Second Shot

I recognized the voice, but more than that I recognized the tone. Hatred and lust. Not a good combination.

Simone’s voice. My principal. Seven days ago I’d been sent to New England with the express purpose of protecting her against possible threat. Now she was out there somewhere in the woods with a SIG semi-automatic, while I lay here incapable of protecting anyone, least of all myself.

What a difference a week makes.

I lay quite still. Not moving was the easy part. I felt horribly vulnerable in that position, but turning over didn’t seem like a good plan. Even the thought of attempting it made me break out into a cold sweat.

“Cold” was the word. The temperature was four degrees below and the wet blood round the entry wounds in my shoulder blade and leg had already started to crystallize on my clothing. My face was turned to the side so one cheek was scorched by the freezing earth and the other by the freezing air. All I could smell was blood and pine needles and ice. I think I might have been crying.

But, I decided sluggishly, cold was good. It would slow my system down, delay my bleed-out-right up to the point where hypothermia got me. I tried not to shiver. Shivering hurt. I tried not to breathe too deeply. That hurt, too.

The pain was extraordinary. A biting, seething, swirling mass of it that sheathed my entire body but had pooled in my chest. My leg was pulsing like I was being rhythmically and repeatedly stabbed by a red-hot blade. I didn’t seem able to feel my right arm at all.

A scatter of small stones cascaded down the side of the ditch and rolled towards my face. I opened one eye and watched them approaching in the light from a clear hunter’s moon reflected on the stark ground.

There was a shadow above me, I realized. Someone was standing a little way up from the ditch and staring down at me sprawled below them. They were too far back among the trees for me to see a face, but instinct told me it wasn’t Simone. This observer was too quiet and too controlled. Friend or foe?

Better to assume foe.

I closed my eye again and played dead. It wasn’t a stretch.

In the near distance, higher up the slope, I could hear Simone crashing through the trees, sobbing out little grunting cries as the thin branches whipped back at her. It was like listening to an animal that had been frightened beyond reason and would kill anything within reach just through that fear. And she was heading my way.

I risked another look. The shadow had gone, making the light over me seem brighter now. Or maybe that was just my own shifting perception. Even the pain had receded slightly, dropping back to a leaden throb. But I was achingly aware of every sodden breath, of the urge to just let go of it all and sleep. I fought it with everything I’d got left. Something told me that if I succumbed to this bone-numbing weariness, the game was going to be over.

I’m sorry.

I formed the apology soundlessly, quickly, like I needed to go through this final absolution while I still had the chance. I pictured my parents and wondered if they’d be as disappointed by my death as they had been by my life.

And Sean, who had once been my life and had become so again. Sean, who’d sent me out here not expecting me to be careless enough to die on the job. Suddenly I wished I’d told him that I loved him on the day I’d left.

The light gleamed stronger all the time and had begun to flicker. It took a moment for me to realize it wasn’t my vision starting to fail but flashlights being carried up the icy incline at a jerky run. There were voices, too. Loud, and so harsh I failed to make out the words.

A thumping rumble swooped down low over the tips of the trees, making the ground quiver under me, spinning up the loose powder snow. The beam of a high-watt searchlight stabbed downwards, intense and blinding. I knew I should make some signal, offer some sign of life, but I couldn’t summon the energy.

“Charlie!”

Close now.

Simone was gasping for air and weeping like her heart was broken. I heard her before I saw her, lunging across the final few meters that separated us, and offered a silent curse that the helicopter should have drawn her to me in this way I tried to form words but could barely whisper.

My gaze swiveled upwards as she staggered over the rim of the ditch, bleeding from a dozen scratches, wild-eyed, her hair a disordered mass around her face. Her left arm was rigidly outstretched. The barrel of the gun seemed to be pointing nowhere but towards me.

She lurched to a stop. I looked into her eyes and saw the pure intensity of her grief and anger and shock. Any one of those emotions in such quantity and weight would have been good enough to kill for. A mix of all three made it a certainty

She never got the chance.

In the instant before Simone could act, the shots slammed into her. I didn’t hear the shouted warning from the police officers who fired them. My senses were winding down by this time, fading to black.