“Lower the gun!” I yelled again, as loudly as I could.
It was aimed right at me, but that’s not why I yelled. I hadn’t even drawn the G42 that Elizabeth gave me, the bug she carried. Emily Louden was frozen. In shock. She couldn’t pull that trigger again even if she wanted to.
No, I yelled because as long as she had that gun raised, at least one of the courthouse guards would reach for his—
Pop! Pop!
I could feel the bullets whiz by me, one followed by the other. They both struck Emily Louden in the chest, the navy-blue peacoat she was wearing exploding with two red spurts as she toppled back and collapsed.
She’d finally lowered her gun.
Immediately I felt another breeze as two guards sprinted past me, straight for Louden. I was the one now frozen. It was pandemonium outside the courthouse, some people still scrambling for cover, others calling 911, and still others seizing the moment—especially those newspeople with cameras. If it bleeds, it leads.
Some of the cameras were trained on Louden, the rest on Kingsman. I could see another guard hovering over the judge, radio in hand. I couldn’t read his lips, but I could tell from his face that he was gauging Kingsman’s chances. There might be a vacancy on the court.
This is crazy, huh, Elizabeth?
I spun back around, my eyes searching the top of the steps where we’d been standing. I looked left and right before turning a full three sixty, trying to spot her in the crowd. There were too many moving parts, a hornet’s nest of people.
Elizabeth?
There was shouting, pointing, crying, consoling, and even one woman praying. Her hands, clasped tightly, were shaking.
Off in the distance, I could hear the sound of sirens. Kingsman and Emily Louden weren’t moving. Perhaps they weren’t even breathing.
But all I could feel was Elizabeth.
Something was wrong.
Terribly, terribly wrong…
Chapter 90
TWO PEOPLE shuffled to the left at the exact moment someone on the right leaned forward. For a split second, a space opened at the top of the steps, and I saw her profile. She was down, lying on her back, holding her chest. Her hand was covered in blood.
I raced up the steps, pushing people out of my way. Before I could even drop to my knees next to her I knew it was bad. The shot had hit her right below the collarbone, definitely piercing the lungs but, I hoped, not the heart. I hoped. I needed to see the entry wound to make sure.
“Who…who was it?” she asked. She could barely get out the words.
“Let’s focus on you,” I said.
I traded my hand for hers, keeping pressure on the wound while pulling back her blazer. Her white blouse underneath was soaked red.
“Who?” she repeated.
I told her only so she wouldn’t keep trying to talk. “Louden’s wife,” I said.
Elizabeth blinked and managed a nod. I nodded back. Enough said. Senseless violence will make you scream to the heavens, but the crimes you can understand—no matter how wrong—just seem to settle over you like a tablecloth.
Elizabeth had been collateral damage, and she knew it.
“The ambulance is coming,” I said. “We need to take a look, though.”
Quickly I lifted my hand, using the hole in her blouse to tear it. Exactly what I didn’t want to see was right there underneath it—a larger hole. Medicine has a lot of words and phrases that sound worse than what they’re describing. They also have some that bluntly nail it to a T. Sucking chest wound, for instance.
The same people who had taught me how to kill had also taught me a few things about keeping someone alive. It wasn’t quite med school, but it was a little more advanced than the Boy Scouts.
Elizabeth had worse than a collapsed lung. The severe shortness of breath, jugular vein distension…too much air had entered through the wound, leaking between the chest wall and her lung. She was in danger of what’s called a tension pneumothorax, which also nailed it in terms of being as bad as it sounded. Next came shock. Then death.
Over my dead body.
I put my palm back on the entry wound, applying pressure. With my other hand I yanked off my belt. Ideally I’d have something sterile I could use. Next best thing was the back of my cell phone, because the case was stainless steel.
“I’ve got to lift your back for a second,” I said, looping the belt around her chest to seal the phone in place over the wound. For what I was about to do next, I needed both hands free.
The sirens were louder; help was close. Not close enough, though.
The first ambulance to arrive would have a gurney to unload and stairs to negotiate. Wheels up or wheels down, gurneys and stairs don’t mix. Most of all, the EMTs carrying it would have a decision to make as first responders.
Whom to treat first?
Unless I decided for them.
Chapter 91
I LOOKED over at the circle gathered around Judge Kingsman. I couldn’t see him; there were too many people. Same for Emily Louden.
Making it even harder was the circle that had now formed around Elizabeth and me, including a cameraman and a few reporters.
I turned back to Elizabeth, her dark brown eyes staring up into mine. “Trust me,” I said.
She had at least one more word left in her. “Always,” she told me.
There was no time for a countdown. I scooped her up, cradling her in my arms. Don’t move a shooting victim, the book says. Screw the book.
Run, Dylan. Run like hell…
Down on Centre Street in front of the courthouse, I could see the first of the ambulances approaching as I made my way down the steps. The pandemonium had spread. There were police lights flashing, sirens blaring, a cop waving frantically as he tried to part the heavy sea of cars, cabs, and trucks with their rubbernecking drivers. A news helicopter whirled overhead.
“Almost there,” I told Elizabeth. “Hang on.” But as I glanced down at her, she was even paler and barely breathing. Her lips were blue.
Faster, Dylan! Faster than you’ve ever run in your life…
I reached the bottom of the steps and sprinted into traffic, on a collision course with the grille of an ambulance. Stop or hit us—that was the choice.
It stopped. Out came the driver. He was pissed for a split second, or about as long as it took for him to look down and see Elizabeth.
“She’s going into shock,” I said.
“C’mon,” he told me.
He led us to the back of the ambulance, where his partner had already bolted from his shotgun seat, popping open the doors from the inside. I handed her off, the two placing her on a gurney and immediately strapping it down. I climbed aboard.
“Out!” said the driver.
“But—”
He grabbed my arm, nodding at Elizabeth’s badge clipped to her slacks. “We got her,” he said, handing me my belt and cell phone.
I hopped out, watching the doors close in front of me. I didn’t want to argue, not if it meant wasting one more precious second.
I didn’t know how many Elizabeth had left.
Book Five
Showdown
Chapter 92