by L. T. Vargus
She did not.
There was a loud peal of thunder. From their position on the hill, the crack and rumble of it echoed ominously over the terrain.
Ethan hadn’t finished his thought yet. In fact, he hadn’t said anything for the last few seconds. Swiveling her head to where he still stood next to the vehicle, she peered up at him.
“Well? What do they say?”
Ethan’s mouth was pressed closed like he was thinking hard on something. His lips parted when she spoke, but still he said nothing. In what looked like slow motion, his chin dipped down to touch his chest.
That was when she saw the dot of red on his white shirt. A nosebleed, she thought at first. And then the red spread before her eyes, growing like a puddle to color more and more of his chest.
“Baxter!”
His left hand was resting on top of the roof, and his fingers squeaked against the polished exterior as he slid downward, knees buckling. He crumpled in a heap next to the truck, curled up on his side, one leg splayed beneath the undercarriage.
For a second, she could only watch the stain on his shirt growing ever wider. It was wet. Thick. The fabric settled against his chest as the red saturated it.
Darger spun out of her seat and jumped to the ground. Her fingers were already reaching into her pocket for her phone when a loud crack sounded and the window of her passenger side door burst into a thousand fragments. She instinctively dropped to her knees and cupped her arms over her head. Frozen in that position, she stared up at the shattered glass, her thoughts finally catching up to her panic.
The sniper had shot Ethan, and now he was gunning for her.
Chapter 20
She dove away from the vehicle, sailing over the edge of the hill, and coming down hard on her elbow. Violet’s momentum carried her into a barrel-roll the rest of the way down the incline. She bumped over rocks and tree roots and dry grass before she came to a stop in a cloud of dust. A fork of lightning lit the sky in the distance. The thunder barely registered over the thrum of her pulse in her ears.
She was ten or fifteen feet below the hilltop now, crouched behind a bush. She peeked up at the front end of the Suburban, at the shattered window she’d been standing beside only a few seconds ago. Could the shooter still see her? She figured he was positioned somewhere to her left, looking down on the back of the vehicle. She surveyed the surrounding landscape but found nothing out of the ordinary. Glancing farther down the hill, she found a dismaying lack of shrubbery to use as cover. She was stuck here.
Loshak, she thought, fumbling for her phone. She had to call Loshak.
No, 911 first.
Her hand shook as she dialed 911.
“911, where is your emergency?”
Darger’s head whipped around, remembering then that the road, as far as she knew, didn’t even have a name.
“It’s a service road. There’s no name. It’s just off I-20. Exit 50-something. 52?”
“Pardon me, ma’am? I couldn’t hear that last part. Can you tell me where you are?”
Darger pressed her lips to the speaker of the phone, as if that might get her point across more clearly.
“I’m an FBI agent, and I have another agent down with a gunshot wound to the chest. Tell the first responders to go to the hill next to the first sniper crime scene. They’ll know where it is.”
It wasn’t until the words came tumbling out of her mouth that Darger fully realized that Ethan was still up there. Alone. She’d just left him there.
“Ma’am,” the 911 operator’s voice came through the ear piece. “I need an address for your location.”
Darger’s attention snapped back to the phone call.
“I told you, there’s no address! I’m on top of a hill. The hill near the first sniper shooting—”
There was a crackle over the line, and Darger pulled the phone away from her ear. A red phone icon blinked with text that read: CALL ENDED.
“Shit!”
Darger tried to redial, but a message blipped at her that she was out of service range. No wireless networks found.
“No, no, no,” she muttered to herself.
How long had it been since the last gunshot? A minute? More? Had the shooter given up? Or was he waiting for her to come out from her hiding spot?
Her mind was racing, and she struggled to reason through it.
He would have to assume she’d call for backup. As soon as word got out that an agent was down, they’d have helicopters swarming the area within minutes. Roadblocks.
He wouldn’t stick around. He would run.
She stood from behind her cover, holding her breath. She counted to ten. And nothing happened. Still not sure if she was walking to her death, she began to claw her way back up the slope.
She was not going to let Ethan Baxter die on this hill.
Chapter 21
She scrabbled over the lip of the ravine and hurried to Agent Baxter’s side. The sharp edges of stone and loose gravel bit into her knees as she knelt beside him, but she barely felt it.
Ethan’s eyes stared straight up at the murky Georgia sky, unblinking. But for the rise and fall of his chest, she might have thought he was already dead.
The bloodstain was even bigger now, the size of a dinner plate and growing still. Darger held her hand to the wound, applying pressure, but she could feel the blood pulsing out in bursts.
“Agent Baxter, can you hear me?”
He still didn’t look at her. She fumbled with the buttons on her blouse, ripping the last few off in her impatience. She folded the shirt into a rough square and pressed it to his chest.
“I called for help. Just stay with my voice now,” she begged him, leaning forward to keep pressure on the hole in his chest.
He was not responsive. His eyelids were barely parted and his mouth hung open, but she could see that he was still breathing, though his breaths were rapid and shallow.
“Ethan?” she said.
