Page 25 of Rogue
Cade laughs like this is the funniest thing ever. He turns around, throwing his hands up in the air. “Well, there you have it. No doctors here, Mother. Sorry.” He doesn’t sound sorry. Not even a little. “I mean,” he continues.“I can pull a slug out of him, but I can’t guarantee I won’t do more damage than good. He looks like he’s on the way out, darlin’.”
Maria Rosa sends him an icy stare. And then she turns it on me. “You’re lying,” she informs me. “Youarea doctor.”
“I’m not.” I’m really damn glad none of these people know my father or my sister are actually doctors. They would probably assume I know what I’m doing by association or something. Turns out Maria Rosa doesn’t need such information to make calls like that, though. “Bullshit. You can save him.” She sounds like she’s determined to make this the truth by sheer force of will. She’s mad. I’m convinced of that fact when she turns her gun on me and removes the safety. “Get over here,” she commands. “Get the bullet out of him and sew him up. You can do it.”
“I—” I shake my head, not quite sure what to do. “I have no surgical experience. I’ll kill him.”
“Oh, no, princess. You kill him, and I kill you. I don’t think you want that. You want to die?”
“Of course not.”
“Then get over here and fix him!”
I can see that the man on the ground by the gate, Rico, is beyond saving. His lips and eyelids are blue, which I’m educated enough to know means he stopped breathing some time ago. I’m betting that if I walk over there and place my fingertips against his neck, I’m not going to find a pulse. I’m also betting Maria Rosa does not want to hear that, though. She seems like she’s on the brink of a complete meltdown.
“I don’t have any equipment. I’d need a sterile room, and surgical tools. I—I don’t even have a needle and thread, let alone forceps. You do know what a psychologist is, right?”
Maria Rosa doesn’t answer. She moves in a flash of tight Versace and highly impractical Manolos, and suddenly she has me by the hair. Both Cade and Shay move at the same time, trying to put themselves in between me and the woman, but Maria Rosa has a firm grip on me; my hair feels like it’s about to be torn out at the roots.
“For fuck’s sake,” Cade groans under his breath. “If you really wanna piss Rebel off, you’re doing a stellar job.”
“Do I look like I give a fuck about Rebel?” Maria Rosa spits. “I only care about Rico.” She proceeds to drag me toward Rico’s body, jabbing me every few paces with what I’m assuming it the barrel of her gun. Raphael starts laughing in that rattling, weird, unnerving way of his. His cackling bounces around the compound courtyard like a mocking bird call. He stops laughing as I pass him to say, “I hope you’re ready, slut. I’ll be skull fucking you before the end of the night.”
Anger rolls through me. I want to punch this woman in the ribcage for handling me like I’m shit, for bring that man in such close proximity of me, but I know she won’t hesitate to shoot if I piss her off.
The Widow Makers all move in unison, crowding in around, all just as angry as I am. They may not know me or like me, but they love Rebel. As far as they are concerned, I am his property and Maria Rosa should not be interfering with me in any way.
Cade is beginning to look seriously worried. Maria Rosa shoves me forward roughly, and I fall to my knees beside Rico. My heart is charging so hard, I can hear my blood pumping in my own ears. The sound becomes a deafening roar when I feel the muzzle of the gun pressing into the back of my head.
This is not good. This is not good at all. I have no way of saving this man. I have no clue what I’m doing. Now that I’m closer I can see the bullet hole in his stomach, though, can see that someone has ineffectually tried to stem the flow of blood by ramming a black silk scarf into the wound. Right into it, like that was the best option available to them. Even I know that was a bad idea. That scarf has got all kinds of bacteria all over it, and now that bacteria is happily breeding away inside the torn up vital organs of a dying man.
“Begin,” Maria Rosa commands.
“I told you, I don’t have any instruments.”
She crouches down beside me, craning her face into mine, baring her teeth so that she’s showing gum. “Use. Your. Fingers.”
“I am not sticking my fingers inside his body. No way!”
Pain comes, then—a sharp, piercing pain at the back of my head. My vision dances, pinpricks of light bursting everywhere, but I don’t lose consciousness. I do fall forward, though—my hands land right on Rico’s torso. The man’s eyes flicker open, and he gasps soundlessly for oxygen once, twice, and then his eyes roll back in his head. He starts to convulse, pink foam pouring out of his mouth.
“Ahhhh, Mother, the bitch killed him,” Raphael laughs. “She’s trouble. I told you, no?”
Maria Rosa lets out an anguished squeal. I look up, and see that she’s hitting herself in the side of the head with her gun, pulling on her own hair. Tears tremble on the ends of her eyelashes, ready to fall any second. “He’s not dead. You check him. Check his pulse,” she growls.
I do check his pulse. It’s thready and weak, but I can feel the irregular twitch of his heart beneath the pads of my fingers. Thank fuck for that. “He’s not dead,” I say. I hate how my voice shakes. I hate that I’m afraid right now, but it can’t be helped. I keep finding myself in these situations. If I don’t get shot in the back of the head in a couple of minutes and my brains aren’t splattered all over Rico and the dirt and everywhere else in between, maybe I’ll be less frightened the next time this happens.Maybe.
Maria Rosa grinds her teeth together, repositioning her gun in her hands again. “Okay. Now you get that bullet out of him, bitch, or I’m going put three in you. Do you hear me?” she screams.
I look from her to Cade and back again. Cade has his gun in his hands pointing it at Maria Rosa, but he looks torn. “I could shoot her if you want, Soph. I can’t guarantee she won’t shoot you first, though. It’s your call. What do you want me to do?”
“God, don’t shoot her.”
“All right. Well, you’d better get your hands inside Rico then, before the bastard dies.” He doesn’t look at me while he talks. He stares intently at Maria Rosa, unwavering, hands steady. I think about changing my mind, about telling him to shoot her, but would he be able to do it before she killed me? Probably not.
So there’s nothing left for it. My hands are covered in blood and dirt from when I toppled forward a minute ago. I scrub them against my jeans, doing what I can to get them clean, and then I lean over the ghostly white body in front of me and I do something neither my father nor Sloane have probably ever done: I stick my bare, filthy dirty fingers inside an open stomach wound. It feels innately wrong, and, worryingly, it feels cool. Should he really be this cold? The human body should sit at an average 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, but the inside of Rico’s stomach feels a lot cooler. This could be normal, though. I’m not a doctor. I know shit about trauma and what happens when someone goes into shock.
“Can you feel it?” Maria Rosa asks.
