A Stranger in Town: a Rockton novel

by Armstrong, Kelley

  I shake my head. “I know the girl he was seeing. That just makes it . . . more real.”

  “Shit,” Anders murmurs. “Felicity?”

  “No, one of Cherise’s sisters.” I cover the last step to the table. “So what do we have?”

  He walks to the counter and lifts a small jar. When he shakes it, a bullet clinks against the glass.

  “Hunting accident?” I say. “A bullet from an old wound?”

  “It was lodged in his aorta.”

  “Aorta? You mean . . .” I turn toward the body. “He was killed by a bullet?”

  A crash sounds from the next room. Everyone turns, and April starts toward it, saying, “If they have knocked over the IV, we do not have a backup—”

  Diana screams, and I charge into the room. She’s alone with Jay and an unconscious woman, leaving no doubt as to which one is making her scream.

  I throw open the door and—

  The bed is empty. That’s the first thing I see. An empty bed with the restraint straps dangling. Diana stands at the foot of the bed, hands to her mouth. There’s no one else in the room.

  How the hell can there be no one else—?

  I follow her wide eyes. She’s looking down at the other side of the bed. There’s a strangled cry, and I race around to see Jay and Sophie on the floor.

  Sometimes, the brain jumps ahead of the eyes and fills in a false picture. It’s a phenomenon I know well from witness interviews. They see what they expect, and that image can leave an impression even when the truth contradicts it.

  I heard a crash. I see Diana frozen in horror. I spot Sophie and Jay on the floor, and I think that Jay has . . .

  Well, I have no idea what he’s done, but clearly he’s the aggressor here when the other person involved is the semi-sedated victim of a murder attempt.

  Yet that is not what I’m seeing. Jay is facedown on the floor, and Sophie is on top of him with her hands wrapped in his hair, her face twisted in rage.

  She jerks his head back, as if she’s going to slam it into the floor, I shout at her to stop, and she has the mental awareness to look up and see the gun pointed at her.

  She snarls something in Danish, and I know, beyond doubt, that she wasn’t fighting off Jay. She’s tried to attack us before. She’s not in her right mind. Yet I somehow still imagined Jay instigated the attack, because that’s the usual narrative.

  Jay’s face is pure terror, his eyes rolling, blood streaming from his nose. More blood on the floor, where she’s already bashed his face.

  His mouth works, but nothing comes out.

  “She—she just went nuts,” Diana whispers. “She was talking to him, and he undid her restraints, and I said not to, but he did, and then she just . . . sprang.”

  “Sophie,” I say. “Can you understand me?”

  “She’s still not speaking English,” Diana says.

  “April? I need a sedative.”

  “She’s already getting it,” Anders murmurs beside me. He has his gun out, too, aimed over the bed.

  Sophie barks something in a voice that makes me jump. It’s a definite bark. A command.

  “Sophie,” I say. “I need you to—”

  “Back,” she says in English. “Back.” She jerks her chin down at Jay. “Kill.”

  Get back or I kill him.

  Seems she knows a little English after all.

  “Jay?” I say. “I know you’re scared right now, but I really need you to translate. Is there any chance you can do that?”

  He makes a gurgling noise. It comes out on a gasp. He’s too frightened to help. Shit.

  “Back!” Sophie says. “Back!”

  I assess the situation. She’s got him facedown on the floor, as she kneels on him. Her hands rest at the base of his neck. She’s pinned him so he can’t lift his arms.

  How serious is her threat to kill him? She could bash his face against the floor, but I’m right here, with a gun trained on her. I can shoot her before she can do that.

  Still, is there any reason not to do as she asks? If I can defuse the situation, I will, even if that means surrendering ground.

  I glance at Anders. He nods, telling me to go ahead and ease back. April appears in the doorway, syringe in hand, and I motion for her to lay it on the bed. She does, so carefully that Sophie doesn’t see it.

  Something’s wrong here.

  Uh, yes, your survivor freaked out and attacked her translator.

  No, something . . .

