Bennie plowed all the way into the living room. The truck hit Mo, crushing his chest. The impact sent him flying backwards against the wall between the bedrooms. The sight horrified her but it was kill or be killed. Mary’s door blew open.
Ray lunged out of the way, diving for the floor. A gun flew from his hand and went sailing into the air as he fell.
Bennie braked, tore off the seat belt, and leapt from the driver’s seat to get the gun. Ray lunged for the gun at the same time. Bennie was there first. She had almost reached it when Ray grabbed her ankle and yanked her backwards. The gun slipped from her grasp.
“No!” Bennie screamed in pain and fear.
“You bitch!” Ray jumped on her, grabbed her hair, and slammed her face into the wood floor. Her forehead pounded but she stayed conscious. She kicked backwards, torqued her body, and flipped him behind her, so she was lying on top of him face-up.
Ray hooked his forearm around her throat. Bennie clawed his arm, trying to pry his fingers off, raking his skin. His grip got tighter. He grunted with effort and satisfaction. She gagged, coughing, momentarily helpless. He was going to strangle her. The gun was far away from them both.
Suddenly Bennie spotted Mary, her hands and feet bound with duct tape, wriggling on her stomach toward Mo’s crumpled body. Mary was gagged, her features barely recognizable through the blood. Still Mary started making urgent noises in her throat, as if she were trying to tell Bennie something.
Then Bennie saw what Mary meant.
There was a gun lying on the floor next to Mo. Mo must have had a gun on him, tucked into the back of his waistband. It had come out when he’d fallen.
Bennie felt her head growing light. She gagged and coughed. She couldn’t breathe. Ray was choking her from behind. He was strangling her, squeezing her neck in the crook of his forearm.
Bennie looked directly at Mary. Their gazes connected. They both knew they had one last chance. Bennie knew what she had to do. And she knew it was the time to do it. So did Mary.
Bennie mustered every last bit of strength in her body, pulled down on Ray’s forearm, and savagely kicked backwards at his ankles, again and again.
Ray’s grip loosened, giving Bennie a split second of air. Gasping, she tore his arm off her neck, scrambled up, and lunged for Mo’s gun. He caught her by the sleeve but it ripped off.
She grabbed the gun from the floor, whipped the barrel around, and started firing. Ray was already in motion, coming after her.
Pop pop pop, went the gun. Fire burst from the muzzle. The air filled with smoke and cordite.
Bennie kept firing, emptying the gun. Bullets struck Ray in the stomach and legs. He dropped to his knees. Blood burst like red blooms from every bullethole. He fell face-first to the floor. The wounds weren’t fatal, but he was immobilized.
Bennie dropped the gun and whirled back to Mary. Mary lay motionless on the floor, her hands taped cruelly behind her. The back of her head was bloodied and her hair matted with dried blood.
“Mary!” Bennie knelt beside her, turned her over gently, and picked the bloody gag from her mouth. “Mary, are you okay?”
Mary nodded, coughing.
“Thank God!” Bennie looked frantically around. There were two phones on the ground, probably Mo’s. One was the company smartphone, probably password-protected, and the other was a burner phone. She grabbed the burner with her free hand. “Don’t worry, I’m calling 911!”
“I already did … on the landline,” Mary said hoarsely, then resumed coughing. “I couldn’t talk … but I think they can tell where we are…”
Bennie looked around for the landline, praying that Mary could stay alive until help got here.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Mary felt only dimly aware of what happened next. There was a lot of commotion with her at the center. Paramedics and police filled the cabin to bursting. They swarmed around her, taking her vital signs and putting her on a stretcher, then fitting an oxygen mask to her face and a stiff plastic collar around her neck. They placed orange foam blocks on either side of her head, then lifted her onto a gurney and wheeled her outside.
Red and blue lights flashed through the night. Sirens blared, making her head feel even worse. There were more cops, paramedics, and other people outside. Two paramedics rushed her to the back of an ambulance, loaded her inside, then slammed the doors closed after Bennie climbed in.
One paramedic shouted to the driver. The ambulance lurched off. The other paramedic started doing more things to Mary, hooking up an IV, wiping her face, and rattling off vital signs.
It got harder and harder for Mary to stay awake and she began to feel herself give up again. She hurt so much she didn’t want to feel anything anymore. Every bump of the ambulance made her head hurt. She was dimly aware that the paramedics were talking to each other about her and answering questions from Bennie, but Mary didn’t understand what they were saying.
She felt a calm rush over her, a certain peace that was telling her to let go. She was in God’s hands now, and she had to keep her faith.
She kept her eyes closed, letting herself slip out of consciousness, and in time she felt herself floating away. She sensed she would have flown away completely, gone up to Heaven or out into space, if not for something anchoring her to the Earth, tethering her to the planet by the warmth of its very human grasp.
Somebody was holding her hand.
Somebody who wasn’t letting go.
Mary didn’t have to open her eyes to know who it was.
Her heart told her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Bennie sat on the waxy paper of an examining table, still dressed in her bloody and torn clothes, having been examined by a doctor, a physician assistant, and a nurse. Mary had been taken to another examining room, and Bennie felt nervous and edgy, not knowing how she was doing. Mary had been unconscious when they got to the hospital, and nobody was giving Bennie any information, much less guarantees. She had cross-examined the paramedics in the ambulance, but they had kept their mouths professionally closed. They weren’t about to give her medical information about Mary because Bennie had no legal standing vis-à-vis her. Under federal law, friends didn’t count.
Bennie got off the table and started pacing, which always made her feel better, even though she had an array of aches and pains for which they’d given her megadoses of Advil. She heard that Ray was in surgery but expected to survive, which improved her mood. She didn’t want him dead, she wanted him in jail. She herself was fine except for two cracked ribs, and they’d cleaned her up, bandaged her hands and wrists, and given her a butterfly stitch at her hairline, promising that the cut wouldn’t scar. At this point, Bennie would wear any scar as a badge of honor.
“I’m back,” said the nurse, pushing aside a patterned curtain, with a pleasant smile. Her name was Karen, and she was a middle-aged woman with short brown hair and rimless glasses that emphasized the roundness of her pretty face.