Killing Game

By Kadi

Rated T

Disclaimer: This is only a sandbox that I like to play in. Sadly, it is not mine.

Chapter 11

Andy jerked the back passenger door open and leaned inside. Sharon was still covering Rusty and the boy was groaning loudly. "Are either of you hit?"

When Sharon looked up at Andy her eyes were wide. They were wild and held just as much panic as they did anger. Her hand was covering a bleeding bullet wound in Rusty's side. Her mouth opened but there was no sound forthcoming, not at first. There was another to his thigh, and it too was bleeding badly. Sharon shook her head and blinked rapidly. "Pull him out."

"Goddammit!" Andy could only make out the two wounds. He reached down and slipped his hands beneath Rusty's arms. He pulled the boy through the opening and out onto the street where he could lay him flat. Sharon joined him and they both knelt beside Rusty, each of them covering a bleeding wound. His head turned toward one of the pedestrians that he spied approaching the car from the side. "Call 911!" Beneath them Rusty coughed and he winced. "Okay, alright. We've got you kid."

"Sharon…" He was squirming beneath them. It hurt like nothing that he had ever felt before and his chest felt heavy. "What…"

"No." She leaned down. "Shh," she crooned quietly. "Don't talk. Help is on the way, and you are going to be just fine." Her stomach clenched when she had to press down more tightly against the bleeding wound in his side. His back arched and he cried out. She felt his pain. "I know, I am sorry, but this is going to hurt honey."

With the kid moving it was harder to keep pressure on the thigh wound. Andy grimaced as blood leaked out around his fingers. It was warm and sticky, and he cursed quietly. "Sharon." He had to call her name twice to get her attention. When she looked at him, he stared back hard. "Can you reach my belt? This one is pretty bad. We need to tie it off."

Her eyes followed his to the bleeding wound in her son's thigh. Her jaw clenched. Sharon adjusted her grip on the wound in his side to apply pressure with only one hand and reached across Rusty to loosen Andy's belt at his waist. When she did pain moved through her. It was hot and almost blinding. She cried out without warning. It stole her breath, the pain that moved through her. She bit down on her bottom lip and concentrated on breathing through her nose as she wrapped her fingers around Andy's belt buckle and tugged at it.

She had gone pale. Andy's eyes narrowed. "Sharon…"

"I'm fine." She tugged at his belt and loosened it. Every movement she made hurt. It was almost blinding. She wheezed as she tugged and although she tried to ignore it, she was aware of the wound now and could feel the warmth of blood soaking her blouse. Sharon gave the belt one more solid tug and sat back on her heels with it. The world tilted and began to spin around her.

"Sharon!" He caught her when she fell forward. His arms went around her and he felt it before he saw it. Her jacket was soaked through on the right side. It was below her shoulder and bleeding badly. "Son of a bitch!" He laid her down beside Rusty and made quick work of using his belt as a tourniquet for the boy's leg wound. He reached for Sharon when he was sure that it would hold and rolled her onto her side. He pulled her black blazer free and slipped it off of her. The blue blouse was soaked completely through. She had definitely been shot, but Andy couldn't make out an exit wound. "Goddammit!" He folded her jacket and pressed it against the wound.

"No." She tried to push him off of her and sit up, but moving was too difficult. "Andy, Rusty…"

He looked across her at the boy. The leg wound was still bleeding but not nearly as bad as it had been. Now there was only the wound in his side to contend with. In the distance he could hear sirens but they still seemed too far away. His jaw clenched. "You," he pointed at one of the onlookers that were standing around staring at them. "Get over here." No one seemed to move. "Now dammit!"

"Andy…"

"Shit, Sharon!" He moved between them, the two prone figures on the ground beside the bullet-ridden sedan. A woman came forward out of the crowd and Andy had a choice. He was staring at Sharon who was staring back at him. He ground his teeth together. There wasn't truly much of a choice. He let go of her. "Hold this," he told the woman, and nodded to the blood soaked jacket. "Just hold it tight and try not to move her too much." He had to force his gaze away. He left Sharon in the hands of a stranger and turned his attention back to Rusty. The kid was still breathing, thank god, but seemed barely conscious. That was probably for the best, he thought, but his heart lurched when he put more pressure on the bullet wound in the kid's side than Sharon would have been capable of and caused the boy to jerk and cry out in pain. "Yeah, I hear you kid. You go right on ahead and scream. It hurts like a bitch and you can let the world hear it…" If Rusty was crying out, he was breathing, and that meant he was still alive. It was a sound that might haunt him for the rest of his life, but for now… in just that moment, the kid was alive.

