Guns & Burning Rubber: The Iron Brotherhood series by Samantha Westlake Page B

Kara could see the dim shape of some building, and Cross aimed over into its parking lot.
    It was a general store of some sort, Kara saw, as the motorcycle’s headlight played across its front before Cross cut the power.  He dropped the kickstand down, and Kara jumped off the bike and hurried over to where Gimli was parking his own.
    Now out in the open, there was at least the fainter light of the moon providing some illumination. Gimli protested, but Kara forced him to sit down, her fingers carefully peeling away clothing and examining his wound.
    Just as the man had said, the bullet wound appeared to be just a flesh wound, although the round had taken quite a bite out of his thigh.  “You should count yourself lucky, you ass,” Kara told the man as he still tried to push her away and insist that it was nothing serious.  “Another inch or two, and this would have severed your artery.  You’d have been dead before you even got the motorcycle running!”
    “Is he okay?” Cross called out from behind her.
    She glanced back at him.  Cross was standing over near the steps of the closed store, looking over at them.  Why was he over there?  He looked as though he was leaning on the railing.  Maybe he was feeling the shock of their adventure only now starting to set in.
    “Yeah, he’ll be fine,” she replied.  “He lost some blood, but the bullet didn’t hit anything serious.  We should get him stitched up, but there shouldn’t be anything long-term but a scar.”
    “Good, good,” Cross said.  There was definitely a note of something new in his voice.  Kara turned towards him, confused.  What was going on?
    “Are you okay?” she asked, taking a step over to him.
    The man nodded, but didn’t respond.  And as he leaned forward a little, holding on tightly to the railing, Kara saw that his face was a mask of agony.  What had happened?
    A second later, the man leaned a little further into the moonlight, and the pale light caught a dark spot on his abdomen, radiating out from where one of his hands was pressed tightly against his chest.
    Kara opened her mouth to cry out, and her feet started forwards.  But before she could reach the man, she saw Cross tilt forward.  His eyes closed as he toppled down to the ground...
    CHAPTER 13
    Before Kara could reach him, Cross’s eyes closed, and he toppled forward, down the stair of the general store and onto the dusty ground.
    A moment later, the female FBI agent landed down on the ground next to him, her hands flying to where, below his ribs, Cross’s motorcycle jacket was soaked through with blood.  “What the hell happened?” she gasped, trying to get his jacket unzipped.
    “Bullet.  On the way out.”  The man’s eyes were still closed, but his lips moved, pushing out each word with an effort.  “Didn’t want to say anything until we were safe.”
    Kara wanted to scream.  They made it out, had rescued Gimli after he had been shot - and now there was this to deal with!  “You should have said something,” she hissed fiercely, even as she peeled back the remains of the man’s shirt to reveal the wound.
    She had her mouth open to say more, but the words caught in her throat as her eyes fell upon the wound.
    This wasn’t a flesh wound, something that could be shrugged off and dealt with later, like Gimli had taken.
    The hole was in the man’s upper abdomen, lower than his diaphragm but definitely cutting through his lower cavity.  There was no way that it could have missed the intestines, Kara guessed - and it might have caught a kidney on the way out.  The blood seeping out of the wound was dark, suggesting contamination, although it was tough to say anything for certain in the pale light.  But the wound was still bleeding, and she could feel the wetness welling up when she tried to press her hands against the hole.
    Think, Kara!  She tried to keep herself together, to fight down the rising sense of panic.  She needed help.  She couldn’t