  Jay’s eyes bug, and he gets a hand free. Even as it shoots to his neck, the answer flashes. The way his eyes bulge. The way he gasps and can’t speak despite having his face off the floor. The way Sophie’s hand rests oddly at the back of his neck.

  That’s why he can’t talk.

  She has something around his throat.

  She’s choking him.

  I back up fast, my hands rising, gun pointing toward the ceiling. Anders shifts, and his gaze shunts my way, but then he sees the problem and his lips part in a curse. He lifts his gun and steps back.

  “Sophie?” I say. “Let him go. We can’t speak to you without his help.”

  I pantomime my words. She only snorts, her nostrils flaring. I can’t see what she has around his throat. It’s thin, whatever it is.

  “Diana?” I say. “What does she have?”

  “W-what?”

  “What’s she choking him with?”

  “Ch-choking?”

  “Sophie?” I say, louder now, firmer. “Let him go.”

  Sophie looks straight at me. She holds my gaze as Jay gasps, and a chill slithers down my spine.

  “Let him go!” I point the gun at her again. “You want me to back off? I’m not going to do it while you’re killing him.”

  She continues holding my gaze.

  “You know what I’m saying,” I hiss. “You know enough English to understand.”

  Jay gasps, and his head falls forward as he draws in rapid breaths. I see then what she’s using. It’s her IV tube, wrapped around his neck, just slack enough now to let him breathe.

  “Dead,” she says. “Malthe and Liva. Dead. Saw killed.”

  “You saw your friends Malthe and Liva die. I’m sorry. That wasn’t us, though. I can explain—”

  “Victor,” she says. “Want Victor.”

  “Victor?” I repeat it. “Is that your partner? Your lover? Your husband?” I rattle off synonyms, waiting for the recognition in her eyes. There is none, though. Her hooded eyes give nothing away.

  “April,” I say. “Get the hiking boot.”

  She withdraws, her shoes tapping across the wooden floor. When she returns, I glance up just in time to see her holding the boot . . . with the severed foot still inside.

  I open my mouth, but Anders beats me to it, waving wildly at the boot and shaking his head. It takes a split second before his meaning penetrates. April disappears.

  “Victor!” Sophie snaps again. She didn’t see the foot, thankfully—she’s too low behind the bed. She tightens the tubing again, and Jay’s eyes bulge.

  “Stop that!” I snap. “If you want to talk to us, you need him.”

  She looks me in the eye. “Liar.”

  I blink. Did she just call me a liar? Or is that a Danish word? “I am not lying to you. He’s the only one who can speak Danish, so unless your English vocabulary suddenly improves—”

  Anders catches my eye. I understand the message.

  Take it down a notch. Remember she’s not herself. She’s woken in a strange place with strange people. She’s not thinking straight and not fully understanding the language.

  “I need you to let him go,” I say, motioning with my hand. “Please. We can talk about Victor. Just let him go.”

  “Liar.”

  I struggle against my frustration. Pretend she’s high on drugs. Don’t expect logic. Just talk her down.

  April returns with the boot, sans foot. I grab it in my free hand and hold it up.

  “Vic—?” I begin.
<
br />   She sees the boot, screams and yanks on the tubing, and Jay thrashes in fresh panic.

  “Sophie!” I shout. “Sophie!”

  She’s not listening. I holster my gun and dive for the needle on the bed. Snatch it, drop onto her just as she grabs Jay’s hair and smashes his face into the floor. I jab the needle in, but she bucks before I can depress the syringe. Then she’s on me. Before I can blink, I’m flat on my back, sprawled half across Jay, with Sophie on top of me.

  Diana screams. Anders shouts at Sophie. I feign contorting my face in panic, and that relaxes her just enough that she doesn’t notice when I go for my gun. In another blink, it’s pointing at her as she lays one hand over my throat.

  “Let her go,” Anders says as he comes around the bed. “Or she will pull that trigger.”

  “She will,” Diana says quickly behind him. With shaking hands, she pantomimes shooting a gun.

  “Shoot her.”

