“You sayin’ yalikethe idea of our Eliza out with a man who’s never turned a wrench or fired a weapon? A man who couldn’t protect her from a rabid squirrel much less the kind of enemies we might have lurkin’ ’round?”
Britt’s expression turned censorious. “Don’t piss on my boots and tell me it’s raining. You don’t dislike McClean because his hands are smooth or because his wallet is fat. There’s something else going on with you. I can’t put my finger on it precisely, but I got my suspicions.”
Ignoring his best friend’s conjectures, Fisher doubled down. “I’m just sayin’ I think the world would be a better place with fewer rich, white, yacht-ridin’ assholes like Captain Dickless.”
If he’d known how prophetic his words would turn out to be, he would’ve kept them to himself.
1
Senator McClean’s residence, 2700 N. Lakeview Ave.
Eliza tasted blood. Hot. Salty. Iron-rich.
Shesmelledblood too. That thick, rusty aroma was unmistakable.
And when she blearily opened her eyes, all she saw was blood. A crimson sheet of it. As if someone had thrown a bucket into her face, coating her eyeballs in the stuff.
But whose blood?
Hers?
If so, she felt no lightheadedness. No wooziness. No pain.
Correction.Her cheek hurt and she could feel her heartbeat in her left temple. But it wasn’t the kind of agony one would associate with that much blood loss.
But maybe that was how it worked when one was mortally wounded. Maybe the brain had a way of disconnecting from the body in the final moments so the person could pass in peace.
She waited for the fear to rise, that inevitable apprehension of the great transition and the unknown that watched from beyond. But it never came. Waited for the tears to fall, to feel the deep regret for all the things she’d wanted to do but hadn’t yet. But they never fell. Waited for her heart to slow, for her thoughts to dim. But neither of those things happened either.
Thirty seconds became a minute. A minute turned into two. Finally, she was forced to admit that, despite the copious amounts of blood, she didn’t appear to be dying.
Which left her only one course of action.Take stock. Reevaluate. Try to make sense of the state of myself.
She started with her toes, gave them a little wiggle, and found they worked.Woohoo!Moved on to her fingers and was delighted to discover they, too, functioned the way they were meant to.Yippee!
Ankles? Check.
Wrists? Check, check.
That’s where her progress ended, unfortunately. When she tried to lift her legs, she couldn’t. Same for her arms. They were pinned solidly against her sides.
She was almost certain she was lying face down with something on top of her. Something extraordinarilyheavythat kept her body restrained and her cheek smashed tight into…
What? The floor? The ground? The foundation of a building that’d caved in on her?
Where am I?
She couldn’t remember. Not where she was or why she was there. She couldn’t even recallwhenit was. Day or night? Monday or Friday? April or October?
A black hole had taken up residence in the center of her brain. A deep void that sucked in every thought before she could latch onto it. Which was far more terrifying than the taste and smell and sight of blood. Because not knowing the who or how or why of what’d happened meant she hadn’t the first clue how to save herself from the thing that held her immobile.
Or…maybe notcompletelyimmobile.
When she went to grab the locket she wore around her neck—a gesture so ingrained it was almost like breathing—her elbow bent. Just a little. But more than that, the weight pinning her shifted.
Or had it?
Had she imagined movement because that’s what she so desperately wanted?
