She slowed the car to a crawl at a line of tall, wild bushes growing off to the side of a flat road. She pulled the sedan over and parked behind them in hopes they would help camouflage them in the dark. With still trembling hands, she reached over to gently touch Niche’s shoulder.
“You’ve lost too much blood.” Meg reached around to the back seat looking for anything she could use as a compression and found a plush scarf that reeked of Michelle’s perfume. Meg was breathing her thanks as she lumped it one handed and added it to the useless wad that had been her bandana.
“I can’t…breathe,” he hitched, his eyes opening wide, momentarily jolted to consciousness by the pain.
“I know.” Meg was on her knees leaning over the body of the man who’d been her protector, her keeper, her captor and her friend. She could barely see through the fat tears welling in her exhausted eyes. “Shhh. Try not to talk,” Meg cooed feeling useless.
“I don’t have much time, Meg,” he whispered between bloody lips. “I have to tell you—”
“Niche, please! Let me get you to a hospital,” she pleaded terrified at the flickering heartbeat she felt beneath her hands.
He struggled through a tight grimace that arched his back, spasms of his organs fighting not to shut down.
Meg’s dark hair spilled from the knot at the back of her head, draping them in a silky curtain of lily scented curls.
For a moment, Niche thought he was already dead, and she his angel to take him away from this dark world. He pulled himself back from her light and forced himself to speak through the soul-piercing pain.
“We were broken, and you cared enough to fix us.”
“Niche, no!”
“We were shattered pieces of a man, but you saw us as whole. When there was only lost time and darkness before you, your light,” his voice hitched and the crackle of a punctured lung could be heard even by Meg’s untrained ears, “it brought us back to life.”
“Please don’t leave me!” Meg screamed, her voice hoarse with emotion. Salty tears streamed down her face.
“I’m sorry. I can’t stay—would do anything to stay beside you. I love you.”
His last whispered words hung like a noose around Meg’s neck. She watched him gasp once more then all the air emptied from his shredded lungs.
Meg fell back into her seat and held her throbbing head in her hands. She wanted to curl up against Niche’s still-warm body and will him back to life, but she knew nothing could bring him back.
Besides, she had another little soul she was responsible for.
Coughing through her emotion, and using the edge of her shirt to swipe her face dry, Meg turned around in her driver’s seat and reached back to check the little boy. Carefully, she pulled the sheet up and off where she knew his face to be and looked past his grimy skin and pungent smell to see the angelic child laying still on the floorboard, right where Meg left him. She reached out her bloodstained hand to gently shake his shoulder, hoping to wake him enough to tell him he was safe from harm now.
“Come on, little one. Wake up. I’m Meg Winter. I am so thankful I got you out of that horrible place.” She swiped absently at the tears that kept falling, despite her best efforts.
The child lay unmoving.
Meg frowned.
Instinctively, she reached up to feel for a pulse in his throat and yanked her hand back. His skin was too cool to the touch. She forced herself to touch him again.
Stillness.
No breathing.
No pulse.
Death had come and swept the child right out from her arms during their flight from the asylum and was now laughing at its irony through thin, blackened lips.
It was all Meg could do to not run screaming down the highway, insane with grief over the senseless loss of life all around her.
Staring at the little boy, she found herself holding her breath empathetically. The vision of his deathly silent expression blurred behind the fresh tears clambering down her pale cheeks, splattering like raindrops on her outstretched arm.
Meg’s heart shattered.
She felt it explode with agony right in the center of her too-tight chest.
“Nooo!” she screamed into the night, filling every plush corner of the stolen car with pins and needles of abandoned rage.
She screamed into the face of death until her throat was raw.
Her clothing tear-drenched, alone in a car with two soulless bodies, Meg curled like a whipped child against the driver’s side door and lost consciousness.
18 Objects in the Mirror
Quiet.
She wants me to hold still and be quiet.
She’s afraid she’ll be caught.
The motion stops and a red glow darts across her worried features. She turns and sees me peeking from under the white sheet.
She smiles nervously and puts her finger to her lips.
The baby is lying against my left thigh. He hasn’t stirred, but he doesn’t look as if he feels very well by the grumpy expression on his squished up face.
The other little boy is watching me with big blue eyes. He’s very scared, but so am I.