Another gunshot.
When Kyuhyun heard the thundering sound, his heart stopped.  Yesung ran toward the blast, and he dashed after the officer.  Rushing faster, faster and—    Siwon was on the ground. Blood was all around him.
Just like Krystal.  Just.  Like.  Krystal.     “No!” Kyuhyun screamed.
Yesung bent beside Siwon.  Backup—more cops—raced up around them.  Kyuhyun hit the ground beside Siwon.  So much blood.    “I’m…all right,”  Siwon managed.
Kyuhyun's heart started to beat again.   “SOB fired from the south.  Waited for me to make a target…of myself.”  His breath heaved out.  “Bullet’s still in my chest.  I’ll be…fine.”
He’d better not be lying to Kyuhyun.
In his chest.   “He’s…not as good,”  Siwon managed,  “with a gun…as he is…with a knife…”
Fear clawed at Kyuhyun's insides.  He grabbed for Siwon's hand and held tight.
Siwon’s gaze — not as bright, and that dimness terrified his found Kyuhyun's.  “Get him…out,”  Siwon rasped to Yesung.  “He could…be here still…”
Kyuhyun wasn’t leaving.  Yesung tried to pull Kyuhyun away, but he just held tighter to Siwon.  “I’m.not.leaving.you.”
Cops fanned out, started searching the area.  The EMTs came and loaded Siwon onto a gurney.  When they put him into the back of an ambulance, Kyuhyun jumped right in with him.
So much blood.
“Rode with you…too…”  Siwon whispered.  “After…wreck…”  His fingers squeezed Kyuhyun's.  “Didn’t want to…let you go.”
“I’m not letting you go.”
The EMT pushed a needle into Siwon's arm.  The ambulance jostled, bouncing along the old road.  The scream of the siren echoed around him.  The EMT cut away Siwon's shirt, and Kyuhyun got a good look at the wound.
Kyuhyun stopped breathing.  “You lied to me,”  he whispered to Siwon.
“No…”
How was he still talking?  Still conscious?
“Never leave…you…this won’t stop…”
The EMT connected thin tubes to him.  Something started to beep.
“Blood pressure’s dropping!”  The EMT snapped.  Then he pushed Kyuhyun back.
Siwon's fingers slid from Kyuhyun's.
You lied to me.
Because Kyuhyun seen the wound, and he knew things weren’t going to be all right for Siwon.
***
The hospital’s emergency room doors flew open.  The EMTs ran with the gurney, barking out orders.  Kyuhyun sprinted to keep up with them.  Doctors and nurses jumped into action, swarming that gurney.
Please, please take care of him.
Siwon vanished into the ER.  The doors swung shut behind him.  Kyuhyun stood, alone, in that narrow hallway.  Staring after him.  So lost.
I can’t lose him again.  Kyuhyun and Siwon just found their way back to each other.  This wasn’t supposed to happen.
“Sir?”
Kyuhyun turned and saw a nurse—a brunette with hazel eyes—gazing sympathetically at him.  “Sir, we’re going to need you to fill out some paperwork on the patient.”
Kyuhyun  lips that were bone dry.  “He’s going to be okay.”
The nurse’s face tightened.  “There’s a waiting room just down the hallway.  It’s the second door on the left.  You can take the papers there.”
“He’s going to be okay,”  Kyuhyun said again, his voice harder.
The nurse handed her the clipboard.  “You may want to notify other family members…”
Siwon didn’t have other family members.  “He only has me,”  Kyuhyun said.  His fingers trembled when he took the clipboard.  Kyuhyun walked toward the waiting room in a daze.  Bodies passed him in a blur.  White lab coats.  Green hospital scrubs.  Someone bumped into him, right as he turned toward the waiting room.   “Sorry,” a voice rasped.
That rasp… Kyuhyun looked up, frowning, just as something sharp jabbed into his neck.  A needle.  He shoved a needle into my neck.
The man wore a green face mask—the kind that doctors and nurses wore during surgery—but Kyuhyun could see his eyes—see them so perfectly.  His eyes were the last thing that Kyuhyun saw before everything went dark.  Kyuhyun fell forward and felt his strong arms wrap around him.
