Known Threat

by Kara A. McLeod

  Unable to stand being away from her after her ordeal, I crept out of my own bed and eased myself into hers. I took great care to be gentle with her as I arranged her limbs so the two of us could share the gurney as comfortably as possible. Once I had her head tucked under my chin and my arms draped protectively around her back, I slipped an earbud into my right ear and fired up the music app on my phone, hoping the songs would help lull me to sleep or would at least distract me so I wouldn’t have to think too much.

  No such luck. Since I had just a few cuts and some minor bruising, the doctor had given me only aspirin for my aches and pains. And aspirin wasn’t strong enough to send me off to dreamland as easily as whatever cocktail Rory had prescribed herself, so I got to lie there and try to wrangle my traitorous thoughts.

  My mind raced, navigating curves and corners with all the speed and precision of a spaceship going warp speed in a blockbuster sci-fi movie. The landscape of my thoughts was treacherous and seemingly without end, and I was unable to stay away from the chasm that was the litany of the ways Rory’s current condition was my fault for more than a minute at a stretch. I hopped back and forth between anger and self-flagellation with all the skill and finesse of a politician flip-flopping on hot-button issues during a campaign. It was becoming something of a default setting for me now.

  I allowed myself to wallow for an undetermined length of time. Recent events had taught me that fighting the impulse only led to tension and exhaustion. Better to give in and let myself splash around in the deep end of the emotional pool, even if only for a little while each day. Somehow, it seemed to speed up the healing process, if only a bit.

  The key was to stop as soon as possible. Until someone somewhere perfected the science of time travel, I couldn’t do anything to change the past, so floundering in guilt and self-loathing for too long was pointless. I needed to balance those periods with intervals of focusing on a solution.

  Now, for example, after ruminating on everything I’d done wrong, everything I could’ve done better to avoid landing us here, and what a shitstorm my life was about to become because of it, I’d managed to drag myself out of the whirlpool of despair and self-reproach to deliberate on what came next. My life had been out of my own control for far too long. I needed to figure out a way to take it back.

  “You’re just like her.” Rory’s slurry voice broke into the whirlwind of my thoughts.

  My heart leapt, thrilled that she’d spoken, even if I had no idea what the hell she was talking about, but I tried not to express any of my joy. I was afraid if I made a big deal about it, she’d lapse right back into her near-catatonic state. I licked my dry lips and attempted to project an air of casual confidence.

  “Hey. You’re awake. How are you feeling?” I winced against the pain in my throat and removed the earbud before running my fingers through her hair. After everything that’d happened, I just needed to touch her to make sure she really was safe. I suspected that’d be the case for some time to come.

  “Mmm. M’okay. Hurts less.”

  “Yeah, well, you could’ve done the decent thing and had the docs give me something to knock me out, too,” I croaked through the fire in my throat, my voice still scratchy.

  She ignored my complaint, pulling back from her position tucked underneath my chin so she could look at me. Her gaze was glassy and unfocused. “I always wondered.”

  I eyed her curiously. “Always wondered what?”

  “Why Mulan was your favorite. Used to think it was the gay thing. You know, because she’s not your typical princess. Now I get it.” She tried to smile at me, but the attempt failed. Whether that was because of the drugs she was on or a direct result of recent events, I couldn’t be sure.

  “What are you talking about? Where did that come from?”

  “You were singing.”

  “I was?” Maybe that explained why the ache wasn’t ebbing.

  She closed her eyes and let her head flop down onto the pillow. “Mmm-hmmm. I like that song better. You were singing some ’80s power-ballad stuff before.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Too sad.”

  I lifted the earbud back up so I could hear the song my phone was playing, the one I hadn’t been consciously listening to. Sure enough, the last strains of “Reflections” were fading. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was doing it.”

  “’S okay. I like listening to you sing. Makes me forget. Almost.” She took a deep breath and let it out in a heavy sigh.

