by EC Sheedy
The light in the room, provided by the single lamp Q had turned on when he came into the house, was dim. But it was enough for April to see Joe’s eyes flick to Phylly’s strained face, his jaw flex and harden.
“Don’t listen to him, Joey.” Phylly gasped when Q again tightened his stranglehold on her neck.
“I hope you recognize bad motherly advice when you hear it, Joey.” Q’s eyes blazed. “Now put down the gun or I kill your mother. Right here. Right now.”
Joe, not taking his eyes off Q, slowly lowered his gun.
April saw the change in Q’s eyes, the slight adjustment he made in his posture—the barrel of his gun shift toward Joe. Q was going to kill him.
April flew at him.
Q fired. The bullet seared along April’s arm. Glass shattered.
Phylly screamed. She lifted her foot and brought her stiletto down on Q’s arch, at the same time dropping her head and slamming the elbow of her good arm into his chest. April grabbed for the gun, but got a fistful of his vest instead. She pulled hard. Phylly brought her foot down again, so hard she broke her heel—still he held on, but the distraction gave Joe a chance and he took it. He lunged, tackled Q from the side. April heard Q’s breath leave his lungs on a sharp gush.
A gun clattered to the pine floor and skidded across it.
Joe’s? Q’s?
April scrambled after it on her hands and knees. Phylly, released from Q’s grip, reeled and fell backward, her shoulder hitting the wall with a loud thump. She groaned, clasped her bleeding arm, and sank to the floor.
Q was no match for Joe’s superior speed and strength and both men toppled backward over the coffee table. It broke under their weight, and they rolled away from it toward the dark fire pit.
The gun. I have to get the gun.
Frantic, April ran her hand under the chair. Nothing. It had slid out of reach.
The two men, locked together, rolled back over the smashed table, their rotation so fast and jerky it was a blur. They tumbled hard against the table beside the sofa, knocking it over. The lamp, the only light in the room, fell with it, crashing to the floor and flickering uncertainly.
April, her hand still desperately groping for the gun, looked over and saw the cruel, determined face of the black-eyed man—under Joe—with a gun pressed to Joe’s throat.
“No!” She scrambled across the floor toward them over the splintered table. Only inches away. Seconds.
The lamp flared then died.
A bullet cracked the blackness, tearing into flesh and tissue—even in the darkness finding its mark, and leaving only grim silence in its wake.
Phylly screamed into the utter blackness of the room.
“Joe.” April’s mind blank with terror, she reached through the darkness, her hands feeling blindly for what her eyes could not see. Yes. Her fingers touched warmth, muscle—a strong arm—quickly traveled upward to the curvature of a shoulder. She clasped it tightly, squeezed. Dear God, it had to be Joe. Had to be.
The life and shape beneath her hands slackened, collapsed and fell away, hitting the floor with a dull thud.
April pressed her hands to her face, unable to breathe. Frozen in her fear and the impenetrable darkness.
“It’s okay, April. I’m okay.” Joe’s hand, big and warm, clasped her knee. “But I’m guessing we can’t say the same for the other guy.”
“I thought—” When she covered his hand with hers, he took a deep breath, then got to his feet, pulling her up with him. Her heart was so full, her chest so tight with left-over panic, she couldn’t finish her thought, didn’t even remember it. All that mattered was that Joe was alive. Joe was here.
A light came on in the kitchen, and April looked over to see Phylly teetering back into the living room wearing her one good stiletto and holding a towel to her arm. She came over to Joe and April, looked them both over, and said to Joe, “You sure you’re all right?”
He nodded, then went to his knees besides Q’s body. He checked for a pulse. “He’s dead.” Looking up at her, he added, “We could use a blanket.”
“I’ll get it.” April was back in seconds with a dark blue blanket; Joe quickly covered the body.
Phylly glanced down at Q’s dead shape and shook her head. “Bastard.” With that she went back to Noah, where he lay against the bedroom wall clutching his leg. Putting her good arm across his chest, she started crying. As he stroked her hair, soothed her, their blood mingled on the floor beneath them. The man was the color of bleached linen.
