I flick my attention back to Kynan’s ghostly orange figure. He’s in the house, and those two men have their hands up.
Not a single shot is fired.
And then one is.
I hear it through the closed car windows, and my head whips back toward the house to see if I can see anything.
Nothing. Pitch-black. The door to the house is closed. I don’t see Kynan.
My gaze goes back to the screen, and I don’t know what I’m seeing. At first, Dozer’s no longer sitting in the chair but seems to be on the ground with the other man on top of him. They’re a big blob of orange glow, and neither is moving.
“Oh my God,” I shriek. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Bebe says, sounding as stressed as me.
All I know is that I can’t stand one more second of not knowing if Dozer is alive or dead.
I jerk the door handle and throw myself out before Bebe can think to order me to stay, or before James can grab me.
I run as hard and fast as I can in my sandals, hearing feet pounding behind me. It’s James, and he doesn’t try to stop me but flies past. I kick out of my sandals so I can keep up with him, my bare feet pricked by pebbles and then sharp grass.
Without any thought to his own life, or whether things are still volatile, James rushes right up the porch and barrels into the front door. I’m on his ass, and I clear the threshold to see that Kynan has two of the men on their knees at gunpoint, their hands behind their heads.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters as he takes us in. But then he gives me a comforting smile. “He’s fine. They’re down that hall.”
James leads the way, and when we enter the room where they’ve got Dozer, I’m not prepared for the horror I see.
I glance at a body on the ground—it’s Borovsky, a bullet hole in his head—and I don’t bother looking at him again. That’s not the truly horrifying thing.
It’s Dozer, covered in blood, standing near the chair, knocked over beside Borovsky’s body. There’s so much blood, I can’t tell where it’s coming from. Jackson is behind Dozer, cutting ties off his wrists, and he grimaces as he rolls his shoulders and rubs at the abraded skin. Cage has his gun trained on the other Russians as they, too, kneel with their hands behind their heads.
Dozer looks over and sees me and his dad standing there. His eyes grow warm with relief, and I brush past James, who seems frozen in place.
“Oh God,” I moan as I reach him, coming to a dead stop, terrified to touch him. I look around wildly, see Jackson is the closest, and snap at him. “Give me your shirt.”
“What?” he asks dumbly.
“Your shirt. Can’t you see Dozer’s bleeding to death?”
“I’m not,” Dozer starts to say.
I ignore him and snap at Jackson. “Your fucking shirt.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says and whips it off, handing it to me.
I turn back to Dozer, afraid to meet his eyes. I can now see a large cut across his chest that had freely bled but seems mostly clotted. One on his abdomen still oozes.
“There’re a few smaller ones on my back,” Dozer says, and my eyes whip up. “The one on my stomach… press the shirt there.”
Gently, I do as he asks, and he grits his teeth through the pain. Vaguely, I hear sirens, and I hope to God one is an ambulance.
James, apparently jostled out of his paralysis, moves to his son’s side. “Let’s sit you down.”
Dozer shakes his head. “No sitting down. I want out of here.”
Covering my hand with his, Dozer takes over holding the shirt to the laceration on his stomach. His dad moves to his side, loops Dozer’s arm over his shoulder, and lets his son lean on him as we walk out of the room, leaving the carnage behind.
“What happened to Borovsky?” James asks as we maneuver into the hall, heading for the front door. Red and blue lights flash through the windows.
“When Cage and Jackson came in, it caught everyone by surprise. The other guys surrendered, but Borovsky said he wasn’t going back to jail and lunged. Cage shot him in the head, which caused him to fall on top of me. Some of this blood is his.”
I grimace, but it doesn’t matter.
It’s over.
Borovsky is dead, and Dozer is safe.
Police and FBI agents move through the house. Bebe meets us at the door and in true fashion, she gasps, “God, Dozer… you look awful.”
“Feel awful.” He grins, which means he still has a little bit of spunk left in him.
“Rather have you feeling awful than feeling dead,” she replies, but she’s not smiling. She’s as shaken as I am.
We’re met at the bottom of the porch by EMTs with a gurney. The fact that Dozer doesn’t decline the gurney tells me he’s worse off than he’s letting on. His dad helps him lie down and I say, “I’ll ride with you to the hospital.”