I hadn’t lowered the Glock a fraction, still had it out in front of me. Lucas was less than four meters away, uphill and slightly to my right, keeping his face pressed against the side of the child’s head as though the touch of her alone would keep him safe, like a protective force field.
Ella had given up her struggles now and was passive in his arms. She might even have been clinging on around his neck. After all, though she could well have been terrified, this was the man she’d learned to call Grandpa. You couldn’t just undo that in an instant. I couldn’t see her face, couldn’t judge how aware she was of exactly what was going on around her.
I mentally calculated the amount of Lucas’s head visible alongside hers and knew that, technically, I could take him out. One round, straight through the mouth. If I was quick I could probably reach Ella before he finished falling.
But I wouldn’t be able to stop her seeing what I’d done. Wouldn’t be able to stop her witnessing a bloody death. A sight no child should ever have to see. She was only four. How much would she forget in time? And how much would haunt her forever?
Slowly, gradually, I let the muzzle of the Glock rise, uncurled my finger from the trigger and laid it along the outside of the guard instead.
“OK, Lucas,” I said. “You’re right. I’m not going to — “
That was as far as I got.
The first shot ripped hot through my left thigh, jerking me off balance. For a few long seconds the only thing I felt was the jolt and the shock of it. Then the pain came rushing in. My nervous system overloaded and shut down, leaving my mind screaming for action. I started to turn, sluggish and clumsy, and that’s when something hit me in the back like an express train.
I watched with a kind of horrified fascination as the Glock went tumbling into the snow from fingers that didn’t seem to be mine any longer. I caught the briefest flash of movement above me, saw Lucas already twisting away, already fleeing without hesitation. I could see Ella’s face staring back at me over his shoulder as he ran with her into the trees. I’ve never seen such terror on the face of a child.
I’d promised her she’d be safe with me, that I wouldn’t leave her. I’d promised her mother that I’d look after the pair of them, come what may.
I tried to take a step after Lucas’s rapidly disappearing figure but it was all so heavy, nothing quite worked anymore.
Oh, so this is what its like….
I stumbled and went down.
Fourteen
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment of my waking. It wasn’t like just flicking a switch between oblivion and reality. Instead, I made the transition slowly, merging the edges of one into the other, until it was all just a slurred emulsion of violent dreams and pain and darkness and hazy memories and odd moments of utter peace.
Then, finally, I opened my eyes and found that they were prepared to stay open without dragging me downwards again like a doomed submariner. Everything crowded in on me in a thunderous rush, too much information to take in, arriving much too fast.
I squinted in the harsh light and found I was lying on my back in what could only be a hospital bed. Hospitals look the same and feel the same and smell the same, the industrialized world over.
There was a foul taste on my tongue and an oxygen mask covering my nose and mouth. I had the strange feeling of being one stage disconnected from the rest of my body. But at least I had a body to feel disconnected from. So, I’d definitely imagined my own death.
But I hadn’t imagined Simones.
I squeezed my eyes shut, blocked it out, shied away from it. I wasn’t ready to face that. Not yet.
I tried a few small experimental wriggles of my extremities. Both feet checked in, although flexing my toes on the left side caused someone to start burning a hole through my thigh with a blowtorch.
The fingers of my left hand came online as normal, but my right hand seemed to be having some difficulty complying with the simplest of commands.
I stilled, trying not to panic, then tried again, telling myself there was a perfectly reasonable explanation. Maybe I’d been lying on my arm in my sleep. Hell, I could have been like that for days-weeks, for all I knew. No wonder the damn thing was numb.
Because that’s all it was, just asleep. I was not-was not-paralyzed. I shut my eyes and focused all my will on moving my right arm. How the hell do you do that consciously? I’d never had to think about it before. The idea of reaching out for something had always just formed in my mind and, before I knew it, my hand was already acting on that impulse, in every sense.
Only now it wasn’t.
Eventually, with a sluggish reluctance, my arm began to obey me. Movement, however small, sent a rippling ache up through my shoulder into my back. There was a blunted feel to the discomfort-the effects of the morphine, most likely.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, taking a perverse pleasure in the fiery stab in my ribs that it caused. Pain meant feeling, at least, and for that I welcomed it. It felt like someone had got me on the ground and kicked me around a good deal while I was there. The drugs hadn’t taken the pain away, just coated it with a sullen protective layer. It would account for the slight nausea as well. The thought of actually throwing up brought me out in a cold sweat.
From somewhere at the foot of the bed I heard the rustle of paper, then quiet steps, and a man walked round into my field of view Good dark blue suit, impeccably cut, tailored shirt, silk tie.
“Ah, Charlotte,” my father said, unsmiling. “You’re back with us, I see.”
I pulled the mask down away from my face, clumsily, with my left hand. There was a butterfly taped to the back of my hand, and an IV line disappeared off out of my field of view I was careful that I didn’t snag it.
“Shit, things must have been bad if you’re here,” I said, my voice clogged and my throat raw. “Where is here, by the way?”
My father frowned. He was holding what was probably my chart and he peered at me over the top of his thin gold-framed reading glasses, but whether his disapproval was at the profanity or the flippancy, it was hard to tell. I’d never been very good at reading him.
“You are at the Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, Maine,” he told me. “How much do you remember?”
I swallowed, “I remember being hit,” I said. Andseeing my principaldie in front of me … but I wasn’t going to admit to that.
“And after that?”
I concentrated hard, but any recall slipped away, elusive as smoke. The harder I chased it, the faster it escaped me.
“No … nothing. How long have I been here?”
He hesitated, as if telling me might make a difference to something. “Four days,” he said.
“Four days?” Instinct made my limbs start to paddle, like someone suddenly told their alarm clock had failed to go off and they’d slept in late for work. My brain was filled with cotton wool.
I was treated to that look over the glasses again and it was that, as much as the hand he’d placed on my shoulder, which stilled me.
“Charlotte,” he said in that clipped, slightly acidic tone I knew so well. “Please bear in mind that you have been shot-twice. The first bullet missed the femoral artery in your leg by millimeters. If it hadn’t, you would have undoubtedly bled out at the scene. The second bullet hit your scapula and deflected through your right lung. The fact that you have survived at all is a testament both to the skill of the emergency medical technicians who attended you at the scene, and that of the surgical team once you arrived here.”
Of course, I should have realized that my continued presence on this earth would be due to members of his own profession and nothing to do with my own will.