Yes, he realized. From three feet, Jaybird missed.
The girl’s jaw quivered. She re-aimed the semiautomatic and tried to fire again, but there was no slack to the trigger. Not even a click. The weapon was empty. Wherever Darby had managed to scrounge that miraculous extra cartridge from, it didn’t matter, because it had whistled harmlessly past Ashley’s ear and plunked down somewhere in the frozen firs. It was gone, their last gasp of hope spent, and Ashley was still alive.
Am I immortal?
It’d all been so darkly hilarious.
The fireball hurling him out the window with only minor burns. The cop arriving and miraculously shooting the wrong person in the nick of time. And now this! Little Jaybird had him dead to rights, point-blank, but she still missed. His toast had landed jelly-side up once again. Against all odds!
He fought back a burst of pitch-black laughter. All his life, he’d been shielded, insulated from consequences by some generous, unknown force. The way he’d been born with the looks and predatory cunning Lars never had. The way his father had lost his shit to Alzheimer’s just in time to hand him the reigns to Fox Contracting. Even trapped a hopeless mile into the guts of Chink’s Drop, he’d been rescued by the blindest, dumbest chance, and the bones in his thumb had knitted perfectly, against the doctor’s prediction — yes sir, he’d grown up to be quite a magic man, indeed, and there could be no doubt, he was destined for big things.
How big?
Hell, maybe he’d be president someday.
He couldn’t resist; he laughed — but oddly, he didn’t hear it. Only the tinnitus-ring in his ears. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure if his face was moving.
“Nice shooting, Jaybird,” he tried to say.
No sound.
Jay lowered the Beretta. Now she appeared strangely calm, still watching him, studying him with those little blue eyes. Not with terror — no, not anymore — but curiosity instead.
What the hell?
Ashley tried to speak again, this time slower, his tongue carefully enunciating: “Nice shooting, Jaybird,” and he heard it come out as a single groaned syllable, slurred by Novocain lips. It was his voice — yes, it came from his own lungs and airway — but it was spoken by a drooling retard he didn’t recognize. This was the single most terrifying sensation he’d ever felt.
Then his eyes slipped out of focus.
Jay blurred, then doubled. Now there were two Jaybirds staring back at him, and both of them set down their twin copies of the pistol that killed him.
A warm wetness slithered down his face, tickling his cheek. A strange odor touched the floor of his brain, dense and sour, like burnt feathers. He was furious now, trembling with rage, and he tried to say something else, to curse at Jay, to threaten a red card, to raise the officer’s sidearm and shut her up forever, but it had already fallen from his fingers. To his profound horror, he’d forgotten what it was called. He recalled something . . . something like –ock. Was it Pock? Dock? Rock-in-a-sock? He wasn’t certain of anything anymore, and words wilted and fell away like brown leaves, and he reached frantically for them, for any of them, and grasped hold of a simple one— “Help—”
It came out unrecognizable, a moan.
Then the world inverted, the brightening sky going under as Ashley pitched over, hitting the snow on his back. The gun was somewhere to his right, but he was too mushy to reach for it. He wasn’t even aware he’d landed, because in his fragmenting thoughts, Ashley Garver was still airborne, still helpless, still falling, falling, falling— *
“Darby, it’s over.”
She was falling too, when she heard the girl’s voice and it caught her. Held her to the world like a thin tether. She opened her crusty eyes and saw the shadow of Jay hunched against a vast, gray sky. “Darby, it’s done. I picked up your gun and Ashley was about to kill someone else, so I shot him.”
She forced her dry lips to move. “Good job.”
“In the face.”
“Excellent.”
“You . . . you got shot, too, Darby.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“Are you okay?”
“Not really.”
Jaybird leaned in and hugged her, her hair tickling Darby’s face. She tried to breathe, but her ribs felt strangely tight. Like someone was standing on her chest, collapsing her lungs.
Inhale, her mother told her.
Okay.
Then count to five. Exhale—
“Darby.” The girl shook her. “Stop.”
“Yeah? I’m here.”
“You were closing your eyes.”
“It’s fine.”
“No. Promise me, promise, that you won’t close your eyes—”
“Alright.” She lifted her duct-taped right hand. “I pinkie-swear.”
“Still not funny. Please, Darby.”
She was trying, but she still felt her eyelids drooping, an inevitable tug into darkness. “Jay, tell me. What was the name of your favorite dinosaur?”
“I told you already.”
“Again, please.”
“Why?”
“I just want to hear it.”
She hesitated. “Eustreptospondylus.”
“That’s . . .” Darby laughed weakly. “That’s such a stupid dinosaur, Jay.”
The girl smiled through tears. “You couldn’t spell it anyway.”
Somehow, this patch of lumpy ice felt more comfortable than any feather bed she’d ever lain in. Every bruised inch of her body felt perfectly at rest here. Like settling into a well-earned sleep. And again, she felt her eyelids slipping shut. No pain in her chest anymore, just a dull, increasing pressure.
Jay whispered something.
“What’d you say?”
“I said thank you.”
This gave Darby a little chill, and her stomach fluttered with emotions she couldn’t articulate. She wasn’t sure what to say to Jay, how to answer that — you’re welcome? All she knew was that if she were given the choice, she’d do it all over again. Every minute of tonight. All of the pain. Every sacrifice. Because if saving a seven-year-old from child predators isn’t worth dying for, what the hell is?
And now, bleeding out into the snow, watching the state-funded Wanapani visitor center burn and collapse into black skeleton, Darby collapsed too, into a deep and satisfying peace. She was so close now. So achingly close. She just had one last thing to do, quickly, before she lost consciousness: “Jay? One last favor. Reach into my right pocket, please. There should be a blue pen.”
A pause. “Okay.”
“Put it in my left hand.”
“Why?”
“Just do it, please. And then I need you to go back to that snowplow. Tell the driver to turn it around and drive you to a hospital right now. Tell him it’s an emergency, that you need steroids before you have a seizure—”
“Are you going to come with us?”
“No. I’m going to stay right here. I need to sleep.”
“Please. Come with us—”
“I can’t.” Darby’s tether had snapped and she was falling again, dropping through floors of darkness, sliding into the back of her own head, back in Provo now, back in her old childhood house with bad pipes and the popcorn ceiling, wrapped in her mother’s arms. The nightmare dispelling. Her mother’s warm voice in her ear: See? You’re fine, Darby. It was just a bad dream.