“What kind? Are they good layers? I was always fond of Plymouth Rocks. Consistent producers and easy keepers, but my mom swore by Rhode Island Reds.”
“I have Reds.”
I turned back a little to offer a friendly smile. “My mom would approve of you.” Maybe not so much for pointing a gun at me, although it’d been so long since I’d seen my family, she might not even recognize me, or care.
The man huffed and I searched for another topic. Come on, Gaynor Beach PD. Where the hell are you? I said, “I’d worry about stray cats, myself. They like the park along the river, and that chicken-wire run in back would keep out dogs but not cats.”
“My rooster would make mincemeat of any cat?—”
Our bonding moment was destroyed by the dog deciding this was the moment to make a break for it. She burst out from under the side of the coop and bolted right past me toward the underbrush along the river.
The man yelled and a shot rang out.
“Aaah!” A flash of red-hot agony lanced through my thigh. I fell. Something hard smacked me on the back of the head like a two-by-four to the skull as I landed. Waves of pain slammed into me from my right leg, making my stomach cramp. I gagged against a flood of bile in my mouth, and the motion sent shooting pain through my skull. Dimly, I heard shouting, but no more shots.
A hand gripped my shoulder, too big to be Kevin’s. A face peered down into my watering eyes. It was a nice face though only vaguely familiar—straight nose, determined chin, worried hazel eyes… The guy from the street. Brooklyn. I found enough focus to say, “Protect Kevin.”
“He ran for help.”
“Oh. Good.” I tried to sit up, but Brooklyn pressed me into place on the ground.
“Don’t move.”
“It’s just my leg.” And maybe my head. I was too dizzy to even know.
“You were shot. There’s no just about it.” I heard a tremor in Brooklyn’s voice, so maybe he wasn’t as calm as he was pretending.
Fair enough. Neither was I. “Were’s the, um, gun dude? Frank?” I blinked and tried to turn my head, but the fire-hot lance of pain up my skull made me freeze and just breathe.
“He ran into his house.”
“With the gun?”
“Yeah.”
“Crap. Let me up.”
“I don’t think…” But when I pushed determinedly, Brooklyn didn’t fight me.
I sat up and looked around. Not down at my leg. I don’t mind blood—heck, I was going to be a nurse, once—but I wasn’t fond of seeing my own. Especially when the world was already whirling like a tornado in Oz.
Sirens wailed on the other side of the house, approaching fast.
“Thank God,” Brooklyn said, which was exactly what I was thinking.
“As long as Frank doesn’t do anything stupid.”
“Stupider.” Brooklyn gave a nervous chuckle. “Shooting you was pretty stupid.”
Another wave of nausea clenched my gut. “Right.” As the sirens came to a stop out on the road, I had to look down at myself. Oh, that’s not good. Bright blood welled out of my thigh in a steady stream. I clamped my hand over the spot and hissed through my teeth. Not the femoral artery, I don’t think. That’s on the inside, right? This hole was more on the outside of my leg. I wasn’t thinking straight.
Brooklyn said, “I’m going to go get?—”
I grabbed his wrist, harder than I meant to. “Don’t go!” Through my tunneling vision I saw the bloody handprint I’d smeared on his fair skin. Blood. Skin. “Don’t worry. I’m negative.” I knew what mattered as a thirty-eight-year-old gay man. Right? The pain thudded a drumbeat in my head that made it hard to form words.
Two cops in uniform skidded around the corner of the house, guns drawn. “Hands up! Where I can see them!” the woman yelled.
Brooklyn raised the hand I wasn’t holding but called, “The man with the gun’s in the house.”
