Before she could make contact, a battering ram, dressed in black, shot out and yanked him away from her. The two of them rolled across the parking lot, each grappling with the gun.
Reid.
While my brother was focusing on him, I ran the short distance to where Heidi had sunk down onto her knees and dropped down in front of her, mimicking her pose as I grabbed her up.
“Fuck me. Baby, are you okay?” My hands searched blindly over her body, checking to make sure as she gasped in air and shook.
“Is she okay?” Carter clipped as he got to us, then squatted and visually checked her over, glancing intermittently over at where Reid was.
Hearing a yell, I looked over the top of her head and saw the moment Reid reached out, his hand coming down on top of the gun being pointed over his shoulder at Heidi’s back. The move lowered it down just as the trigger was pulled, and his body jerked and fell forward on top of the fucker.
Carter shot off from his place beside us and landed on top of the son of a bitch, disarming him within seconds. Somehow, Reid got up and joined him, and both of them rolled him onto his stomach and cuffed him before Carter began reading him his rights.
“Reid!” Heidi screeched, trying to pull out of my arms to get to him. “Jesus, Bond, he’s been hit.”
Reid held his hand up in the air as he sagged over, his chest heaving like he was struggling to breathe. That might well be the case, given that he’d been shot.
The whole thing seemed like it was all playing out in slow motion, like I was skipping through a movie based on slides instead of video. Heidi had been held at gunpoint, and my brother had been shot. Both of them were still breathing, albeit labored breaths by one out of the two of them.
How had this happened? This was meant to be real life, not fiction.
“My brother’s been shot,” I breathed, turning slowly to look down at Heidi.
Whatever she saw on my face made her eyes widen, and she lifted her hands to hold my cheeks, directing my focus onto her.
“You heard Carter just now, he’s okay. He’s been hit in the vest and probably has some cracked ribs given how close they were, but he’s breathing and alive.”
I hadn’t heard Carter say shit over the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears.
Continuing to murmur reassurances at me, Heidi climbed onto my lap and hugged me tightly.
Then she said a name that snapped me out of my shock. “Where’s Nemi?”
Holding her tightly against my chest, I buried my head into her neck and just breathed her in. “She’s inside with Canon. I’m meant to be looking after you, baby. Are you okay?”
“Marriage is give and take, Mr. Bond.” My lips tipped up at the name. “Keeping it on an even fifty-fifty balance is what makes it successful, so we look after each other during moments like this.”
“I don’t want there to be another moment like this ever.”
“Well,” she sighed, “I didn’t mean exactly like this. I was talking about the shitty, stressful ones.”
“Yo!” Carter yelled over his shoulder. “DB and Raoul are coming to get fuck face here, and I’m driving that one to the hospital.” He pointed at Reid, who was now on his back with his hand over his ribs and a grimace on his face. “Gonna need y’all to give your statements.”
I jerked my chin up at him to let him know we’d do it, but then I focused on the piece of shit who was grinning smugly at me. His whole demeanor and the fact he was finding humor in the situation stoked the rage that was simmering inside me, but when I tried to get to my feet, Heidi held on.
“Don’t do it. If anything happens to him while he’s cuffed or in custody, he’ll have ammo to use in court. That’s what he wants.”
Now that she’d said it, I had to admit, Heidi was probably right. So, I just gave him my own smug smirk back and then grinned widely when his face dropped as he stared at me with pure hatred instead.
It was as he was being loaded into the back of DB and Raoul’s cruiser ten minutes later that the words to fuck with him perfectly hit me. Leaving Canon with Heidi and Nemi, I strolled over.
“Hey, man,” I greeted, getting wary looks from both officers in case it turned physical. Given what he’d done, I doubt any man would have blamed me. Didn’t mean it’d be the right thing to do, though. “Know what you were saying about jobs and how you wanted one? Well, prison’s full of those. I’ll think about you the next time I need new tags for one of our vehicles, knowing your hands made it just for us to drive around with on those long, open roads.”