"If you don't comply, I'm gonna be forced to use this.”
“I wonder how fast you are, cowboy,” Mr. Mask chidded. “Because mine's already in my hand.”
Then, before I could even move, he whipped his hand up and took a shot at me with a pistol he had been concealing behind the car door. The shot took me in the left shoulder and the force of it punched me rapidly off my feet; one minute I was looking at Mr. Mask and Wilson, the next I was laid out on the concrete, flat on my back and gasping for breath.
“Get the hell outta here!” I heard Wilson shout.
The Mercedes screeched its tires as it took off fast, and I heard footsteps bolting down the alley as Wilson fled on foot.
“Shit,” I groaned, reaching up for my left shoulder with my right hand.
I felt the wound, and it wasn't good. Blood was oozing out and was quickly soaking through my shirt. So much for being all dressed up for the evening. Now what was I gonna do? I didn't want to go to a hospital if I could help it – that would bring on way too much publicity, and set me up for a lot of questions that I didn't want to have to answer, because that would mean my cover would be totally blown.
But I sure as hell couldn't just shrug off a gunshot wound. I had to do something. Now I really, really wished I had brought my phone with me. Wishing, however, wasn't going to achieve a damn thing, though. I had to do something, and I had to do it now.
I scrambled up onto my feet, swaying and feeling groggy. Maybe there was a cheap clinic here that could help me. I had to at least try before giving up and calling an ambulance. I staggered out of the alley, looking up and down the street, hoping and praying for the slim chance that there'd be somewhere nearby where I could go.
And that's when I saw it – a sign for a veterinarian. But not just any vet – Jimmy M. Knight, veterinarian. I stumbled across the road, and hope blazed through me as I saw that a light was still on inside the vet's practice; someone was still there at this hour. I staggered over to the door and bashed on it.
“We're closed!” shouted a familiar voice, a voice I hadn't heard for years.
“Even for old Navy SEAL buddies?” I shouted back, hoping it was indeed the Jimmy I thought it to be.
“No way... no freakin' way!” the voice shouted back. “Everett James? Is that you?”
“Yeah, it's me, now get your ass out here and open up!”
A short but powerfully-built man with thinning brown hair and a bushy goatee came shuffling out of the back, with a bunch of keys dangling from his meaty paw.
He saw me through the glass door, and his eyes lit up.
“It is you, Everett! Damn, bro, what on earth are you doing here?”
He opened the door and then saw my shoulder.
“Oh man, Everett, what the hell happened?”
“Gunshot. Nine millimeter, I think.”
“Oh crap. We need to get you to a hospital.”
“Can't. I need... I need you to do it.”
He nodded.
“I don't know how, Everett, but you're damn lucky this happened to you right outside my doorstep. Damn, I heard a bang a few minutes ago, but thought it might be kids letting off cherry bombs or something.”
“No, no... that was me... getting shot,” I said as I staggered in.
“Alright, alright, get into the back room there,” he said. “I'll lock up here and be with you in a sec. Get your shirt off in the meanwhile.”
I stumbled into the back, pulled my shirt off and hopped up onto the stainless-steel table where Jimmy treated dogs and cats.
He hurried in and closed the door behind him, and then put on a pair of thick glasses that he pushed up his nose.
“As you know, this is gonna sting,” he said as he poured some disinfectant onto some dressing cloth and used it to wipe clean the wound. I winced as the disinfectant burned my open wound, but it wasn't as if I hadn't felt this before.
Jimmy shuffled around behind me and looked at the back of my shoulder.