Page 2 of Havik: Warlord Brides
So that’s how she got by. She learned to dig out bullets, stitch up knife wounds, and watch for infection. She knew her antibiotics from the pain pills and even which pills helped with common chronic ailments like high blood pressure. What she didn’t know she looked up in Doc’s old medical books, but that didn’t come up often. The people who ran with Nicky were more likely to waltz in with a stab wound than develop diabetes or hypertension.
A fist pounded on the door. “Tallie, get dressed. The boss wants you.”
Okay, then.
“It’s the middle of the night!” she shouted through the door, adding a dramatic yawn.
“No rest for the wicked,” the man said. Everyone had to have a maxim. Fuckers.
“Speak for yourself,” she grumbled. Already dressed, she cleaned the lenses of her eyeglasses and took her time getting her kit together. Nicky’s goons didn’t need to know that she heard them coming and had been prepared to fight. It was safer to let them think she had been fast asleep.
Nicky’s paranoia had been growing in recent months, not that she could blame him. His line of work wasn’t the safest of professions, so it was smart to be wary. Maybe if Doc had died from liver failure the way he anticipated instead of being gunned down in a hit, Nicky might have had a bit more chill nowadays.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.Another one of her mother’s sayings.
Turf wars sucked, and not just from the constant vigilance required to keep from being stabbed in the back. The stress wore a person down. It wore Thalia down. Between being dragged out of bed at all hours to stitch together Nicky’s minions and listening to Nicky rant about aliens tracking people through implants, she needed a break. Or at least a few hours of decent sleep.
Thalia ran a brush through her hair for decency’s sake and pulled it back in a ponytail. Whatever Nicky needed, she figured it’d be gross and require her to keep her hair out of her face. She tugged on the ends, disappointed to see the green color already faded. Her normally dishwater blonde held color fairly well, but she tried a new brand the last time she colored her hair.
The pounding on the door resumed. “Get your ass out of bed, Tallie. They’re almost here. Nathan needs you.”
Ugh. That guy.
She swept the scattered supplies back into the bag and flung open the door. “I’m here. You can stop shouting.”
“Downstairs. Now,” the man said, his face pulled into a scowl. If she didn’t know him to be a heartless bastard, she’d say he looked worried.
In the kitchen, Thalia wiped down the counter to lay out her supplies and scrubbed her hands. The backdoor banged open as two men carried in a third. Nathan clutched his gut, blood staining his shirt.
Not good. He had no color and barely looked conscious.
“What happened?” she asked.
“He got shot,” the man with the buzz cut said, ever so helpfully.
“He needs to go to the hospital,” Thalia said. Gut wounds were more than just tricky, they were a fucking disaster. Too much could go wrong and too many vital organs to hit. Doc had been an actual doctor, albeit unlicensed. Thalia was, at best, an orderly and sometimes paramedic. “Seriously, a hospital.”
The men ignored her and hauled Nathan onto the table. He moaned in pain, the poor bastard.
“Hey! You, buzz cut, don’t put him on the table. I have to clean that,” she said as the men hoisted Nathan onto the kitchen table. Shit. Fine. Whatever. Nathan would be lucky if he survived long enough to worry about infection. “Remove his shirt.”
“I’m not your servant, and my name is Blade,” he said.
“Of course, it is,” she muttered, snapping on latex gloves. “How exceedingly original.”
“You think you’re hot shit, but you ain’t nothing Nicky can’t replace,” Blade said, stepping toward her.
“We’re all replaceable. You gonna hold Nathan down or am I going to tell Nicky that his best friend died because his minion had to front?” Thalia asked, suddenly tired. She took her scissors to the ruin of Nathan’s blood-soaked T-shirt. Gut wounds were the trickiest. Gunshot wound, dead center of the abdomen. Sloppy. Hits were normally a single shot to the head. Boom. No chance of survival. If Nathan had been the target, someone wanted him to suffer. “Roll him to one side. I need to check the exit wound.”
Nathan’s bulk moved enough to expose his smooth, unblemished back; sans exit wound.
Fuck.
The bullet was still in Nathan, which meant dying horribly on the kitchen table, and Nicky would blame her.
Thalia pressed the wadded-up ruins of the shirt against the wound, helpless to do anything else. Short of surgery, she could only alleviate the pain. She could pour whiskey down his throat and try to get him to swallow enough pain pills to make his last moments bearable.
“Get me some towels,” she ordered. “And a bottle of whiskey.”