The shirt she held over his injury was quickly sodden with blood, and she pulled it away for a moment to try to find a dry spot. As she did that, Ethan wheezed.
No, she corrected herself, he hadn’t made any noise from his mouth. The noise had come from the wound. She removed the bloody wad and again noted the strange sound. Half hiss, half gurgle. And the blood was frothy and pink. Bubbles.
Something tickled in the back of her mind. That sound and those bubbles meant something. What was it? She’d taken an advanced first aid class only a few months ago, but the details eluded her. Her mind was a swirling torrent of fear. What if the ambulance couldn’t find them? What if the 911 operator decided it was a prank call and never sent anyone at all?
Stop it, Violet. Think.
She tried a centering exercise.
I’m Violet Darger.
I live at 437 West Walnut Street, Apartment 1.
And right now I’m stranded on top of a goddamned mountain with a dying man.
Fuck!
But it must have been enough, because the correct sequence of words came to her. She said them out loud.
“Sucking chest wound.”
Also known as a pneumothorax. Or was it a hemothorax? She couldn’t remember just now, and it didn’t matter. She knew it meant that the bullet — or perhaps a bone fragment from a shattered rib — had punctured his lung. That meant it couldn’t inflate properly, and precious oxygen was leaking out of the wound every time he took a breath.
She needed an occlusive dressing. She glanced at Ethan’s face, noting his pallor and the blue tinge to his lips. She needed that dressing now.
She dove into the truck, digging around for a First Aid kit. Come on, she thought as she checked the center console. A meticulous bastard like Ethan had to have a First Aid kit in his car. Her fingers fumbled at the glove box, practically ripping the door off in her haste. There was a rectangular white box nestled underneath the user manual for the vehicle. She tugged it free, immediately recognizing the red letters and large cross on the lid.
She popped it open, hustling back to Ethan’s side to continue compressing the wound while she searched. Her free hand sifted through the contents of the box: Bandaids, alcohol and Betadine pads, medical tape, exam gloves, antiseptic wound spray, a pair of scissors, an Ace wrap. Finally she reached a stack of large bandages on the bottom. There was a plastic baggie filled with gauze bandages in a variety of sizes and two large abdominal pads. No occlusive dressings.
She ripped open the two abdominal pads and pressed them to the wound while she thought. Her wadded shirt made a wet splat as she tossed it aside.
Occlusive was just the opposite of absorbent. She needed something to block the flow of air from the wound. Airtight. Waterproof.
She looked down at the contents of the First Aid kid again. The plastic baggie. She opened the zipper at one end and shook out the gauze squares. Next, she collected the medical tape and the scissors. She removed his tie, stuffing it into her pocket, and used the scissors to cut away the front of Ethan’s shirt. The scraps of fabric came in handy for cleaning up the blood in the surrounding area. She needed a dry surface for the tape to adhere to.
Then, quickly, she pressed the plastic bag to the wound and taped it down. Remembering that the real occlusive bandages were open on one side, she left the lower end of the plastic bag unfastened.
When Ethan took his next breath, she leaned closer to listen and watch.
His chest rose on an exhale. When it started to fall, Darger could see the bag pucker as the wound pulled at it, suctioning the plastic and sealing the hole. The gurgling sound was gone, and his breaths seemed more even now.
“Ethan, are you with me?”
His eyes rolled slowly over to where she crouched next to him. They were glassy and out of focus. She was probably not much more than a dark blur looming over him.
He responded with the slightest nod of the head. With her hands free, she found his fingers and gave them a squeeze.
“You’re going to be OK. Hold on.”
What next?
A little voice in her head spoke up: exit wound.
Right. She hesitated to move him. A shot to the chest meant a risk for spinal injury. Shifting his position could make things worse. Then again, if he had another gaping hole in the back of his lung, he’d be dead soon for certain.
“I need to roll you on your side to check for an exit wound.”
There was a lot of blood staining the white shirt underneath him, and she was sure that meant another wound. But after she cut and peeled the crimson fabric away and lifted him enough to get a look at his back, she didn’t find anything. She wrapped her hand in the remaining gauze and wiped as much of the blood away as she could, to be certain.
Ethan was quite a bit taller and a lot more heavily muscled than she was, and Darger grunted as she gently rolled him back into a supine position. As limp as he was in his current state, he was damned heavy.
“Good news,” she said, though she wasn’t sure how good it actually was that the bullet was lodged somewhere in his body. “No exit wound.”
She considered the lack of an exit wound for a moment, and recalled that the shooter used hollow points in the Publix attack. Less penetration. More tissue damage.
Ethan’s eyelids rolled closed again. His face looked still and almost peaceful now.
Christ, was he still breathing?
Darger reached out to take his pulse. Just as her fingers made contact with the point under his jaw, she heard them.
Sirens.
Chapter 22
The ER waiting room was chaos. Dozens of voices talking, shouting, muttering at once. Shoes squeaking over linoleum. Gurneys rolling by, bumping through swinging doors. Metallic instruments clinking against trays.