It felt like it took forever for the sirens to get closer. Patrol arrived on scene first. The incident was called in as a traffic accident. There was a single ambulance behind them but the responding officers called for a second. Andy found himself pushed aside when the paramedics arrived. He had to take a step back when they took over. He started to run a hand over his face but realized at the last second that they were covered in blood. That was also when he realized that his arm was stinging like hell. Andy looked down at it and found the sleeve of his jacket ripped and bloody. He grimaced as he shrugged out of it. The blue shirt underneath had a fairly good-sized bloodstain, but it was only a graze, barely a scratch. As he took stock, he realized that he had a few scratches from the glass that had blown inward when the shooting began. Another bullet had grazed his hip, just below the waist of his trousers, and that one was aching like a son of a bitch. He was otherwise unharmed, and waved off an officer that came forward with a first aid kit.

While the paramedics worked, the two patrol units that initially arrived on scene called for additional units, including traffic. A perimeter was set up around the two vehicles in the street, and as more police arrived on scene, the crowd of onlookers was pushed back. Andy stood by, hands on his hips and a scowl on his face. His gaze remained locked on the scene beside Sharon's car, where paramedics were moving back and forth between her and Rusty.

"Lieutenant." One of the patrol officers moved along side him. "We called this in to central. Your division is going to be rolling out," he said. Someone had shot at a pair of off-duty detectives in the middle of a busy city street; that definitely qualified as a major crime, at least as far as most of the department was concerned. FID would be on their way to the scene too, since several of the witnesses were already saying that the Lieutenant had returned fire. "What happened?"

He would have to give a statement, and it sounded casual enough, but Flynn and the officer both knew that there was no way in hell that he was going to be hanging around and waiting for Force Investigation to show up. The rules could be damned. Sharon would have his ass for that, but if she was in any condition to read him the riot act later, he would take it. Andy barely spared the officer a look. He jerked his head toward the car that was parked behind the now ruined silver sedan. "There was a car in front of us. It hard stopped. That one hit us from behind. A minute later a pair of shooters opened up on us. They took off in the first car, left that one." They had just moved through the intersection. Andy's eyes narrowed, but his gaze remained on his girlfriend and her son. "Traffic cams probably picked up the whole thing. My gun is in the front seat. You'll want it for FID when they get here. I don't think I hit either of them. The Captain's is in her purse. She was shielding the kid."

The officer swore quietly. It was bad enough they had a cop down, but a police captain shot up while protecting her kid, that wasn't going to go over well, and especially not with the other recent cop killing. Most of their department was already on edge about it. Two cops in less than a week, and a third one injured. It was going to start to feel like they were under attack. While they spoke, the sound of more sirens growing closer could be heard. When the Lieutenant rattled off the license plate of the car that had left the scene, the officer wrote it down. Another ambulance arrived, along with two more patrol units. The officer made quick work of retrieving both the Lieutenant's gun, as well as the Captain's.

The arrival of the second ambulance was something of a relief for Andy. With the second team of paramedics present, he knew that they would be moving Sharon and Rusty soon. Somehow it didn't surprise him when it was Sharon that was loaded first. The medics had managed to stabilize Rusty, but it was his mother that was pale and barely breathing. Andy jolted and almost followed her. He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth and forced himself to remain where he stood. His eyes followed the gurney, though, as it was loaded into the back of the first bus. That she wouldn't want Rusty left alone was the only thing keeping him there. The kid was in and out, and obviously in a lot of pain. Andy focused his attention on the kid so that he wouldn't have to watch the ambulance drive away, although his ears strained to hear the sounds of the sirens as they faded.

He recalled that the officer had mentioned calling the shooting in; while he waited for Rusty to be loaded and moved, Andy pulled his phone out. It didn't really surprise him that there were several missed calls from his partner. He never even noticed it vibrating in his pocket. With a sigh he swept his finger across the screen and called Provenza back. He barely managed to open his mouth before his partner's irate voice filled his ear.

"Flynn! It's about time. What the hell is going on? Patrol called in a shooting? Taylor is flipping out because he can't get ahold of the Captain, and neither of you are answering your phone."

"Sharon is on her way to Cedars," Andy replied. "I'm still on scene with Rusty, they'll be moving him soon..." He paused for a moment and sighed. That had silenced his partner's complaining. Now that he was listening, Andy quickly filled the other man in on everything that had happened. "Patrol has both our guns," he concluded. "I'm not waiting for FID; I'll go with Rusty."

The other side of the call remained silent for a moment. When he finally responded, Provenza's voice remained low and somewhat grim. The scene, as Flynn described it, didn't bode well. "How are they?"

