Page 57 of Taking Savannah
The wounded one is trying to get his weapon back. His good hand is reaching for the gun on the concrete, and I lean out and put a round into the floor six inches from his fingers. He pulls back.
His partner sees Carmelo coming and makes a decision. He breaks from cover and runs for the exit ramp, weapon abandoned, legs pumping, and I step out from behind the pillar to track him because a man who just tried to kill me doesn't get to leave the building without consequences.
That's when the fifth one shoots me.
I didn't count five. I counted four and I was wrong, and the fifth was in the stairwell, the one I didn't think to check, the one Carmelo didn't clear because we both made the same assumption and assumptions in a firefight are how people die.
The round hits my left arm just above the elbow. The impact is a punch, not a sting, a hard, blunt force that spins me sideways and slams my good shoulder into the concrete wall. My back slides down the rough surface and I hit the ground with myass, and my gun is still in my right hand because dropping your weapon is dying. That lesson was beaten into me before I could drive a car, and it stuck.
The arm is wrong. I can feel the heat spreading through my bicep, and my sleeve is already soaked. Entry wound in the front, just above the crease of the elbow. I can feel the exit in the back, ragged and bigger than the entry, which means the round tumbled on the way through. The bone is intact. I know because I can still wiggle my fingers, and a shattered humerus would have me screaming instead of sitting here assessing the damage with the detached calm of a man whose training is the only thing keeping him from panicking.
Carmelo finishes the runner. I hear the sound. I don't look. Then he finds the fifth one in the stairwell and I hear that too, and it takes longer, his screams echoing as Carmelo bashes his head against the concrete with wet thuds.
He appears in front of me and crouches, takes a peek at my arm. His face does nothing because it never does, but his hands are fast and sure. He strips the belt from one of the dead men and wraps it around my arm above the wound, pulling it tight with a jerk that whites out my vision for a full second.
"Through and through," I say when I can talk.
"I know." He ties it off and checks the wound again, then looks at me with those dead-gray eyes. "I didn't clear the stairwell."
"I know."
"It won't happen again."
"I know that too."
He helps me up. The garage tilts hard to the left and I grab his shoulder and wait for the world to find its level. It takes about five seconds and during those five seconds I think about the fact that I promised Savannah I'd come back in one piece and technically a bullet hole is still one piece, it's just one piece with a hole in it.
She's going to be furious about the technicality.
Carmelo walks me to the SUV and puts me in the passenger seat and gets behind the wheel. He drives fast. I lean my head back and hold the belt tight and watch the blood seep through the fabric and think about three things.
First: Billone is being positioned as a mediator between both families, which means someone is actively moving Aurelio's son into the space between the Bonaccorsos and the Castillos, and that someone has enough pull to give Marco Castillo direct orders.
Second: Ferrara is an ally now, a real one, burned by his own side and willing to share intelligence because the alternative is serving people who build schools to destroy children.
Third: Savannah is going to kill me.
My phone buzzes, it’s Leone. I answer with my good hand.
"Status."
"Alive. Bullet in the arm. Through and through. Carmelo's driving me back."
"The meeting?"
"Ferrara's information was good. The alliance was pulled by someone above Marco. And they've got a mediator coming in. Matteo Billone."
Silence. Long enough that I check the screen to make sure the call is still connected.
"Leone?"
"I heard you." His voice is the Don. "Aurelio's son is being positioned between both families."
"That's what Ferrara said. Placement. Not mediation."
Another silence, shorter this time before he talks again. "Get back to the compound. Get stitched. We'll debrief when you're not bleeding."
"Copy."
