Cole: The Wounded Sons, Leah Sharelle [the reading list .TXT] 📗

with the family rather than take off on my bike like I normally did. I missed out on a lot being in a Special Ops Tier 1 team, and my need to be alone meant I missed seeing my nephew come into the world and see Zander get his VP patch. Chase took off for Alaska while I was traipsing around in a jungle and my baby sister Willow chewed my arse out for missing her twenty-first birthday earlier in the year.

Maybe Willow and I could take off for a week up in Queensland, go visit some theme parks and have some fun. Willow and I were really close, being the only girl in the family other than our mum, she had a hard time getting time away from the watchful eyes of the men in our family, not to mention the rest of the Club we grew up in.

Settling on making some plans to do exactly that, I sat back in my seat, removed the coms, and let myself breathe easy. I didn’t want to think about what Gabe was going to say to me when I finally arrived back in the country. I could only imagine how pissed off he was going to be at me for going back in alone, not letting him in on the major’s orders. And, not that I would blame him for being shitty, him being the captain of the team, and his high sense of responsibility to his job as the commanding officer, he had every right to question the order.

Deke, too, was going to cop a mouthful not only from Tank but from all the boys as well. I was still to have my say about his erratic behaviour on this mission, and he was going to hear it, just not yet. The poor bastard had enough to deal with, being taken and brutalised, the details not yet known, except what I have surmised by the injuries I was able to get a look at so far.

I worried that Deke was not going to come back from that; not many soldiers did. But Deke was strong, he could regroup and compartmentalise what happened to him. After all, he was a Son; every member of Team FIVE was a strong and capable man.

We had to be.

There was no other choice.

Suddenly, Dan let out an ear-piercing whistle, the noise dragging me from my head.

“We’ve got a problem, Ghost,” he yelled, dropping to his knees to lean over Deke’s battered body. “Paddles!” he ordered, shouting out to the other medic who I wasn’t familiar with yet.

Paddles?

Sitting on the edge of my chair, I silently watched as Dan snatched the defibrillator off his colleague, pressing buttons on the machine.

“No pulse Dan, charge it up to full!” the medic yelled with his ear to Deke’s chest, his shirt was torn down the middle, and I got a good look at what looked like a dark blue/black dinner plate-sized bruise that stemmed from his abdomen to his pecs.

Dropping to my knees, I shuffled quickly to my mate.

“Deke!”

Grabbing him by the shoulders, I shook him hard, jolting him off the rescue board forcefully.

“Open your fucking eyes, soldier!” I ordered panic setting in when I received no response from him at all.

“Charged!” Dan called out. “Back up, Cole!”

It took three seconds for me to compute that Dan was about to hit my mate with a powerful blast of electrical charge to his heart. A heart that didn’t seem to be beating.

I felt hands push at my chest, moving me from Deke’s body.

Falling to my arse, my eyes widened when Dan put the paddles to Deke’s battered chest.

“Clear! Shocking!”

Deke’s lifeless body jumped off the board, then slumped back.

“Nothing! Charging.” The voice I didn’t know yelled, fingers on Deke’s throat checking for a pulse.

“CPR while we charge, Cole,” Dan ordered, throwing a resuscitator bag at me.

Jumping into action, I fitted the mask to Deke’s mouth and started pumping oxygen into his lungs, Dan taking the job of pumping on Deke’s chest.

“Two breaths when I say, Cole,” Dan instructed me. “Go!”

I quickly squeezed the bag two times, then watched as Dan did compressions, fast hard pumps on Deke’s breast bone.

We did this for what seemed like hours but was literally only twenty seconds while we waited for the defib to charge back up again.

“Clear, no one touch him.” Over and over, Dan shouted out commands, going back to CPR in between charges.

“Come on, Deke, fuck you, breathe!” I growled, tossing away the plastic bag and taking the breathing over myself. Pinching Deke’s nose, I tilted his head back and began to administer my own breath to my mate.

“Come on, Deke, don’t do this, mate,” I urged desperately, my eyes glued to his throat where his pulse should be.

Twice more, Deke received electric shocks, and twice more, I breathed for him, but nothing was happening.

“Fuck, his sternum just broke,” Dan shouted, his hands laying on Deke’s unmoving chest.

“Don’t stop, Dan, for fuck’s sake, keep going!” I ordered frantically, shoving his hands off Deke and replaced them with mine.

“Breathe, you fucker. Breathe!” Pressing down on Deke, the awful sound of bones crushing had bile rising in my throat.

Fuck no!

“Cole, stop mate,” Dan’s voice came loud and close, almost as if he was shouting in my ear. Arms wrapped around my shoulders, dragging me away from Deke.

“No, no, no, he isn’t dead. Let me go, I gotta save him!” I cried out pitifully, wrestling to get out of the hold Dan had on me.

“He is gone, mate. There is nothing more we can do, Cole.” Pity and sympathy coming from Dan, but I wasn’t listening to him. I didn’t want to believe that Deke was gone.

“He can’t be; I got him out, I saved him, carried him so he could rest,” I heaved out, “he was joking with me, he can’t be gone.” My voice breaking with each word.

The sound of a long, dull beep filled the cabin, the sound of a heart monitor