Cut & Run (Cut & Run #1)(108)
Author: Abigail Roux

“Shit, Ty, you can’t take my damn arm off! Please … baby,” Zane’s voice cracked with agony as he pleaded between uneven gasping breaths.

“Get out of the car,” he ordered weakly.

Ty responded with a small, chaste kiss. As he heard the roaring of the battered cab’s engine coming closer he curled protectively around Zane, hoping to shield him from the brunt of the crash. He tried not to tense, but his physical discipline was no match for simple human instinct. As the cab barreled toward them, he hunched his shoulders and prepared for the impact.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed as he closed his eyes tight and waited.

“Ty…,” Zane choked out as he curled his free arm around Ty’s back, holding him tight and turning his face into his neck. Christ. Forget about not being there. This. This was Zane’s worst nightmare.

The sound of the sirens was closer now, and through his closed eyelids Ty could see the changing light and dark that told him the flashing lights were on top of them. There was a sound of squealing tires and the smell of burning rubber. He raised his head and opened his eyes, knowing the impact should have come already. He turned and looked out the cracked window at the yellow blur of the cab as the driver turned at the last minute, spinning out right beside their wrecked Ford on the highway. He turned out of the spin, gunned the engine, and headed off in the other direction. Several squad cars gave chase, flying by the wreck of their vehicle in a blaze of light and sound.

The driver knew he couldn’t finish them off and still get away. He had chosen to fight another day, and he’d left Ty and Zane alive to do it.

When Ty shifted, Zane opened his eyes to blurrily see the cab retreating and police cars stopping around them. He started to shake. Shock.

He was going into shock. His arm was already numb, and the pain was still shooting up into his shoulder and down his back. His side was screaming and he couldn’t feel his leg. “When we get out of this car I am kicking your ass,”

he rasped.

Ty didn’t respond. He was already climbing through the roof and holding up his badge and his empty gun, handle first, calling out the code for an officer down.

ZANE sat in the back of the ambulance with a blanket over his shoulders and lap as the EMT worked him over. He stayed put, cowed by a tiny woman who barked at him when he’d tried to leave without medical treatment. All he’d allowed was an IV of clear fluids, and he’d checked the bags. What she was doing hurt like hell (he’d also insisted on no painkillers after a very few words with her about the past addiction record) so he was focusing hard on what was going on away from the ambulance.

Ty stood talking with some of the cops. Luckily, they’d not given him any trouble, none that Zane saw anyway. The EMT found another broken rib and Zane hissed, jerking away instinctively.

“Doing okay, Special Agent Garrett?” the EMT asked.

“Still here,” he answered hoarsely after pulling away the oxygen mask. His eyes were still glassy and glazed with pain.

“Feeling light-headed again?” she asked, pausing in her examination.

“Just get it over with, huh?” he said weakly, leaning his head sideways against the wall.

“I told you already, I can’t do anything more for you here. You’re going to have to go to the hospital and—”

“Just do whatever you have to do,” Zane interrupted. “I have to be able to use that arm.” It would be his right arm. He swallowed hard. “Set it and do whatever.”

The EMT stared at him silently. When she spoke, her voice was thin.

“You know how much you’re going to hurt?”

Zane turned his chin so he could look at his mangled arm and then at her. “Yeah, I know. Just do it.”

Frowning deeply, she got to her feet and climbed into the ambulance with practiced ease. Zane just closed his eyes. He was going to pass out; he knew it. When he opened his eyes again, he found that Ty had finally managed to break away from the cops who’d been asking him questions and was making his way hastily toward the ambulance.

He glared his way past a man who tried to stop him, and he came up to Zane with a twisting sensation in his gut. He could take pain himself, but he couldn’t take watching other people go through it. Especially not people he cared for.

“Why haven’t they drugged you yet?” he asked Zane in outrage.

Zane pulled the mask away to answer, but the EMT beat him to it.

“He declined pain treatment,” she said, voice clearly disapproving.

“Well, f**k that, give it to him anyway,” Ty demanded with an impressive scowl.

“No,” Zane said sharply. “You pump me full of something strong enough to help, and I’ll be out of commission for two days and then suffering another week of cravings.”

“A local won’t cause drug cravings, moron!” Ty shouted angrily.

Zane merely shook his head stubbornly.

The EMT looked between them, scowling heavily. “Special Agent Garrett, please reconsider,” she asked, voice soft. “The pain from the broken bones is just going to grow worse; you’re already well in shock. And your partner is right. I can give you a local for your arm and it has nothing to do with—”

Zane looked up at Ty and shook his head, cutting her off. “Go make arrangements for a car,” he rasped to his partner. “You didn’t listen before.

Listen now. Go and come back.”

“Fuck you,” Ty huffed. “Give him the drugs,” he told the EMT.

“I can’t give him the drugs if he doesn’t consent,” the woman said helplessly.

The corner of Zane’s mouth turned up triumphantly, although his eyes drilled into Ty. But he was still shaking slightly.

“He’s severely injured,” Ty argued calmly, looking at the woman intently. “He’s not mentally capable of making the decision,” he said pointedly.

Her eyes narrowed and she looked from him to Zane and back.

“What? The hell I’m not,” Zane said hoarsely. “What are you trying to do to me?” he demanded of Ty.

“I’m trying to keep you out of the f**king hospital,” Ty snarled.

“Give him the shot,” he told the woman. “You know if he goes catatonic from the pain you’ll just have to do it then, and take him to the hospital, and shoot me because I’ll have to kill someone.”

“Ty, goddammit, we have things we have to do. I can’t be stoned out of my mind for an hour, much less a day—“