  My heart crumbled into dust, and I had to fight to contain my tears. Rory didn’t need for me to break down. Of the two of us, she was the one who deserved to be allowed to disintegrate. I had to be strong enough so she’d feel like it was all right to do that. I cleared my throat as softly and gently as I could so as not to exacerbate my agony and wiped at my eyes hastily with the hand not trapped under Rory’s body.

  “You’re just like her, you know.”

  “I’m just like who?” I asked, grimacing at the noticeable tremor in my voice.

  Rory opened her eyes again, and even though it was evident she was having trouble focusing, she attempted to pin me with an irritated glare. “Mulan.”

  “I am, huh? And how’s that?”

  “You’re tough like she is. And brave. You would’ve fought.”

  “What?” The words came out a horrified whisper, and the pile of dust that my heart had become blew away on the breath of her declaration, replaced by a cold emptiness.

  Rory’s eyes filled with tears now, and she looked away. Her hand came up to play with the neckline of the hospital scrub shirt I was wearing. “You would’ve fought him. You did fight him.”

  “Oh, Rory.” I pulled her to me and tried not to lose it when she shuddered and let out a strangled sob. “It’s okay.”

  Rory shook her head, and her hair tickled the underside of my chin. “No, it’s not. It is definitely not okay.”

  If my heart hadn’t already just broken, it would’ve shattered. I struggled with a response. “Maybe not right this second. But it will be.”

  “When?”

  I closed my eyes, gave up my most recent fight, and let the tears gathering there fall. They slid down my cheeks and ended up in her hair. I wished I had an answer for her. “I don’t know.”

  “You would’ve fought,” she said again, her voice barely audible. “You wouldn’t have let him…You would’ve fought.”

  I tightened my grip around her and struggled to keep from wailing. An all-consuming ache was replacing my cold, empty feeling. I was heavy with anguish and dread. I didn’t know what I could possibly say to make her feel better. The notion that I could say nothing was making me even more miserable.

  “Rory, he was bigger than you.”

  “So? That wouldn’t have stopped you.”

  “Only because I’m too stubborn for my own good. The knife I saw at the park, he had that wherever he held you, right?”

  Rory nodded and fisted her hand into the front of my shirt. “Held it to my throat. I was so scared.”

  A tremor racked my body. I’d seen the faint cuts on the skin of her neck and had already put two and two together, but to hear her actually say it… “You did the right thing, then. You did what you had to do to survive. There’s no shame in that.”

  “Wouldn’t have stopped you,” she mumbled. “Knife, gun, bat. You wouldn’t have cared.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. In all likelihood, if it’d been me, I’d have gotten myself killed. And what’s the point of that?”

  Rory let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. It was a painful, strangled sort of sound, and it almost killed me to hear it. “At least you would have died fighting instead of just taking it.”

  “You can’t beat yourself up over this.” But even before the words were out of my mouth, I knew how foolish they sounded, how devoid of any sort of comfort.

  Rory ignored me. “How am I supposed to live with myself? How can I ever look at myself in the mirror again knowing that I just lay t
here, shaking like a leaf as he…over and over and over…”

  I clenched my jaw to stop the sobs clamoring up the back of my throat, dying to burst free. They were clawing and scraping, but I held them back because I knew that once I started crying, I wouldn’t be able to stop. And I was afraid if I lost it now, it would somehow, in Rory’s mind, reaffirm for her that everything she was obviously convinced of was true.

  “So fight now,” I said, flashing back to the thoughts I’d been mired in before she’d woken up and drawing all the expected parallels between her situation and mine.

  Rory stilled, and she said nothing for a long moment. “What?”

  “Fight now.”

  “How? He’s dead. Nothing can undo what he did to me. How can I possibly fight now?”

