A deep tiredness hit me: hypothermia setting in. My body felt like lead and the frozen road I was lying on was like a feather mattress. All I wanted to do was go to sleep.
But then I thought of her. Of silky, copper hair and milky skin. Of the way she looked when she was scared. She was scared right now. She needed me.
I took a deep, ragged breath and pushed one hand into the road to lever me up, knowing how much it would hurt. I screamed loud enough to shake the trees, white fire blazing up my wrists and arms, but I was up onto my knees and the pain had chased away the tiredness. I got a foot under me and heaved myself up to standing, staggering a little.
Far off in the distance, I could see a glow that might be headlights. I turned towards it. And started to run.
60
Amy
“WHAT’S wrong?” asked Colt.
I shook my head, but there were too many clues, he was going to figure it out. The red stain had spread, its fingers almost brushing the trees. He must be feeling light-headed from blood loss, by now. And I knew he could see my tears, frozen into shining trails on my cheeks. Every time I tried to grab the bullet fragment, I just pushed it deeper, causing more bleeding that I had to frantically work to stop. There was just too much to do: I didn’t have enough hands.
Colt grabbed the leg of one of his men as he walked past. “If I don’t make it,” he slurred, “kill her. Take the gold, blow the mountain and get out.”
No. No no no. I worked frantically, no longer caring if I caused pain. Colt grunted and the gun barrel scraped painfully against my head, his finger tight on the trigger. But if I didn’t save him, I was dead anyway. I could see the bullet fragment gleaming, in amongst the red and pink. Another minute and maybe—
“Take care of my son,” Colt told his men.
And he died.
61
Dominic
AS I STAGGERED out of the trees, I saw Beckett on her knees next to Colt’s motionless body. One of Colt’s men pulled the gun from Colt’s limp fingers.
He made the mistake of pointing it at the woman I loved.
I ran forward, bellowing in rage. The guy spun in shock and tried to bring the gun around, but it was too late. When my fist connected with his jaw, it felt like every nerve ending in my hand was being plunged into lava. But it worked. He went down and the gun went flying. But the other one swung his rifle towards me—
“Wait!” screamed Beckett. “I can still save him!”
We all turned to look at her. She was frantically scrabbling in a bag, pulling out a portable defibrillator. “I can save him,” she repeated. She looked at me. “But I need his help!”
Colt’s men looked at each other. There didn’t seem to be a second-in-command. Colt was probably too distrusting to allow one. So with their leader gone, they didn’t know what to do. At last, the man with the assault rifle waved me towards Beckett.
All I wanted to do was throw my arms around her and pull her close. But our only chance of making it out of this alive now hung on whether we could save Colt. I raced to Beckett’s side. “How long has he been down?” I asked.
“Not long.” She ripped open Colt’s shirt and started fixing the defibrillator pads. “Get a shot of epi!”
Gritting my teeth, I managed to clamp my frozen fingers around the little bottle and fill a syringe.
“Clear!” yelled Beckett.
Colt’s body jerked as the electricity slammed through him. As soon as he went limp, I gave him the whole dose of epinephrine. Beckett felt Colt’s neck….
“Got a pulse,” she said breathlessly. “We have to stop the bleeding, fast. I’m going to open up his leg while he’s out and try to find the bleeders. There are two bullet fragments in there, too.”
She grabbed a scalpel and started cutting. Colt’s men cursed under their breath as she opened him up. But it was the only way to save him. Now that his heart was going again, the blood was pulsing out of him: we only had minutes.
But this was Beckett. Surgery was what she did.
Despite the cold and the pressure, she dropped into one of those Zen states of focus, the sort I knew I could never manage. Her hands were quick and precise, separating the tissue, finding the bleeders. My hands were still numb but I managed to clamp each one as she found it.
Every so often, she’d lean her shoulder to the left so that it pressed up against mine. Reassuring herself that I was still there. Neither of us had a hand free to touch and there was no time to kiss or even look at each other. But I pressed back against her each time she did it. Yes. I’m here. And she’d nod to herself and work on.
I passed her instruments as she needed them. Whenever my hands were free, I massaged the blood back into them. It hurt like hell, but they slowly began to come back to life. Beckett dug out the first bullet fragment, then the second. She sutured the final artery and we were done. She closed him up, bandaged the leg and we fell back on our asses in the snow, panting with relief. “He’s okay,” she told the men. “He’ll live.”
And then I grabbed her. I didn’t care that we were still being held at gunpoint, didn’t care about the cold air that gripping her waist made my throbbing hands scream in pain. Ever since she disappeared, I hadn’t been able to breathe properly, hadn’t been able to think about anything else. Now I finally had her in my arms, her softness crushed to my chest. We were still in danger but we were together and that was all I cared about. I kissed the top of her head as she nestled against me, then pushed her back, swept the hair back off her face and kissed her, hearing our joint moan of relief as our lips touched. God, she felt amazing, soft and warm in the middle of all this cold darkness. We kissed long and deep, and I felt her hot tears of relief against my cheeks.
Then the barrel of an assault rifle was thrust between us, pushing us apart. “Wake him up,” one of the men told us.
