LIVINGSTON HAD HIS shotgun to his shoulder, though it was aimed at the ceiling while Newman knelt to check Bobby’s pulse on the side of his neck. I stood on the other side of Bobby from him. Bobby looked so pale and so still. I held my breath as if that would help Newman find a pulse. Bobby’s face was a bloody mess, and I’d done that to him. Had I done more? Had he died while we tried to call the judge, slowly bleeding to death inside his head? Or maybe I’d broken his spine badly enough that the trauma had acted like a decapitation. Yeah, Olaf said Bobby’s heart was still beating, but I couldn’t hear it. In all the years I’d been hunting, fighting, and dating people with lycanthropy, I’d never heard of one of them dying from a spinal injury or a concussion. I thought you had to see brains on the outside of the skull for the brain to be injured enough to kill. It was going to be a hell of a time to be wrong.
“Pulse seems slow, but it’s there.”
I let out the breath I’d been holding, but the tightness in my chest wasn’t fooled. It knew that a pulse just meant Bobby wasn’t dead yet.
“I told you he was not dead,” Olaf said from the door, where the sheriff was still trying to get him to move so he could lock the door again.
“If that monster comes to and rushes the door, he could kill us all before we get him,” Leduc said.
“No,” Olaf said.
“You hunt these things. You know how fast they can be,” Leduc said.
Newman was opening one of Bobby’s eyes. I prayed that the pupils weren’t uneven and fixed, because if either of those things was true, then I’d killed him. It was just going to take him longer than normal to die.
“Anita would slow him down until I could join the fight. He would never reach you and the others,” Olaf said.
“You can’t know that.”
“Blake beat him without help last time, Duke. I think we’re safe to leave the cell open,” Livingston said.
“Pupils are even and reacting to light,” Newman said.
The tightness in my chest loosened. “Good,” I managed to say, and I sounded breathless, as if I still couldn’t get enough air. Killing someone on purpose was one thing; doing it by accident was something else. It’s funny how you don’t know what will bother you until it does.
Newman looked up at me. “I still want to call an ambulance.”
“If we can get some paramedics that are willing to look at him, I’m good with that,” I said.
“They have to do their job if we call them,” Newman said.
I shook my head. “Not if it will endanger them. Legally they can refuse.”
“They’d just let him die because they’re afraid?” he asked, sounding outraged. He suddenly seemed years younger than I knew he was, or maybe I just felt years more cynical.
“If they think he’ll kill them, yeah,” I said.
“He’s unconscious,” Newman said.
“Even if they look at him here, they won’t transport him.”
“They might,” he said, and again I felt so much older than he was, not in years, but in experience. That will age you faster than any number of birthdays.
“She’s right, Newman,” Livingston said.
Newman glanced back at him, a hand protectively on Bobby’s shoulder. “We could take him to the hospital ourselves.”
“You’d have to take him all the way to the county hospital. It’s the closest one with a trauma unit that could hold him,” Duke said.
“Fine. We’ll do that,” Newman said. “Help me move him, Blake.”
I thought about being in Newman’s car when Bobby came to and how close the fight had been in the cell. I realized I didn’t want to be in the car with him if he started to shift. “On one condition.”
Newman gave me outraged eyes. “Conditions? You nearly beat him to death, and you want to give conditions for saving his life?”
“Maybe condition was the wrong word, but I want you to understand one thing before we start for the hospital. If he starts to shift in the car like he did in the cell, I’m going to shoot him in the head, probably multiple times.”
“He’d never survive that.”
“That would be the idea.”
“You think he’s a murdering monster now?”
“No, but I think he would have killed me if I hadn’t stopped him. I’m glad I didn’t kill him by accident, defending myself. I hope we prove that he’s innocent and find out who really killed Ray Marchand, and if Bobby just wakes up in the car like normal, then we’ll take him to the hospital. But I will have a weapon drawn and aimed at him in the car. If he goes apeshit again, I won’t risk fighting hand to hand with him.”
“You can’t blame Blake for that, Newman,” Livingston said. He was still holding the shotgun at the ready.
“Yeah, I can.”
“Newman,” I said.
He looked up at me with angry eyes.
“If it had been you in the cell with Bobby when he started to shapeshift, what would you have done?” I asked.
The anger started to fade in Newman’s eyes as he said, “I’d have gone for my gun.”
“You’d have shot him to save your life,” I said.
He sighed and nodded. “I guess I would have.”
“Then don’t blame me for not wanting to push my luck and try to survive a second slugfest with a shapeshifter.”
Newman looked down at Bobby, still touching him protectively. “Who am I fooling? I’d never have gotten my gun out in time. It’s why you didn’t draw yours. There wasn’t time. I don’t have your fight training, Blake, or your speed. If I’d been the one standing next to Bobby when he went animalistic, you’d have been taking me to the hospital or the morgue.”
“And we’d have had to shoot Bobby to save you,” I said.
He nodded. “I know.”
“Do you think he’ll go crazy when he wakes up like he did before?” Kaitlin asked from near the door to the offices. She hadn’t come too far into the cell area this time. I think she’d decided that she didn’t want a repeat performance with Bobby. Me either.
“There’s no way to tell until he wakes up,” I said.
“He had to have control of his change before this,” Newman said, “or his family wouldn’t have let him walk around the house in leopard form.”
“He was trying to suicide by cop when he started to shift,” I said. “He may have carried that thought over as he started to change.”
“Would that have been enough to make him lose control like that?” Newman asked.
“I think it was,” I said.
“Yes,” said Olaf. When the others looked at him, he explained, “If he were a normal person that was intent on suicide by police, he would raise his gun instead of putting it down, so we would have to shoot him. His beast is his gun. That is the only difference.”
“Win, don’t put yourself and Blake in a car with him. I don’t want to have to explain that to Haley,” Duke said.
“Don’t do that, Duke. Don’t bring Haley into this.”
“I know you want to help Bobby, and I know you believe he didn’t kill Ray, but is any of that worth not having a lifetime with the woman you love?” Duke seemed so reasonable, even caring and gentle. It was another glimpse of a good person, a good cop who was in there somewhere. Maybe I really hadn’t seen him at his best.
“Damn it, Duke,” Newman said.
“I’ll call an ambulance and see if they’re willing to look him over. Okay, Win?”
Newman nodded and lowered his head until it was almost touching Bobby’s. If the wereleopard woke up now, it could go badly. But Newman was as aware of that as I was, so I let him be. Duke went into the office to call for an ambulance just as Bobby took a long, shuddering breath.