  At the last voice, I give a start. It’s eerily calm, and it comes from over my head. Out of the corner of my eye, April appears. Her expression . . .

  I have never seen this look on her face. Her words are cold and calm and clear, but her face is taut with fear, eyes showing whites all around the blue irises.

  When she speaks again, there’s a tremor under that calm. “Shoot her, Casey. Please, just shoot her.” April swallows, the sound as loud as a gunshot. “She has her thumb on your Adam’s apple, and I need you to shoot her now.”

  It is indeed on my Adam’s apple. Yes, an open-handed strike at that spot is famous as a killing blow, but Sophie’s thumb just happens to rest there as she presses her hand into my throat.

  I lift the gun to Sophie’s face. Then, beside me, Jay gurgles.

  “Casey . . .” Anders says, and I follow his gaze to Sophie’s other hand, wrapped in the tubing again. I glance at Jay. The tubing digs into his throat, blood tricking down.

  “Syringe,” I whisper.

  Anders shakes his head. “The needle’s snapped. April, can you please draw up—”

  “Shoot her, Will, for God’s sake,” April hisses. “She’s going to kill Casey.”

  “For once, I’m with April,” Diana says, voice shaky. “Will? Casey’s not going to do this. Can you please—?”

  Sophie’s thumb digs in. Then she yanks on the tubing, so hard her face twists with effort, and she smiles. Dear God, she smiles down at me as she yanks and—

  I fire, and she twists sideways, my bullet hitting her in the shoulder as another passes through the side of her head. As she topples, I scramble up to wrench the tubing from her hand. Jay’s face hits the floor.

  Anders yanks Sophie’s body aside. There’s no help for her. I know that. Grief darts through me, grief for a woman we’d tried so hard to save. Anders had been right shooting to kill, though. He didn’t know whether I would actually pull the trigger, and he couldn’t risk aiming for her shoulder.

  With Sophie gone, we both scramble for Jay. He’s facedown on the floor, unmoving. I flip him over. His eyes are closed, and that damned tubing is still embedded in his neck. I go to pull it free, and Anders says “No!” just in time.

  “Move!” a voice says. “Both of you. Move, now!”

  We part for April as my sister shoulders her way in.

  “The tubing—” I begin.

  “I see it.”

  “He’s not breathing. He’s—”

  “Casey.” Her eyes meet mine. “Let me do my job.”

  “What do you need?” Anders asks.

  April tells him, and we all scramble to obey.

  14

  Jay is alive. That is all I can say. Alive, for now.

  He stopped breathing, and it wasn’t a simple matter of CPR to bring him back. Adrenaline can give ordinary people the strength to overturn cars to free their trapped children. It can also, when fueled by madness and rage, give them the strength to yank plastic tubing through a windpipe. Getting Jay breathing again took all my sister’s emergency-ward experience. Without her, he would have died. Even with her . . .

  Jay did not leap up, gasping, when his heart started again. His brain has been deprived of oxygen for too long. He’s in a coma, and even if he recovers . . .

  For now, we will not speculate on his mental condition if he recovers. Our focus is on making sure he does recover.

  Ten seconds.

  That’s what I keep thinking. Ten seconds. Maybe even five. Yes, I’m quite certain it’s five.

  If I’d pulled that trigger five seconds faster, Jay would be dealing with a sore throat and nightmares. Traumatized, but alive.

  Five seconds faster and Anders would have seen me shoot Sophie and stayed his own finger, and she’d be alive.

  Five seconds. A blip so fast we barely register its passing. How can I possibly be judged for missing such a narrow window?

  Because it is not the blink of an eye. After Jay is stable, I measure time in five-second intervals. That’s how long it takes Anders to cross the room and retrieve gloves from a drawer. That’s how long it takes April to tell Diana she should leave, and Diana to protest. That’s how long it takes for Dalton to burst in, frantic because he’d been in the forest and returned to hear I’d been attacked by a patient. That’s how long it takes for me to go outside and ask Kenny to reassure people that the situation is under control.

