The Bulletproof Boy Read online

  I’m never going to see Scarlett again.

  I need to let go.

  “Hunter!” Rodriguez is saying, gently shaking my good shoulder. “Hey, buddy? Stay with me, okay? You’re losing a lot of blood.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I tell him quietly.

  “What do you mean?” he asks. “Don’t get emo on me now, man.”

  Turning my head to the side, I rest my uninjured cheek on the linoleum floor. The blood from my injured cheek drips down around my nose, and into my eye. I don’t even have the energy to blink it away. All the fight has gone out of me.

  “Hey,” Rodriguez says, shaking me. “We need to get you some medical attention. Help is on the way, and the shooter is probably on the move by now. Do you think you can help me get to the door, holding this bed as a shield?”

  I can’t bring myself to respond. The distance from where I am to the door feels infinite. There’s no way I’m going to make that.

  “Cole!” Miranda is shouting, as she sobs from behind the door. “Honey, are you okay?”

  I open my mouth to respond, but I can’t find the words, or the energy to project enough volume to reach her. I know that she cares. But it’s not enough. Something is preventing me from being able to really feel anything. I’ve already lost so much. My mother. My father. Scarlett. Would it really be so much worse to lose my life?

  My head is spinning with these thoughts, and the words of my therapist.

  You need to let go, Cole. Let go of the past.

  In this moment, I feel suddenly aware of the fact that my whole life has been meaningless. What have I really done? The hospital floor is still cold against my cheek. Is this all there is? These harsh white walls, and these cold floors. These giant boxes are my children—this is what I’ve created.

  This is the only sort of thing I’ll leave behind when I’m gone. Coldness.

  No love. No photographs on walls. No children to mourn me.

  As rich as I have become, it means nothing without family. And if that bullet had struck a few inches closer—if I hadn’t turned my head—who would really care? Rodriguez looks concerned, and I know he did his best to protect me. Without him, I probably would have just sat there like an idiot and allowed the shooter to go to town on me as target practice.

  “Cole,” Rodriguez is saying, gently slapping the lower half of my cheek. “Okay, I may have exaggerated. This is a little more than a scratch. We need to get you some help.”

  Tightening my hand around my phone again, I try to unlock the device. The blood has dried a little more and it is easier. I go to my favorites list and jab my finger into the only name there. That’s what you’re supposed to do in this type of situation, right? Call your wife. I hold my breath as the phone rings. Twice. Three times.

  I wait, listening for the sound of her voice.

  And then finally it comes, her answering machine. Of course, it’s impossible for her to actually pick up. Her cell phone is sitting at home in my nightstand, where she left it when she skipped town. I keep it charged up and waiting for her. And I still occasionally call her, in moments when I really need to hear her voice.

  Like when I’ve just been poisoned and shot by a sniper.

  Her soft voice brings tears to my eyes, and the phone trembles in my hand.

  “Buddy,” Rodriguez says softly, placing his hand on my neck and checking my pulse. “We’re going to get out of this. You’re not going to die.”

  “What if I want to?” I ask him.

  His brows grow narrowed. “Don’t say shit like that, man. Especially when you’re bleeding to death on the floor. It freaks me out.”

  “No,” I tell him. “Not die die. Disappear. You can make that happen, right? If someone’s trying to kill me?”

  “Like witness protection?” Rodriguez frowns. “Probably not. We would need to get approval…”

  “I’m not asking for government protection, Roddy. I’m asking for your help. You did it before, right? With your cousin.”

  He looks at me in disbelief before shaking his head. “Man, that’s insane. My cousin had a criminal record. You are well-respected, with money, a great job, a great life. You would lose everything. I know things seem hard now, but you’re not thinking straight. Just let me deal with these assholes who are after you. They’ll be behind bars soon, and you will feel safe again.”

  I smile at him. “Do you ever feel safe, Roddy? Does anyone ever feel safe again after something like this?”

  His expression darkens. “No.”

