In the distance, dogs barked a challenge. Neighbors appeared from their houses, looking around to see where the shots came from. He knew that even as he raced after the shooter. The man disappeared behind the van. A moment later, the engine revved. Tires squealed, smoke rising from the pavement as the van sped off. Jackson stopped at the curb, slamming a fist against his thigh. Then he turned and his world narrowed to the sight of Mac lying in the entryway, blood pooling around her.
God, so much blood.
Too much blood.
He leapt up the steps to the front porch. As he did, he snarled as he imagined what she’d say if she saw him. She’d want him to be careful. He couldn’t mess up the crime scene. The techs might be able to learn something from it. To hell with all that. None of it mattered if it meant not helping her.
He wasn’t about to lose her.
He couldn’t lose her.
Fear clawed at him as he dropped to his knees at her side. For a moment, he stared down at her, praying this was a nightmare he’d soon wake up from. Then he shook himself. This was all too real and if he didn’t do something to stop the bleeding, she’d die.
Mac lay on her stomach, right arm extended. Her gun rested a few inches from her hand. Blood pooled underneath her. Swallowing hard, Jackson carefully rolled her onto her back. He inhaled sharply as he did. Blood soaked her left side as it poured from wounds in that shoulder and her neck.
Not thinking, he threw back his head and let out a primal scream. Then he called for help. Surely, one of the neighbors who came outside after hearing the shots would realize something was horribly wrong. One of them had to come see what happened.
Didn’t they?
Not waiting to find out, he ripped off his shirt and tore it in half. His hands shook as he formed two compresses. His mouth firmed into a taut line as he pressed the material to her wounds. As he did, Mac moaned softly.
It was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard.
She was alive.
Now to keep her that way.
“Shh, sweetheart. I’m here. Lie still.”
Phone. He needed his phone. But his was upstairs. He remembered Mac holding hers. Where had she put it?
Holding the compresses in place with one hand and a knee, he searched her pants pockets. His fingers fumbled as he unbuttoned her jacket. Carefully, he eased the jacket open. As he did, he forced himself to look to look for additional injuries. Then he reached inside the jacket’s inner pocket.
He let out a relieved breath as his fingers closed around her phone. As they did, he tried to focus. First things first. Get help. Then he could check Mac for other injuries. Most of all, he needed to remember she still lived. She would stay that way. He wouldn’t accept any other option.
Ignoring the blood on his hand, he swiped a finger across the cellphone’s display. Then he bit back a curse. It was locked. Shifting positions, he reached across Mac. Carefully, he pressed her right index finger against the scanner. He almost sobbed in relief when the phone unlocked. He reached down to once again apply pressure to her wound with his left hand while he called for help with the right.
“911,” a woman’s voice said. “What’s your emergency?”
“Officer down!” He forced down his panic. He had to give the 911 operator all the information he could. “This is Jackson Caine. My wife is Captain Mackenzie Santos, Crimes Against Persons. She’s been shot.”
He rattled off the address and answered the operator’s questions the best he could. When she told him to stay on the line, he simply dropped the phone onto the floor at his side, leaving the line open. He couldn’t talk to her any more. He needed to help Mac.
“C’mon, Mac. Hang on. Help’s coming.” He looked around for something, anything to replace his shirt as blood seeped through the now saturated material. But there was nothing, and he didn’t dare leave her long enough to find something else.
Even as he focused on Mac, he heard footsteps running toward the front porch. Neighbors called to one another, asking what happened. Someone said he’d called the police. Someone else ordered children inside. There was trouble. They didn’t know what it was yet, just that something had happened.
“Dear God!”
Jackson looked up, his body tensing, ready to protect his wife from another attack. Then, recognizing their next-door neighbor, he breathed a sigh of relief.
“I need something to stop the bleeding,” he rasped.
The man glanced at Mac and then nodded. Jackson watched as he hurried in the direction of the kitchen. Then he closed his eyes and willed Mac to hang on. Help was on the way. All she had to do was hang on until it got there.
