“Mine’s alive but needs an ambulance,” Danny heard from behind him.
“Mine too.” Stepping back from the man’s possible reach, he scanned the area, watching the other man get away. He’d left his phone line open with HIS headquarters, but with it lodged in his left pocket, he had no idea if they’d heard anything—surely the shotgun blast—or if he’d broken it during his dive.
The corners of his lips lifted when he saw a truck racing through the field and cut off the retreating ATV. Backup had arrived. Then he heard a thump. Turning, expecting the other threat to be back in the ballgame, but seeing Wayne on his back mixed in with the crop sent a jolt to his system. Quickly reaching Wayne, Danny gulped at the redness of his examiner’s hand that clutched to the side of his lower abdomen.
With a steely resolve, Danny took the chance no other threat was imminent and replaced his weapon in his pocket. Down on his knees, he jerked the phone from his pocket. A quick visual assessment screamed the urgent need of medical attention. With his phone to his ear, lodged between his shoulder and cheek, he demanded, “I need Life Flight and two ambulances.”
“Copy. Life flight. Two buses. Standby” was the response he received.
Dropping the phone, so he could use both hands to staunch the blood flow, he urged Wayne, “Tell me.”
The pain blazing on Wayne’s face reinforced Danny’s request for Life Flight. “One bullet. I don’t feel the pain in my back, so maybe lodged.” His examiner groaned and took a few deep breaths that seemed to help calm him. As calm as the man could be with a bullet in his abdomen.
Seeing the blood flowing around his hands, Danny didn’t need to see the wound. He couldn’t do anything about it anyway, so he did the one thing that could help. He kept his hands over Wayne’s to staunch the flow of blood.
Wayne hissed. “Fuck, it hurts.”
“I expect it does.” Danny visually examined Wayne’s body for any other injuries. He’d first thought of the two shots between Wayne and the third man but remembered the man who got away wildly shooting behind him. The metallic tinge of blood floated from Wayne. “Are you injured anywhere else?”
Gritting his teeth, Wayne’s voice began to waver. “Isn’t this enough?” His eyes fluttered and his consciousness began to slip.
“Stay with me, Wayne.”
The blood flow from Wayne began to slow, but it hadn’t stopped, which worried the hell out of Danny. He’d been the one to land them here. He’d been the one who’d decided to greet the men with fake pleasantries instead of standing their ground from the beginning. Losing Wayne would weigh heavily on him. But, most importantly, Wayne’s family would suffer a great loss.
Shifting those thoughts aside, he jerked his head around at the roar of an engine. Relaxing a notch, he turned to see Wayne struggling to keep his eyes open as Danny’s gut wrenched at the pain Wayne suffered.
Hoping to give Wayne a smile, he asked, “So, did I pass?”
A quick grin appeared on his examiner’s face before it turned to a painful grimace. “You did good, kid.”
Good? He’d gotten his examiner shot. Who does that and passes their licensing exam?
Danny heard fast movement through the plants approaching. A quick turn confirmed Boss and Sugar behind him. “Life Flight ETA two mikes,” Boss informed him. Those two minutes passed agonizingly slow.
Blessed relief slid through his system at the echo of the Life Flight. The approaching sirens actually shifted into an angry mood. He understood the sheriff’s department had a large area to cover, but their slow response helped not one iota.
“He’s out,” Sugar stated.
“This one too,” Boss responded.
Without a need to glance up, Danny knew they stood guard over the two threats. That released one focus of his mind. “Did you get the other guy?” Danny didn’t want someone trying to return with backup.
“He’s in the truck,” Boss answered. “How is he?”
Assuming he meant Wayne, Danny answered, “Not good.”
“Tell them we’re friendly,” Boss stated on his phone, over what Danny expected to be the HIS emergency line. The last thing his group needed was the deputies to pull their weapons on armed agents of HIS.
In no time, everything turned into a controlled chaos as the emergency teams from both Life Flight and the ambulances jumped into action and the deputies directed the scene. Reluctantly, Danny lifted his hands to a paramedic who—with another paramedic—quickly assessed Wayne and hurried him to the waiting helicopter.
After finding out where they would take Wayne, Danny nodded and turned back to what he knew would be twenty questions and a grueling interrogation from law enforcement.
He gave a quick statement on the scene, then was asked to go to the station and provide a more complete one.
Hours later—after questions upon questions, and then “Sit and wait, while I check out your story”—Danny hitched a ride with Boss and Sugar for the airfield to pick up his truck. He’d wanted to see Wayne but had been told to wait until tomorrow. While he was stable and would recover, they had him sedated.
As Boss dropped him off, Danny couldn’t help but laugh when Sugar told him, “This is no reason to cancel tonight.”
With an easy laugh, he admitted to forgetting about his evening plans. Only Sugar wouldn’t consider nearly dying in a crash or being killed by stupid marijuana farmers an excuse to back out of something.
Well, he thought about the blind date, today can’t get much worse. Then another whisper hit him, You both survived. Yeah, he nearly snorted out loud, although my instructor was shot.
After returning home, he prepped for the date Sugar had set up for him. Once she’d fallen in love with Boss, she’d made it her mission to help Danny find the right woman. Being that this was Sugar, he’d promised to meet the
