Think Twice

Hadn’t Win said that just the other day?

Apropos.

Still, he managed to lurch forward a foot at a time.

Chapter Forty-Two

You are stunned but also feel delirious joy.

He surprised you, Myron Bolitar that is, when he swung his arm and threw off your aim.

Good for him.

Still, the bullet landed in the cusp between his neck and his collarbone. Blood gushes, splashing you. You wonder whether you hit an artery.

Will he simply bleed out?

You wanted chaos and you got it. You hear screams. You see people rush for the park’s exit on the west side. You swim with the tide of people, another salmon heading upstream.

But then you remember: He had your photo on his phone.

Somehow Myron has put this together.

You can’t just wound him. You have to make sure he’s dead.

There is no time for you to think it all through. If you did, if you had a few more seconds, you’d probably realize that someone must have sent him that picture, that Myron never works in a vacuum, that if Myron has put it together, others, like Win, will know too.

But right now, you don’t have time for nuance.

You need to kill him. No matter what. If this is the end for you, if this is your goodbye, it will be his too.

Myron is badly wounded. He crawls away from you like a crab with no equilibrium. The stream of people heads in the other direction, getting in your way. You debate just firing, but your weapon is a six-shooter. No reason to waste the bullets. When you lose sight of Myron for a moment, panic sets in. You fight harder now, pushing past the crowd.

And there he is, still crawling by the benches. He starts to rise up a little.

You aim and fire. You miss. You aim and fire again.

You hit him in the back.

Myron’s body jerks. He falls hard now.

Chapter Forty-Three

After the first bullet hit him, Myron tried to straighten up, but the pain made his head reel in protest. He stayed low, more slithering than running. He stumbled to the left. His head screamed in protest. He had no balance, no stability.

People ran by him, bumped into him, pinballed him to and fro. Everyone was screaming. Myron tried to keep moving away from the general direction of the shooter. He heard another gunshot. Myron blinked hard, felt the blood pouring off him. He kept stumbling ahead. Another shot rang out.

A hot searing pain entered the small of his back.

The impact knocked Myron forward, his arms splayed. His spine bent backward as the air rushed out of his lungs. He couldn’t breathe. His cheek landed hard on the corner of a bench.

Blood filled his mouth. Not from the fall. Not from banging his cheek on the bench.

The blood was coming up from his chest into his throat.

Drowning him.

Myron started to feel the darkness on the edges moving in. He was losing consciousness.

Hang on, he told himself.

But his body wouldn’t listen. Even his primitive survival instinct had faded away, grown distant. He rolled away, rolled under the bench. The darkness was starting to swim in front of his eyes now. Something inside of him was shutting down.

He wondered whether he was dying.

He lay now on his side, his cheek on the pavement. He couldn’t move. He could barely care. He could still see feet running by, but he couldn’t hear the screams anymore. The only sound now was a high-pitched whirring in his head. Why was that? Why couldn’t he hear anymore?

It felt as if some powerful force was dragging him down into the cold, into the black.

Two feet appeared in front of him. They stopped and bent down.

The face from the screenshot, complete with the black baseball cap, came into view and stared right at him.

It was Grace Konners.

His phone was still in his hand. She reached for it and pried it out of his weak grip with ease. Once she had taken possession of it, Grace pointed her gun at the center of his face. Myron couldn’t move. He could only look on helplessly. He saw the gleam in her eye, the way her lips curled into a smile.

He had found the killer. Too late. But he had found her.

Myron tried to do something in the second of life he had left. A final gesture. A way of ending it all with resistance or bravery or something. But his body wouldn’t obey. His gaze locked on the gun, only the gun.

Time slowed down.

Then the rest happened all at once:

A male voice shouted, “No!”

Grace pulled the trigger.

A man’s hand landed on the barrel of the gun, the palm covering the muzzle.

The voice and the hand belonged to Jeremy.

Myron wanted to wave him away, to tell his son that it was too late, to let go of the gun and move to safety.

The gun fired.

Myron heard Jeremy scream in pain.

No...

Myron wanted to cry out, wanted to help, wanted to do anything.

He couldn’t move. He felt cold, frozen. The high-pitched whirring became a death hum in his head.

Grace aimed her gun again. But not at Myron.

At Jeremy.

No...

Two shots rang out. The bullets didn’t hit Myron. They didn’t hit Jeremy either.

They hit Grace.