***   “Kyu.” Saying his name was hard.  So much harder than it should have been.
Siwon tried to move his arms, but found that they were strapped down.  His throat ached, burned, and it sure as hell seemed like someone had driven a ing stake through his chest.
A stake…or a bullet.   “Take it easy, Choi.”  A familiar voice advised him.  “You just came out of surgery.  They took the tube out of your throat three minutes ago.  Just slow the hell down, okay?”
A tube?  That would explain the burn in his throat.
Siwon forced his eyes to open.  Again, the small act was too damn hard.  But he opened them, and he locked his gaze on Detective Kim. “Kyu.”  Siwon said his name again because he was the only thing that mattered.
But at his name, Yesung looked away.
Where is he?  He’d been with him in the alley.  He remembered Kyuhyun holding onto him.  He’d been in the ambulance, too.  He’d hated the look of fear in those puppy eyes.
“We’re looking for him,” Yesung said.  His voice cracked.  Not good.  “I’ve got an APB out now— every cop in the city is searching for him.”
Searching for him…?!
The machines around Yesung began to beep frantically.  Yesung hurried toward the side of the bed.  “Take it easy.  Jesus, man, calm down.”
He couldn’t be ing serious.  Siwon tried to push up in the bed.
“You’re bleeding again!  Stop!”  Yesung pushed the call button for the nurse, then he locked his hands around Siwon's shoulders.  The detective shoved him back against the bed.  “They just dug a bullet out of you.  You can’t go racing out of here now!”
Yes, he could.  Siwon had to get to Kyuhyun.
The lines on Yesung's face became deeper.  “We’re going to find Kyuhyun.”
How had they ing lost him?  How?
Yesung exhaled on a rough sigh.  “Kyuhyun was in the hospital.  I-I saw the security video just a little while ago.  Some guy in a doctor’s coat came up to him.  He injected Kyuhyun with something that knocked him out.  Then the cocky bastard just put him in a wheel chair and pushed him right out the doors.”
No!
“No one even stopped him.  Didn’t ask a single damn question.  He took Kyuhyun out the emergency exit.  There were two guards there, and he just took him.”
The machines were shrieking now.
Two nurses ran into the room.  The male nurse demanded,  “What are you doing to the patient?”
The other nurse—female, a redhead—hurried toward the bed.  When she got close enough, Siwon grabbed her wrist.  “Get me…out…”
“No, no, sir.”  Her brown eyes became saucer sized.  “You can’t leave!”
The male nurse pulled out a needle and added something to Siwon's IV bag.  “This will help calm you down.”   No.  He didn’t need to be calm.  I need Kyu.
“Take it easy,” the redhead told him.  “You have to rest and recover.”
Resting was the last thing he needed to do.  He had to get out there and find Kyuhyun.  “Doc…tor…”
"The doctor will come to see you soon,” the redhead reassured him as Siwon's fingers slid lifelessly away from her wrist.  He could feel the cold touch of the drugs slipping through his veins.  “Sleep…”  The nurse told him.
I can’t sleep.  Kyu needs me.
“We’ll find him,”  Yesung told him, but the cop’s voice seemed far away now.  “Every cop in the city has his photo.  Kyuhyun's not just going to vanish…”
***   But he did.  Kyuhyun ing vanished.  Two days passed, and the cops didn’t find him.
“He was clever,”  Kangin said as he guided Siwon into the car.  They were at the hospital’s exit.  Finally.  The doctors hadn’t wanted him to leave the hospital.  what they wanted.    Siwon had tried to leave the day before, and he’d torn open his wound.  Blood had spurted and the nurses had sedated him.  Again.
“The guy kept his face averted from the cameras,”  Kangin told him,  “and he had a surgical cap and mask on the whole time.”
Siwon slid into the car.  The fresh stitches in his chest pulled, but he ignored the pain.  He could only focus on one thing then—Kyuhyun.  Kangin slid into the front seat.  The car eased into traffic.
“The cops think he’s already dead.”  Siwon had heard the whispers when Yesung got his updates.  As soon as they’d hit the forty-eight hour mark on Kyuhyun's abduction, the cops had stopped looking for a live body.
“It’s…it’s been a long time, Siwon,”  Kangin said softly.  “A lot can happen during all those hours…”
Siwon’s hands fisted.