No one’s coming to help, she realized.
No one had heard the awfulrat-a-tat-tatof the weapon. The crashing of chairs and tables. Thescreams.
Oh, the screams… They were the last thing she remembered before Charlie jumped on top of her, sending her temple smacking into the flagstones so that she knew no more. Those horrible, awful, nightmarish screams.
Despite the warmth of the night, goose bumps peppered her skin as she gathered her courage in preparation for what must be done. She needed to get off her ass and find a phone. She needed to call in the authorities. But first, she needed to make sure the gunman was?—
Oh my god! The gunman!
Why was she just now thinking of him?
Her heart had been in her throat since she’d regained consciousness. Now it swelled with terror, choking her, making her breaths wheezy as she quickly glanced around, allowing her gaze to skim over the gruesomeness of mass death in search of the perpetrator of it all.
Was he hiding somewhere waiting to finish off any survivors?
No. The man’s body was splayed on the flagstones near the back door. The moment her gaze landed on him, she cried out in relief.
His chef’s coat made him easily recognizable. But where once the garment had been white and pristine, now the front was splattered with blood, looking like the macabre canvas of a modern artist.
He still held the weapon in his hand. Although, it was no longer clenched in a tight fist. Now, it lay loose inside his grip. And it was impossible to know for sure, but it looked like he’d shot himself under the chin after he’d taken out everyone else.
Why?her mind cried. Why would anyone gun down a patio full of innocent people?
Unless…
Had it been politically motivated? Senator John McClean certainly hadn’t been the sit back, raise his hand when it came time to vote, and collect his paycheck type of politician. Quite the contrary. John had been the loud, firebranding, anti-establishment kind.
A self-made billionaire, John had stepped down as CEO of the green energy company he’d built from the ground up only to take his talents to D.C. There he’d set about shaking things up and making enemies of the comfortable fat cats who paid mouth service to their constituents during election cycles only to turn around and vote against the interests of the people they’d sworn to represent once they were actuallyinoffice.
John had been a frequent flyer on the national news circuits, oftentimes lambasting his fellow senators for their apathy, hypocrisy, and outright treachery.
To say he’d been disliked by most of his peers was an understatement.
Did someone finally have enough?she wondered.Did they decide he was too much of a liability?
If so, why hadn’t they just killedhim? Why had they killed everyone else?
It was a question she couldn’t answer. And honestly, she was too exhausted, too sad, toohorrifiedby it all to try.
People got paid to find the answers to the question ofwhy. It was time she called them in.
Pressing a kiss to the back of Charlie’s hand, she silently thanked him and apologized to him in a single breath. Then she carefully placed his palm on the ground beside his body.
The mind was a strange place in times of trauma. It glossed over some details and focused on others. Like that Charlie’s left shoelace was untied. Like that his socks were pink and printed with red and green watermelon slices—he’d had a thing for fun socks.
Like that she was already thinking of him in the past tense.
“Oh, Charlie,” she whispered his name one final time and then slowly pushed to a stand.
The instant she was upright, her head spun and her stomach heaved. The throbbing behind her left eye radiated up and over the back of her head. And the ground beneath her feet felt like it went as soft and as soggy as a good tiramisu.
She grabbed the back of a nearby chair to steady herself. Only once she was assured she wasn’t going to pass out did she tentatively press probing fingers to her head.
What she found had her wincing.
A knot the size of a golf ball bulged above her temple. When she gently palpated it, the pain nearly had her knees buckling.
Apparently, her temple had taken the worst of the fall when Charlie tackled her. That—her fingers moved to her cheek and she hissed—and her face.
