by Kate Aeon
He shrugged. “We aren’t going to be here when they get here. Sorry about that. But I do have to credit you with good use of the only resource you had. You were always surprising that way.”
“I’ll see if I can’t come up with a few more surprises for you,” she said.
He laughed. “Ah. There you are. The Phoebe I knew. I thought you’d be showing up. Nice to see you again.” He turned. “Follow me, dear heart. We’re going back to my yacht, and I’m going to let you negotiate for your boyfriend’s life.”
“Right.”
“Oh, I will. I always do what I say I’m going to do, don’t I, Phoebe? Whereas you don’t.”
“How the hell do you figure that?”
“You promised to be my wife until death did us part.”
“You promised to love and honor and cherish me.”
“I do love you, Phoebe. I honor the bond between us — I have been faithful to that bond as no man ever has been before or ever will be again. And I will cherish these last few days that you and I will spend together.”
“Days,” Phoebe whispered, remembering Michael’s hellish photo-essay on her wall. “Days?”
“I’ve done a lot of reading on how to keep people alive. Took EMT and paramedic courses. Had doctors teach me all sorts of interesting things. I can start IVs, do minor surgeries, make little repairs to keep your heart beating and your mind functioning. I think, considering the admittedly extreme nature of what I plan, I’ll exceed your capacity to survive my art in just a few days. If I’m lucky you may last a week.”
A week, she thought.
And Michael wouldn’t honor any deals he made regarding Alan, either. Her only hope was that she would see some opportunity to kill Michael before he got her where she was going.
If the police didn’t leap out and rescue her. But Michael wasn’t even trying to hurry her along — he seemed perfectly content to move at the snail’s pace dictated by her damaged knee. So he knew that the police couldn’t reach the two of them in time.
Which meant his yacht was close.
She was going to have to do this on her own.
She could, perhaps, catch Michael off balance and knock him into the storm-tossed waters of the marina. He might be eaten by a shark when he fell in, or hit his head on one of the big concrete pillars that drove into the sea — maybe he would drown.
Or maybe he would at least stay down there long enough that she could reach Alan and save him.
Except she had no idea where Alan was.
God.
How was she supposed to survive this? She had nothing.
God, let there be a hungry shark down there waiting, she prayed, and did a little sideways dive and grabbed Michael’s knees.
He did fall. He just didn’t fall into the water.
“I was wondering how long it would take you to try that,” he said, sitting up, yanking the wig off her head, grabbing her hair, pulling her face up so that she was forced to look at him. “Nicely done.”
“You’d thought of that, and you let me...”
“I’ve thought of everything, Phoebe,” he said. “I had a long time where I couldn’t do much else but think. And you were all I thought of. Aren’t you flattered? You should be.”
“I want you to die,” she said. “I want to be the one to kill you.”
“You had your chance.” He laughed. “Now it’s my turn. C’mon. I don’t want to be out here any longer. This is disgusting weather.”
She spat in his face.
He slapped her so hard her ears rang, and she tasted blood in her mouth.
If I were one of those berserkers, she thought, I’d taste my own blood and work myself into a frenzy and charge him and rip him to pieces with my bare hands.
It made a pleasant fantasy for the half second she had before he grabbed her throat and yanked her to her feet.
“By the way,” he said casually, “that little stunt just cost your whore-mongering friend one body part, no matter what sort of deal you and I work out. But because I love you, I’ll let you pick the part.” He yanked her forward and she stumbled. “And if you try any more little tricks, we’ll do dismemberment on a geometric curve — your next stunt will cost him two body parts, the time after that four, the one after that sixteen... and after that basically I’m stuck dicing him into tiny little cubes. So don’t be stupid again, you cunt.”
She couldn’t let herself think about it. She couldn’t let herself believe that Michael would reach his yacht and that she would be his helpless victim. She had to keep fighting, because not fighting was certain death for both of them.
