Page 2 of A Furever Home (Gaynor Beach Animal Rescue #8)

“What kind? Are they good layers? I was always fond of Plymouth Rocks. Consistent producers and easy keepers, but my mom swore by Rhode Island Reds.”

“I have Reds.”

I turned back a little to offer a friendly smile. “My mom would approve of you.” Maybe not so much for pointing a gun at me, although it’d been so long since I’d seen my family, she might not even recognize me, or care.

The man huffed and I searched for another topic. Come on, Gaynor Beach PD. Where the hell are you? I said, “I’d worry about stray cats, myself. They like the park along the river, and that chicken-wire run in back would keep out dogs but not cats.”

“My rooster would make mincemeat of any cat?—”

Our bonding moment was destroyed by the dog deciding this was the moment to make a break for it. She burst out from under the side of the coop and bolted right past me toward the underbrush along the river.

The man yelled and a shot rang out.

“Aaah!” A flash of red-hot agony lanced through my thigh.

I fell. Something hard smacked me on the back of the head like a two-by-four to the skull as I landed.

Waves of pain slammed into me from my right leg, making my stomach cramp.

I gagged against a flood of bile in my mouth, and the motion sent shooting pain through my skull.

Dimly, I heard shouting, but no more shots.

A hand gripped my shoulder, too big to be Kevin’s. A face peered down into my watering eyes. It was a nice face though only vaguely familiar—straight nose, determined chin, worried hazel eyes… The guy from the street. Brooklyn. I found enough focus to say, “Protect Kevin.”

“He ran for help.”

“Oh. Good.” I tried to sit up, but Brooklyn pressed me into place on the ground.

“Don’t move.”

“It’s just my leg.” And maybe my head. I was too dizzy to even know.

“You were shot. There’s no just about it.” I heard a tremor in Brooklyn’s voice, so maybe he wasn’t as calm as he was pretending.

Fair enough. Neither was I. “Were’s the, um, gun dude? Frank?” I blinked and tried to turn my head, but the fire-hot lance of pain up my skull made me freeze and just breathe.

“He ran into his house.”

“With the gun?”

“Yeah.”

“Crap. Let me up.”

“I don’t think…” But when I pushed determinedly, Brooklyn didn’t fight me.

I sat up and looked around. Not down at my leg. I don’t mind blood—heck, I was going to be a nurse, once—but I wasn’t fond of seeing my own. Especially when the world was already whirling like a tornado in Oz.

Sirens wailed on the other side of the house, approaching fast.

“Thank God,” Brooklyn said, which was exactly what I was thinking.

“As long as Frank doesn’t do anything stupid.”

“Stupider.” Brooklyn gave a nervous chuckle. “Shooting you was pretty stupid.”

Another wave of nausea clenched my gut. “Right.” As the sirens came to a stop out on the road, I had to look down at myself.

Oh, that’s not good. Bright blood welled out of my thigh in a steady stream.

I clamped my hand over the spot and hissed through my teeth.

Not the femoral artery, I don’t think. That’s on the inside, right?

This hole was more on the outside of my leg. I wasn’t thinking straight.

Brooklyn said, “I’m going to go get?—”

I grabbed his wrist, harder than I meant to.

“Don’t go!” Through my tunneling vision I saw the bloody handprint I’d smeared on his fair skin.

Blood. Skin. “Don’t worry. I’m negative.

” I knew what mattered as a thirty-eight-year-old gay man.

Right? The pain thudded a drumbeat in my head that made it hard to form words.

Two cops in uniform skidded around the corner of the house, guns drawn. “Hands up! Where I can see them!” the woman yelled.

Brooklyn raised the hand I wasn’t holding but called, “The man with the gun’s in the house.”

Two steps closer, the male cop said, “Arthur?”

I recognized him from somewhere, the shelter maybe. I repeated, “In the house,” my voice setting up shrill echoes in my skull.

He waved urgently at us as they headed for the back door. “Stay down.”

Sagging to my back on the grass was all too easy.

Something crashed over by the house, and Brooklyn launched himself to lie over me, tucking my head against his neck.

Like he could cover me and protect me, though I was twice as wide as he was.

Should be me protecting him. But I hurt and there was something so safe, so warm despite the chills racking me, in that moment, in having Brooklyn blanket me away from the world.

I lay there through several people shouting and another crash, but no gunshots, with the clean shampoo-scent of Brooklyn’s short straight hair in my face.

Another voice, this one female, snapped, “Who’s injured?”

Brooklyn scrambled off me. “He is. Arthur.”

“Damn it, Bjornsson, what did you do?” The paramedic knelt by me. Her face was familiar. Lori? No, Lauren. I think. I was crappy at names. She’d adopted a pair of male tuxedo kittens, that I did remember.

“Got shot,” I told her without moving. I didn’t want to know.

“So I see.” Her tone gentled. “Max and I are going to take care of you, okay? Just lie still and let us help. Anything else, or just the leg?”

“Kevin,” I remembered. “He’s probably scared. You should help him.”

“Is he injured?” she asked.

I couldn’t remember. A gun was pointed at him, right? Before I could stress out, I heard Brooklyn say, “No, Kevin’s fine. Just, like Arthur said, probably shocked at seeing him get shot.”

Lauren began cutting up the side of my jeans with shears, starting by my ankle. They were a favorite pair, but I’d probably never get the blood out anyway.

My head spun. “Brooklyn, you’ll take care of Kevin, right?” I didn’t know the guy at all, but he’d run with me to find the gunshot. He’d covered me with his body. That made him a good guy, didn’t it? “Call his dads, and…and… yeah, the shelter. Tell them I’ll be late for evening feeding.”

The guy with Lauren chuckled at something, not sure what.

My vision swam as he felt around my head and neck with gloved hands.

“Can you move your toes? Your fingers?” I think I did, but they wrapped a padded collar around my neck anyway.

Then they said more stuff and began lifting me from the grass to the lowered stretcher beside me.

Damn, new and exciting levels of pain. I tried to breathe through it, tried to think.

All I came up with was, “Kevin. And my dogs. They’ll need a walk.

” A thought came to me through the pulsating darkness.

“Brooklyn, the dog. The yellow one? Is she okay?” I tried to sit up to look for her.

Somehow, even though I’d barely moved and my eyes had drifted shut, I recognized his hand on my shoulder. “Hey, stay put and listen to the paramedics. The dog’s fine. She ran away at top speed.”

“Have to catch…catch her,” I mumbled. “Ask Kevin…”

Then the paramedics raised the stretcher with a swoop that almost made me lose my lunch, and I was rattling over the grass, clinging to awareness and clenching my teeth not to scream.

Screaming was bad. It’d scare Kevin and Brooklyn and the dog.

I repeated that thought over and over in my head, till I was safely in the ambulance and the doors closed behind us.

There were things that needed to be done back there, but all I could do was breathe and answer the paramedics’ questions and trust that Brooklyn, whoever he was, would figure out what those things were.