Nick shook his head though, his voice hard. “It’s not funny, Black. We’re going to have put you into protective custody.” He looked at me. “Both of you.”
Black folded his arms, letting out a humorless snort. “I own a fucking security company, Nick. I can handle it with my own people.”
Nick shook his head, clenching his jaw. “You can supplement it with your people if you want, Black, in fact I’d prefer it if you did. But we need to bring you in.” He gave me a hard look. “And you too, Miri. This guy is obviously targeting both of you...”
“How the hell would he know about Black’s tattoo?” I said, looking between them.
Nick looked at me, then up at Black.
Watching them exchange looks, I definitely got the sense this wasn’t the first time they’d talked about this, and wondered again what they’d been discussing on the phone while Black had been in Angel’s living room.
I turned to ask them, shifting my eyes towards Black...
...When Black jerked violently backwards.
It happened so fast, it didn’t look real.
There was no sound.
I didn’t hear the gunshot until a few seconds later, after everything was over. Even then, it echoed over the lake from such a distance, it evoked thunder in my mind instead of what it actually was, a high-powered rifle fired from over a hundred yards away.
Then the combat thing kicked in and I found myself hitting the dirt alongside Nick. Nick grabbed Angel’s arm. She’d been on her way down too, but not as fast as us, and he helped her the rest of the way there roughly, before her gravity and reflexes caught up with ours.
Other things flashed through my mind, in that same set of seconds.
What a perfect kill zone this was.
Willow trees have thin leaves.
They were perfect for a sniper, since they provided the illusion of cover without providing any actual cover. We’d stood over that white paint on the walk, just like he’d wanted. He might as well have painted a bullseye on the ground, with a big X in the middle before he dropped the hammer. We even stood right behind a park bench––something that had been specifically placed by an opening facing the water, to provide a view for anyone who might sit there.
I knew better. Nick knew better.
Hell, Black knew better.
But we hadn’t been thinking we were at war.
Across from us, I stared at the island in the middle of Stow Lake, my face by the asphalt, panting as I looked for a glint of sunlight on metal, any indication of where he was. He was too far for me to see any smoke. I couldn’t see anything.
I knew the shot had come from there, though.
I felt a whisper of that silent presence. Satisfaction.
Rightness.
“Miri! Goddamn it, Miri! Help me!”
The sound came back on, echoing that shot in my ears.
My ears rang. My knees hurt like hell from how hard I’d thrown myself into the asphalt.
Nick was already down next to me, and he had Black’s arms and was dragging him, throwing me even further into a flashback of being with Nick on very different terrain. My mind blanked out, shifting into its own kind of muscle memory as I jerked to my feet. Walking low to the ground but fast, I reached his side in seconds. Then I had Black’s legs, helping Nick, who had Black’s shoulders. We carry-dragged him out of that open patch of land and behind the trunk of a wide-branched cherry tree.
No more shots came though. He knew exactly what he’d hit, and where.
Only when we had Black behind cover did I look back for Angel.
She was behind the other trunk, her gun out.
She was already talking into her phone.
When I looked back at Black, Nick was kneeling over him, his hands putting pressure on the wound. He used most of his weight, leaning his upper body over Black’s chest.
“Fucker got him right in the heart...” Nick’s voice shook, even as he turned sharply towards Angel, raising his voice. “Call a fucking ambulance! Then get Mozar at the boathouse. Tell him to get SWAT down here. Get those uniforms moving... every inch of this fucking path! Look for boats, floating debris big enough to hide someone... anyone or anything in the water. We need coverage on all sides before SWAT does their sweep of the island. I want that asshole!”
His voice still shook at the end, but I heard fury in it now.
I knew the shooter was already gone.
Somehow, I just knew.
That ringing grew louder in my ears.
The ringing wasn’t physical. I felt like a bullet was stuck in my own chest, forcing my lungs into a space so small I couldn’t get enough air. For a few seconds, I really thought I might pass out. I looked down at my own chest, looking for the hole, but I saw nothing.
That one shot was all I’d heard.
I stared at Black’s face, feeling like my vision was telescoping around both of us, the longer I looked at him. He looked deathly pale, like something had already drained most of the blood from his body. He was out. Like way out. His eyelids didn’t so much as flicker.
His eyes were closed, and blood streaked one side of his long neck.
“He’s breathing, Miri...” Nick said. Stopping to stare at me, without taking his hands or his weight off Black’s chest where he was applying pressure, he snapped at me, loud, forcing my eyes to him. “Goddamn it! You’re not going to go into shock right now, Miriam! I need you! He’s fucking dead if we don’t do the right thing right now...” His voice grew harsher. “Look at me goddamn it. Not him... me! Look at me, Miri!”
I didn’t realized I was staring at Black, willing him to open his eyes, until Nick said it.
I forced myself to turn, to focus on Nick’s face.
I gripped Black’s arm and hand now, but I didn’t remember when I’d taken hold of either. Maybe I simply never let go of him after I helped Nick drag him to cover. I was throwing myself at him in some way I couldn’t explain. Throwing some part of myself at him––something inside me, something I couldn’t see.