But she had nothing. She had absolutely nothing else that she could do, nothing else that she could think of. Michael had his turf and his plans and his weapons and Alan, and she had the wind and the rain and the taste of her own blood and fear in her mouth.
Michael led her past a dozen multi million-dollar yachts. To an empty slip.
He stopped, his head whipping from side to side, his body suddenly rigid, as if no one less than God had slapped him upside the head with a frying pan, and he screamed, “Where the fuck is my boat?”
He turned on her. “Where the fuck is my boat, you bitch? Where is it? Where is it?”
She stared at him. “How the hell would I know?”
He slapped her across the face again. “Don’t use that kind of language with me, cunt. I own you. And don’t lie to me!”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Alan hung half in and half out of the rough water, knowing damned well that he was bleeding into it and knowing there were sharks below him, around him, moving nearer with every second, that were tasting his blood, coming to feast on him, with other monsters in their wake.
Blood in the water.
He clung to the side of the dock, to the tiny rungs, and he prayed that Michael and Phoebe would reach him before the sharks did. He was only going to get one chance, if he got even that, so he prayed that he’d picked the right spot. That he was where he needed to be. That Fate would smile on him and deliver the monster into his reach.
God, he prayed, I don’t like to think that I’m in a position to call in chips, but if you’re out there, you know I honored my part of the bargain. I did medicine, I’ve saved lives, haven’t asked for much, and I kept my part of the bargain even when you took the most important person in my world away from me. You owe me. You owe me a lot. Let me save Phoebe. That’s all I’m asking here. If I die afterward, fine. If I die during, fine, so long as Michael Schaeffer dies first. But I love her, and I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to love anyone again. You owe me. One good shot. One good shot and the death of that monster. For her.
He knew uncounted ways to save a man’s life. Had never been able to understand how anyone could kill rather than save.
But he understood now, and he was surprised to discover how useful all his years of putting people back together had become now that he wanted to take one apart. Alan hung there and planned where he would hit Michael with the knife. Where he would drive it in. Presenting parts — he thought of those — if he was facing the bastard, he would have to hit there... and there. A side shot would give him two different targets, one on the left, one on the right. A back shot — with a knife and a back shot Alan thought he could kill the monster well, and quickly. Didn’t matter that he had to do it left-handed. Didn’t matter what angle he got. He was going to make his shot work for him.
If he just got an angle.
Where the hell were they?
God was playing his cards pretty close to the vest; he didn’t give Alan a sign, or an okay, and Alan hung just below the edge of the pier, with waves pounding him and dragging at him and sometimes submerging him for an instant. He was terrified that he was going to be pulled under the water. Terrified of things in the water.
I hate the fucking ocean, he thought.
A wave slammed over him, and he hung on, gasping when it passed, and then he heard Michael’s voice over the wind and the rain, screami
ng, “Where the FUCK is my BOAT?”
Thank you, God, Alan said silently, and poked his head over the edge of the dock.
Michael stood there, his back to Alan, slapping the shit out of Phoebe and screaming at her, accusing her of doing something with his yacht. Beating on her because she was in reach.
Yeah. That fit.
Hang in, Phoebe, he thought, and launching himself out of the water, he took the few steps he needed to reach Michael at a dead run, and punched hard with the knife — in through soft tissue, up, around. Left-handed. His shot wasn’t perfect. He’d entered too far left.
He heard Michael grunt.
Blood poured over Alan’s hand, hot and sticky.
And then Michael turned, ripping the knife out of Alan’s grip in the process, throwing Phoebe halfway down the dock away from the two of them. Onto her back. Michael smashed a fist into Alan’s face, and Alan saw stars.
Alan had taken a good shot — but he hadn’t severed Michael’s spinal cord, hadn’t sliced through the ascending aortic artery that ran just in front of it. He’d gotten bowels and maybe a chunk of kidney, but not enough to stop the fucker from hurting Phoebe, if that was what he chose to do.
