In His Protective Custody. Marie Ferrarella

didn’t allow just anyone to saunter to the elevators. But now, she was glad that her cousins had overruled her protest and installed the chain.

      Alyx glanced at her watch. Oh God. She now had only six more hours until her shift. She hurried off to the bedroom and prayed for a few hours of sleep.

      Chapter 3

      Unlike his partner, Zane Calloway, Officer Ryan Lukkas liked to talk. When he was nervous, he had a tendency to talk more. And faster. He was talking fast now. Very fast. And driving the exact same way.

      “Dunno what this city’s coming to, when two cops can’t even walk into a convenience store in the middle of the day to get a couple of hot dogs and two cans of soda without some kind of a gun battle erupting,” he complained loudly.

      Officer Lukkas had raised his voice to compete with the blare of the siren that was piercing the usual ongoing din of the city. The siren was theirs and it was blaring for a very good reason. They needed to get to their destination. Fast.

      Needed to, but so far it didn’t look as if that was going to become a reality. Didn’t people respond to sirens and flashing lights anymore? he silently demanded, cursing a blue streak in his head. Up to this point he’d managed to keep the words from erupting on his lips.

      “Maybe it had something to do with you saying ‘NYPD, drop your weapons,’” Zane suggested, his voice somewhat labored.

      The careless shrug only involved one shoulder. “Yeah, maybe.” He spared Zane a look, worried despite himself. “What else was I supposed to do?”

      “Nothing else,” Zane did his best to assure the man, though it got harder for him to focus. The pain was worsening. “You did the right thing.”

      C’mon, c’mon. Move! In addition to the siren, he blared his horn. Traffic slowed down even more. “You’re only saying that so I don’t feel guilty.”

      “I’m saying it,” Zane replied in his dead, no-nonsense voice, “because it’s true. You want to feel guilty about it, hell, that’s up to you. Me, I’d say feeling guilty is a waste of time—and stupid—in this case anyway.”

      Ryan gave Zane another look and swallowed a curse, allowing the words “Oh damn” to break through. “How do you feel?” he pressed anxiously.

      Zane’s answer came out in a weakened growl. “Like I’ve been shot.”

      “Maybe I can drive on the sidewalk,” he suggested as he looked at the area on either side of the street.

      Today was particularly humid and miserable. Why couldn’t these people stay at their jobs or in their homes? It seemed as if every one of the eight million New York City inhabitants were out today, mostly milling around in the vicinity of the vehicle.

      Lukkas blew out an impatient breath and slanted yet another look at Zane’s arm. Of course, Zane knew it didn’t look good. The towel that had been wrapped around it was heavy with blood.

      “I want to be able to get to the hospital before you bleed to death,” Ryan declared nervously.

      “Anyone ever tell you that you’re pretty lousy in the stay-calm department?” Zane asked him. “And I don’t need to go to the hospital,” he insisted, not for the first time. “Just stop at the closest pharmacy and get some bandages and gauze and peroxide.” He looked down at his injured arm. “I can take care of this myself.”

      “Sorry, tough guy, you’re outvoted. We both know that you’d be better off seeing a doctor.”

      “How the hell can I be outvoted?” Zane demanded sharply. “There’s just the two of us.”

      “I’ve got two good arms to your one. That gives me two votes. Now shut up and save your strength.”

      “If I save my strength for anything,” Zane warned him, “it’ll be to strangle you.”

      “Fine,” Ryan bit off, snaking the car around an ice cream truck that had its annoying theme song on. “First we get you patched up, then we’ll discuss you strangling me. Fair enough?”

      Zane inclined his head in agreement. There wasn’t exactly much he could do, since Ryan was the one behind the wheel. Zane usually let his partner drive because traffic snarls and logjam conditions didn’t seem to faze Ryan the way they did him.

      “Fair enough,” Zane echoed, repeating the phrase grudgingly.

      Ryan definitely looked concerned, Zane thought. The man kept glancing at him as if his partner expected him to go up in smoke at any second. There was fear in Lukkas’s eyes.

      “I’m okay, Ryan,” he assured the other officer. “I’d be more okay without a bullet in my arm, but I’m okay,” he repeated. “Really,” he underscored when his partner of a little more than a year made no answer. “There’s no need to drive on the sidewalk. Look.” He nodded toward the front windshield. “The cars are beginning to clear a path for us.”

      “About time,” Ryan declared, mumbling under his breath. “We’re the police—they should be clearing a path for us.”

      “The ‘protect and serve’ is in our part of the deal, not theirs,” Zane reminded him. “They don’t even have to be accommodating if they don’t want to be—unless we arrest them.”

      Ordinarily, his partner wasn’t this forgiving of the public. “You just want to argue,” Ryan accused, flooring the vehicle, going all of fifteen yards before he had to slow down again.

      Zane slowly let out a labored breath. Was it his imagination, or was it getting harder to breathe?

      “No, I just want to stop bleeding. You could have stayed on the scene and brought the gunman in,” Zane reminded him. There was no need for the man to do an imitation of a mother hen. “McKenzie could have taken me to the hospital. Hell, I could have taken me to the hospital.”

      “Number one, it was your shot that stopped the thief, so technically you should have been the one to take him in, not me. Two, McKenzie can’t find his way out of a paper bag. It’d take him four hours to get to the ‘nearest’ hospital.” He glanced toward his partner. “And you would have probably bullied him out of taking you there altogether. Aha, aha.” One hand off the wheel, he pointed at Zane’s face. “You’re smiling.”

      “I’m grimacing, Lukkas,” Zane corrected him. “You just drove over another damn pothole.” This one had felt as if it was big enough to swallow the whole squad car—with room to spare. The jarring motion accentuated the pain in his arm.

      “Sorry. Not my fault the city’s falling apart faster than the mayor can come up with the money to fix it.” The siren was on and the lights were flashing. Craning his neck, Ryan stuck his head out the window and shouted, “Get out of the way, damn it! Can’t you hear the damn siren?” he shouted.

      His words were all but swallowed up by the noise of the crowds as they made their way through the throngs of humanity that occupied the streets at any given moment of the day.

      Zane stared straight ahead, trying to distract himself from the fire in his arm. The streets of the city were always crowded, but it seemed as if they were even more so at this particular time of the day. It was lunchtime.

      He looked down at his arm, staring approximately where the bullet had gone in. He would have felt better if there was also an exit wound, but there wasn’t. The bullet was still inside his arm, and despite the hastily secured “bandage” created out of the convenience store clerk’s towel inventory, the wound was oozing blood. A lot of it.

      And he was getting progressively more light-headed. Despite his efforts to concentrate, Zane could feel his grasp on his surroundings slipping away from him.

      He didn’t like not being in control, and he wasn’t, not here.

      Initially, Ryan had wanted to call for an ambulance, but waiting for one would have taken even longer,