His chest was rising and falling too fast, too labored. The blood soaked through his shirt, red and sticky even in the dark. He gave me a weak smile. "What a fucking way to go, y'know?" he asked , blood coming out of his mouth as he spoke.
"You're not going fuckin' anywhere," I insisted, pressing my hand into the wounds of his chest, trying to stop the flow. "Stay the fuck with me," I demanded.
"Thank fuck I never denied myself the ladies and booze," he rasped, choking slightly on the blood that kept flooding his mouth.
"Stop that shit," I said, a hint of desperation clear in my voice. I liked all the guys. But Shred was the only one I could likely call a friend. He couldn't fuckin' die on me.
"Hey," he said, spitting some of the blood out onto the ground. "Take care of that Penny girl. She's one of the good ones. I know it."
"No, Shred," I begged as his smile went a little slack, as his eyes lost their brightness. "Fucking no!" I roared as his chest stopped moving, as the life left his body.
I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder and, grief and rage a heady concoction in my system, I flew to my feet and swung around, slamming my bloodstained hands into Renny's chest. He went back a step. His gun was tucked away. His hands were raised in a passive way.
"I get it, man," he said, shaking his head, backing up as I kept advancing him, feeling no way to vent my rage but violence. My hands slammed into him again, leaving perfect palm prints on his white shirt with Shredder's blood. "Get it out," he went on, hands still up, still retreating as I advanced, likely knowing that if I let go, he would be my target, and the rage I felt was nothing like I had known before.
I bent, having every intention of taking him down, when I felt my shoulders tagged from behind by hands too strong to be anyone other than Wolf.
"Aiming that anger wrong," he told me, voice low and firm as he started dragging me backward from Renny who stopped retreating and dropped his hands.
"Fucking Shred," I growled, my chest compressing, squeezing out all my air and I dropped down again, hanging my head, trying to suck in air to ease the stinging sensation of my heart in my chest.
"Get some mother fucking flood lights out here," Reign's voice yelled. "And get that body in the back of a truck and get it the fuck out of here five minutes ago. Repo, collect the guns and disappear them. The fucking cops will be here in less than two minutes. We were attacked. We lost two men. None of us returned fire. Every fucking one needs to wash the gunpowder off their hands right now. And anyone who shot a gun, get your clothes in the washing machine now. I said fuckin' now!" he growled.
Wolf's hands dragged me upward and we all shuffled inside and toward the basement. We all threw our evidence-covered clothes in the wash as the other guys threw new clothes down the stairs. Renny grabbed the bleach and poured half the bottle in the washing machine and poured more in a bucket, plunging his hands in and scrubbing it up to his elbows. Everyone else followed suit.
"Snap the fuck out of it," Reign barked at me. "There's a time to grieve. This is not fuckin' it. Get rid of the evidence and get your head on straight or you'll be grieving the death of a brother behind fuckin' bars."
I shook my head to try to clear it and plunged my hands into the bleach as well, scrubbing off the evidence as well as Shred's blood. It almost felt wrong to wash it off, like I was brushing it off like it was nothing but evidence, not his fucking life all over me.
But Reign was right; I needed to get it together.
Renny grabbed the bucket of bleach, pink with blood, and poured it down the sink, pouring the rest of the bottle of bleach to wash it down.
"Upstairs now," Cash barked from the top of the stairs. "The cops are here."
We all filed upstairs, oddly barefoot, all our shoes in the washing machine. Renny turned to me suddenly, shoving a bottle of vodka in my hands. "Chug it," he told me as I took it. At my lowered brows, he shrugged. "You being plastered will explain the fact that you're acting weird as fuck. Bottoms up," he said and, seeing the logic there, I tipped it up and chugged a fourth of the bottle before dropping my arm, spilling a bit on my shirt for good measure.
"NBPD," someone yelled from outside a second before the door burst open. "Hands up!" they demanded, coming in all vested-up, guns drawn, fanning out.