Alan had half a second to consider possible next moves. And then he was looking down the muzzle of Michael’s gun.
And behind him, Phoebe screamed, “You said you didn’t have a gun.”
Michael shouted, “No. I said I didn’t need one.” And to Alan he said, “That hurts, you pissant. That hurts enough that I don’t think I’m even going to play with you anymore. I’m just going to blow your fucking head into the water while she watches. And then I’m going to take her, and go somewhere with her, and do all the things I was going to do in the first place. You won’t get to watch. But all the things I’m going to do to her will make something nice for you to think about as your face goes squirting out the back of your skull.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Phoebe crawled to her feet, saw Alan down on one knee with a gun shoved in his face, saw Michael bleeding with a knife jammed into his back, and all the world seemed to slow to a crawl.
Seemed to freeze.
Got icy cold.
Phoebe shivered, and exhaled, and her breath plumed away from her in a long, thin stream.
Save my daddy, Chick whispered inside her head.
Cold flowed into her right knee, silencing the pain, and Phoebe stared at the knife in Michael’s back, and Chick screamed, Hurry.
Phoebe did not stop to think. She lunged forward, and her knee held, and her hands wrapped around the knife handle.
In the weird, nightmarish slow motion of dreams, where terrible things unfold at an unstoppable crawl, Phoebe started pulling the knife out. She could see Michael’s finger beginning to tighten on the trigger, even as his head started to turn toward her.
She focused on the left side of his back, the place where his heart should be, and with all the strength in her, shoved the blade in between Michael’s ribs — and blood spurted against her hands.
But not enough.
Michael’s right arm flopped, and the gun went off, not against Alan’s forehead, but lower, and a blood rose bloomed low and to the right on Alan’s chest.
And Michael sagged, but brought the gun in his hand back against Alan, who was falling, and Phoebe twisted the knife.
The universe slowed to a molasses crawl.
The bright flood of hot blood as she yanked on the knife.
Michael’s arm steadying, his grip on his own handgun solidifying.
His finger tightening on the trigger.
Phoebe yanking the knife out.
His finger tightening.
Her jamming the knife into the side of his neck, blood fountaining from his back, and then from his jugular.
The wobble in his hand, his arm, as the shock of the blood loss overran his adrenaline at last.
The flash from Michael’s muzzle, the sound no more than a soft pop above the tearing wind and a sudden burst of slashing rain.
The splash of Michael’s blood against Alan’s face — Alan’s sagging face.
Alan collapsed, and Michael dropped on top of him, and Phoebe dropped the knife and tried to catch Alan.
Felt her knee wrench.
Fell.
Pain — fast hot explosive agony — hatched and ripped and clawed newborn and ravenous into her right knee. Bad pain. Important pain. Doctor-save-me pain.
She screamed at it but kept going, dragged herself in a wounded-dog three-legged crawl to Alan, and rolled Michael partway off of him.
Michael flopped, facing her, and for a moment she froze, staring.
He was looking at her. Right at her, with a fixed stare that chilled her blood — and then she realized that he wasn’t blinking. Wasn’t breathing. He was, at last, dead.
“Come back from that, you fuck,” she snarled and turned her attention to Alan.
She shoved the dead weight of Michael the rest of the way off of Alan, struggling because she was hurt — more than she wanted to think about or face — and the pain in her knee was keeping her from getting good leverage. The air around her got still colder, colder than air could be. Inside her head, the child’s voice screaming, Hurry! Hurry!
Cold and terror sucked the breath out of Phoebe’s lungs. Her hands trembled. She pulled Alan’s shirt up, found two small holes in his chest. One on the left side, one lower and to the right. They looked so small. Little horrible dark holes with blood bubbling out of them, with black edges, powder burns tattooed into gray-white skin.