  “Exactly.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “I need to die here today. There are many witnesses who saw me get shot. People are ducking for cover and terrified out of their minds. They don’t know what’s going on. It’s perfect. Can you make it happen?”

  “Is this really what you want?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re gonna regret this, Hunter. You have no idea what you’re asking me to do. You’ll be throwing away everything you’ve worked for.”

  “I already threw it away,” I tell him. “Besides, you owe me one. Make it happen. Make the phone call. Make me a dead man.”

  He stares at me, clenching a muscle in his jaw. “This is about Scarlett, isn’t it?”

  “Partially. Look, I know I seem crazy with blood all over my face, but I am thinking clearly. This is my decision.”

  Rodriguez glances to the doorway where Miranda is taking cover, and looking at our whispered exchange with worry.

  “Can she be trusted?” Rodriguez asks.

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  “Fine. What’s the safest room in this hospital, Cole? Somewhere private.”

  I scan my brain for information. “The morgue.”

  “Okay, good,” he says, glancing over the bed-shield cautiously. “We’re going to make a run for the morgue. The hardest part is making it safely to the door. That amateur will never be able to shoot us once we’re moving if he couldn’t even shoot you while you were sitting still.”

  “Makes sense,” I say weakly. “But I don’t know how much energy I have.”

  “Just leave it to me, okay?” Rodriguez says gently, ripping the chelation tube out of the needle in my arm so that the bag won’t slow us down. “Stay low.”

  Glancing up over the bed, he springs to his feet and flattens himself against the wall. The sound of another bullet is heard, but before it has even lodged itself in the hospital walls, Rodriguez is grabbing me and hoisting my arm over his shoulder as he drags me out of the room. I dizzily try to keep up, but my legs are clumsy.

  Miranda grabs my other arm for support as soon as we are in the main hallway, and I wince at the pain in my collarbone. She wraps an arm around my waist, crying as she helps the detective lead me to the morgue.

  “You’re going to be okay,” she says between sobs.

  “Just think of Rasputin,” Rodriguez tells me.

  I grimace with pain as they drag me across the hospital floor. “I don’t see how that could possibly help.”

  Chapter Four

  After I got shot

  Everything is cold. I am being pumped full of O-negative, chelation, antibiotics, and some morphine I tried to refuse. I can hear voices and feel people touching me, but it’s hard to make sense of it all. With my eyes closed, I feel only a sort of swaying sensation. I feel like I’m on a metal raft, and it’s bobbing up and down in the middle of a stormy ocean.

  “You’re lucky,” says a man’s voice. “It barely nicked your bone. You only have a hairline fracture. This could have been very messy.”

  I pry my swollen eyes open to see a small pair of scissors holding a curved needle. It is pulling black thread away from my injured eye. The needle descends toward my eye again, and I wince as it pierces the damaged skin over my cheekbone. I can’t feel it, because of local anesthesia, but it is similar to dental work. No one likes seeing their wisdom teeth being broken with a pair of pliers as they are pulled out of their jaw.

  I remember getting my wi
sdom teeth taken out, years ago, while going to MIT. I tried to ignore it for months, but eventually the gums grew so infected that I couldn’t eat, and the headaches got so bad that I couldn’t study.

  Scarlett dragged me to the dentist and insisted that I get the problem teeth removed. She always took care of me like that. I was eighteen at the time and we couldn’t afford to remove all four, so I only removed the two impacted lower molars. Due to my anxiety over falling asleep, I opted for local anesthesia only, and watched the whole procedure. I am not sure why watching a thread stitch my face up like I’m a Chucky doll is more terrifying than hearing that grotesque crunching sound of my teeth getting broken, but it is.