  Five seconds.

  I might have saved two lives if I pulled that trigger five seconds earlier.

  Yet I couldn’t. I know that. I made a mistake fourteen years ago, let anger and outrage pull a trigger for me, and a man died for it. A man who deserved to be punished for what he did, but who did not deserve to die.

  Too fast. Too slow. When it comes to this, it will forever be one or the other. There is no time I have ever fired a gun and later rested confident that I did exactly the right thing, even when, in the back of my mind, I know I did the only thing.

  I will question it.

  Anders will, too.

  There will be late nights, the two of us, huddled in some quiet place, nursing a drink, whispering our doubts to the only person who truly understands them. I love Dalton with all my soul, and he has done things he regrets, but only Anders and I share this in our past—the shame of pulling a trigger when we shouldn’t have.

  Now we are locked together in a new regret. I will tell him that he did the right thing and saved my life, and he will not believe it. He will tell me that I did the right thing in trying to save Sophie, and I will not believe it.

  I saw the plastic tubing around Jay’s neck. I saw blood. I should have shot Sophie right then. But I misjudged. I thought I had the situation under control, and it was only when she yanked that tubing that I realized my mistake.

  Five seconds.

  “I would like to speak to my sister alone now,” April announces.

  I jump. I think we all do as her voice cuts through the tiny room. Dalton’s grip tightens on my hand—I hadn’t even realized he was holding it until now.

  “Eric,” April says, “you may have Casey back in ten minutes. I need to speak to her alone.”

  Anders nods and waves Dalton to the door. They go out back. April waits until they’re gone and then walks to the door, her head tilting.

  “They aren’t going to eavesdrop, April,” I say.

  “Not intentionally, no.” She pauses and then, satisfied, returns to me. “I have a dilemma, and I wish to consult with you.”

  Her words make my stomach flip in a sensation so alien that it takes a moment for me to identify it.

  My sister is admitting she has a problem.

  She wants to talk to me about it.

  She may even need my advice.

  I have been waiting for this moment all my life. How many times did I want to ask for her advice, but I couldn’t because we didn’t have that kind of relationship? If she had opened the door, though, I’d have leaped through. Even just the proof that my perfect sister had problems, needed advice, would have meant so much. I grew up
feeling like the screwup, the girl who never quite got her shit together, because April did everything effortlessly.

  “Okay,” I say. “What is it?”

  “I want to say that I am unable to properly care for this patient in his condition.”

  I nod. “I would disagree, but I understand if you feel you can’t—”

  “No.” The word comes out sharp. “I do not wish you to understand, Casey. I can care for him. In his current state, a hospital could do nothing for him that I cannot. Moreover, here, he can receive the undivided attention of staff at all hours, and if he comes to require more than we can offer, I can personally arrange a discreet transfer to a Vancouver facility.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “The problem is that I don’t want that.”

  I lean against the counter. “You don’t want the burden of his care. You have enough to do here so we’d understand—”

  “No. It is not a burden. It’s that I do not want the responsibility for his care. I wish to transfer it to someone else. My expectations for a full recovery are low, and I wish to make that someone else’s responsibility. I want to spare myself the guilt of feeling as if I could have done more.”

  “Ah. Well, I’d rather have spared myself the guilt of not acting fast enough to save Jay. Or not figuring out how to save Sophie.”

  “This isn’t about you, Casey.”

  “No, it’s not. I’m making a point. We are all going to second-guess here. What if Diana had alerted us when Jay first removed the restraints? What if we’d sedated Sophie right away? What if I didn’t break the damn needle injecting it? What if I’d shot her before she strangled Jay?”

  “Yes, you should have shot—”

  I lift a hand. “Really not what I need right now, April.”

  She hesitates and then nods. “I apologize. I would have preferred you’d shot her sooner, but I understand that you made the choice you thought was correct.”

  I try not to stiffen at that. She doesn’t mean an insult. I just hear “you thought” more emphatically than she says it.

  “However,” April continues, “I’m not sure what this has to do with my situation.”