Alan’s eyes were open, but he didn’t seem to see her. He wasn’t breathing — at least she couldn’t see his chest rise or fall — and she screamed at him, “Don’t you die on me!” She got to her hands and knees — oh, God, the pain — dully aware of the awful fire in her knee. Of time passing. Her fingers sought for a pulse at Alan’s neck, and her cheek felt for the movement of air from his nose and mouth, and she got nothing. Nothing.
The whisper inside her head was fading. Chick was fading, the icy cold was blowing away in the wind and the rain — as if Chick was wearing thin, or had grown tired. Or maybe as if she had given up.
But Chick had one last word for Phoebe.
Believe, she said. And she was gone, and the last of the cold vanished with her.
Phoebe didn’t let herself look at the bullet wounds in Alan’s chest, at the blood on his shirt and her hands; she didn’t let herself think about how hopeless this was. She lifted his jaw to clear his airway and blew two deep breaths into his lungs, and felt his chest rise. And heard bubbling.
Bad sounds.
Don’t leave me, she thought.
She found his sternum and, shaking, rested the heel of her left hand on it, and put her right hand atop her left hand. She interlaced her fingers, and lifted them so they didn’t touch his chest. Balanced most of her weight on her good knee, because something awful was happening with the bad one, but she didn’t have time for that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
It had been a long time since she’d taken a CPR class, and she fought to recall everything all at once. She knew she had to keep her elbows straight, had to keep the heel of her left hand right on top of his sternum. She mustn’t bounce. She could rip up his ribs or even tear holes in his heart if she did this wrong. She didn’t dare do it wrong. But she couldn’t let fear paralyze her. He wouldn’t live without her.
Fifteen counts, she thought, and put the weight of her upper body into the first push. “One and two and three and four...” she counted out loud, doing one compression at each count.
Her life, lived in shadows, streamed in front of her eyes. The shadows of what might have been, endlessly replayed; of what might have been prevented, endlessly regretted; of who she might have become had she not chosen so badly, allowed foolish honor and pride to keep her from listening to her screaming instincts, if she had only...
Everyone had regrets, though. Everyone looked in the mirror one day and said, “If o
nly I had...”
She’d taken her risk at last, had let herself find love and experience true happiness. Bittersweet though these days since she’d met Alan had been because they showed her how hollow she had let her life become. These few glorious days meant everything to her. She had, at last, truly lived.
Please, God, if you’re up there, if you’re paying any attention to this, don’t let me screw this up. Let me do it right. I just found him. I’ve waited my whole life, and I just found him. Please don’t let me lose him this way.
I love him. I never even dared tell him that, but I love him. Please give me the chance to tell him.
Fifteen compressions, two breaths, fifteen compressions, two breaths, check for a pulse, check for breathing, start over.
He promised me we were going to make it out of this. He promised me we were both going to make it out of this.
The silence moved through her and around her.
“I love you,” she told him, feeling for his pulse, praying for his breath, finding nothing. “You have to live. Because you promised me.” She fought against tears, against the swelling in her throat, against her own ragged breathing that would interfere with what she had to do to — to breathe for him, to make his heart beat for him. To hang on for him.
Believe. She didn’t know if she could believe. She didn’t know if she had any belief left in her.
She had never felt so alone.
Chapter Forty
Alan knew Phoebe was trying to save him. He could hear her voice, could hear the tremor in each word as she counted compressions, knew he was lying on the dock in a pool of blood, beside a dead man. He knew there were holes in his chest — right side, left side, a lot of damage. His professional opinion was that he didn’t have much of a chance.
He could feel the thin thread that tied him to his body, a tiny glowing lifeline. He could stay, he thought.
But a breeze blew behind him, fresh and sweet as Kentucky springtime, and the sound of the rain pattered on glass, and he turned away from the sad scene on the dock — the pretty dark-haired woman fighting off tears, fighting to save a life, the dead man, the dying man — and he found an open window, yellow-and-white gingham curtains blowing, and on the other side a sky heavy with clouds, air hazed with a sweeter, gentler rain. He walked to the window, hoping, praying.