  It might be because it’s so close to my eye. It might be because of the traumatic experience that preceded the injury. Getting shot at is no fun—but getting shot by someone you can’t see, when you least expect it, is deeply unsettling. A hospital is supposed to be one of the safest structures around, a building where healing occurs. I designed this building with that in mind. If I had known the patients would be vulnerable to sniper bullets from nearby buildings, I might have designed it a little differently. It’s ridiculous, but I feel somewhat responsible for this. I didn’t build the place to be a bunker.

  Some days, I really wonder if every building should be a fortress or a bunker. Our bodies are so delicate, and we all reside in such flimsy dwellings. It is so easy for harm to befall us. Bullets can pierce glass, buildings can burn or fall down entirely. Not my buildings, not usually. I have tried so hard to create strong structures to protect people, but I can’t even protect myself. What good is my work if people still get hurt?

  All those subdivisions near forests that I designed to be fire resistant—bad things still happen there and people die all the time. All my work is for nothing.

  This is a slightly depressing train of thought, but it hasn’t been a great day for me. I was already poisoned and dying before I got shot, and missing an important business meeting. You would think that would be enough to deal with for one day. But worst of all, after getting patched up, Scar isn’t going to be there to make me Jell-O shots to cheer me up, like she did after my wisdom teeth removal. Scarlett could never really cook anything other than coffee, but she could make a mighty fine Jell-O shot.

  “All done,” the doctor says, as he ties off the stitches.

  “Good,” I tell him. “Now stop the morphine drip. I need to drive soon.”

  The doctor hesitates, but after sharing a look with Detective Rodriguez, complies.

  Rodriguez examines the bag containing blood. “On the bright side, the blood you lost was poisoned with cadmium, anyway. You just got rid of the bad blood, and got powered up with all this fresh juice that’s sure to make you heal even faster. It’s like you got a free oil change! Joke’s on you, shitty sniper.”

  I reach up to gently finger my shoulder, where the bullet tore through my trapezius muscle. The area is completely numb, but I can feel a stiffness when I try to shrug. “Is that really how it works?”

  “Not exactly,” the doctor says. “Losing blood is never something to celebrate.”

  “Unless the condom broke,” Rodriguez mutters under his breath.

  My mind is preoccupied, and it takes me a second to get his joke, but I am too miserable to smile. “Why do you think someone wants me dead so badly?”

  “I don’t know,” Rodriguez says, “but I’m going to find out.”

  The doctor pulls off his surgical gloves and wipes the back of his hand across his forehead. “We’re just lucky that the bullet didn’t completely tear the trapezius, or hit the shoulder joint. When it comes to ballistic trauma, the damage is usually extensive. This could have required bone grafts and hours of surgery, but it seems like you’re a very lucky man, Cole.”

  “I am?”

  “There might be some nerve damage, and you might have some trouble moving this arm for a while, but it’s nothing that physical therapy won’t mend.”

  “He’s been shot before, doc,” Rodriguez says proudly, patting my leg. “He’s a professional at narrowly escaping death.”

  The doctor shakes his head. “Just don’t make it a habit. The swelling should go down in a few days. Until then, you’re going to look like you went to Spain for the Running of the Bulls, and the bulls won. But we’ll load you up on painkillers, and this will be a distant memory soon.”

  “Thank you, doctor.”

  “You should be thanking Detective Rodriguez. That was quick thinking, to shield you from fire and tie up your injuries with the blanket to prevent more blood loss.”

  “He’s my hero,” I say honestly.

  “That was nothing,” Rodriguez says smoothly. “You should see what I can do with a tampon.”

  “What?” I ask, a few seconds after he speaks. The morphine is clouding my mind, and I hate it. “What can you do with a tampon?”

  “Buddy, you have no idea. Tampons are glorious things. They are perfectly designed for stuffing a GSW in the field, when it’s difficult to get medical attention. They come out of the package clean, and they help stop the bleeding real fast. Tampons save lives, man.”

  “Wow. I never would have thought of that.”

  “The laughter helps, too. When a friend has been shot and you have to shove a tampon in his bullet hole—well, it’s impossible to do that sort of thing without cracking a joke that’s sure to cheer him up.”

