Page 98 of Poisoned Pawn
“How the fuck am I supposed to get answers from a corpse, huh?”
Lennox comes over, waving his good hand at me. “That’s enough.”
“Maybe I should have let him fucking k—”
“You do not want to finish that fucking sentence, Dalton,” Lennox warns, pointing his finger at this Dalton guy. Lennox turns back to me as Maddox’s hand wraps around my bicep. “Let it fucking go. We’ve got one, and he’ll give us what we want.”
I look to Maddox’s hand then to him, and he shakes his head. “Not worth it, man. He was just doing his job.”
A rumble of laughter comes from the Shadow on the floor. “Fuck you. Death will claim me before I give you fucking anything,” he spits, hatred in his words and his eyes as he looks at Lennox.
“It’s not death that will claim you, Shane. The devil owns your arse. But first you’re going to tell me where Rook is.” Lennox points to Dalton and two other Shadows. “Get him the fuck out of here.”
They lift him, not giving a shit about hurting him as they do. Good. I hope the pain is excruciating.
Once they leave, Lennox orders the rest of the Shadows back to whatever they were doing before the attack. His shoulder is a mess, and his white shirt beneath his jacket is soaked through with blood.
“You trust those three?” Maddox asks, nodding in the direction Dalton and the other two Shadows went.
“As much as I fucking can right now,” he replies, heading for the door.
“Where the fuck you going, Lennox?” I ask, following him.
“I’m going to see Blaze and get this fucking bullet out of my shoulder unless you fancy doing it?”
Maddox and I follow Lennox to the lift and down to the third floor, which is essentially a hospital.
Lennox shoves through a set of double doors where Blaze raises his head from where he’s bent over a guy laid out on the table getting some sutures in a nasty gash to his arm.
“I hope the other guy looks worse,” he jokes, going back to his sutures. He finishes, snipping the vicryl suture and dropping it and the scissors into a dish at his side. He dresses the guy’s wound and sends him on his way.
Lennox climbs onto the other table as Blaze discards his gloves then joins us, giving me a fist bump.
“Good see you, man. Though this wasn’t what I had in mind for our next catch up.” He pulls on a new pair of gloves then helps Lennox remove his jacket. “Heard the shots from here. Should I be expecting more patients?”
Lennox winces as Blaze begins cutting off his shirt.
“Just corpses,” I tell him.
Blaze nods and gets to work fixing Lennox up. While he does, Maddox calls Roxanne to make sure they got Erica and let her know to meet us back at the church as soon as possible, and I make a quick to call to Rick to let him know we’ve been held up and won’t make it.
“I’ve never seen those two before. They new?” I ask, but all I get is a roar in reply as Blaze pokes about trying to locate the bullet.
After a few minutes, Blaze pulls the small bullet from Lennox’s shoulder and drops it into a round tin tub on the tray beside the table with a plunk.
“Took them on about a year and a half ago.”
“That’s a long fucking time to have had access to here. They didn’t get flagged?” I can’t keep the accusation out of my tone, and I catch Blaze’s side-eye. He remains silent and carries on.
“No, Carter, they fucking didn’t. You can shove your accusations and assumptions where the sun don’t fucking shine. If Rook is behind this, then how the fuck are you surprised?”
“Hold the fuck on,” Blaze says, waving a hand in the air. “Rook’s dead. Or did I fall into a time loop back to three years ago?”
“He ain’t fucking dead.Someonehelped him that night and has been hiding the cunt ever since.”
“Fraser?” Lennox says with a grimace as Blaze starts suturing the gunshot wound now it’s all cleaned out.
“Yeah, fucking Fraser. Along with the Shadow that was with Rook the night I took my shot at him. And that’s not all.” Maddox steps ups beside me, tucking his phone away. “Lev had a deal going with Perry Graham and Mark Swanson. Now, how much do you wanna fucking bet that Fraser and Rook have got something to do with it too?”