“Shh!”
Still on shore, Lucy wraps her arms tight about herself, one hand still clutching her gun. Then she turns abruptly to scan the trees. Is she waiting for something? Someone? Finally, she makes a small, impatient gesture, sticks her gun inside her jacket, and begins to walk away from shore, directing herself not precisely toward the spot where Jane and Ivy are hiding, but near to it. She wears a fuzzy black knit hat that makes her look big-eyed and young. She seems very alone to Jane somehow, as if Jane is looking into a View-Master at the only woman in the world. As Lucy approaches, she wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand and Jane sees that she’s crying.
Ivy reaches under her hoodie toward the gun holster and makes a move to stand up.
“What the hell are you doing?” Jane whispers fiercely, grabbing on to Ivy’s arm and yanking her back down.
“I’m going to stop her!” says Ivy, struggling to break free of Jane’s grip.
“Stop her doing what?” Jane says. “We still don’t know what’s going on!”
“Don’t be so na?ve!” says Ivy. “She’s an art thief!”
“Fine, but I won’t let you shoot her!”
“What?” says Ivy, staring at Jane with an incredulous expression. “I’m not going to shoot her!”
“Then why do you have a gun?”
“Okay,” says Lucy’s voice, rising, cold and careful, from a place very near. “Who’s there? I can hear voices. Come out slowly.”
Ivy is so startled that she drops back down, gasping, eyes wild. She reaches under her hoodie. “Stay hidden,” she whispers. “Let me handle this, please.”
Before Jane can even begin to try to figure out what to do, Jasper barrels around the shrubbery toward Lucy. Jane stands up, crying out, and watches the dog ram into Lucy. Unprepared, Lucy topples, cursing, struggling with her gun. The dog climbs on top of her and closes his mouth on her gun, growling, flailing to and fro. Everything is happening so fast. Jane runs to them, terrified that the gun will go off in Jasper’s mouth. Lucy struggles, her fingers bleeding and trapped; she understands too.
“Stop him,” Lucy sobs. “Stop him. Pull him away. He’ll blow my head off!”
“Jasper,” Jane says, wrapping arms around his middle and trying to pull. “She’s not going to shoot us!”
“I’m not,” Lucy gasps. “Of course I’m not going to shoot you. I swear!”
Jasper’s grip slips. The sudden release sends Jane falling down sideways with the dog in her arms. She and Jasper struggle and roll, then she finds her feet and rights herself.
When she stands, Lucy is on her feet again too. Lucy holds her gun, trained on Jane.
“Lucy,” Jane says, confused.
Lucy’s eyes are steady and hard behind the barrel of the gun. Blood runs down her hands. “So,” she says. “You’re charmingly trusting, aren’t you?”
Not really, no, Jane thinks, her thoughts taking sluggish steps, but there’s a world of difference between not trusting someone and believing they’re actually capable of shooting you. This is my fault, Jane thinks. Ivy is here. Jasper is here. I brought them here and put them in danger. “Jasper,” she says to the dog, who’s emitting a low growl beside her that terrifies her because of how Lucy might react. “Be quiet, and still.”
Ivy’s strong voice rises behind Jane from the bushes. “I’ve got a gun too,” she says. “Drop yours, Lucy, or I’ll shoot you.”
Lucy snarls. “You don’t have a gun.”
“Don’t I?” says Ivy. “If you hurt Janie, I’ll make your knees explode. Now drop it. I’m going to count to one.”
What happens next happens so fast that Jane can barely follow it. Jasper launches himself at Lucy. Lucy tries to shoot him. Jane screams and runs at them, Lucy’s gun goes off, and Jasper’s teeth are clamped around Lucy’s knee. Lucy goes down again, Lucy is screaming in pain, and Jasper is bleeding. Jasper is bleeding! Jane falls on Lucy and wrests the gun from her hands. She doesn’t know what to do with it once she has it, but then Ivy is beside her, taking it away. Ivy trains Lucy’s gun on Lucy, who’s still screaming, still struggling to escape the grip of Jasper’s teeth. Jasper is holding on hard.
