Brett Battles - Every Precious Thing

Alan, who had just rounded the corner, yelped as he fell to the ground.

“Watch him!” Logan said to Dev, with a quick nod at the guy he’d just shot. He whipped back around to cover the doctor, but Dr. Paskota wasn’t there anymore.

If shehad gone into the bushes, Logan would have heard that. So the only place she could be was along the side of the garden shed.

“It’s over, Dr. Paskota,” Logan yelled. “You know it is.”

As soon as the last word was out of his mouth, he raced quietly across the grass to the shed.

“You’re a dead man, Harper,” the woman said.

“It’S over, Dr. Paskota,” Harper yelled. “You know it is.”

Erica’s mind raced. There had to be some way out of this. She was Dr. Erica Paskota! She was the one who called the shots. She was the one in charge. Things couldn’t be this fucked up. They just couldn’t!

She winced as pain radiated out of her wound. Her wound! She’d been shot ! She never thought in her entire life a bullet would ever touch her skin. This was wrong, all wrong!

“You’re a dead man, Harper,” she yelled.

This should have been simple. She should have already been on the way back with the girl.

Done.

Done, done, done.

But she’d been shot. And it was that son of a bitch Harper’s fault. He shouldn’t have even been involved at all.

I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to get out of here.

But even as the words repeated in her mind, they began to sound hollow.

“Dr. Paskota, put your gun down, and come out,” Harper said.

He was only a few feet away, just around the front of the shed.

I’m not getting out of here, am I?

The thought actually relaxed her for the first time in…years.

Harper had said she would be going to prison, but he was wrong.

She unscrewed the suppressor from her gun, and slipped the barrel into her mouth without hesitation.

As much as Logan hoped she would come out peacefully, he knew she wouldn’t. Her arrogance wouldn’t allow that. He would just have to keep her there until the police arrived. They could figure out how to get her out.

He heard the faint squeak of something being unscrewed.

What the-

With sudden realization, Logan raced around the corner.

Dr. Paskota had the muzzle of her gun in her mouth. She was opting for the coward’s way out, but he couldn’t let that happen. He dove, his hand knocking into the weapon just as she pulled the trigger. The blast was so loud that Logan didn’t even hear himself hit the ground. He did, however, feel her gun fall on his back and roll to the ground. He flipped around, intending to grab the weapon before she could get it again, but he needn’t have bothered.

Dr. Paskota was lying on the ground, unmoving.

“No, no, no!” Logan said as he pulled himself to his knees.

“You all right?” Dev called out, his voice sounding tinny and far away.

“I’m fine.”

Logan put a hand on the woman’s neck, sure she was dead, but there was a pulse. It wasn’t very strong, but it didn’t seem to be in danger of stopping.

He flipped her over, and saw what had happened.

He hadn’t hit the gun in time to pull it out of her mouth before it fired, but he had moved it enough so that the bullet ripped through the doctor’s cheek instead of the back of her head, leaving a nasty hole that was now covered with dirt.

But she was alive, and she would answer for what she’d done.

He ripped the sleeve off his shirt and tore it into several pieces. He used a strip to wipe the dirt away from her facial wound, and stuck another over the hole. A third he used to tie off the wound on her arm. He then grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her out from behind the shed and into the yard.

He checked the others. Of all the injured, Richard had it worst. Gut shots were never good, and his only chance was to get to a hospital soon.

Logan looked over at Kurt, who had yet to move from where he’d been standing. “Come here.”

Kurt mouthed something, but Logan couldn’t hear it.

“What?”

“I’m fine where I am,” Kurt said, his voice barely audible to Logan.

“Come here and keep pressure on this,” Logan told him, his hand pushing down on the makeshift bandage over Richard’s wound. “He tried to save your life, for God’s sake.”

That got Kurt moving. He took over for Logan, who then joined Dev next to Alan. The bullet had caught Sara’s husband in the meaty part of the thigh.

“Don’t think it hit the bone,” Dev said. “And it’s not bleeding too bad, so no artery.”

Logan glanced at Alan, wanting to ask what he thought he’d been doing, but the pain in the man’s eyes stopped him. The truth was, Logan knew what Alan had been trying to do.

“Where the hell are the cops?” he asked Dev.

His friend gave him an odd look. “They’re like a block away. Can’t you hear them?”

Logan shook his head. “Ever had a gun fired right next to your head?”

His friend grinned. “Once or twice.”

The police rushed in a few minutes later, shouting at everyone to get on the ground. Of course, everyone was already on the ground, either injured or tending to them.

Once the cops secured all the weapons and confirmed the danger had passed, the EMTs were allowed to come in and assess the wounded.

Richard, as Logan expected, was the first out the door. Dr. Paskota went next, then Alan and Dr. Paskota’s companion.

Logan and Dev were ordered to sit at the patio table and wait with an officer assigned to watch them.

A thought suddenly occurred to Logan. “There’s another one,” he said to the cop. “He’s across the street, on the other side of one of the sedans parked there.”

“You mean the one the two old guys with the tire iron were watching?” the officer said.

That answered that.

Fifty minutes after the police stormed the house, FBI Special Agent Kara Sanchez arrived. She didn’t look much older than Logan, and had her dark hair pulled back into a tight ponytail.

“You’re Logan Harper?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What the hell were you thinking? Do you know how many people could have been killed here?”

“I do. Do you know how many people were killed?”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’ve created one giant mess here, my friend, and I don’t envy you.”

Logan looked past her, making it clear he was checking to see if anyone else was around. “Really?” he said. “What I thought I had here was a case that could make an FBI agent’s career.”

“Oh, is that so?” she said, her attitude unchanged.

“It is.”

She looked at him for a moment, and he saw what he knew he would-a subtle shift in her eyes.

Logan was in the middle of his story when Callie arrived. As soon as she had made the calls to the police and Special Agent Sanchez, she’d left Riverside. Now, as Logan went on, she confirmed many of the points he told Sanchez, and soon they were all heading to the hospital.

Though Sanchez wanted them all to travel together, Logan insisted on taking his own car. He had a very important reason for this, a promise he had yet to keep. So, after Callie gave Sanchez her personal assurances that Logan wouldn’t bolt, they headed over separately-Callie with the agent and Dev with Logan.

Logan and Dev arrived first and found Harp and Barney sitting in the lobby. Barney had insisted that Harp be taken by one of the ambulances so he could be checked out after his hostage ordeal.