Joe shoved his gun into his jacket pocket, and went to kneel beside Noah and Phylly. He quickly checked both of them out, looked up at April. “Get me a sheet, some towels.”
She was back in seconds, and while she secured the towel as best she could around Phylly’s wound—which, thank God, seemed to have eased off bleeding—Joe tore the sheet apart and made a rough tourniquet for Noah. He tightened it and said, “Can you hold it there?”
Noah nodded.
Again Joe looked at April. “We need a doctor and we need one fast.”
Phylly raised her good hand and pointed to Q. “And someone to take out the garbage.”
Joe nodded, his expression unreadable. “That, too.”
“RCMP in Tofino . . . fastest way,” Noah murmured.
April, her chest thick with panic, looked at Phylly and Noah, both pale and bleeding. From what she could see of Phylly’s wound, she’d be able to hang on, but if it was Noah’s femoral artery, every second counted. She gave Phylly a reassuring hug and got to her feet. “I’ll go.”
“Wait,” Joe said. Taking his cell phone from his pocket, he hit 911. He put the phone to his ear. “Worth a try.” He looked at Noah. “Will they patch it through to local?” Noah nodded.
They waited. Lives hinging on the sputtering of sabotaged technology. April sent a silent prayer . . . just one little break, God, that’s all I ask. Just one—
Joe let out a noisy breath, briefly closed his eyes, then spoke into the phone. “We need a doctor and the police. Stat. Gunshots. We have at least three people dead and two injured. One of them is my mother . . . . Noah Bristol’s place. Tofino. The locals know it . . . . Good.” He looked at April, touched her hair, and bent to kiss her forehead. Not taking his eyes from her, he again spoke into the phone: “Joe Worth. Home address, Seattle. Yes. We’ll wait.”
He clicked off the phone and pulled her into his arms.
Chapter 31
Joe draped his arm loosely over April’s shoulder, careful to avoid the burn left by Braid’s bullet, and watched the cop car lead the ambulance down Bristol’s narrow road for the second time tonight, this time carrying Braid and his accomplice. It’d been a damn long night—and it wasn’t over yet.
The preliminary examinations by the local doctor, who’d come along in the first ambulance, were tentative. Phylly was going to be okay, the wound was clean, mostly tissue damage that would take time to heal and leave a hell of a scar, but Noah wasn’t so lucky. Braid’s shot missed the femoral artery, but even so, the bullet had done a real number on his leg. The plan was to ’copter him to a hospital trauma center across the island as soon as the fog lifted.
Noah was set for surgery and major rehab, but all he seemed to care about was Phylly. And for the first time since this insane quest began, Joe was getting the message: Some good people cared a hell of a lot for the woman. Yeah, he was getting it. He just wasn’t sure what to do about it. When she’d slammed that heel of hers into Braid’s foot—when she’d set herself up to take the bullet meant for him, he’d damn near . . . hell, it was like his heart was set to leap from his chest. He’d felt crazy. Confused. Panicked.
He didn’t like thinking about the thoughts and feelings that had ripped through him, too many, too fast—like lightning hitting the brain. Not only could he not put things together, he didn’t know how. Moving from the mother who’d walked out on him to the one who’d saved his ass, was like trying to run from zero to sixty wearing a full kit and army b
oots.
Then there was April, the woman standing beside him— the woman he wanted in exactly that place for as long as he could keep her. Because of her—and his mother’s dumb shoes—he was still breathing.
“How’s the arm?” he said to her.
“Fine. Whatever the good doctor put on it, it took away the sting.” She gingerly touched the small bandage that the doctor had applied, along with his instruction that she drop by his office first thing in the morning.
When the taillights of the ambulance were lost in the fog, and the sound of both cars vanished into its smothering darkness, April looked up at him. “I should have gone with Phylly.” She worked her lower lip. “She might need me.”
