by Lisa Regan
“That’s not the worst thing,” Josie said.
“Didn’t say it was,” Lisette said. She maneuvered her walker through two of the small lanterns staked alongside the path and pushed it into the grass.
“Just a minute, Gram,” Josie said. She took out her cell phone and found the flashlight app. Turning it on, she caught up with Lisette and shone the light ahead of them. The tree line was about thirty feet off. “How do you know where you saw her?”
“There’s a tree trunk that looks like someone set it on fire, like it’s covered in soot.”
Josie panned the trees with her flashlight. “Not soot,” she said. “Black sooty mold. It’s from spotted lanternflies. When they eat, they produce this stuff. It’s sugary. I think it’s actually called honeydew. Anyway, it gets all over everything. That’s why the trees they feed on look like they survived a fire.”
Lisette kept pushing her walker along, now and again, when the grass was thick, picking it up and thrusting it forward. “To your left.”
Josie panned left with her flashlight.
Lisette stopped walking as they came within ten feet of the tree line. “There!”
The flashlight landed on a young birch tree, its trunk blackened. “You sure this is it?” Josie asked.
“I think so.”
They moved closer to the trees. “You’re sure she was alone?”
“Yes. I think so.”
Josie used her flashlight to pan the ground. Why had Emily left? Why would she walk into the woods within hours of nightfall? Was she running away? Was she looking for Rory? “Once Sawyer comes back, I’ll take a closer look, although by now she could be anywhere.”
A rustling sound came from within the trees. Josie swung her phone upward, but not before she saw a small pile of gray tufted buttons in her periphery. It lay at the base of the birch tree. Had Emily left them on purpose, or had she just dropped them?
“Emily?” Josie called, swinging the light back and forth.
“Josie,” said Lisette. She stepped away from her walker and placed a hand on Josie’s free arm. “Josie, we need to—”
More rustling sounded from beyond the ruined birch tree. Josie kept shining the flashlight but could see nothing besides low-hanging branches and tree trunks.
Lisette’s grip tightened, and Josie could only remember one other time in her life when she had felt her grandmother’s fingers dig into her skin so sharply. Josie had been a child and they were about to be separated. Josie had been going back to a house of horrors, and Lisette knew there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Josie turned her head and met her grandmother’s eyes, registering the fear in them. “Gram?” she said.
Lisette tipped her head ever so slightly toward the trees and mouthed the word gun. Josie’s heartbeat stuttered. She wanted to ask Lisette what she’d seen. A person? Rory? Josie wanted to sweep the light over the trees again but if Rory was there with a gun, only a few feet from them, they were sitting ducks. He’d already attacked Josie once that day without provocation. Josie wasn’t sure she could reason with him under the best of circumstances. What was he doing here anyway? Did he have Emily? Had he lured her into the woods? Josie used one hand to unsnap her holster and pull out her pistol, holding it in one hand while she shone the flashlight with the other. She kept the barrel pointed downward. She didn’t want to risk hitting someone who wasn’t a true threat, but if someone was in the woods pointing a gun at them, she wanted him to know she was prepared.
There was only one problem. Whoever was in the woods, she couldn’t capture him with the beam of her flashlight. It wavered under the weight of Lisette’s hand on Josie’s forearm.
“Police,” she called out. “Whoever is there, come out where we can see you.”
Lisette pulled at Josie’s arm and the flashlight beam jerked downward. “We should go back.”
In front of them, something moved, a dark blur. Lisette yanked at Josie’s arm with surprising strength, throwing her off-balance and sending her flat on her ass. Josie’s phone fell into the dirt, the flashlight facing down, plunging them into blackness. A gunshot cracked through the air. Josie sensed, rather than saw, Lisette’s body crumple. She placed both hands on the handle of her Glock and pointed it upward toward the trees. But she couldn’t shoot blindly. There were other police officers and searchers in the woods. She couldn’t risk it. Through the rushing in her head, she heard an unmistakable sound that turned her blood to ice. A shotgun being racked. Another shot was coming.
“No!” Josie screamed.
