Author's Note- I thought that cliffhanger was mean, so I tried to get this one up as fast as I could manage. That's why it's short. Though, I might move back to shorter chapters as we now wind our way toward the ending.
Disclaimer- Don't own the show. No profit had. Blah, blah, blah- the usual technical jargon.
Chapter Fifty-Six:
Maura staggered with the weight as she half-caught Frost's body without thinking, shock rippling through her system as she put sore arm under him enough to ease his fall a little. She tried to keep her weak knees from buckling, tried to stay on her feet while Frost's grip dragged at her arm, tried not to cry out in fear. It was a miracle that she was even somewhat successful.
Something like a scream came out of Barry's mouth when he fell. Hitting the ground, he writhed a little on the concrete and when she finally dropped down beside him to grab at the bleeding wound on his shoulder, he clutched at her. His eyes burned as he gasped. "M-Maura... run!"
She didn't try. Knew she couldn't even if she wanted to and she didn't know how to articulate that to him beyond holding onto him tighter to try and stop the bleeding. Though she was hardly any help when she couldn't seem to get her brain to function enough to begin assessing the damage done. What should she do? What could she do? Her only thought was to find something to stop the blood gushing from the bullet wound, so she snapped the sling from her arm and pressed it to the giving flesh, using the straps to tie it haphazardly. It wasn't good, but it was something. What else could she do?
Think!
Fast footsteps jolted her out of her shock. Her frantic mind stopped trying to pull medical knowledge out of the depths of her emergency training and flung her back into reality. They were under attack. Of course, she needed to concentrate. The sound of the gunman approaching them stirred her mind into something like a flurry. Options started filing through her head. She wondered if it wasn't her best option for her to offer to willingly go with him, but just as quickly, she realized she couldn't take that risk. Barry clearly didn't have the protection from his firearm that she did, he was bleeding out, and if the gunman took her now, she knew she would never see the light of day again, if she even lived long enough to care. For a moment, she warred with the thought of obeying Frost's first urging and running for her life. Her mind tried to rationalize the scenario that would follow if she didn't. Surely it wouldn't help if she got caught. Maybe he would leave Barry alone, since he was already bleeding out, and come after her instead. But that was if she was what he was really after and she could lead him away like that. Something wasn't right about that though, something stopped her, the 'what ifs' pounding through her brain. What if the man would kill them just because they had seen his face? What if the gunman decided that finishing the officer off was the best course of action before following? What if Barry tried to stop him and got himself killed anyway? There were too many negative outcomes for her brain to calculate.
Frost was Jane's best friend. He had been kind to her. There were a million other reason's but that's what really stopped her, she knew. He was Jane's friend and he was kind.
The only option left was to stay. To stay and fight and hope she wasn't completely useless. Should she try to hide them both? Rush to meet him? Wait him out?
All those thoughts flashed through her mind in the few seconds it took the shooter to cautiously come over to them. That's all the time it took for her to make a snap judgment and feel the calm of it replace the panic of her indecision. Maura took Barry's good hand and pressed it on his own wound to replace hers, grabbed the object from the ground beneath him with bloody fingers, and turned away from his pinched face and closed eyes to stand shakily to her feet. Her whole chest shook with the force of her uneven breaths, but she faced the slowed footfalls with a slight raise of her chin. Whatever happened, she was tired of running, tired of hiding.
Tired of always being the victim.
No one else was going to turn her into that again. No one had the right to steal away what little happiness she'd built for herself. Because she was stronger than that, damn it! More than that! This man was going to kill Barry over her dead body and no other way. Trembling, she stepped forward a little, angling her body between the approaching man and Frost.
The gunman slowed in surprise, lowering his weapon so it wasn't pointed at her at least.
A shudder of relief went through her, hopefully hidden by her shivering from cold and fear. As she had suspected, though she hadn't been completely sure, he was under orders not to kill her outright.
Lifting a hand toward her as if entreating her, the gunman took a step closer, into the light. He was more grizzled than his partner had been, with salt and pepper hair buzzed close to his head, and he had a scar just to the left of his eyebrow. "Come quietly now." He ordered gruffly. "I don't want to have to hurt you, Miss Isles."
Trying desperately to keep her voice from shaking as much as the rest of her already was, she called back to him. "I'm supposed to believe that? With what your friend already did?" Her breathing was too labored, she needed to get it to be as calm as her mind was now. This was nothing more than a John. Nothing more than a patsy. He was insignificant in the grand scheme of things and all he had was her disgust for betraying every moral he might have once had in order to work for a man like Hoyt.