Beckett shook her head. “He’ll make it, but he needs to rest. He’s lost too much blood—”
“Wake him up!” snapped the men. “I know you can give him something, adrenaline or shit like that.”
Beckett and I looked at each other in horror. Beckett put her hands up to try to pacify the man. “Adrenaline could kill him,” she explained. “He’s too weak—”
The gun cocked. These guys were anxious and twitchy. They needed their leader back. Beckett swallowed and looked at me. What do we do?
I slowly nodded. We had to do it, or they’d kill us. But whether Colt woke up or not, we’d be useless to them afterwards and they’d kill us anyway. We needed a way out, quick.
The men watched Beckett closely as she filled a syringe of adrenaline. While their eyes were off me, I grabbed another syringe out of the bag and filled it with Haldol, a powerful tranquilizer, then held it in my palm so they couldn’t see it.
Beckett raised her syringe. “Stand back,” she told the men. “He’ll come up fast.”
They backed off and I backed off with them... a little too far, so that I was standing almost behind one of them. All their focus was on Colt and making sure nothing happened to him. They weren’t expecting us to attack them... I hoped. And the cockpit of the helicopter faced away from us, so the pilot wouldn’t be able to see what was going on.
“One,” counted Beckett, aiming the syringe. I heard one of the men hold his breath. “Two….”
I stabbed the syringe of Haldol into one guy’s neck and pushed the plunger, then punched the other one as hard as I could in the face. They crumpled at the same time. Beckett gaped in shock... then threw down her syringe and ran into my arms. We hugged each other tight and I closed my eyes, breathing in her scent. I was never going to let her go again.
But then the darkness turned red as a bright light shone through my eyelids. I opened my eyes. A car was approaching, its headlights blazing through the trees.
Beckett cursed. “That’s the guys who set the bomb coming back.” She stared up at me. “We have to stop it!”
How? We didn’t know anything about bombs. But if we di
dn’t stop it, the whole town was going to be wiped out. “Fuck,” I muttered. “You know where it is?”
“Black van,” she said instantly. “It’s on a timer.”
The headlights were coming closer. Once those guys got there and woke up their friends, it was all over. “Come on!” I grabbed her hand, then winced: I’d forgotten how much my hands hurt. “You drive!”
We jumped into the pickup—lucky for us, when they’d turned on the headlights to light Colt’s operation, they’d left the keys in the ignition. Beckett carefully backed us up, then drove around the three unconscious men in the snow. Just as the other car arrived, we roared away towards the mountain.
62
Amy
THE ROAD to the mountain was slick with ice, but I pushed our speed up to fifty: we couldn’t afford to go slow. I kept doing the math in my head: how long since the bomb was set? How much time did we have left? However I worked it out, the answer kept coming out as not enough.
Both of us were white-faced and grimly silent. Corrigan was nursing his hands in front of the heater and, from the look on his face, they were hurting even more as they thawed..
As we came over a rise, Corrigan suddenly said, “Stop!”
I glanced across at him, disbelieving, but he was stony-faced. “Stop!” he said again.
I hit the brakes and we skidded to a stop in the middle of the road.
“We’d be safe here,” said Corrigan. “We’re high enough above the town.”
I looked down at the town. He was right.
“They had supplies back at the camp,” Corrigan said. “Food, shelter. By now, those guys will have woken up, taken the gold and gone. We could survive there until the roads are clear.”
I stared down at the town, then looked at him and shook my head, tears in my eyes.
He took my chin in his hand. “I want to save them,” he told me, his voice strained. “I need to save you.”
My stomach knotted. If we turned back now, I lost everyone and everything I knew. But I’d have him. Oh Jesus, don’t make me choose…. We stared into each other’s eyes, both of us fighting the same battle. And the longer we hesitated, the less time we had….
“Fuck it,” I snapped. “We’re doctors.” I stamped hard on the gas and we shot forward. Corrigan’s hand covered mine on the steering wheel and gently squeezed.
63
Colt
I SAT bolt upright, sucking in air like some kid waking up from a nightmare. Tucker, the guy who’d left to set the bomb, was standing over me with a syringe. The others were clustered behind him, looking terrified. “What happened?” I snapped.
“That Irish doctor showed up,” said Tucker. “They got the jump on us and took off.”
“They got the jump on you?” I snarled. He looked at his feet. Jesus, why was everyone except me so goddamn weak? “They’re going to try to defuse the bomb. We gotta go after them.”
I went to get up. Everyone rushed at me, pushing me back down to the snow. “Colt, you died,” said Tucker. “They had to bring you back! You need to rest.” He looked at the others. “Let us get you into the chopper and let’s go! Forget the mountain. We got the gold, we won!”
“It needs to be perfect!” I yelled. My voice shook the trees around us and he shrank back in fear. Why were they so worried about my health? My leg hurt like hell, but other than that I felt like a lion, every vein thrumming with life and power. “I’m not having the FBI on my back for another twenty years. Everyone’s got to think the gold is still there, under the rubble. And no one can know we are here. That’s the only way this works!”
