Page 145 of Shrapnel

“Where is Mateo?” Grant asked so quietly it sent a shudder through Owen.

“Jackson took him to Weaver Syndicate. He said he would get the information we needed.”

That seemed to placate Grant. Jackson wasn’t one for hospitals. Belatedly Owen was beginning to realize he probably should have come too. Wasn’t he hurt? Owen was having a hard time remembering. As if years had passed rather than hours.

Kurt looked like he was ready to kill. His lips were twisted, and his eyes kept fluttering closed. His left hand kept stroking the scars on the underside of his right wrist. This is the first time Owen had been close enough to see the faint lines on Kurt’s face—the remnants of his imprisonment in the Catacombs. They looked pale against the heated red of his cheeks.

“How did Mateo shoot him?” Kurt asked as he leapt to his feet, pacing back and forth.

Owen closed his eyes. He wanted to forget. He wanted to sink into the nothingness. Anything would be better than the memory of that gunshot. Impossibly loud. How everyone hit the ground, Owen covered his head with his hands. When he looked up Noah was down, blood draining out of him. Rivulets snaking through the cracks in the asphalt.

As Owen pressed his hand to the massive hole in Noah’s chest he looked up. There, on a fire escape holding a rifle, Jamie looked down at him. Eyes cold. He stared at him for a long moment before walking away with two other men.

It didn’t make sense. Owen had tried not to think about it, but the memory was there, burning a hole in his brain.

“Mateo didn’t…” Owen felt like he was reaching into his throat and yanking out the words by force. “It-it was Jamie.”

Grant’s head snapped around so fast it could have been funny. “What did you say?”

“That fucker finally snapped,” Kurt muttered, glaring at Grant. “He’s always been fucked in the head, and he finally lost it.”

“That’s impossible,” Grant said resolutely, putting his hand out to Kurt to stop him.

“Impossible? There was a witness! He saw him! Jamie shot Noah. What the hell else do you need? He’s probably been working with these guys from day one. You picked him up without knowing his story. He betrayed us!”

“No!” Owen screamed, jumping to his feet. His hands planted into Kurt’s chest, shoving him backward a step. “Just shut up! Shut the fuck up! You don’t know anything. Jamie would never. He would never!”

“You just said you saw him!” Kurt roared.

“There has to be a reason,” Owen reasoned, feeling hysterical. He hiccupped and tried to hold his tears in. “Jamie isn’t like that. He loves…”

What did Jamie love? He told Owen he liked him. Elijah said Jamie was close with Noah. He talked about the Weavers like they were his family.

So then why? Why would he shoot Noah? After helping him for so many months. He had so many opportunities to kill him.

“I don’t know why or how or…but Jamie isn’t…he’s not evil. He’s not fucked up. There’s a reason.”

Grant was looking at the ground. His eyes were shifting with the speed of his thoughts.

Owen addressed him. “Jamie has been through some stuff, but he isn’t…there was a reason. You raised him. You know better than anyone that Jamie would never do this.”

Kurt pressed his palms into his eyes. “A reason? What reason could he have to shoot my nephew?” he swore, kicking a chair across the hallway. A nurse looked up at them from the desk, picking up a phone to no doubt call security. Grant was silently staring at the chair.

“Noah Elliott’s family?”

A timid looking woman in scrubs and a fancy blue hat was looking at them, fingers clasped around a hot pink stethoscope around her neck.

“I’m Dr. Lee,” she introduced herself. “Noah’s surgeon.”

Her eyes flitted on each of them. She looked concerned. How could she not be? An angry man kicking chairs, another who looked like he could slit someone’s throat and they’d thank him, and a third covered in drying blood.

“We just finished,” she informed them. “He made it through surgery. It was touch and go for a while. He lost a lot of blood.”

“Can we see him?” Kurt asked through clenched teeth. It took all his effort to be civil.

She nodded. “He’ll be out of it for some time. We’ve started him on antibiotics and pain killers. Honestly, he was pretty lucky.”

The look on Kurt’s face had her back pedaling. “For someone who was shot, I mean.” She winced. “I mean—it’s just that the gunshot was a through and through. It missed all his major organs. I’ve never seen anything like it.”