Pint of No Return by Dana Mentink

Author:Dana Mentink [Mentink, Dana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2021-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

“Quinn!” Trinidad dropped to her knees and clutched at his wrist. Fingers trembling, she sought for a pulse. Nothing. Horror robbed her of breath.

“Oh, please don’t let him be dead,” she silently prayed. Repositioning her fingers, she tried again and felt the strong thud of the pulse in his wrist. The relief almost made her pass out.

“Oh, man,” Carlos said as the boys arrived at full speed. “Is it another body? I should have brought the video cam.”

“Uh-oh,” Diego breathed. “It’s Quinn.”

Candy hurried up. “What now?” She paused. “What is Quinn doing there?”

“He’s been hurt,” Trinidad half sobbed. “Call an ambulance.”

“We already did,” Diego said. Carlos peered around his shoulder. “The chief and the ambulance are on their way. Maybe you should pull him onto the sidewalk.”

Trinidad nodded, taking hold of his wrist.

“Hang on,” Carlos interrupted. “I don’t think you’re supposed to move people when they’re injured.”

“Yeah, but if he’s been shot, he could die if we don’t stop the bleeding,” his brother said.

Bleeding? Trinidad fought for breath. “We didn’t hear any shots,” she managed.

“Silencer?” Carlos suggested.

“Silencers don’t completely deaden the noise, just muffle it,” Diego said. “They’re more appropriately called suppressors rather than silencers, so we probably would have heard something.”

Carlos nodded. “Okay. What about a knife? Could have been stabbed.”

Trinidad felt like screaming. “Stop helping. Both of you.”

Carlos cocked his head. “I was just gonna say we should put him on his back in case his heart stops, and then we could do, like, CPR.”

“It might work,” Diego said, “but statistically nine of ten people who suffer cardiac arrest outside the home die anyway.”

Stabbing. CPR. Survival. Trinidad’s head spun, and she clamped her teeth together to keep from screaming at the twins. Her grandfather gripped her arm.

Carlos looked from Trinidad to his brother. “Uh…we should stop helping now.”

With her grandfather’s assistance, Trinidad grasped Quinn’s arm, and they lifted him as gently as they could onto the sidewalk. She frantically scanned for blood but didn’t see any signs of injury other than the fact that he wasn’t conscious. As she monitored his pulse, he began to stir.

She put a quaking hand on his cheek. “Quinn? Can you hear me? What happened?”

One of his eyes fluttered open. “Owww.”

Pure, sweet relief coursed through her body. He was alive and talking. One by one, her muscles seemed to shakily resume their functioning. She placed her palm on his chest and grimaced along with him. “Where does it hurt?”

His face tightened in pain. “The spot where someone clobbered me on the back of the head,” he groaned. He pried his other eye open and tried to sit up.

“You should stay still,” Papa Luis advised.

“Hello, sir,” Quinn said, extending a palm from his prone position. “We haven’t met.”

“Luis,” Papa said. “I am Trinidad’s grandfather.”

“Honored.”

Trinidad would have laughed at the formal greeting, the handshake extended from Quinn on his back to her grandfather, if she wasn’t so worried.

Quinn cleared his throat. “Not to alarm anyone, but I am going to sit up now.”

“Bad idea,” Carlos said.

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