"Don't make this harder than it needs to be." He growled, edging ever closer. "You don't know what you're dealing with."
"You're cops and you're letting yourself be used by a sadistic serial killer. I know exactly what I'm dealing with, I know better than anyone who it is that you get your orders from, and I don't trust you as far as I could throw you. You can tell Hoyt... I'm ready to fight. Because I'd rather die than go back." She quickly lifted the gun she'd been hiding behind her leg, the one she'd taken off Frost while he was down, to sit it in her other hand she raised up with only a wince of pain. Then she fired before her nerve left her.
With a crack of sound that seemed entirely too loud, the kickback of the weapon actually knocked her back a little, her bad arm going numb with the sudden jerk, and a cry forced past her lips. The shot was wild and missed hitting anything but the wall beside the man she had been attempting to aim it at, but it also worked as intended.
The gunman dodged back, scrambling for cover, like he hadn't really expected her to try and fire it at him at all.
Giving her time to stagger backwards to Frost.
Somehow, the officer had managed to get himself up to his knees, his hand bloody where he had been clutching at his opposite shoulder. When she got to him and used her good arm with the gun still in her grip to try to get him up to his feet, he took the gun from her with that same hand, smearing his blood over her already covered fingers.
She concentrated on holding him upright.
This time, when Barry shot the gun, it didn't seem to recoil at all. Probably because he knew how to shoot. The bullet pinged off the gunman's cover and they used the momentary reprieve to duck away down the cross street to their right.
"We have to stop the bleeding." Maura huffed.
"We have to get out of the open first." He countered. His breath shuddered out of him. "We need a place to hide." A great grimace overtook his expression and he swayed hard into her.
"You're going to go into shock soon, and after that you'll die from a combination of it and blood loss, so if you've got an idea it had better be now, before he realizes we've made a run for it rather than stay for a firefight." She snapped back, grunted with the effort of keeping him moving.
"I can hotwire a car if it's old enough, but if he's a cop like we think, he might know of all the safe houses I could take us to."
"Safe houses aren't an option anyway, they won't work. Not now that you've been shot." She pulled them around a corner onto a broader avenue and immediately crossed the street, barely missing getting hit by a truck. "You need medical attention."
"You're a doctor, right?" He murmured defensively, stumbling over the curb she dragged him over.
"I'm an intern." Maura stressed. "I'm a nobody. Being top of your class at Harvard and tapped for Neurosurgery doesn't do any good against bleeding bullet wounds or gun-wielding mercenaries. Without supplies, I'm as good as useless." She glanced back behind them and saw someone in dark clothes she suspected was their pursuer at the corner they'd left, only not seeing them because a group of chattering women passed in front of him while he was looking.
"This one." Frost pointed at a beat-up old Pontiac at the side of the road.
She tried the passenger door and by some miracle, it opened, so she quickly shoved him in, lifting his feet into the vehicle behind him. "Stay down." She breathed, closing the door softly on him before he could protest and ducking back by the trunk. Crouched low, with her back against the tail-light nearest the road, she waited.
The gunman ran past, somehow without seeing her.
Gasping in a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding once he was gone, shaking as she turned around the car to the drivers side, she almost crawled to the door, which she found locked. Her knuckles rapped quietly against the metal, she heard a click, and this time when she tried it, the door yielded.
Frost was leaning across the seats, bleeding into the drivers seat cushion, one arm tucked close to his body to reduce jarring movements and the other busy beneath the steering wheel. "I can't get it with one working hand." He grit out between his teeth.
"Move over." She demanded, shoving him gently aside so she could climb in and shut the door. Keeping her head down, her hands took his place, working deftly to find the right wires before she bent to strip them with her teeth. Then she used her nails to separate the wires and twist the needed ones back together.
He stared in shock. "How the hell do you know how to do that?" He asked breathlessly.
"I do a lot of reading." She said tonelessly, starting the car with a tap of wires and pulling them out into the road without looking to see if it was clear.
His breath of laughter eased her panic as she drove them away, trying not to speed and draw attention to their escape. "Where are we going to go then?"
"Somewhere we can hide and hopefully get help." Maura murmured, only able to think of one option. She just had to hope that Susie and Dr. Martin could get them out of another jam.