“She’ll be okay. Besides Noah asked us to secure this place as best we could—and drop off our friend here.” Chance lay at their feet, his attention still fixed on the road that had taken his master.
“I know but—”
He touched her mouth. “She’ll call as soon as she knows where they’re taking Bristol. We’ll head out at first light, right after we drop off our buddy at Noah’s friend’s place, check with the RCMP and you see the doc. Fair enough?”
Silence, then, “Fair enough.” More silence. “Looks like it’s her and Noah for now, anyway.” She smiled a bit at that, then looked into the fog which had absorbed all traces of the landscape. Rubbing her upper arms, she winced when she hit the bandage. “When will the police officer be back, do you think, for the, uh, woman?”
“An hour, if he can get some help, later if not. The one left behind is doing what he can to secure the scene. Keep an eye out for—” he stopped, deciding April didn’t need the graphic.
“Animals, I know.”
“Yeah.”
“I wouldn’t want his job—in this.” She lifted her chin at the grayness that enfolded the property, deeper where it shrouded the forest beyond the deck.
Joe’s gaze followed April’s, while his mind conjured the death behind the mist, and the strange woman who’d lived long enough to give him the edge he’d needed.
How the hell she’d found the strength to take out Braid’s accomplice—he’d never know. Judging from the hole in her back, she must have been running on an ounce of blood. And she’d used the last of it—and a whole lot of mean—when she’d cut out that guy’s Adam’s apple. She’d hung on long enough to tell the cop Braid’s plans for the people in Noah’s house, how he’d killed her sister, cried about how she was too late to save her. The doctor had done what he could, but she’d died before the tears for her sister had dried on her cheeks.
“It’s hard to think about,” April said, her voice low, halting. “Knowing there’s dead bodies out there in the fog—because of me.”
“Hey.” He turned her toward him. “Put that thought away and put it away now. Because what happened to them had nothing to do with you. It had to do with Braid taking a little girl from her mother. It had to do with a son of a bitch who wanted to steal your life, April—then get away with it by taking even more.”
“I know.” She took a deep breath. “But there’s a part of me that’s having trouble buying it.”
“Buy it—and swallow it whole, because it’s the truth— and because feeling rotten about something you had no control over is a waste of time. Zero net.”
“Why does that sound like the voice of been-there-done-that talking?” She paused. “Phylly? Right?”
He opened his mouth then closed it, recognizing uncharted verbal territory when it hit him between the eyes. “You’re shivering. Let’s go inside.”
She didn’t move. “When you and Phylly met—before all this awfulness started—she fainted. Right into Noah’s arms. And you, you walked away, Joe. Just walked away. How could you do that?”
His throat felt as if there were a wire around it. “I . . . couldn’t do anything else.”
She frowned up at him, her lips twisting as though she were trying to understand.
“I was frozen.” This wasn’t coming out right.
April kept her curious gaze on him, said nothing.
He gripped the railing. “She fucking terrified me. Okay?”
“Why? She’s your mother.”
Turning to her, his chest full of gravel, he said, “Yeah, but I didn’t know that, until I saw her. Until then she was a ghost, a stranger I’d waited years for, then taught myself to forget, because it was easier to let go than feel I’d been dropped off because I wasn’t worth keeping.”
“Joe, that’s not—”
“Look, I was probably still mewling and wetting my damn pants when she dumped me. I grew up. I got that kids are a load of trouble, some of them more than others. I just figured I was one of them. Carried that load of crap around for quite a while, but then—like I said, guilt has zero net, so I traded it for not giving a damn. Telling myself it was no big deal not to have family, that maybe it was even kind of cool. I think I was about thirteen when I latched onto that idea—from there I moved on to her getting rid of me as being her damn loss. I was going to be an okay guy in spite of her—and she could go to hell.” He took a deep breath. Anyone who said this talking crap was easy once you got the hang of it was out of their damn mind. His mouth was dry and his brain sizzling. “I kind of stuck on that last one.”
“And now? After tonight?”
“You won’t let go, will you?”