Violet heard none of it. She hunched there, playing it over and over in her head: Baxter climbing out of the car, pausing next to the door. The way he pitched forward and then slid to the ground. The frothy blood running into the dirt.
“Darger!”
Loshak’s voice broke through the racket.
She looked up, saw him approaching, then let her gaze fall back to the floor.
He took the empty seat next to her and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“You OK?”
She searched for an appropriate word or gesture and settled on a nod.
“Baxter?” Loshak asked, running his fingers through his hair.
At the name, she lifted her head again to stare him in the eye.
“In surgery. They wouldn’t tell me much, but it’s not good.”
The hand in his hair clenched into a fist, tugging at the strands caught in his grip. His fingers released and fell into his lap.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked.
She could barely muster more than a whisper, and given the noise level of the hospital floor, she was surprised Loshak could hear her at all.
“What are you talking about?” Loshak pawed at his face and gave her a worried look. “You called me.”
Darger frowned down at her lap, noticed her phone there. The screen was covered in reddish-brown smears.
Had she called him? She didn’t remember. Everything after the moment Baxter had been shot was all mixed up in her mind. She couldn’t remember calling 911, but she recalled talking to a woman and trying to explain where they were, so she must have. And the ambulance ride. She vaguely recalled a paramedic hustling her into the back of an ambulance, and now she was here at the hospital. But the details were gone. Had they run the sirens the whole ride?
“I forgot,” she said.
Loshak studied her with concern while she mulled these things over in silence. The hand on her shoulder squeezed.
“Why don’t I take you back to the hotel?”
The thought of leaving alarmed her for some reason. She had to know that Agent Baxter made it through surgery. If he was going to be alright.
“I want to stay.”
“Look, I know how this is gonna go. He’ll be in surgery for a few hours at least, and after that, he’ll go to recovery. The doctors aren’t going to tell you anything since you’re not family.”
Violet started to protest.
“Listen! Let me take you back to the hotel so you can get cleaned up. You’re a mess, kid.”
Violet glanced down, noticed the dried blood caked around her fingernails.
“Shower, get some food in you, and then you can come back and check on Agent — on Ethan. I’ll drive you back down here myself.”
Somewhere in there, Loshak’s tone had turned consoling, like he was talking to an ornery toddler who was refusing a nap. Violet didn’t have it in her to complain about it. In a way, it was actually reassuring.
“OK,” she said.
The blood on her hands caught her eye again as she stood.
“But first I want to go wash my hands.”
Violet cranked the shower onto the hottest setting. Steam billowed past the vinyl shower curtain, fogging the mirror. She couldn’t seem to focus enough to use soap or shampoo, so she leaned under the shower head and let the stream of hot water pummel her skin.
The white noise of the falling water made her feel like she was closed off from everything. A secure place where she could take her insides out and study them without worrying about being intruded upon.
She cried. Big, gasping sobs that heaved out of her chest with so much force she had to brace herself against the tiled wall.
When the tears had subsided, and all that was left were a few whimpering hiccups, she felt better. Lighter. Whether it was the release of pressure that had been building in her for some time or endorphins from the cry, she felt calmer. Actually, she felt tired.
She put on a clean pair of joggers and a loose t-shirt and wrapped her hair in a towel. When she exited the bathroom, Loshak bustled in from the hallway, tray in hand. He set it down on the bedside table.
“Ordered up a pot of tea and some toast.”
“Thank you,” she said, lowering he
rself onto the mattress.
She folded her knees to her chest and leaned back against the headboard.
Loshak unfolded a newspaper and read — or pretended to read — while she sipped at the tea. She sensed him watching her from over the edge of the paper periodically, though he did not press her to talk.
Rain pinged against the window, and Violet watched the drops pummel the glass, streaking it with wet, turning it into a smear of color and light.
Chapter 23
Her eyes were closed, but she knew she was in bed. She could feel the mattress beneath her, the pillow propping her head up. But something was wrong.
Wet.
The sheets were wet. And warm. And sticky. And that smell…
Blood.
The sheets were soaked in blood. Ethan’s blood. He lay next to her on the bed, mouth gaping, eyes staring sightlessly. A fly buzzed overhead and then landed on his cheek. He didn’t blink or twitch.
Ethan was dead, and she was lying in a pool of his blood.
Violet tried to scream and woke herself from the dream, her hands still clinging to the sheets that were not wet and certainly not drenched in gore.
It was a moment before she was able to catch her breath and reorient herself to her surroundings.
Her hotel room. In Atlanta.
The drapes were open, and she could see that the sky was tinted pink from the setting sun. A soft light filtered in through the window still streaked with rain from the storm earlier.
There was a strange weight on her head. Feeling with her hand, she found the towel still wound around her hair. She unwrapped it, freeing the still-damp tresses and combing her fingers through the tangles.
Violet inhaled sharply as a noise broke the silence: it sounded like a heavy piece of furniture being dragged over a slightly sticky wood floor.
She released the death grip she had on the towel once she realized what it was: Loshak had fallen asleep in the chair across the room, and now he was snoring.
She checked her phone. It was almost 7 PM, halfway through what would have been her shift monitoring the tip line.