Instead of dealing with untying the knot completely, James did the next best thing.
He ripped it apart.
Whether the knot was bad to start with or the rope was already frayed, it came undone fast. The man shifted and Rose’s positioning finally made sense. She pushed off the ground with her arm wrapped around the man’s waist.
Together with James, the three of them sprung up to the surface.
James hit it first, gulping up the air. Rose came second. She was already yelling for him.
“Help me! Help me get him to bank!”
It was a struggle at first but soon they found a system between them that worked. The man didn’t fight back at all, which made sense considering he wasn’t breathing when James hefted him up the bank and pulled him to a flat area of grass.
“He’s—he’s been in the water for—for over a minute,” Rose huffed out. She shoved her hair off her face. She didn’t meet his eye. “He’s been—been shot too. I need—I need to call this in but my phone—”
James yanked his phone out of his pocket but felt instant relief.
“It’s waterproof.” He started a call to 9-1-1 while Rose put pressure on the bullet wound in question. It was near his shoulder and the sudden force didn’t stir him either.
“Who is this?” he asked.
James was utterly shocked at her answer.
“It’s Damon. I—I need you start CPR while I go—”
She tried to stand, James kept her down. He might not have known what had led to Damon being the one tied to a cinder block and shot, but he doubted it was Rose’s doing, considering he had found her tied up too.
So there was a third person.
Someone he hadn’t seen yet.
“Who shot him? Who tied you two up? Was it Lloyd?”
Her eyes widened. A dispatcher answered the call, her voice floating up toward them. Rose simply nodded.
“Where did he go?” James’s muscles were tensing, his adrenaline surging one more time.
“The house. He’s—he’s armed.”
James didn’t give two licks.
He ran back to that house, clothes soaked through, and yelled Lloyd’s name like an angry sermon.
What he hadn’t counted on was the man calling him right on back.
Lloyd Harrison was standing by a window on the second floor. The window treatments were still there, framing the dirty glass with stubborn dignity. It was the only thing in that room that seemed to belong.
Lloyd didn’t. In fact, he didn’t look like he belonged anywhere. His clothes were baggy, his hair limp, his expression dull. He looked like he had already been written out of the world, but his body just hadn’t caught up yet. He rested one hand on the window frame; the other was wrapped around a gun.
His gaze was slow as syrup as it moved between the outside world and James in the doorway.
James was dripping on the hardwood. His chest was heavy from anger and effort. His fists were empty but balled.
He had never met or seen Lloyd Harrison before that morning and now the man was squarely in his sights.
“You tied her to that block,” he breathed out, his voice as low as he’d ever heard it himself.
Lloyd hardly reacted.