She shook her head. “I’ve got a stake in you, Joe. And I’ve got a stake in Phylly. So, no, I won’t let go—unless I have to.” His brain spun around her words: I’ve got a stake in you. But it took him a nanosecond to respond. “Care to define ‘stake’?”
“It’s probably too early to say it, but hell, I’ll say it anyway. I’m falling in love with you, Joe Worth—”
He reached for her, wanting to drag her against him, to hold her, feel her—use her to stop his heart from jumping clean out of his chest—but she pushed him away. He wanted to tell her he was long past the falling; he was done. He was taken. All in. He’d hit the love ground hard. But before he could speak, she raised her hand.
“The operative word in that statement is falling, Joe.” She gave him a fierce look. “But I’ll grab the skinniest tree branch I can latch onto to stop that fall if you can’t—” Again she wrapped her arms around herself.
Against the chill? Against him? They faced each other, her chin lifted, him frowning, half in frustration because he couldn’t hold her and half in confusion over her stubbornness. He leaned back against the railing. “If I can’t what, April?”
She squared her shoulders and finished: “If you can’t resolve your feelings about Phylly.” She met his gaze. “You know how I feel about her, what she did for me. I want her to be part of my life forever. She’s my mother in every sense of the word. I can’t let myself . . . love someone who can’t—or won’t—feel the same. I can’t see a future with the two people I care about the most not caring about each other. I wouldn’t know how to make that work.”
He looked at her a long time, tried to read between the lines, see behind her eyes. Past her invincible loyalty to his mother. He wanted to say the right words, the words she wanted to hear, but he couldn’t find them. And he wasn’t about to offer glib promises—before he’d sorted some things out, talked to his mother.
April closed her eyes against his silence, drew in a breath.
“That’s not all of it, is it?” he asked. “It’s not just about Phylly and me.” He ran his knuckles along the smooth skin on her jaw.
“Maybe not. And maybe I can’t say exactly what I feel. I only know it makes me sad—and afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“To think you’re . . . an unforgiving man.”
April heard Joe on the phone when she passed his door on her way to the kitchen. She was busy making coffee when he joined her a few minutes later.
What light there was—the fog had thinned but loitered—was a cool pearl gray, but growing warmer as daylight broke behind the lingering mist.
She turned in his arms and kissed him, rubbed the pad of her thumb over his mouth. His eyes were dark, urgent—as she suspected her own were.
They hadn’t slept together. And wouldn’t until what was between them was fixed. That was Joe’s idea; she hadn’t felt quite so noble last night, especially when he’d walked into the shot-up bedroom, and she’d gone into the undamaged one where she’d tossed about in a sleepless night. Alone. What she’d wanted was to lose herself in Joe’s arms, push away the fog outside as well as the fog within. What she’d said surely hurt him, confused him as much as it confused her. But it hadn’t occurred to her to not say what had to be said.
“I’m ready to go. You?” he asked.
She gestured at her bag sitting by the table, then left his arms. “I found a Thermos. We’ll take the coffee with us. I put Chance in the car, and I called the doctor. They took Phylly and Noah out half an hour ago.”
“Good. I’ve arranged for the plane, so we’re right behind them.” With that, he grabbed her bag and his and headed outside. It was a while before he came back. “Somebody messed with the wires on the car, but I got it going, so—” His cell rang, and he pulled it from his pocket. When he heard who it was, an eyebrow shot up, and he looked at April. From that point on he listened, acknowledging what was said with the occasional uh-huh or murmur, finally saying, “It’s all good, so suck it up. And stop worrying.” He clicked off, smiling. “Want to take a guess who that was?”
She shook her head.
“The wise and terrible Cornie. She’s on her way to the hospital.”
“Oh, God.” And that was all there was to be said, because from here on in, it was up to the heavens to call the shots. It was Cornie, after all. “How did she—”
“Phylly called her last night, right after they got Noah settled. Must have been quite a call, because she knows everything. She says Noah’s her father. That true?”