She scrambled onto her knees, taking one hand off the pistol grip to feel her way toward Lisette. Josie was aware that everything was happening in a matter of seconds and yet, time seemed to stretch out in an agonizing drip, like sap from a tree. Josie’s hand brushed against Lisette just as her body rose up. The second shot pierced the air. Lisette fell back, knocking Josie down and falling on top of her.
“Gram! Gram!”
Ears perked for the sound of the shotgun racking again, Josie squirmed from beneath Lisette. Her mind was overwhelmed. On some gut level she knew she had to choose between pursuing the threat in the woods—which could still kill her—or tending to Lisette. Her hands had already made the choice as they tossed her pistol aside and began to feel Lisette’s body for wounds.
“Gram!”
Lisette was on her back. Profound, visceral relief flooded Josie’s veins when her trembling hands reached up to touch Josie’s face. “Jos—”
Her breathing was ragged. Josie’s fingers traveled down her grandmother’s wrists to her shoulders, caressing her face, her hair. Nothing wet or sticky. No head or face wounds. Her chest and torso were another story. Hot blood clung to Josie’s fingers. Had the shooter used a slug or buckshot? The more her fingers explored, the more Josie was convinced it had been buckshot, which meant multiple wounds.
“Jesus,” she cried. “Gram! Hold on.”
She couldn’t see. Her hands scrabbled through the grass. She needed her phone. The flashlight. Or she could call her team.
“Gram!”
Every nerve ending in her body buzzed. She couldn’t find the phone. Lisette coughed. Josie turned back toward her and had the sensation of leaving her body. Suddenly, she was floating just over herself and Lisette. It was like looking through night vision goggles, both of them dark forms against a glowing green backdrop. Josie saw herself on her knees, hands gliding across the grass, finding nothing. Lisette lay on her back, eyes staring upward. One of her arms reached out, searching for Josie.
There was no time.
Josie snapped back into her body. Felt the terror choking the air from her lungs, the hot blood on her hands, the adrenaline making her entire body feel like a live wire. She heard noise in the distance. Someone moving away, through the woods. A motor whirring in the opposite direction. Then, as sure as if he were standing over her, whispering into her ear, Josie heard the voice of her late husband, Ray.
“Focus,” he said.
“I’m trying,” Josie cried, aware for the first time of the tears streaming down her face. Had she said it out loud? She didn’t know, didn’t care.
“Jo,” the voice said again. “You have to scoop her.”
Scooping was a term used in law enforcement. When a victim of violence—usually a shooting—was losing blood too fast to wait for aid, the police literally picked them up and carried them to their vehicle and then rushed to get them help.
Josie crawled toward Lisette, found her shoulders and hips and slid her arms beneath her, scooping her up. She stumbled to her feet, swaying, trying to find her balance on the grass with a swollen, aching ankle. Then she ran.
Twenty-Five
Sawyer pulled up along the path in a resort car as Josie reached the asphalt. Josie watched the emotions pass over his face in seconds: confusion, alarm, fear, and then his training took over. He threw the car into park before it even stopped moving and jumped out, running toward Josie. He met her in the
grass and took Lisette from her. “What the hell happened? Were those gunshots I heard?”
Josie followed him as he ran toward the resort car. “Someone was in the woods. They shot at us. I couldn’t see, I—”
“You have to drive,” Sawyer said, cutting her off. He tried to sit Lisette up in the back seat of the car and then he slid in beside her. “Can you do it? They didn’t have the staff to spare, so they gave me the keys.”
“Yes,” Josie said.
In the low light of the path lanterns, Josie could see the blood. It soaked Lisette’s torso. It streaked over the gear shift and the steering wheel as Josie put the cart in motion and turned it around. She had never driven a resort car before but this one was just like an extremely large golf cart. It was similar enough to a car that her body went onto automatic pilot.
“Lisette,” Sawyer said. “Jesus. She’s bleeding everywhere. Everywhere, Josie. How many times was she shot?”
“It was buckshot,” Josie said.
“Oh my God. Lisette!”