  The doctor nods. “I’ve heard stories from field medics. When you don’t have access to all the bells and whistles, you make do with what you’ve got. But luckily, we’ve got everything we could need right here.” He gestures around at the morgue with both hands. “Blood, sterile equipment, drugs to make this all more comfortable. This is like an all-inclusive resort for getting shot. Again, Cole, you’re a very lucky man.”

  I don’t feel so lucky. Have you seen that movie where the stuffed animal gets ripped apart and loses his stuffing? That’s a pretty good visual representation of how I feel. Also, that movie made me cry. I really liked that stupid stuffed animal.

  “That’s all that I’m needed for here,” the doctor says. “Do you have any questions?”

  “Do you think I’ll be okay to drive tonight? And do you think it’s safe for me to stay in a remote location without access to quick medical care?”

  “I wouldn’t recommend it,” the doctor advises.

  “And if I do it anyway?”

  The doctor hesitates. “I’ll put together a pack of emergency items you might need: drugs, antibiotics, and fresh bandages. But I do highly recommend you stay near a hospital just in case any secondary complications arise.”

  “Understood,” I tell him.

  “I’ll leave you two alone for now,” the doctor says, giving Rodriguez a knowing look. “Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”

  “Sure thing, doc,” says Rodriguez, fishing into his pocket to hand the doctor a wad of bills. “I appreciate your silence.”

  “I appreciate your business, as always. Should I send the lawyer and that woman inside?” the doctor asks.

  “Yes. Just tell them to give us a few minutes to discuss things.”

  The doctor nods and leaves.

  Rodriguez pats my good shoulder and grins. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? I bet you’re regretting what you said before, about wanting to disappear.”

  “No,” I tell him, pushing myself into a sitting position with a grunt. “That’s what I need to do.”

  Pausing and frowning, Rodriguez examines me. “It doesn’t make any sense. You have everything, Hunter. There are men out there who would die to have a fraction of what you have.”

  “They would need to. It’s damn near killed me, getting here. It’s certainly killing me to keep going.”

  “Buddy,” Rodriguez says slowly, shaking his head in disbelief. “I thought that once you got some good drugs in you, you’d change your mind. But you’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Dead serious.”


  The detective exhales slowly, scratching his chin as he processes this. “I know you’re hurting over this girl, but I think she’s making you crazy. Why don’t you just try getting some rest for a few days? Go to therapy some more. Go on a holiday. More importantly, bang some other chicks. You can find someone better than her, man. You can forget about her and move on.”

  I close my eyes as a dull, throbbing pain fights its way through the anesthesia in my cheek. “Roddy, you don’t understand. She isn’t some girl. I built my life around her. She’s… part of me. Like, I swear I can feel strands of her DNA floating all around in my body, knotted up with mine, entangled, painfully so. I don’t know how to keep living my life if she isn’t close to me. It’s like my soul is being stretched—stretched clean across this damn country, to wherever she is.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I need a fresh start. And the only way I can do that… is if I die.”

  “You need to give up everything just to give up her?”

  “Yeah. Because she is my everything.”

  Rodriguez nods. “Okay. You’ve convinced me—that you’re completely insane. But I do owe you, so I’m going to do this. I am a homicide detective, after all, so maybe it will be easier to work your case if I pretend you were actually killed.”

  “Thanks, buddy.”

  “But if I lose my job over this, you better make it up to me in your will.”

  “A duplex, a ranch, and some horses,” I say dizzily, shutting my eyes. “I’ll even throw in a toaster.”

  “Cheapskate,” he says with a grunt. “I save your life and kill you in one day, and all you can think to add is a toaster? Whatever. Should I call the others in?”

  When I nod, he moves to the door and opens it a crack, gesturing for Miranda and Mr. Bishop to enter.

  “Oh, Cole,” Miranda says, rushing over to me and encircling me in a careful hug. “Are you going to be okay, honey?”