  I deliberated how to phrase this. “You went through a terrible ordeal that I can’t even begin to understand. Walker took something from you when he…when he did that to you.” Somehow I couldn’t say the actual words, and I hoped my inability wasn’t undermining my entire point. “He took something precious and valuable, but it’s up to you now. Do you want to let him keep it, or do you want to take it back?”

  Rory was quiet for a bit. I wasn’t sure whether she was thinking about what I’d said or had drifted back to sleep. Finally, after an impossibly long time, she spoke. “I don’t know how.”

  I buried my face in her hair and dropped a gentle kiss onto the crown of her head. “You don’t have to figure that part out right now. We can make it up as we go. You just have to decide that you want to. Someday.”

  Rory nodded. “See? Just like Mulan.”

  I smiled sadly. It must have escaped her notice that Mulan had been the hero in her tale, whereas I was just a total failure in mine. I’d failed to protect her. I’d let her down. The lump in my throat felt both suffocating and painful. “Sure.”

  “You’ll help me?” She sounded exhausted, and a jaw-cracking yawn punctuated her question.

  “Of course.”

  “Good.” She snuggled further into my embrace, and I held her as she drifted back to sleep.

  My lips quivered, and I sniffled as I slipped the earbud back into my ear. I closed my eyes, too, hoping to drift off to sleep as well. Instead, I spent the next who knows how long trying to avoid being sucked back into my earlier unpleasant thoughts. I’d already used my allotted wallowing time for the moment and wanted to focus on something a little more empowering. Unfortunately, that was easier to say than to do. The skirmish between what I wanted to dwell on and what I actually was dwelling on was long and bloody, and I appeared to be on the losing end.

  The why of the whole thing overwhelmed me, and the why questions never ended. Why had Walker snapped? Why had Bellevue let him out in the first place? Why hadn’t we been notified that he’d been released? Why hadn’t we assigned someone to monitor him? Why hadn’t I seen this coming? All of those why questions tempted me to start playing the “if only” game, and that would only be counterproductive. I sighed.

  “How’s she doing?” Allison’s soft voice jostled my awareness.

  I allowed my eyes to drift open and pulled the earbud back out of my ear so I could concentrate on the conversation. I was glad for the distraction. Struggling not to play the “if only” game had just made me edgy. I could use a break from all my introspection.

  “As well as can be expected, I suppose.” I tried to duck my head so I could look into Rory’s sleeping face, but with her nestled against me, I couldn’t see anything. Disappointed, I shifted my gaze so I could meet Allison’s eyes.

  She, too, was looking at Rory, her expression such a mixture of sadness and frustration it pained me to see it. “She’ll be okay.”

  “Eventually, yeah. She will be.”

  “You, on the other hand—”

  “Me, what?”

  “You just had to go and prove me wrong, didn’t you?” Allison’s voice was low, but that did nothing to disguise her annoyance.

  “Prove you wrong about what?”

  “The last time we were in this position, after you got shot, do you remember what I told you?” She pulled up a chair on the opposite side of the bed, facing me, and sat down. Her eyes took in Rory’s still form cradled in my arms, and her expression softened, if only slightly.

  “Refresh my memory. You said a lot of things, but even with a hundred guesses, I bet I still can’t come up with whichever one you’re talking about.”

  The skin around Allison’s eyes tightened for an instant. “I told you I’d never been as terrified as I was the instant I heard you’d been shot.”

  “Oh. That. Okay.” I still wasn’t sure where she was going with this.

  Allison obviously picked up on my cluelessness and rolled her eyes in fond exasperation. “And then you had to get into an all-out brawl with a man twice your size. Tell me. Do you enjoy testing my limits, or do you just have a death wish?”

  I frowned. “Neither. What the hell was I supposed to do?”

  “Shoot him.” Her answer was immediate and sure. The cold gleam in her eyes told me she would’ve had no qualms if she’d been in my position.

  “You know I couldn’t have done that. Not without warning him first. That’s what we’re taught. And I couldn’t take the chance that Rory would end up hurt because I gave him that warning.”