“Brave dog,” Jane says, grabbing on to him. It’s just his ear. Lucy’s shot a hole through the flap of his big, floppy ear. Tears stream down Jane’s face. “Jasper, you brave, brave dog. I’m so sorry. Are you okay? Let go. Let me look at your ear.”
Jasper lets Lucy’s knee go. Jane hugs him and he licks her face, bleeding all over her. She cries into his fur. It’s a big wet mess. His ear is bleeding copiously and Jane presses on it with her sleeve, not really sure how to help him, until Ivy suggests Jane remove one of her layers and use it to tie the ear tightly to his head.
“I’d give you one of my layers,” Ivy says, “except that I’m not taking my eyes off this asshole.”
“It’s lovely, your concern for the dog,” snarls the asshole in question, rocking over her injuries, moaning. “I’m in bad shape here.”
Jane can’t stand the sound of Lucy’s voice in her airspace. “If she talks again,” she says to Ivy, “shoot her.”
“Changed your mind, then?” asks Ivy in a gently teasing tone.
Jane is too ashamed to look at Ivy. She tries to fashion a bandage for Jasper with her hoodie. It’s not going well. She’s still crying, and frightened, and shaking too hard.
She takes a deep, steadying breath.
“Hey, Janie,” Ivy says quietly. “You know we’re all going to be okay, right? We’ve got this.”
*
The three women and one dog make an odd procession back to the house. Jane is still in her Doctor Who pajamas, she’s covered in Jasper’s blood, and her face is tear-stained. Her hoodie is wrapped twice around Jasper’s head, its sleeves tied in a bow. Jasper doesn’t seem to mind looking silly. His head is high and he walks with a spring in his step.
“Jasper,” Jane says to him, “you are the picture of heroism.”
Several feet ahead of them, Lucy snorts. Lucy is bloody, bedraggled, and limping, her wrists locked together with restraints Ivy pulled out of her backpack.
Ivy walks behind her, Lucy’s gun held coolly in her hands, like some sort of ninja wondergirl.
“Who were you waiting for back on shore, Lucy?” Ivy asks. “After your friends in the boat left and before you heard us talking? Who were you expecting?”
“No one.”
“Bullshit,” Ivy says. “Who did you leave the house with early this morning, carrying a flashlight and the Vermeer? Janie saw you.”
“You’ll never link me to the Vermeer,” Lucy says. “Janie must’ve seen the guys from the boat.”
“No,” Ivy says, “she didn’t. Only one of those guys had wet pants legs.”
“So maybe the other one changed into dry pants when he got back to the boat.”
“What happened,” says Ivy, “is that you and an accomplice carried the Vermeer from the house to the forest this morning and passed it to the guy in the boat. The guy with wet pants was a lookout for the other one. We saw him sitting in the ramble. The person you left the house with acted as your lookout. I want to know who it is.”
“I don’t have an accomplice,” Lucy says in a bright, musical voice.
“Right,” says Ivy sarcastically. “Whoever your accomplice is, I expect all your wailing chased him neatly away, so, well done with that.” Then Ivy reaches an arm around to her backpack again, pulls out a walkie-talkie, and speaks into it. “Hello,” she says. “Somebody pick up. Mrs. V? Mr. V?” No one answers.
Jasper, struggling his way up the hill beside Jane, slipping on leaves and beginning to pant, makes Jane’s tears rise again. “Are you okay, buddy?” Jane asks him. “Do you want to be carried?”
“Almighty god,” says Lucy. “Maybe we should stop so you can build a shrine to the dog.”
“The dog is the reason we’re safe and you’re in trouble,” Jane says coldly to her back. “That’s why you keep making snide remarks about the dog. The dog kicked your sorry ass.”