Maybe that “light” thing that Black always talked about.
Whatever it was, I threw as much of it at him as I could, without holding back. Anything of me I could give, I gave. Anything that might help to keep him alive.
Anything that might keep him from dying right in front of me.
Without realizing it, I’d turned to look down at him again.
“Miriam!” Nick snarled.
I jerked my head sideways, seeing Nick only a few inches away. Nick with blood all over his hands and his leather jacket as he pressed down on Black’s chest.
“Can we take him to a hospital, Miri? A human one? Can they help him?”
My brain clicked on somehow in the question.
Black was...
God. Black wasn’t human.
I’d never thought to ask him what to do if he ever got seriously hurt. I’d never thought to ask him where I should take him if anything like this happened.
It suddenly struck me as such an insanely unforgivable oversight.
I shook my head. I knew that from combat too.
Don’t fudge. Tell the truth.
People died faster without the truth.
“I don’t know. I have no idea.” My voice didn’t even sound like mine. My mind continued to click through scenarios, options, resources, people. I thought about my Uncle Charles, about whether he might have people nearby. The techs at Black’s Securities company.
But I had to prioritize. Nick was right. Mere seconds had gone by, but each one felt like another second Black might be dying.
“I’ll call his people,” I said. “They’ll know something.”
Nick nodded, his jaw hardening. “Okay. Talk to whoever there you trust. At least we’ll know what to do when the ambulance gets here...”
I knew he was talking more to keep me focused on him.
It almost worked.
I’d already yanked out my phone, which was still, miraculously, in
my back pocket. I had to force myself to let go of Black’s arm to do it. My hand shook violently but I stilled it through sheer will, scrolling through and hitting the number for Black Securities and Investigations.
I caught hold of Black’s arm again as soon as I had the phone to my ear.
I don’t think I ever stopped throwing that part of myself into him.
Whatever I was doing to him, it was starting to make me light-headed.
I don’t know any of what I said to whoever picked up, but at some point, Lisbeth was on the line. She told me the car Black had tailing me was still with us at Stow Lake, that the two agents inside had already alerted technicians from Black’s medical branch and told them at which hospital to meet us. From what Lisbeth said, those doctors were on the payroll and already knew some of the “unusual aspects” to Black’s physical history.
I used my psychic ability to read her at that point and realized she didn’t know the truth about Black’s race, only that Black had some genetic anomalies. That appeared to be the company story more generally, and even that wasn’t widely known.
Lisbeth definitely seemed to know that I knew, however.
We’d been talking a few minutes when Lisbeth told me the ambulance had just arrived, and that Angel was on the other line with Kiko and that EMTs were coming our way.
Everything after that happened in a blur.
I have a memory of Nick pulling me to my feet, probably to give the EMTs space to work. I remember standing there while Nick held me, watching the EMTs crouch over Black where he lay on the ground under that cherry tree. I don’t know how long they were doing that before they hoisted him onto a portable stretcher, but it couldn’t have been long.
I read them and knew their priority was to move him, fast.
His eyes never opened. Not once, during that whole time.
For some reason, that’s where I focused, willing them to open, to flicker at least, but they never did.
He looked ghost-like to me now. Leached of so much pigment he looked the color of chalk, his skin now matched the white paint used to write the Bible verses on the asphalt.
When they lifted him up off the grass, I saw the opening in his back and groaned aloud, lunging towards him. Nick held me back, gripping me in a half-hug in his arms, even as he kept me behind the cover of the trees. I’d seen that kind of thing before, of course––again, mostly while I’d been in heavy fire zones while serving in the military.
In front, where the bullet entered, there was barely anything. Some blood, a hole. It was like a clean, metal spike got punched through the left side of his chest.
The wound on his back, on the other hand, came last––after the bullet had rolled over and over inside him, expanding its hollow point outward once it hit his flesh and bone and organs, smashing through and breaking and running into things and tumbling until it exploded out his back, leaving a hole closer to the size of a softball.
I watched them lift him onto the gurney and I didn’t see him move and some part of me broke inside, even as I yanked on Nick to let me go after them.
Nick held my hand by then.
When I followed the EMTs that time, he didn’t hold me back. He came with me.
He helped load me into the back of the ambulance, telling the EMTs to let me ride along and flashing his badge. He said something to me––something about security waiting for us at the hospital, something about him and Angel following shortly––then Nick just stood there, watching my face as the double doors closed between us.
I couldn’t think about them looking for the person who did this on that island.
I couldn’t think about Nick standing there with the bloody arms, or the look on his face as he’d watched the ambulance pull away from the curb, its siren blaring.
For the first few seconds, all I could do was stare down at Black’s face from the corner of that ambulance and will him to open his eyes.
Then my mind clicked back into focus. Marginally, at least.
I pulled out my phone a second time. I only took my eyes off Black’s face long enough to find the number I’d been given. I’d programmed it into my phone only a few weeks earlier, while Black and I were still in the Paris airport, waiting for our plane home.
