***
Brooke squinted through the windshield at the house numbers on South Terrance Street. On her way there, she expected to see more of a residential neighborhood, but what she found the closer they moved to Eric’s friend’s house were large pieces of land, gated off with big houses sitting on them. In between the properties were clusters of thick trees and tall grass. It was the first time she’d seen the color green in a very long time.
The odd-numbered houses were on the left, and she kept counting in her head until she saw a half-bent, rusty mailbox with the numbers 4249 written on it in small, faded black letters. A locked gate guarded the driveway to the house.
Eric was completely passed out, and the wound was still bleeding. His face was ghost white, and he was no longer sweating. Brooke knew that was a bad sign. Brooke turned around to John and Emily in the back seat. “Hold on.”
Brooke shifted the cruiser into reverse and backed up, keeping the gate lined up directly in front of her. She reversed forty feet and slammed on the breaks. She jammed the shifter back into drive and floored the gas pedal. Dirt flew up from the tires, and the engine roared as all eight cylinders pounded furiously.
Brooke’s fingers tightened around the groves in the steering wheel. Her arms and shoulders stiffened, bracing for the impact. The speedometer soared from twenty to forty to sixty, and then the front grille of the cruiser smashed through the locked gate, crumpling the front bumper and cracking the headlights.
The chain and lock from the metal gate snapped in two and clanked against the concrete. They skidded to a stop just before hitting the bumper of a truck parked outside the house’s garage. Before Brooke could get out of the car, a tall, lanky man dressed in a dirty white shirt and holey jeans stepped out with a rifle aimed right at them.
“This is private property! This is your only warning before I sho—”
The man cut himself off. He lowered the rifle and squinted at Eric through the passenger window. “Holy shit.”
Brooke stepped out of the car, her hands in the air. “Are you Eric’s friend?”
“Well, that’s a strong word for it,” the man said rushing to the cruiser’s side. He opened the door and picked Eric up in his arms. Brooke was amazed that the man was able to lift Eric by himself. He looked no heavier than a buck fifty sopping wet. She watched the man disappear with Eric inside the house, and she worked on getting Emily out of the back seat. Before she could stop him, John was out of the cruiser and running after Eric.
“John!”
Despite Eric’s claim that this man was his friend, Brooke knew nothing else about him. She picked Emily up in her arms and ran after them.
The inside of the man’s house was simple, clean. Not exactly what she expected from someone living on a large piece of land like this. Of all the houses she passed, this was definitely the smallest. Brooke found John with the man and Eric in a bedroom on the side of the house. Eric’s shirt was ripped off, exposing the gunshot wound. John watched from a distance.
Brooke turned around and set Emily down in the living room on the couch. There was an old television in the corner. She found the remote and clicked it on. Despite its age, it still worked. She handed Emily the remote. “See if you can find anything good on TV, okay? I’ll be right in the other room. Just call for me if you need anything.”
Emily nodded, reaching for the remote out of some reflex of watching television for countless hours in the living room at their old house. But Brooke knew her daughter had seen things now well beyond her years. She just hoped that she’d still be okay.
Brooke ran into the bedroom, where the man was bent over Eric with what looked like a pair of tweezers in his hand. “How long has he been bleeding?”
“A little over an hour,” Brooke answered.
“Run into the garage. The door is just past the kitchen. Inside you’ll find a red medical bag. Next to it will be what looks like a coat rack, but for just one coat. Bring them both here.”
The man pierced Eric’s flesh with the tweezers, and Brooke cringed. The sound of the metal squishing against the exposed flesh distracted her.
“Hurry!” he said.
Brooke maneuvered through the foreign house as best she could. When she made it to the garage, it was completely dark. She ran her hands over the wall, feeling for a light switch. She flicked it on and immediately saw the red bag and coat rack he’d described.
When Brooke made it back into the room, the man held the bloodstained bullet pinched in the tweezers. He dropped the 9mm piece of lead on the table and snatched the red bag out of Brooke’s hand.
“Is he going to die?” John asked.
“Not sure yet. He’s lost a lot of blood. And the fact that he’s been unconscious so far with very light breathing isn’t boding well for him,” the man answered, whose bloodstained hands sifted through the bag and pulled out a plastic IV bag and attached it to the rack. He ran a tube from the bag and tipped the end with a needle that he placed in Eric’s arm. He then pulled out a sewing needle and thread from a case. “Keep an eye on him. I need to sterilize this.”
John and Brooke were on either side of the bed, staring at Eric’s unconscious body. She looked over to her son, who had tears welling up in his eyes. She walked over to him and wrapped him in a hug.
Brooke took John out to the living room to join his sister and let Eric’s friend finish patching him up. She knew John had become attached to Eric over the past few days. It’d been a while since he’d had any strong male presence around. She just wasn’t sure if he was crying tears of guilt or of fear.