Josie punched the gas pedal as hard as she could and zoomed back down the path to Griffin Hall, headed for the flashing red and blue lights of one of Denton’s police cruisers. She glanced briefly over her shoulder to see that Sawyer had pushed Lisette’s shirt upward in his attempt to find the wounds. One hand held pressure on the left side of her chest while the other tried to find a pulse in her throat. Josie hadn’t heard a sound from Lisette in what seemed like an eternity but was probably less than a minute. She tried not to think about what that meant.
Sawyer said, “She’s not going to make it if we wait for an ambulance.”
“I know,” said Josie. “We’re taking a police vehicle.”
In front of Griffin Hall, a crowd of people stood, many of them Josie and Noah’s own family members who had stayed for the weekend. They all looked nervous, eyes searching the horizon. They’d heard the shots, Josie realized. She heard several cries as they pulled up in front of the building, but the faces were a blur. People crowded her but she pushed through them. Behind her, Sawyer had gotten out of the car and now carried Lisette. The uniformed officer asked no questions. He took one look at Josie’s face as she approached and held out his keys. Josie opened the back door and helped Sawyer get Lisette inside, sprawled across the seat. While they were doing that, the uniformed officer popped the trunk and riffled around until he found a first aid kit. He gave it to Josie, who handed it over to Sawyer. Then she got into the driver’s side.
As she turned on the siren and backed out, she heard Lisette cough. The sound sent a jolt through her. “We’ll be there in a few minutes, Gram,” Josie said. “Just hold on.”
From the back, Josie heard the squeal of a zipper and the ripping of Velcro as Sawyer tore into the first aid pack. “Jesus,” he said. “I don’t have anything. I can’t take her vitals. I can’t—”
“Do whatever you can,” Josie told him. “I’ll get us there as fast as I can.”
“Hang on, Lisette,” he muttered. “Her airway is clear. Pulse is thready. Multiple wounds to her chest and abdomen. I’ve got gauze. Not a lot, but I can use what’s here to pack some of these. No sucking wounds, thank God.”
“QuikClot,” Josie said. “We all carry it in our cars. There should be some in the kit.”
QuikClot was a hemostatic dressing. It looked like gauze, but it had an agent in it that stopped bleeding more quickly in wounds. Soldiers in combat often carried it with them. When it became available for civilians to purchase, the Chief had added it to the first aid kids carried by all officers on Denton’s force.
“Got it,” Sawyer said. “This will help. Lisette! Lisette! Stay with me.”
Josie pushed the patrol car as hard as she could, doing nearly eighty miles an hour down the long mountain road into town. Once she hit the residential area, she slowed only enough so that she didn’t hit anyone or anything. It felt as though the hospital was hours away, when they’d only been driving for minutes. Josie took the long hill up to the hospital at sixty miles per hour and screeched into the Emergency Room ambulance bay. The patrol officer whose vehicle she’d taken must have called ahead, because Dr. Nashat and several of his staff members were already outside with a gurney, waiting for them. By the time Josie got out of the driver’s seat and limped around the car, they already had Lisette strapped in. Dr. Nashat, one of his residents, and four nurses jogged alongside as they rushed Lisette inside. Josie looked to her right to see Sawyer standing there, arms slack at his sides, covered in Lisette’s blood.
He turned toward her. His expression was a combination of fear and anger. “What the hell happened out there, Josie?”
Josie swallowed the hysteria that rose in her throat. “Someone was in the woods and they—”
He advanced on her, cutting her off. “Someone was lurking in the woods and they decided to shoot an eighty-four-year-old woman?”
“No, I don’t know. We were just standing there, and she saw something, a gun.”
“I thought you guys were looking for an eight-year-old girl, Josie.”
“We were. But there’s more to it—”
He pointed a finger toward the Emergency Department doors. Josie noticed his entire arm shook. “What kind of person would shoot an eighty-four-year-old woman, Josie? She walks with a goddamn walker. She’s not a threat. You’re a police officer. Didn’t you have your gun? What in the hell happened out there? You’re not hurt. You’re not shot.”