  “You could’ve shot him without the warning. You could have articulated it.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

  “Definitely. There’s no question.”

  “Definitely it matters? Or I definitely could have articulated it?”

  “Either. Both. Pick one.”

  “If I’d shot him without warning, an attorney would’ve hammered me.”

  Allison shrugged. “So what?”

  “So, I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of an inquisition. Besides, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to live with myself.” Our conversation had been soft to begin with so as not to wake Rory, but my voice dropped even lower with that admission.

  Allison appeared angry, though at what exactly, I wasn’t sure. “And if you’d known what he’d done to her? If you’d known that he forced himself on her, would you have done it then? Would you have been able to live with yourself?”

  I sighed, then froze as Rory stirred, shifted, and then nestled herself further into my arms. Once her breathing had evened back out, I gave Allison’s question some thought. Fat lot of good that did. I had no idea what the correct answer was. Most of me wanted to say yes, but a tiny part of me wasn’t positive.

  “I don’t know. I likely would’ve done it, yes. Whether I’d have been able to live with myself after is another matter. I’m glad I don’t have to find out.”

  “Yes. It’s fantastic.” Allison’s words were caustic enough to burn.

  I winced. “What’s wrong? You seem upset.”

  “I do, huh? Well, look at you, using your investigative skills to crack the case.”

  Now I frowned. I tried to keep my words soft, but it was tough. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Allison’s countenance was dark, and she was clearly struggling with something. Something big. I tried to ignore the anxiety pooling in the pit of my stomach as I watched the emotions swim beneath her eyes.

  “I am so furious with you,” she said, her words low and even. Apparently it’d taken a great deal of effort to make them that way. But also a definite amount of affection colored her expression and took some of the sting out of the words.

  “You’re what?”

  “You could’ve been killed, Ryan. You reacted instead of acted. You didn’t think.”

  “No, actually, I did think. I thought about how whatever else Walker had done, he was mentally ill and therefore not completely responsible for his actions. I thought about how someone in the grip of paranoid schizophrenia deserved treatment, not to be shot in the back. And I thought about getting sued later if I did shoot him. Believe it or not, a lot
of things went on inside my head.”

  “You didn’t have to shoot to kill. You could’ve hit him in the leg or something. It would’ve stopped him, surprised him long enough for you to get the upper hand.”

  I shook my head. “I couldn’t have made that shot.”

  Allison huffed, exasperated. “I’ve seen you shoot, remember? The day we met, you put twenty-five rounds into a space the size of a golf ball at twenty-five yards in a span of less than twenty seconds, including a reload. And that must have been an off day for you because I’ve seen you put up much smaller groupings. You’re amazing on the line. I’ve never seen anything like it. You could’ve made that shot with your eyes closed.”

  “Yes, I’m good on the line. I couldn’t have made shots like that today.”

  Allison sat back in her chair, crossed her legs, and folded her arms across her chest. She pinned me with a dark glare. “Yes, you could have.”

  “Allison, you’ve seen me shoot under range conditions. It’s slow and controlled, with no stress. That makes it easy to aim, easy to hit the target where I want to hit it. But today…Today, too much else was going on, too many other factors to consider. I’d been running, and I was edgy about my sister. Then I saw the knife, and Rory and Hurricane were right there. Plus, we were in the middle of a park. Other people were around. If I’d tried for that shot and missed, I could’ve hit any one of them, could’ve killed them. Rory, Hurricane, some mother out for a jog. God, some kid playing Frisbee. I just…I couldn’t take that chance.”

  Allison’s ire faltered. “You really thought about all that?”

  I nodded and realized I did have an answer to her earlier question. “Yes. And knowing everything that happened afterward, I still would’ve done exactly what I did.”

  Allison pursed her lips and stared off into space as she obviously considered my point. I continued to draw light patterns on Rory’s back with my fingertips and play with the ends of her hair while I waited for Allison to decide what to say next.