Page 76 of Sean's Sunshine
He looked up to see Ellery Cramer trotting across the parking lot, dressed in a natty suit and shiny shoes while Jackson disappeared into the stadium behind him.
Ellery wasn’t stupid.
He gaped at Sean for a moment before turning toward where Jackson had disappeared, and they both realized Rivers had literally said, “Look over there!” while he ran to put himself in harm’s way.
Sean gaped back, fighting the hurt of being left behind but knowing thathecouldn’t catch Rivers and Ellery needed to.
It didn’t take much urging to send Ellery flying in the opposite direction, looking furious and worried because his idiot boyfriend was about to go get between a sniper and his target.
Sean locked the Charger and started after him, hating how slow he was, hating how his breath labored in his lungs. He’d almost reached the stadium when he heard running footsteps behind him and a familiar, dear, angry voice swearing at him in Spanish.
“Are you hearing me, cop-man?” Billy demanded, screeching to a halt in front of him. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going? Lookit you—your lips are fucking blue!”
“Rivers,” he panted, “is still bleeding from his back. He’s going to help.” Wheeze. “Ellery too.”
“But I don’t need them, you stupid fucking pendejo!” Billy yelled. “I need you!”
Sean remembered his time in the hospital and how angry Billy had been that Sean was sick, and he knew without a doubt that this was the same thing.
“I need you too,” he said with a little smile. “Now come on, let’s go make sure Rivers doesn’t get himself shot. Again.”
Billy turned around, and for the first time Sean saw Curtis standing near the Charger. “Stay here!” he called. Sean handed him the keys, and Billy ran close enough to pitch them while Sean walked toward the small, practically invisible thruway into the stadium.
As they entered the shaded passageway, Sean’s breath almost stopped. Sudden inescapable panic squeezed his chest, and he found himself fumbling for Billy’s hand.
I went from light to darkness to light again, and then….
Oh God. The only difference here was that heknewthere was something scary on the other side of the darkness. Heknewsomebody was waiting there with the potential to hurt, to maim, to kill.
And this time, he was holding Billy’s hand as he went, and Billy was in danger too.
“You okay, cop?” Billy asked when they were halfway through.
“Stay back from the entrance,” Sean managed to say. “When the light changes, pause for a second and let your eyes adjust.”
It wasn’t the same, he thought. The day was mildly overcast, the gray skies a good foil for what they’d see but not blinding like sunlight. Rivers and Cramer were on the other side too, drawing fire, and Henry was probably up in the stands, getting ready to kill to defend them.
It was that thought that gave him the courage to go on.
His friends—the guys who had made sure he wasn’t alone in the hospital, who had brought Billy into his life, and who had cared about him, in spite of his shitty attitude when they’d first met—those guys were in trouble.
He needed to help.
They came to the opening of the thruway, right where the light hit, and Sean tugged on Billy’s hand, pausing to let his eyes adjust and to peer onto the track to see what was happening.
“Jesus,” Billy breathed.
Sean made a hurt sound and got ready to launch.
BILLY HOPEDthat Jackson Rivers was never mad athim, because the guy he was yelling at on the track in the stadium had obviously pissed him off.
Rivers was standing about forty feet away, angled with his back toward them, and was very deliberately baiting the sweaty guy in the SAPD sweatshirt. Neither of the men seemed to notice the tiny red dot tracking their movements from one to the other as Jackson accused the man of assaulting him, of deserting his fellow policemen, of being a dirty cop, while simultaneously trying to back up toward the tunnel where Billy and Sean stood, looking for a move to make.
And definitely neither of them noticed Ellery Cramer, standing behind and a little to the side of them, until the dot lingered for a heartbeat too long and—
“Oolf,” Sean muttered. “Nice one.”
Jackson let out a yelp worthy of the dog as Ellery made the world’s clumsiest tackle. He landed on top of Jackson, who hit the track on the still-seeping knife wound on his back. A shot rang out, passing through where they both had been and fracturing the screen that ran in front of the empty first row of seats in the stadium.