Josie couldn’t seem to push the words out. How it had been so dark and happened so quickly, and how she couldn’t see anything. How she’d already been shot at once that day. How the killer was aiming for her, not Lisette. The feeling of Lisette’s steel grip on her arm, the way that Lisette had whipped Josie off-balance like she weighed nothing, how her body rose up in front of Josie before the second shot—all of those things kept repeating in Josie’s mind. Sensory memories, shadows across her shock-addled brain.
“She put herself in front of me,” Josie choked.
“What?”
“She was protecting me.”
“Bullshit,” Sawyer spat.
But he hadn’t been there. He was Lisette’s grandson by blood, but he didn’t really know her. He hadn’t spent a lifetime knowing her. He had no idea the lengths that Lisette would go to protect the ones she loved. He had no idea the things she had done to protect Josie from the very moment that Josie came into her life. If he did, he might not look at Lisette the same. Of course Lisette would protect Josie—instinctively and reflexively. Completely without thought or regard to her own safety. In that horrible moment, Josie was a scrawny kid again and Lisette was imbued with the strength of a mighty lioness whose ferocity overcame any physical limitations she might have.
“She shouldn’t have been out there,” Sawyer said. “In the dark, out in the woods. What is wrong with you?”
“Me?” Josie shouted. “My grandmother is a grown woman. No one has ever told her what to do, and no one is starting now.”
“Our grandmother,” Sawyer said. He turned away from her and brushed his cheek with his sleeve. When he turned back, Josie saw that he had left a streak of Lisette’s blood below his eye.
“I’m sorry,” Josie said. “Our grandmother.”
She walked over to him and tried to touch his hand, but he jerked away from her. He turned away again, his shoulders trembling. Josie waited a moment. She tried to touch him again, but he moved out of reach. “Just go,” he said. “Go check on her. I’ll call Noah.”
Josie realized then that she didn’t have her phone. It was somewhere along the tree line with her gun. “Tell him he has to secure the area where she was shot. It’s a crime scene.”
Without looking at her, he nodded. Josie ran through the trauma bay doors. She followed the sounds of tense shouting and Dr. Nashat’s voice barking instructions. They had taken Lisette to one of the glass enclosures, but the door stood open. Lisette’s clothes had been cut off and discarded on the floor. Her arms, che
st, and abdomen were peppered with small round wounds where the buckshot pellets had penetrated her clothes and skin. Blood leaked from each one and smeared across her flesh. Some bled faster than others, and two of the nurses worked quickly to staunch the flow. Another nurse tried to get her vital signs. Dr. Nashat tweezed pellets out of her arms and dropped them into a basin. An oxygen mask covered her face. Her skin was as pale as her gray curls.
“Gram,” Josie croaked.
One of the nurses shouted out her vitals. Dr. Nashat dropped the basin and tweezers onto a nearby tray table. “We have to get her up to CT. We need to know what’s going on inside.”
Lisette’s head turned slowly. Her eyes searched the room until they locked onto Josie. Everything around them faded for a few precious seconds. Lisette’s mouth moved but beneath the mask, Josie couldn’t make out what she was trying to say.
“Detective.”
Josie tore her eyes from Lisette long enough to see Dr. Nashat standing before her.
“We need to get this woman upstairs. She needs a CT scan, and, given the placement of some of these wounds, I’d say she’ll most definitely need surgery.”
Josie stepped aside. “Would you please keep me updated? She’s my grandmother.”
Dr. Nashat froze momentarily, his professional demeanor slipping for just a moment. Then he patted her shoulder. “You’ll know everything I know.”
The nurses wheeled Lisette out the door. Josie managed to touch her bare shoulder as she went past. Her skin was cold.
Twenty-Six
Josie felt a paralysis unlike any she’d ever known. Thoughts escaped her mind. She stood in the hallway until a security guard appeared and ushered her into another area of the Emergency Department. It was a small, private waiting area. She was aware that he said something about her not going into the main area because she would frighten everyone else, looking as she did. He planted her in a chair and handed her a towel. She held it limply in her lap, eyes staring straight ahead but seeing nothing. Nurses, doctors, and other patients passed by. Some asked if she was okay, to which she simply nodded. Her mind replayed the scene at Harper’s Peak over and over, trying to figure out what she could have done differently.