She Saw Mafia Boss Limping—Recognized Tourniquet Failure—'Sit Down NOW or You Bleed Out in 4 Minutes

Описание: She Saw Mafia Boss Limping—Recognized Tourniquet Failure—'Sit Down NOW or You Bleed Out in 4 Minutes'

The fluorescent lights of QuikStop Convenience flicker again at two seventeen in the morning, casting sickly shadows across the scuffed linoleum floor. I don't bother looking up from the inventory clipboard anymore when they buzz and dim. In the six months I've worked the graveyard shift on Chicago's South Side, I've learned which sounds matter and which don't. Flickering lights don't matter. The click of the security door unlocking does.
My hand moves instinctively toward the panic button under the counter, a reflex drilled into me during three tours in Afghanistan, before I force it to stop. It's probably just another drunk stumbling in for cigarettes and lottery tickets, another ghost haunting these streets at hours when normal people sleep. Normal people with normal jobs and normal lives. People who aren't former Army combat medics working for eleven dollars an hour because their medical certifications expired while they were too busy having panic attacks to renew them.
The store smells like burnt coffee, cleaning chemicals, and the faint sweetness of rotting fruit from the produce section I'll have to cull in another hour. My black QuikStop polo is too big, inherited from the guy who worked this shift before me, before he quit without notice. The name tag still says "Marcus." I haven't bothered to change it. Elena Hayes doesn't exist here between midnight and eight in the morning. Just Marcus, just another body behind bulletproof glass, another invisible person keeping the city's insomniacs supplied with their fixes.
Through the security glass, I watch the door. A man enters, and even from fifteen feet away, I can tell something's wrong. He's moving like every step costs him, his gait uneven, his left hand pressed against his right thigh. Tall, probably six foot two, wearing a suit that even under the harsh lighting looks expensive. Charcoal gray, perfectly tailored to broad shoulders that are currently hunched with pain. Dark hair, slightly longer on top, disheveled now. Late thirties, maybe forty. And bleeding.
Not a lot. Not the obvious arterial spray I've seen paint desert sand red. But enough. The way he's holding his leg, the slight drag in his step, the paleness beneath olive skin. I've seen this before. Too many times.