‘No,’ Emma whispers, can’t stop tears coursing silently, her wet cheeks the only warm spot on her body. ‘Please, Travis, don’t do this, he’s just playing with us, he only wants—’
‘If he wants me, he can have me.’ Travis drags his gaze away from Simon long enough to burn his eyes into hers. ‘So long as you’re safe, it doesn’t matter.’
It matters to me!Emma feels like she’s being ripped apart. The pain in her leg is nothing compared to this. Simon takes his hand from her shoulder long enough to stroke her left cheek.
‘Oh, Mr Bell,’ Simon scolds. ‘See what you’ve done – you’ve made poor Emma cry. That’s very bad form. Apologize at once.’
‘Emma…’ Travis whispers. His bottom lip is trembling. He meets her eyes with an intensity that consumes like lava.
Emma feels her expression crumble.
‘Simon, don’t do this,’ she gasps. She knows it’s useless, but she has to try. ‘Simon—’
‘Now, Emma, don’t be cruel.’ Simon Gutmunsson raises his right arm and points the gun at Travis’s head. ‘Accept Mr Bell’s apology so he feels better about all this before he leaves us …’
Emma sees dust motes floating in moonlight as everything in the moment slows down.
Pale spots in her vision. In front of her, Travis, the only person in the world still in focus as he steps closer, close enough to reach out and touch. As he gives her a look of almost unbearable tenderness. Simon’s hand squeezing her shoulder. The slow leak of blood from her leg. The cock of the gun. Far off, the sound of sirens.
Then rustling movement, a flash of pale shirt in the background. A voice that starts as a wheeze and accelerates, turns into a bellow that accompanies running footsteps.
Travis, in front of her, head in the process of turning as he hears the bellow. His body suddenly pinioned, jerked to a standstill, eyes widening, chest lifting as he arches, everything slow, slow, slow.
Peter Kirke, howling, face bruised and hideously twisted in its rage, channeling all his weight and the force of his sprinting momentum into a sharp length of rebar he grips in both hands. It goes through Travis like a sword, and emerges, bloody, high on his torso, punching through the white cotton of his shirt with a tearing rip that Emma will be unable to scrub from her memory, no matter how hard she tries, for so long as she will live.
Emma screaming, she can’t hear it, hands reaching. Travis’s arms open, hands shaking, empty, suspended in air. He looks down at the gore-covered tip of the rebar, trails his gaze back to Emma’s.
Simon Gutmunsson, the Artist, gasping with delight at this tableau of devastation, an extraordinary moment he would like to paint in oils – then flicking his right hand to send the gun flying in Travis’s direction to add the poignant coup de grâce.
Travis catching the gun, training kicking in on automatic, blood spilling from his lips in a thin, bright stream. He lifts the weapon, lowers it, unable to act, vague with pain and shock, the fluted steel protruding from just below his breastbone. With the last of his energy, he drops the gun into Emma’s hand as, twisting to his side like an oak, he topples down.
She grasps the gun, wavers barely a moment – the killer behind her, the murderer in front. Lifts the weapon and shoots Peter Kirke in the face. Steps forward and shoots him again. And again.
Then she breaks the spell of her horror and turns, shoots again into nothing, into darkness and shadow, which is Simon Gutmunsson’s substance, the shape of absence and sorrow, a void in her heart as she sinks to her knees.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
It takes thirty minutes to stabilize Travis at the scene. There’s such a long delay that Emma is ready to punch somebody by the time they load him into an ambulance to UPMC Mercy.
Both the SWAT paramedic and the EMT try to stop her from going with him despite how much she tells them that her leg is fine, it’s a graze, it’s nothing she can’t deal with. Before she can press her case further, some goddamn bastard shoots her full of fentanyl against her wishes, and she passes out awkwardly mid-sentence to Carter, who manages to grab her before she hits the floor.
She wakes up in a hospital bed, it’s two in the morning, and the only sounds are the faint hiss of the air conditioning and the scuff of nurses’ shoes as they walk the linoleum on the late shift. Emma can smell Lysol and a hint of vomit. Then she’s vomiting herself as she feels the effects of the fentanyl and the chill sweat of nausea, the memory of the last twenty-four hours – the last three fucking years – coming back to her in a rush.
Once the puking stops, and the mess has been cleaned up by staff, Emma eases back onto the pillows and swipes a dirty hand over her forehead, asks the night nurse her questions.
‘Your friend is in ICU. He was in surgery for four hours, only got out of it a little while ago.’ The woman’s hair is done in intricate braids, tied off her face for work, and her gaze is both matter-of-fact and kind. She pats Emma’s other arm gently. ‘He’s gonna be in recovery a long time – he’s lucky to be alive. As for the rest, honey, I really don’t know what to tell you. There’s an FBI man out in the corridor, though, maybe he can give you better answers.’
Which is how Carter gets permission to come in. He’s in shirtsleeves with no vest and no tie, which is the most casual Emma has ever seen him, although he’s carrying his FBI jacket, which he lays over a chair. He pulls up another chair closer to her, his glasses swinging on their chain. She can see that his foundations have been rocked tonight. This isn’t how everything was supposed to work out.
‘First, I need to apologize,’ he says, mouth drawn and tired behind an extra day’s growth of beard. ‘We should have learned about the Beechview house earlier. And the communication with Faye at police headquarters should have been straightforward, but there was a problem with the UHF radios in the DEA vans, which didn’t synchronize with the FBI VHF radios … Anyway, I’ll say there’s no excuse for it. We should’ve done better. Then everything got screwed up when Simon Gutmunsson escaped Allegheny County Jail. That set a lot of things in motion that dominoed into a lack of coordination between you and Travis Bell, us in Crafton, and the men at the local bureau. It was a mess, plain and simple, and you suffered for it. I’m very sorry.’
Emma can see that it’s not an act, he means it. She doesn’t care.
She has to take a drink of water before she can reply, and Carter has to help her with the cup and straw, which rankles. ‘Linda?’
‘She’s fine. We found her in the Lincoln. She was scared and hurt and tired, but she’s alive. She’s gonna be okay. She’s one floor down, and her parents are keeping her pretty protected. But you can go see her if you like.’
Emma nods. She’s going to do that. ‘Kristin and Simon?’