A moment or a lifetime later, the sounds of someone else running up the steps to the house penetrated Jackson’s laser focus on his wife. He lifted his head, teeth bared. As he did, he pictured his jaguar sniffing the air. He inhaled and relaxed. Jael. Finally.
Where the hell had she been?
* *. *
“Go straight to school from Mac’s,” Jael Lindsay said, glancing across the car to where her seventeen-year-old daughter sat in the passenger seat. “Your brother has football practice.”
“I know,” Chelsea drawled. “I still don’t see why he couldn’t get a ride with one of his friends. That way I could meet the girls at the coffeeshop this morning.”
“Chel, we’ve talked about this.” She glanced across the car and fought the urge to laugh at her daughter’s mulish look. It was an expression she knew well, one her own mother had seen often enough during Jael’s teenaged years.
“It’s not fair, Mom.”
“Life isn’t fair, Chelsea.”
Almost every morning started with a variation of the same protest. Chelsea didn’t want to take her brother to school. Of course, her brother didn’t want her to. Sibling rivalry was alive and well in their household, at least until someone else decided to get involved. Then the two joined forces. Not that it kept Jael from wanting to knock their heads together on a regular basis.
Instead of closing saying anything, Jael flipped on the turn indicator and slowed to turn right onto Mac’s street. At the same time, a white van sped around the corner, almost clipping her front bumper. For a moment, it looked like the van might overbalance. It seemed to teeter just on the edge before it steadied. Frowning, Jael checked for a plate. Her frown deepened. Not only did she see neither a front nor rear license plate, but the windows were tinted so darkly she couldn’t see inside.
Mental alarm bells sounding, she sped down the block in the direction of Mac’s house. As she neared the cul-de-sac, she gripped the steering wheel even tighter. Something was wrong. There were too many people standing around, some in the street and others on the sidewalk and front lawns. They should be getting ready for work or getting kids off to school. Worse, they all seemed focused on Mac’s and Jackson’s house.
Worried, she honked the horn, warning everyone to get out of her way. A moment later, the car rocked back and forth as she braked to a halt in the driveway. She left the engine running and grabbed her cellphone where it rested on the console between the front seats. Without thinking, she climbed out. Then, remembering she wasn’t alone, she leaned inside the driver’s side window.
“Chel, Brandon, stay here. Don’t leave and don’t come inside until I give you the all clear. Understand?” Gone was the frustrated mother of a few moments before. In her place was the seasoned cop, one anticipating the worst even as she prayed for the best.
“Mom?” fourteen-year-old Brandon questioned from the backseat.
“Do as I say, Bran, please.” She turned her attention to Chelsea. Much as she hated what she was about to do, she wanted to make sure they could protect themselves. “Take this. Use it if you have to.” She pulled her backup piece from her ankle holster and handed it to her daughter.
Mouth tight, worry darkening her expression, Chelsea nodded.
“Be careful, Mom.” She took the gun and checked to make sure the safety was on. The
n she climbed over the console and settled behind the steering wheel.
Jael nodded and motioned for her to roll up the window. Then she pounded once on the rooftop, reminding them to lock the doors. Praying her instincts were wrong, she ran across the lawn toward the front porch. Without conscious thought, she pulled her primary weapon from her shoulder holster. With it in one hand, her cellphone in the other, she slowed as she neared the porch and the half dozen neighbors gathered around it.
Without a word, she pushed past the first person. The others stepped aside. As they did, she clamped her mouth shut to keep from cursing long and hard. Mac lay motionless in the doorway. Jackson knelt next to her. Blood covered his hands and soaked his slacks as he bent over her. Another man, a neighbor Jael recognized, knelt opposite him. When the neighbor looked up, he shook his head and Jael’s breath hitched.
“Jackson?” She slid her gun back into the shoulder holster and moved carefully to his side. As she did, she scanned the entryway, looking for something, anything to explain the scene before her.
“Find out what’s taking the damned ambulance so long to get here!” He glanced up for a moment before turning his attention back to his wife.
Jael nodded. She didn’t need him to say anything else. She saw it in his expression and in the tears pooling in his eyes. Mac was bleeding too much. Worse, she wasn’t healing.
