Page 17 of Shatter

I turn around.

She's rolled onto her back.

She's got a chunk of broken asphalt clenched in her right fist, raised up over her shoulder like she means to bury it in my skull.

Her eyes are enormous.

Green and wild, fixed on the gun in my hand.

One side of her face is already swelling, the left eye going puffy and dark, and there's blood on her lips.

Her left arm is pressed against her stomach with her right hand clamped over it.

Her black polo hangs open in two ragged halves, sliced from collar to hem, her bra pale against the blood smeared across her ribs.

Red leaks out between her fingers.

Mamma, twisted around in the driver's seat, red between the fingers pressed to her belly.

Don't look down.

I blink hard, and the parking lot comes back.

"Hey." I lower the gun slowly, pointing it at the ground. "Hey. It's okay."

She scrambles backward on her elbows, rock still raised, a sound tearing out of her throat.

I stop moving.

I put the Glock back in its holster, slow, so she can watch me do it, and then I hold both hands up, palms out, fingers spread.

"It's me." I crouch down, keeping six feet between us. "Corner booth. Pancakes and scrapple."

Her eyes flick to my face, then my hands.

Then past me, to the man on the ground and his legs lying at an angle legs shouldn't lie.

"Is he—" Her voice cracks in half.

"He's dead." I don't look back at him. "He's not getting up."

She stares at me.

Her chest is heaving in short, shallow jerks, like she can't get air all the way down, and the rock is shaking so hard in her fist I can hear the grit rasp against her palm.

"I'm going to come a little closer." I keep my voice low and even, the way Walt used to talk to the strays behind his garage. "I'm not going to touch you unless you tell me I can. Okay?"

She doesn't say okay.

She doesn't say no, either.

I move forward on my knees, a foot at a time, gravel biting through my jeans.

When I'm close enough to see the cut on her arm, the scrapple climbs back up my throat.

It's long, maybe four inches down the inside of her forearm, and deep enough the edges gape.

Not an accident.