Someone picked up the phone on the other side in less than two rings.
I talked to that person while the EMTs worked over Black in a blur, fitting him with oxygen, checking and stabilizing his vitals while they talked to someone else over a radio. I knew they wanted whoever waited for us on the other end to have everything they could give them before we arrived. I wanted the same.
At the same time, I could feel their puzzlement already.
Puzzlement about Black, about things they’d noticed about his physiology, even in those few minutes. If nothing else, that told me I was right in making the call.
No matter what Black had in place, we needed seers there. Trained seers.
“You’ll have someone there?” I clarified over the phone.
“It is happening as we speak.” My uncle Charles sighed, clicking gently. “My ilya... my darling girl. Trust me. I will take care of this. I will take care of this for you...”
I could only nod, numb, my eyes on the gurney in the back of the ambulance.
In all of that, Black never moved.
He lay there like a ghost, and I couldn’t feel him at all.
Fourteen
NEXT OF KIN
I RAN INTO Nick and Angel pretty much the instant a nurse escorted me out of the surgery staging area and into the waiting room. I stood there as long as they would let me, but they stopped me outside the last set of swinging doors and a soft-spoken nurse who might have been Chinese took my arm and gently guided me out of those back rooms, promising they would come talk to me as soon as they knew anything about his condition.
Blinking into the brighter light of the waiting area, I stood there for a few seconds, unmoving, before I realized the place was full, and that most of the people I could see standing there were cops.
Angel and Nick walked over to me right away, as I said, which confused me as much as anything, especially at first.
Truthfully, I hadn’t expected to see them here so soon.
I hadn’t thought either of them would leave the lake while the SWAT team was doing its sweep, especially Nick. But I saw Nick seconds after I saw Angel, both of them standing with the same cluster of plainclothes cops. As I watched, a third person standing with them turned, staring at me with sharp, sky blue eyes.
His expression altered visibly as soon as he saw me.
“Where’s Hawking?” I said, feeling my jaw harden. “Where is he, Mozar? Where’s your fucking partner?”
Mozar’s eyes flinched, then widened in surprise.
He glanced around us, then back at me.
Sympathy filled his shockingly blue eyes as I watched, along with an understanding I’d never seen there up until now. His voice bordered on gentle.
“Ms. Fox. I’m horribly sorry about what happened. My partner is down at the lake. Coordinating the SWAT team. It’s more his area of expertise than mine... and Detective Tanaka wanted to come here. We’ll debrief you as soon as you’re ready. Right now we’re in the preliminary stages of discussing next steps and setting up protection for––”
“Where was he when Black got shot?” I said, cutting him off. “Hawking. Where the fuck was he, Mozar? Do you know?”
I was close to shouting that time.
Nick got between us, holding up his hands as if to shield me from Mozar and the rest of the uniforms now staring in our direction.
Or maybe he was trying to shield Mozar from me.
Among the faces I could see as I stared around the room, I couldn’t help noticing two men who stood taller than the others. Both of them were model-handsome, with dark eyes that I strongly suspected to be tinted by contact lenses.
My uncle’s people.
I’d already run into two others in the surgery area. The
y’d been suiting up with the human surgeons. Luckily, no one else seemed to noticed them but me. That, or they’d somehow managed to push their minds into thinking they belonged there.
I bit my lip, facing Nick.
Anger washed through me at first, most of it still about Hawking, and why Nick was protecting him. Then I looked at Nick, really looked at him––and my throat closed. Gratitude washed through me––so much I couldn’t speak at first. Remembering Nick down by Stow Lake, what he’d done for Black and how he’d snapped me out of the shock I’d been tunneling into, I met his eyes, fighting to speak.
Before I knew it, I clutched his shoulders in my hands.
Then I looked down, and saw that he was still covered in blood.
Angel got between us as I stared, taking hold of Nick’s arm on the other side.
“Hey. Naoko. You should go clean up,” she murmured to him.
Nick looked down, like he had no idea what she was talking about. Then he held up his hands, frowning. Nodding, he gave me a brief apologetic look then turned, walking swiftly down a hall and probably looking for a bathroom.
Mozar continued to stand there, a few yards away, staring at me.
He looked like he wanted to say more to me, but didn’t know what to say.
I bit my lip from saying what I wanted to say. I would wait until I could talk to Nick and Angel about Hawking. Preferably alone.
“Take a walk, Mozar,” Angel said, her voice cold.
Mozar looked about to speak again, then just nodded. Motioning with his face and jaw towards the doors, he muttered something about coffee to Estevez and Glen, who I only then realized were standing there too, staring at me with the same blank expressions on their faces.
When the three of them wandered off, Angel caught hold of me, holding both of my shoulders and rubbing them, as if trying to get the circulation going again.
“Has anyone checked you, doc?” she said. “You don’t look so good.”
I shook my head. I felt drained from whatever it was I’d been doing to Black, so I knew what she was seeing, but I couldn’t let them focus on that right now.
“I’m fine,” I said. “What’s Nick doing about security? Here, I mean.”
Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) Page 22