Andy's gaze moved to the pavement in front of him. He shook his head before he realized that his partner couldn't see it. "The kid is stable. They're getting ready to load him right now."

Provenza suppressed the urge to curse when he didn't go on. "Flynn."

"She wasn't moving." He ground his teeth together. "She seemed fine and then she wasn't. I didn't realize she was hit. She was covering the kid. I don't know. I..." Andy shook his head again. "I don't know," he repeated. That was the truth. He had no idea if Sharon was okay or not.

"Dammit." Provenza scowled at the phone on his console and scrubbed a hand over his face. He was driving with lights and sirens on, but he was still twenty minutes away. "Okay," he said finally, "You go with Rusty. I will deal with Wheaton and his people; I doubt they will complain too much considering what's going on. I will call Taylor back and tell him what happened. Someone needs to call the Captain's kids. I'm going to have Amy meet you at Cedars. I'm sending everyone else out to the scene."

"Not until I know what's going on." Andy watched as Rusty's gurney was pushed toward the ambulance and followed it. "I will call Rick and Emily as soon as I know how Sharon is. It's going to be hours before Emily can get here, and I don't want Rick doing something stupid like trying to drive if he can't get a flight." If he had to, he'd send Charlie to pick him up. His son was only a couple of hours away in Sacramento. "Look, they're moving Rusty now. I'll call you as soon as I know something."

"Do that." Provenza paused for a moment. "Flynn, I'm sure she's fine. It'll take more than this."

"Yeah." He wanted to think that. Andy shook his head. "I hope you're right. What I want to know is... who the hell arranged this?"

"I intend to find out," his partner promised. It was obvious that it wasn't just some random, road rage shooting. It was planned. The Captain and Flynn had been followed, and their shooters had an escape route in mind. Provenza ended the call and concentrated on moving through traffic. He had wondered just how bad this case would get before it ended; now he knew.

By the time that Provenza made it to the scene, the second ambulance was already long gone. Tao was waiting for him when he stepped out of his explorer. The other Lieutenant was holding his phone and looking grim. Sanchez stood beside him, seething with barely controlled emotion. "Amy met the Captain's ambulance at Cedars," Mike reported.

"They're taking her to surgery," Julio stated, in a tone so low it was almost inaudible. "Rusty is still stable. The leg wound looks superficial. They're checking on the other one. Officer Jacobs told FID that he sent Flynn to the hospital to get checked out. He had two minor wounds that he wouldn't let paramedics treat on scene."

"He got grazed," Tao said. "Arm and flank. I'm surprised that it wasn't worse."

"Son of a bitch!" Provenza ripped the white bucket hat off his head and slapped it against his leg. He scrubbed a hand over his face. "Where is Buzz?"

"Filming the car." Julio took a half step back and pointed at the bullet-ridden sedan beyond the yellow police tape. Buzz already had his camera in hand and was slowly circling the vehicle while SID was setting up to begin gathering evidence.

"Jesus." Provenza strode toward the silver sedan. He circled the car slowly. The passenger side was completely ruined. The windows were shattered and there were bullet holes through both doors front and rear. On the driver's side, the doors stood open. The Lieutenant glanced into the front seat. There were holes in the front windshield, where stray bullets had passed through it. Both of the seats, driver and passenger were also ruined. Provenza shook his head as he stepped back to look into the rear of the car. Rusty's knapsack was still in the floor behind the front passenger seat. Provenza's jaw clenched at the sight of blood smearing the familiar tan bag. There was blood smeared across the leather seat too, and one of the Captain's shoes lay in the floor behind the driver's seat. Provenza turned where he stood and looked toward the pavement beside the car, where the paramedics had left behind the bandages and packaging they had used while treating the two injured people.

There were two distinct blood stains already turning brown in the late afternoon sunlight. He easily spotted the other shoe, as well as the Captain's blazer. The black material was stiff and stained, and looked as though it had been soaked through. Provenza slapped the hat against his leg again and shook his head. "Okay," he began slowly. "Buzz, keep filming," he noticed that the younger man had stopped. "Julio start looking for casings. Mike…" He waved his hands toward the crowd of onlookers that patrol had detained. "Let's start getting statements. I want to know everything, and I do mean everything, that they know," he stated, almost growling the order.

Julio was standing on the other side of the car. "I want to have a talk with our friend Detective Fiess." He pointed at the bullet casings that were clearly visible on the ground near the car. "Automatic weapons," he told them, although that was obvious from the number of bullet holes that riddled the vehicle. "Patrol already ran the plates and vin number on that car. They don't match. Detective Fiess worked Gang Intelligence. I think we already know what happened here."

