BLOOD TIES (Decklan Jennings Thriller Book 1) by Philip Duncan (book recommendations for young adults txt) 📕

He was losing too much blood and before they could make it five feet, his unconscious body collapsed to the pavement.

Decklan bent back down and picked him up like a father carrying a sleeping child. Even though Langley wasn’t the biggest guy in the world, carrying a fully grown unconscious man was not easy. Something about dead weight when someone is fully relaxed, or in this case passed out, seemed to add an extra few hundred pounds. They made it back to his truck, completely forgetting that the other guy, if he was still alive, could be looking for them to finish the job. The only thing that mattered to Decklan right now was saving Langley’s life. He laid him down in the back seat and quickly ran around to the other side to pull him all the way in. He slammed both doors, jumped in and floored it out of there.

He knew Langley couldn’t hear him, but he talked to him anyway. “Hang in there, man; everything is going to be okay. No way I am letting you go out like this. You have come too far to give up now, you hear me? We are going to finish what we started, I promise.”

Decklan couldn’t help but feel like this could be an empty promise, seeing that everything had gone to shit so far. It seemed like every step they took forward they got knocked three steps back. They made it back and Decklan jumped out of the truck almost before he got it parked. He ran to open the front door and then rushed back to get Langley. He saw wounds like this a dozen times overseas and he knew that every second counted. The more blood he lost, the slimmer his chance of survival got.

He slowly lowered Langley down on the couch and ran for the first aid kit in his bedroom. It seemed like it only took him a few seconds to retrieve it and get back due to all the adrenaline that was coursing through his veins, but for Langley, it must have felt like a lifetime, not that he had any idea what was going on since he was still unconscious. Decklan pulled out a pair of scissors and cut Langley’s shirt off rather than try to sit him up and risk causing more pain or loss of blood. He ripped open several packs of gauze to soak up as much blood as he could. Then he pulled out the rubbing alcohol and poured it generously over the open wound. He knew he needed to sterilize it as quickly as possible to decrease the chance of infection. As bad as getting shot must be, getting an infection could be like running poison through your veins, which would be nothing less than a death sentence if left untreated by antibiotics, and they couldn’t risk going to a hospital right now.

After letting the alcohol saturate the wound for a little bit, he pulled out more gauze and soaked up any remaining blood and fluid. Then he grabbed a sterile towel from the kit and patted the wound and the area around it as dry as possible before placing the final bandage. Once the bandage was in place, he tore strips of tape and placed it directly to the skin to make sure it was secure. It had been a long time since he had to administer first aid to anyone, but he was pleasantly surprised by his work. The last time he had done anything close to this was when his son took a nasty fall off his bike and skinned both knees and elbows badly. The difference here was he was trying to save a life.

Finally coming down from his high, Decklan made his way over to the La-Z-Boy next to where Langley was lying on the couch. He knew he had done all he could right now, so all he could do was wait and hope that he pulled through. Langley was the closest thing he had to family right now and he couldn’t stand the thought of losing someone else, especially someone as valuable as Langley.

Dear Lord, I know it has been a while since I have sent anything your way, but if you’re listening, I could really use some help. I am begging you, please let him live so we can finish what we started and finally bring peace to my family and his. All of this can’t be for nothing. Amen.

This was an interesting prayer, if you could even call it that. Decklan was so desperate for help, for any glimmer of hope, that he was asking God to help his buddy pull though so they could go kill the guys that did it. Imagine that—asking God to help you kill someone. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and Decklan was desperate.

After twenty minutes sitting and watching Langley fight for his life, he started to feel his eyes get heavy. He didn’t want to fall asleep and risk Langley dying in his sleep. He needed to stay awake and check his vitals every half hour or so. Another five minutes passed by and his eyelids seemed to have doubled in weight. It was only a matter of time now before exhaustion took over from his huge adrenaline dump and shut his lights out. He managed to fight through the urge to sleep to get up and check Langley’s pulse.

Yup, still fighting. Keep it up, buddy.

He quickly found his ass back in the chair, and he could no longer put up a fight. He peered over at the oven clock in the kitchen to check the time—4:45 pm, which was the last thing he saw before finally succumbing to his exhaustion.

There he was with his family again. They were all on the beach just behind their house. The kids were flying their kites, running and laughing, and he and his beautiful wife were parked in their beach chairs watching. This was