Page 44 of Misadventures in Blue
A cup of coffee appears in my vision. Black, slightly oily, tiny bubbles rimming the edge of the liquid where it sloshed gently against the paper cup. I take it, although the idea of drinking or eating anything while my stomach is still twisted up into my throat is laughable. I don’t bother to look over as Russo settles next to me, her own cup of coffee in hand.
“How is he?” she asks.
“Stable, last I heard. The bullet caught an artery in his arm and he lost a lot of—” My voice catches, and I suck in a breath, forcing myself to face tonight’s events with the usual blunt, cold honesty I face everything else with. “He lost a lot of blood,” I manage after a moment. “They closed the wound and did a transfusion, and he’s recovering now. I should be able to see him soon.”
Russo reaches out, touches my hand with her rough, unmanicured fingers. I know she sees the dried blood still trapped along the lines of my cuticles. “You saved his life,” she says quietly.
“Maybe,” I say, because at no point during those frantic, bloody moments after the gun went off did I allow myself to hope. At no point when I stanched his wound with my bare hands, the scene cruelly overlaid with my memories of trying to save Frazer, did I let myself believe it could end any differently.
Instead, I felt his hot, wet blood against my skin, sticky and slick all at once, and I thought it’s happening again.
It’s happening.
Again.
The uniforms cuffed Gia while she was frozen in horror at what she’d done—we arrested her without any one of us firing a weapon or using any kind of force. Good police work any way you slice it, and the paramedics were a credit to the city. They arrived as fast as humanly possible and took charge of Jace’s life with expert competence.
Someone had to peel me away while they worked. Another paramedic? Captain Kim, maybe? But I was allowed to ride in the ambulance with him. Allowed to hold the hand on his good arm while I frantically searched for all the prayers from my Catholic upbringing.
I could only remember fragments, and finally my thoughts disintegrated into vague, broken pleas as the ambulance raced to the hospital.
Please don’t let him die.
Please.
Don’t let him die.
“There was nothing else you could have done,” Russo points out in the here and now. “The other officers told me what happened. You had the interview under control, and from what it sounds like, you might have been able to talk her down even without Sutton crashing in.”
“I should have searched her first,” I murmur.
“You wouldn’t have been able to—not without cause—and what you had on her going into the interview would have been pretty weak grounds for a body search from a court’s perspective.”
She’s right, and I know she’s right, and it’s almost worse that way. It’s almost worse to know I did everything right and still.
Still.
I take a drink of the coffee. Not because I like it or because I need time to think, but just because it’s something to do. Some new input that isn’t self-recrimination and terror and misery.
“He did what Frazer did,” I say after a minute and mostly out of nowhere.
“Yeah,” Russo sighs. “I know.”
“Why do they do that?”
Russo gives a dry laugh. “Who? Cops? Men? Men who are in love with you?”
I don’t want to answer that, and I can’t anyway.
“I know he’s in love, Day,” Russo adds gently. “All anyone has to do is look at him and know he’s gone for you.”
“He’s young,” I say, trying to sound dismissive. It only comes out as sad. “He doesn’t know what he wants.”
“I disagree,” Russo says. “I think you’re the one who doesn’t know what she wants.”
“He did what Frazer did,” I repeat softly, and she gives me a rueful look.
“Is that so unforgivable?”