"Not yet." Provenza pointed a finger at the younger detective. "By the book, Julio. If we do nothing else by the book for the rest of our careers, this is it. When we talk to Fiess, I don't want him to have even an inch of space to wiggle through. We get him on this." He looked between Sanchez and Tao. "No trial. We put him away, we throw away the key, and that's the end of it."

Tao's hands were at his hips. His lips were pursed. He stared at the pavement in front of him for a moment before nodding. "No trial," he agreed. "Julio?"

The detective glanced toward where Buzz was still filming. There was plenty that he would like to say, but he wisely kept his mouth shut. He nodded instead. "Fine. We give it to Hobbs, but I get to talk to him."

Provenza watched him turn away and begin gathering the casings. He nodded once. "Fair enough." As he had said before, Scary Sanchez wasn't a bad thing to have in their corner, when the occasion called for it, and this occasion as definitely calling for it.

MCMCMCMCMCMC

Amy Sykes was beginning to develop a phobia about hospitals. The antiseptic smell seemed to cling to everything. Even when she stepped outside to use her phone, it continued to surround her. It felt as though all of them had spent entirely too much time in hospitals lately. There was Julio's shooting the previous year, and then the Lieutenant's injury and surgery just that fall. It was the nature of the job; they all knew the risks that lay before them each time they stepped out of their homes wearing their badges. The reality of being injured, of dying, or watching one of their colleagues fall, that was something that all of them had accepted. They carried it in the backs of their minds; it was there, every moment of every day. That was their cross to bear.

It was not Rusty's.

She was left seething over that. Amy stood outside for several moments while she tried to get her temper under control. She had been at the hospital for an hour. The Captain and Rusty were both still in surgery. It was now a matter of waiting. It was something that they should not be doing. Amy drew a deep breath of clean air before she went back into the hospital. They had taken over the third floor waiting room. As Amy made her way back up stairs she considered how much they did not know. She had checked in with Lieutenant Provenza again. She was giving him quarterly updates, and in return, she knew that the rest of the team was still at the scene. It was where she would like to be. She wanted to be doing something, to feel useful. Instead she was told to sit tight, to keep an eye on that idiot, as the Lieutenant had called him, and to keep the rest of them updated.

Amy supposed that was something to do. It was a lot of sitting around, and she was beginning to feel stir crazy, but Lieutenant Flynn was not exactly in any condition to be expected to keep everyone updated. Amy's gaze found him when she stepped back into the waiting room. He was exactly where she had left him, and in exactly the same position that he was in when she left a few minutes before. He was seated near the wall, shoulders hunched and arms resting against his knees. He was staring at the floor. There were clean clothes on the chair beside him, but he hadn't bothered to change into them. His jacket was long gone, and his dress shirt was untucked, wrinkled, and stained. The left sleeve had been cut away and a bandage was wrapped around his bicep. They had convinced him in the ER, while Rusty was being worked on, to allow his two minor wounds to be treated.

It was Cooper that had brought the clothes. Flynn kept a change of clothes in his locker at the PAB. Coop had retrieved them before heading down to check on Rusty. He hadn't stayed. They sent him to the airport to meet Ricky's plane. He would be landing in half an hour. The Captain's daughter wasn't in the air yet. The earliest flight from New York to LA would not be taking off for another hour. Amy supposed that she should amend her previous thought. The Lieutenant was moving. His phone was vibrating every twenty minutes with a request for an update from the Captain's daughter. He answered every one, even if it was just to say that they hadn't heard anything yet.

Amy sighed quietly and let her gaze shift to the figure beside him. Gus had gotten there a few minutes ago. They sent a patrol unit to pick him up at work and bring him over. Amy was ashamed to admit that she had forgotten about Gus until he was standing in front of her. That had been Buzz's idea, according to Mike. If the boy was upset that he was not told that his boyfriend was hurt sooner, he wasn't showing it.

Flynn's phone vibrated again. It was sitting on the seat cushion of the chair on his other side, beside the clothes that he had yet to change in to. He reached for it automatically. He was expecting another text from Emily, but found one from Ricky instead. He honestly could not find it within himself to get frustrated with the girl. She was a few thousand miles away, cut off from the rest of her family and left waiting alone while the hours ticked by until her flight would leave. He only wished that he had more to tell her than not yet. Her mother and brother had not been in surgery for long, although it felt like hours. All that any of them could do was wait.

"Ricky's flight is on final descent," Andy reported. "He'll be on the ground in twenty minutes."

