Murdered!
“Killed”implied it could’ve been an accident. Or a force of nature. Like, he’d crossed the street at the wrong time and been hit by a speeding taxicab, or he’d fallen off the sailboat he kept moored at Belmont Harbor and drowned in Lake Michigan.
But no. This was planned. This was intentional. This was…a massacre.
Charles Xavier McClean was dead.Dead!
How was it possible? How could something so awful happen to someone so good? Someone who had so much life left to live? Someone who’d wanted to share that life with her and?—
Her thoughts crashed to a stop as a hard sob burst from her throat. For long minutes, all she could do was cry. Pull her legs to her chest and cry. Bury her face in her knees and cry.
Cry for the man who’d come to mean so much to her.
Cry for the sacrifice he’d made in saving her.
Cry for not being able to love him like he’d loved her.
Cry, cry,cry.
Charles McClean is dead.
Charles McClean is dead,she silently recited as she rocked against the flagstones. She didn’t want Charlie’s death to be like her mother’s. She didn’t want to relive the trauma of turning to tell him something only to remember too late he was gone—like she had a hundred times after her mother had been put in the ground. She didn’t want to relive the agony of waking up in the morning having forgotten about her loss and then have reality slap her in the face and make her want to crawl back under the covers.
It was better to drill the truth into her brain now. To nail her new reality into her gray matter with a steel spike until there was no question of it.
Charles McClean is dead.
They’realldead.
Crawling back to Charlie’s side, she was careful not to look at the gruesome mess that had once been his beautiful face. Pulling his large, well-manicured hand into her lap, she noted it seemed to be the only part of him that’d been spared the gunman’s wrath. The rest of him was riddled with holes. The cream lining of his sport coat poked through the darker material like macabre flowers stained red with his blood.
She tried counting the rounds he’d taken and gave up when she passed a dozen.
“Charlie…” Her voice was hoarse with tears, harsh with pain.
He’d deserved so much better than this. Better than her and?—
Her mind began running through all the if-onlys.
If only instead of freezing and blinking in confusion when she’d first seen the weapon, she’d grabbed his hand and pulled him around the side of the house, maybe they would have been able to outrun the gunman.
If only she’d had the wherewithal to snatch the canister of Mace from her clutch before Charlie tackled her perhaps she could have blinded the shooter and saved Charlie, saved the others.
If only she’d listened to her gut and declined the offer to attend tonight’s gathering, perhaps Charlie would have stayed home too and maybe he’d still be alive.
If only…
They were the saddest two words in the English language.
She had no idea how much time passed as she sat beside Charlie’s cooling body wishing she’d changed just one thing. Just one, teeny, tiny thing that might have made all the difference. But it was long enough for the blood staining her hands to turn ice cold. Long enough for her to squeeze out her last tear, leaving her as dry as the desert and as numb as a severed limb.
In the quiet that followed, her focus expanded.
She became aware of the warm summer wind whispering through the trees beyond the patio, making their leaves shiver and sigh. She noted how upbeat jazz still hummed lowly from the outdoor speakers—sounding macabre given the circumstances. And farther, beyond the large stone wall surrounding the senator’s property, her ears picked up on the everyday sounds of the city. Thehumof traffic. Thebeepof a horn. Thehissof a bus coming to a lumbering stop at a light.
A siren.
She sat up, waiting with bated breath for the authorities to arrive. But the high-low clamor didn’t grow louder as it came closer. It grew fainter as the cop car drove off into the distance.
