“Right there! Right there! Don’t move!”

Bosch followed the sound, moving in tight to the side of the ramp and holding his weapon up. His training told him to call out, to alert the other officer to his presence. But he knew that if Brasher was alone with Stokes his calling might distract her and give Stokes another chance to break or make a move on her.

As he cut beneath the underside of the ramp, Bosch saw them at the far wall, no more than fifty feet away. Brasher had Stokes up against the wall, legs and arms spread. She held him there with one hand pressed against his back. Her flashlight was on the ground next to her right foot, its beam lighting the wall on which Stokes leaned.

It was perfect. Bosch felt relief flood his body and almost immediately he understood it was relief that she had not been hurt. He came out of the semi-crouch he was in and started toward them, lowering his weapon.

He was directly behind them. After he had taken only a few steps he saw Brasher take her hand off Stokes and step back from him, glancing to either side as she did it. This immediately registered with Bosch as the wrong thing to do. It was completely out of training. It would allow Stokes to make another run if he wanted to.

Things seemed to slow down then. Bosch started to yell to her but the garage suddenly filled with the flash and shattering blast of a gunshot. Brasher went down, Stokes remained up. The blast echo reverberated through the concrete structure, obscuring its origin.

All Bosch could think was, where is the gun?

He raised his weapon while lowering his body into a combat crouch. He started to turn his head to look for the gun. But he saw Stokes start turning from the wall. He then saw Brasher’s arm rising up from the ground, her gun pointed at Stokes’s turning body.

Bosch aimed his Glock at Stokes.

“Freeze!” he yelled. “Freeze! Freeze! Freeze!”

In a second he was on them.

“Don’t shoot, man,” Stokes yelled. “Don’t shoot!”

Bosch kept his eyes unwavering on Stokes. They still burned and needed relief but he knew even one blink now could be a fatal mistake.

“Down! Get on the ground. Now!”

Stokes dropped onto his stomach and spread his arms at ninety-degree angles to his body. Bosch stepped over him and with a move performed a thousand times before quickly cuffed his wrists behind his back.

He then holstered his weapon and turned to Brasher. Her eyes were wide and moving in a back-and-forth pattern. Blood had spattered onto her neck and had already soaked the front of her uniform shirt. He knelt over her and ripped open her shirt. Still, there was so much blood it took him a moment to find the wound. The bullet had entered her left shoulder, just an inch or so from the Velcro shoulder strap of her Kevlar vest.

The blood was flowing freely from the wound, and Bosch could see Brasher’s face was losing color quickly. Her lips were moving but not making any sound. He looked around for something and saw a car wash rag poking out of Stokes’s back pocket. He yanked it out and pressed it down on the wound. Brasher moaned in pain.

“Julia, this is going to hurt but I have to stop the bleeding.”

With one hand he stripped off his tie and pushed it under her shoulder and then over the top. He tied a knot that was just tight enough to keep the rag compress in place.

“Okay, hang on, Julia.”

He grabbed his rover off the ground and quickly switched the frequency knob to the main channel.

“CDC, officer down, lower-level garage at the La Brea Park apartments, La Brea and Santa Monica. We need paramedics right NOW! Suspect in custody. Confirm CDC.”

He waited for what seemed to be an interminable time before a CDC dispatcher came on the air to say he was breaking up and needed to repeat his call. Bosch clicked the call button and yelled, “Where’s my paramedics? Officer DOWN!”

He switched to tactical.

“Edgar, Edgewood, we’re in the lower level of the garage. Brasher is down. I’ve got Stokes controlled. Repeat, Brasher is down.”

He dropped the radio and yelled Edgar’s name as loud as he could. He took off his jacket and balled it together.

“Man, I didn’t do it,” Stokes yelled. “I don’t know what-”

“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”

Bosch put his jacket under Brasher’s head. Her teeth were clenched in pain, her chin jutting upward. Her lips were almost white.

“Paramedics are coming, Julia. I called ’em before this even went down. I must be psychic or something. You just gotta hold on, Julia. Hold on.”

She opened her mouth, though it looked like a terrible struggle. But before she could say anything Stokes yelled out again in a voice now tinged with fear bordering on hysteria.

“I did not do that, man. Don’t let them kill me, man. I didn’t DO it!”

Bosch leaned over, putting his weight on Stokes’s back. He bent down and spoke in a loud voice directly into his ear.

“Shut the fuck up or I’ll kill you myself!”

He turned his attention back to Brasher. Her eyes were still open. Tears were going down her cheeks.

“Julia, just a few more minutes. You’ve got to hang on.”

He pulled the gun out of her right hand and put it on the ground, far away from Stokes. He then held her hand in both of his.

“What happened? What the hell happened?”

She opened and then closed her mouth again. Bosch could hear running feet on the ramp. He heard Edgar call his name.

“Over here!”

In a moment both Edgar and Edgewood were there.

“Julia!” Edgewood cried out. “Oh, shit!”

Without a moment’s hesitation Edgewood stepped forward and delivered a vicious kick to Stokes’s side.

“You motherfucker!”

He readied himself to do it again when Bosch yelled.

“No! Get back! Get away from him!”

Edgar grabbed Edgewood and pulled him away from Stokes, who had let out a hurt animal cry at the impact of the kick and was now murmuring and moaning in fear.

“Take Edgewood up and get the paramedics down here,” Bosch said to Edgar. “The rovers aren’t for shit down here.”

Both of them seemed frozen.

“Go! Now!”

As if on cue, the sound of sirens could be heard in the distance.

“You want to help her? Go get them!”

Edgar turned Edgewood around and they both ran back toward the ramp.

Bosch turned back to Brasher. Her face was now the color of death. She was going into shock. Bosch didn’t understand. It was a shoulder wound. He suddenly wondered if he had heard two shots. Had the blast and echo obscured a second shot? He checked her body again but found nothing. He didn’t want to turn her to check her back for fear of causing more damage. But there was no blood coming from beneath her.

“Come on, hang in there, Julia. You can do it. You hear that? The paramedics are just about here. Just hang in there.”

She opened her mouth again, jutted her chin and started to speak.

“He… he grabbed… he went for…”

She clenched her teeth and rocked her head back and forth on his coat. She tried to talk again.

“It wasn’t… I’m not…”

Bosch leaned his face close to hers and lowered his voice to an urgent whisper.

“Shhhh, shhhh. Don’t talk. Just stay alive. Concentrate, Julia. Hold fast. Stay alive. Please, stay alive.”

He could feel the garage rumble with noise and vibration. In a moment red lights were bouncing off the walls

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