Oh, God, this was worse than she thought.
“Dispatch, we have an officer down. I repeat, we have an officer down. Civilian witness on scene called in the 911. I need status on the bus.” She gave Dispatch the address and waited. Her mouth tightened as the dispatcher responded. Even running code, it would be at least ten minutes before the ambulance arrived. Without a word, she texted Chelsea, telling her to come to the porch but no further. Then she shoved her cellphone into her hip pocket and looked at Jackson. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head as he continued trying to staunch the bleeding from Mac’s wounds. “The doorbell rang. We thought it was you. She came down. There were shots. Three, maybe four of them. I found her here.”
Jael nodded. There were other things she needed to know but not with civilians listening in. “Greg, isn’t it?” she asked the second man.
“Yeah. I live next-door.”
“Get some more towels. Hell, get anything we can use to stop the bleeding. Plastic wrap too. It should be under the kitchen sink. Then a blanket and something to put under her feet.”
“I’m on it.” Moving so quickly she had no doubt he was glad to have something to do, he climbed to his feet and disappeared into the rear of the house.
Jael waited, giving him time to get out of earshot. Then she turned her attention back to Jackson.
“Jackson?”
“She won’t stop bleeding.” His voice caught and fear filled his eyes.
Jael knelt next to him and rested a hand on his arm. Worry gnawed at her and she forced it down. There would be time for it later, after they got Mac to the hospital. Until then, she needed to do whatever it took to keep the woman alive.
“Jackson, look at me.” She waited until he looked at her with fear-filled eyes. “She needs help and I don’t think we can wait for an ambulance. Do you understand?”
He nodded. As he did, what little color there had been in his face drained, leaving him as pale as a cadaver.
“Oh God, Mom!” Chelsea gasped, followed almost immediately by a curse from Brandon that would, under other circumstances, have sent him to his room.
Jael closed her eyes and fought the urge to curse even more imaginatively than her son. The last thing she wanted was for them to see this. Mac was a surrogate aunt to them and they loved her. They didn’t need to see her like this.
Teeth clenched, Jael dug in Mac’s jacket pockets. A moment later, she tossed a set of keys to her daughter.
“Chelsea, bring the SUV around front. Pull up as close to the porch as you can. I want it right next to the steps, hatch to the door. Don’t worry about the lawn or anything else. Understand?”
“Mom?”
“Chel, please. Just do it!” she snapped. Before she could apologize, Chelsea nodded and ran through the house. Soon the sound of the utility room door slamming shut filled the house. One down, one to go.
“Jackson, we’re going to take Mac to the hospital. I need you to go upstairs. Put on a pair of clean pants. Leave those in your room. Then put on shoes and a shirt. Get your wallet, phone, keys and anything else you’re going to need. Bring a sheet or blanket as well. We’ll need it to move her to the SUV. Brandon, go with him. When you get back, we’ll take Mac to the hospital. We aren’t going to wait for the ambulance. Do you understand?” She kept her voice calm, her expression reassuring.
Jackson nodded but didn’t move.
“Jackson, here’s how we’re going to do it.” She put her hands over his, ignoring the blood that covered them. “Feel my hands?”
He nodded again.
“I want you to slowly move your hands out from under mine. I’ll keep pressure on the compresses. But you need to get your things so we can go.”
He hesitated another moment. Then she heard him swallow hard. “All right.”
“You’re doing great, Jackson.” She did her best to sound reassuring when all she really wanted to do was yell at him to hurry. “On three. One-two-three.”
He slid his hands out from under hers and stood. For a moment, he looked down at Mac. Then he turned and started upstairs, moving slower than Jael wanted but at least he was moving.
“Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll take care of him.” With that Brandon hurried after Jackson.
As they disappeared upstairs, Jael studied Mac. Blood continued to pool out from beneath the compresses at her neck and shoulder. All she knew for certain was the neck wound wasn’t as bad as it could be. If her carotid artery had been hit, she’d be dead. But she was losing too much blood and it was obvious the enhanced healing she enjoyed as a shapeshifter might not be enough to save her.