"I'll let Coop know," Amy replied, her way of reminding him that they had someone waiting. She wasn't entirely sure how much information he was absorbing at the moment.

"Alright." Andy replied to the text, letting the older son know that someone was waiting for him. When the kid immediately followed up by asking how his family was, Andy sighed. He had no more information than when Ricky had boarded his plane.

"Raydor."

The name, when it came, was voiced at the entrance to the waiting room. Andy's head snapped up so quickly that his neck popped. He moved for the first time since seating himself in the hard, barely cushioned chair, and strode toward the scrub-clad figure. He ignored the ache in his arm and hip and scowled at the young, blond woman in front of him. "Yes. How is she?"

The young doctor looked at the three people who had moved to stand in front of her. Her gaze swept over them before settling on the older man. "Are you family?" The older man's eyes narrowed into an intense glare, but she simply tilted her head at him.

"Yes." He felt like snarling at her. Andy's grip on his phone tightened and his stance shifted a bit.

The young woman nodded. "I'm Doctor Miller. I am the surgical resident assigned to your wife's case. My attending is still with her. We haven't finished operating yet, but we wanted to give you an update. We believe your wife was hit by a ricochet." Her arm lifted and she held up an X-RAY film. Doctor Miller turned and lifted it so that it was in view of the overhead lights. "The bullet entered here," She pointed to a spot just below the shoulder, "but it lodged itself in the scapula." Her finger circled an area of bone where a small, white object was lit up. "Normally the force of a gunshot would break the bone and a bullet's trajectory would continue forward, or in worse cases, it changes and we have serious organ damage. Since the bone was able to stop the bullet, we believe it wasn't a direct hit. Bullet trajectory was already changed."

Andy didn't bother to correct her about the subject of his marital status, or lack there of, and when Amy didn't either, he folded his arms across his chest and frowned at the woman. "Then she's okay?" Those were the words that he wanted to hear, but so far, had not been spoken. He cared less about the medical jargon and more about Sharon's condition.

"For the moment," the doctor replied, "She is stable. We do have quite a bit of vascular and muscle repair to do. This isn't going to be a quick process. We are looking at another two hours, at least. I will be back to update you again as soon as I know more, but yes. If she continues to do as well as she is now, I think that your wife will be just fine."

He shifted, and Amy thought that he might have staggered. She laid a hand on the Lieutenant's arm as she stepped forward. "What about her son?" Her brows lifted in askance. "Russell Beck. He was brought in too. They're both in surgery."

"I don't have that information," The doctor shook her head. "When I get back inside the OR suite, I can have someone come out and update you on his condition."

Andy glanced at Gus beside him and nodded. The boy's shoulders had slumped. "Yeah," he sighed. "Thanks doc." He would feel better if he had news on both of them, but he could wait a few more minutes before he pulled his badge and Sykes's gun and started demanding answers. Andy turned to Amy and held up his phone. "I'll let Em and Rick know."

"I'll call the Lieutenant back," Amy said. She was left standing with Gus as he moved off to talk to the Captain's kids. "I'm sure we'll know something soon," she said.

"Yeah." Gus shook his head. He shoved his hands into his pockets. "How does this even happen?" What was wrong with the world? How was it that the people who never hurt anyone kept getting hurt in return? He just didn't understand it.

"I don't know, Gus." Amy smiled sadly. "That is something that we are trying to figure out."

"When you figure it out," he asked, "what are you going to do about it?"

Amy stared back at him. She shrugged. "What we do best, Gus. Hunt them down and make them pay. Only they can decide how that ends." With bullets or handcuffs, that choice was not always theirs to make. Amy wondered if maybe the decision was already made when their suspects decided to gun down a cop and her kid. When Coop got back with the Captain's son, she would join the others. She would leave him in charge of the situation at the hospital. The Captain's family would be in good hands with him. Amy felt like it was the rest of the family that needed her most. She wanted to be with them when they got those responsible for the shooting.

In the meantime, Amy led Gus back to the row of chairs they were previously occupying. She waited for the Lieutenant to get off the phone and reminded him again that he could go and change. He ignored her, again, but Amy kept trying. She didn't think he would leave the waiting room, even for a few minutes, until they knew something about Rusty. Amy decided she would give it a little while longer. If he had not changed by the time Coop replied, letting her know that he had Ricky, she would use that as her bargaining tool. It might be a low blow, but Amy would do what she needed to do. It was what they always did. After all, Flynn didn't want to greet his girlfriend's kids wearing clothes that were stained with her blood.

-TBC-