“Colt, we gave you adrenaline,” said Tucker, starting to lose his cool. “You’re all fired up, but it’ll pass. You can’t get into a fight, you’ll die.”
I grabbed his gun right out of his hand and turned it on him. “Don’t tell me what I can do!” I yelled. Everyone jumped back. I struggled to my feet, using a tree to support me when my bandaged leg refused to. The rage boiled up inside me, expanding with each booming crash of my heart. These weak sons of bitches... “Unload the gold!”
Their eyes bugged out. “What?!” asked Tucker.
“Unload the goddamn gold!” I yelled, the gun leveled right between his eyes. “You can take one bar each. That’s adequate fucking compensation, if the money’s all you care about. The rest of it stays here, with me. I’ll build a new militia, with men I can trust!”
They cursed and pleaded and tried to talk me round, but I just kept the gun pointing right at their heads, my face stony. They slowly unloaded the heavy bags of gold, each man taking one shining bar for himself. Then they climbed aboard the chopper and the pilot started her up.
“Colt, please!” Tucker leaned out of the open door and yelled over the sound of the blades. “Even if you stop them, how are you going to make it out alone? The roads are still blocked.”
“I won’t be alone,” I told him. I looked around. “Where’s Seth?”
The men all shook their heads. “He never showed, Colt.”
The rage rose higher, consuming me completely. Traitor! I slammed the door and stepped back. Watched as the chopper took off.
That bastard Irish doctor. He’d taken everything from me: my plan, my men, now my son.
I limped over to a pickup and started it up. I only needed one good leg to drive.
He’d taken everything from me. I was going to take everything from him.
64
Amy
WE’VE BEEN driving too long. We were on the mountain now, right under the cliff that overhung the town, but we hadn’t seen any sign of the van. What if we’d missed it? It was black, if they’d hidden it in the trees beside the road we could have driven straight past it. And any second now it would explode and the whole side of the mountain would come down on us. Should we turn back? But what if the van was just around the next corner? I wanted to scream just to release the tension—
There!
They’d hadn’t even tried to hide it. It was just parked by the side of the road, two wheels on the pavement. I skidded to a stop beside it and we jumped down into the thick snow. We each grabbed one of the rear doors and threw them open—
I’d seen the crates and the wires back at the camp. But now they were just background: the only thing that mattered was the digital clock.
It’s hard to explain what it feels like, to see something counting down the time until you die. Death is always so distant you can push it out of your mind or so sudden you don’t see it coming. This was mercilessly exact, each change in the crimson digits another of our final seconds gone. Corrigan and I both stared at it, transfixed.
We had one minute and thirty-two seconds left on this earth.
One minute and thirty-one seconds.
One minute thirty.
We stepped forward, then looked at each other helplessly. Corrigan’s hands were doing the same as mine: grasping at thin air, aching with the need to do something, to stop it, but afraid to touch it.
“There’s got to be a way to turn it off,” said Corrigan. The stress made the Irish thick in his voice. “The people who set it, if they needed to change it….”
I nodded and tried to say right, but it came out as a weak croak. My eyes were going everywhere, searching for something marked off, but it was just a jumble of wires and circuits.
Whoever had made the thing had left their tools strewn over the bottom of the van. Corrigan grabbed a pair of wire cutters, turned them over and over in his hands as he thought... then handed them to me. I looked at him in horror. Me?!
“You have steadier hands,” he told me.
I made the mistake of looking at the clock just as the numbers slipped from 1:00 to 0:59.
I’ve killed us. I had no idea which wire to cut, or if that would even stop it. We should have stopped and turned back when Corrigan said. Now it was too late: even if we started driving now, we still wouldn’t make it out of the path of the landslide.
What am I doing here?
The panic was rising up from my chest and taking control. I couldn’t breathe, my lungs moving in painful fits and starts. This is not my world. This is not what I do. Why had I ever left my operating theater? If I’d just stayed there, in my safe little burrow….
Your life is meant to flash before your eyes, just before you die. I saw a different one, one where I’d stayed upstairs that day.
I’d never have met Corrigan. I wouldn’t have been there when Rebecca had come in, and she would have died. Without her there, I wouldn’t have pressed for the ER to stay open and we would have evacuated along with everyone else. We’d never have known about Colt or his plan. When the snow melted, we would have come back to find the town wiped out by what seemed like a natural disaster. Corrigan and I would have found new jobs and gone our separate ways.
We’d both be alive.
But we’d both be alone.
A big, warm hand came to rest between my shoulder blades. “I trust you,” he said. And his voice was calm. He really did.
Twenty-three seconds.
I took a deep, shuddering breath and focused. I told myself that wires weren’t so different to arteries, really. Feeding from a heart—the battery—to a brain—the clock—with nerves running from that to the muscles—the explosives.
Eleven seconds.
The weak point, the point where the brain could be cut off without throwing out a rogue signal, would be….
I heard Corrigan draw in his breath.
Would be…..
There. I lunged forward and snipped a canary-yellow wire before I changed my mind. When I looked at the clock, the display had gone dark. I’d never know how long we’d had left. I thought about asking Corrigan and then decided I didn’t want to know.
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