“Damn it, I’m not giving up on you, Mackenzie,” she said softly.
Much as Jackson had done earlier, she shifted so her knees kept pressure on woman’s wounds. Then she shrugged out her uniform jacket. Not taking time to unbutton her shirt, she simply ripped it open, sending buttons flying. She ignored the blood soaking into her uniform pants as she tore the shirt into four pieces. She tossed them over her shoulder and blew out a breath. Now came the hard part and she’d have to move quickly.
Telling herself she had no other choice, she lifted Mac into a sitting position. Once she had, she moved quickly to remove the woman’s jacket. One part of her mind noted the solid feel of Mac’s Kevlar vest under her hands. Another noted the hole center mass in the back of Mac’s jacket. Fear almost choked her as she carefully eased her left hand across Mac’s back. She couldn’t hold back her sob of relief to find no wound there.
Carefully, she eased Mac back to the floor. As she did, Mac’s injured arm moved. Blood spurted from underneath it. Jael shifted positions again, carefully easing her friend’s arm further away from her body. This time when she closed her eyes, it was in prayer.
“Goddammit!”
She had to work quickly. A third bullet had entered above the edge of Mac’s vest, under that arm. Jackson hadn’t realized it because he’d been focused on the wounds he could see. Hell, so had she. God, if they lost her because of such a foolish mistake….
Where the hell was the neighbor with the supplies?
“You listen to me, Mackenzie.” She bent, her lips close to the younger woman’s ear. As she did, she pressed part of her shirt to the newly discovered wound. “You hang on. Do you hear me? You hang on and fight. So help me God, if you don’t, I will find someone to raise you from the dead just so I can kill you myself. I swear I will.”
“H-hurts,” Mac rasped.
Jael sat back on her heels, surprised. Then she leaned forward. She rested a hand on Mac’s cheek, wanting her to know she wasn
’t alone.
“I know, kid. We’re going to get you to the hospital soon. I promise.”
“Safe?” She turned her head toward the front door.
“You’re safe, Mac. I promise.” She apologized as she applied more pressure to the compresses, trying to slow the bleeding. “Kid, what the hell happened?”
“Doorbell rang. Thought it was you. Wasn’t. It was a man.” Mac drew a shuddering breath and closed her eyes. Sweat dotted her face. “Don’t remember.”
“That’s okay, Mac. Lie still.”
“Shift. N-need to shift.”
Fear licked at Jael. She might not be a shapeshifter like Jackson and Mac, but she understood their instinctive need to shift into their animal forms when injured. Unfortunately, that was the last thing Mac needed to do just then. There were too many normals around, people who didn’t know what their neighbors were. Jael closed her eyes, praying she found the right words.
“You can’t, Mac. Not now.” She spoke softly so none of those gathered outside could hear. “Too many eyes and ears close by.” Not to mention cellphones with their cameras and video capability.
Mac opened her eyes and looked around. “J-Jackson?”
“He’s fine. I promise.” She lightly brushed the hair from her friend’s brow. When she did, she frowned. Mac’s skin felt cool, almost clammy to the touch. She was going into shock. “You hang in there, Mac. Everything’s going to be all right. I promise.”
She prayed she’d be able to keep that promise as Mac once again lost consciousness.
“Here.”
Gary dropped to his knees on the other side of Mac and shoved a pile of towels at Jael. The moment she took them, he shook out the blanket he carried and draped it over Mac, covering her from the waist down. Then he looked up, Jeal saw the worry reflected in his eyes as he waited for her to tell him what to do next. Hoping she was doing the right thing, Jael held a hand out for the plastic wrap.
“When Jackson gets back, we’re going to transport Mac in her SUV if the ambulance isn’t here.” She waited until the neighbor nodded. “I need you to help me secure the compresses in place. Then I want you to hold here until the cops arrive. Tell them everything you can. Let them know I was on-scene and transported Mac and that Jackson is with me. Got that?”
Nocturnal Revelations Page 2