Aurora 06 - A Fool And His Honey (21 page)

“I usually go to the mother’s house for delivery, but every now and then I deliver a baby-here.

That’s all I can say.”

I could tell she meant it, and I felt sorry for her. “Goodbye,” I said, so she could get in out of the cold. “I hope your insurance comes through for you, soon.”

She made a face at me, half doubting, half smiling. “Thanks.” She turned and made her way through the yard back to the trailer door.

So that was another door shut.

I found myself wondering about the so-timely fire, destroying the record of Regina’s prenatal visits and delivery—if she had indeed delivered in Nurse Sunday’s office—right after Rory came back to Corinth. When I thought of Rory’s handsome young face, impossibly guileless, I heaved a long sigh. What would we do with Rory? Would he be safe, riding back into Corinth with Karl? Did I care? Would Martin be willing to keep the boy in the house overnight? I wasn’t sure I would.

I was grateful to see the entrance to the farm, and even more grateful when I entered the kitchen to find Rory intact and Martin and Karl apparently holding on to their tempers. I tossed down the keys and my purse, realized I’d forgotten to take my boots off at the door, and knelt to dry them with a towel.

“So, what have you guys been talking about?” I asked. I looked up at Karl.

“This fool—” he began, and then the window exploded.

Since I’d been kneeling well away from it, I clearly saw the shards of glass flying into the kitchen, glinting in the fluorescent light. The glass sprayed Rory’s left side as he sat slumped at the table, sprayed Martin’s right side as he stood across from him, and grazed Karl who was perched beyond Rory on one corner.

And the bullet that had broken the glass, that bullet hit Rory in the neck on the left side, punching a mortal hole and exiting on the right, causing a shower of blood and tissue that rained on Karl, as the same bullet struck Karl’s thigh, hitched over the corner of the table.

At that moment, it seemed, Martin screamed, “Down, down,
down!”
and took a flying leap to land on top of me, flattening me to the floor. A heartbeat later—a heartbeat Rory didn’t have—I was facedown on the floor amid the glass and blood, my heart racing at a terrifying pace. Karl was screaming, and Rory bonelessly slid out of his chair and landed two feet away from me, blood pouring out of the wounds in his neck to puddle under him. His eyes were open.

I shrieked without knowing I was going to do it. With Martin weighing me down, I lay shivering and shaking on the floor with Rory’s blood spreading toward me.

And then the kitchen was silent.

After the longest minute I’d ever lived through, no more bullets punched through the window.

Martin gradually eased off me. I made myself crawl over to Karl, who had begun to moan steadily. The floor was covered with glass, and I found myself thinking of brooms and dustpans—and mops—as the advancing pool of blood stopped inches from me.

“Martin?” I asked hoarsely.

“Yes,” he said, breathily.

“Honey, I think Karl has to have a tourniquet.”

“Rory?” he asked.

“Dead,” I said.

Trying not to sit up, I fumbled my belt out of its loops, and wound it around Karl’s thigh. To my intense relief, Martin scooted on his elbows to the other side of the wounded man and drew the belt tight.

Karl became silent, and I risked looking at his face to see he was as pale as his complexion would permit him to get.

I glanced at Martin, wanting to see if Karl’s poor condition had registered with him.

I made an incoherent sound of horror. Martin was covered with blood.

My husband, the invincible and strong, the coper with crises.

“Oh, honey,” I said. “Oh, honey, you’re hurt.” Sometimes the obvious truth is the only one that fills your mind and you don’t care if you sound smart or not.

“Cuts from the glass,” he said briefly. But he was breathing shallowly, and his color was as bad as Karl’s.

Without wasting further breath, Martin reached up a cautious hand to get the telephone sitting on the counter.

From upstairs, Hayden began crying. It came over the monitor clearly. I made as if to rise, and Martin clamped a hand on my shoulder. His grip wasn’t strong, but the force of his will was.

“Are you crazy?” he hissed. “Stay down!” He dialed without holding the phone to his ear. I was closer to it, and I could see that the little light, the one that comes on to illuminate the numbers so you can dial in the dark, was off.

“Phone’s dead,” I told him, unable to control the shaking of my voice. I followed the wire with my eyes, and when it came to the jack, I saw that the phone had not been cut off outside the house, but inside; the little plastic connector had been cut off. I pointed, and Martin followed the line of my finger. For the first time since I’d met him, I saw despair in his eyes.

Martin held it up to his ear to confirm what his eyes had already checked. One of the people who had been our visitors in the past two hours had done this. They’d all been in the kitchen.

This was the only phone in the house.

“Where’s the cell phone?” I asked.

“It’s out in the Jeep.”

Of course. I’d seen it there minutes before.

“We’ll have to get Karl into the Jeep. We’ll call the hospital on our way into town.”

“You and the baby have to come.” Though he seemed barely conscious, Martin crawled over to the wall and got Karl’s rifle.

I couldn’t remember how close the Jeep was to the front door. “Let me go check where I parked the Jeep,” I told Martin, and crept on my hands and knees to the front door. I stretched up a hand and opened the door, peering around the frame to keep as much of myself covered as possible.

The Jeep was wonderfully close. I felt a surge of hope. We’d get out of here, into town, to the little Corinth hospital.

Then I noticed that the Jeep was canted oddly to one side. My heart did something painful inside my chest when I realized that two of the tires were flat, the two on the side away from the door.

I shut the front door, ran in a crouch to the stairs. They weren’t visible from any windows, or at least the angle would be quite acute. I sprinted up as fast as I could, reached the top safely. I stood and panted for a few seconds, trying to get my breathing rate down to something approximately normal, then scurried into Hayden’s room, which was over the kitchen. It was safest for him right where he was, I made myself admit, though my every instinct was to pick him up and take him with me. But I couldn’t stand the crying. I tried popping his pacifier in his mouth. That would hold him, I hoped.

I didn’t want to tell Martin about the Jeep’s being disabled, but I had to. He looked even worse than he had three minutes ago, and Karl, I thought, was unconscious.

Martin was still thinking clearly, though.

“Check to see if the phone’s still in the Jeep,” he told me, though he clearly hadn’t much hope. This silent admission that he was not capable of action was more terrifying than anything to me in that horrible kitchen. Martin, strong, dangerous, and brave, had been like a rock at my back for three years. I felt exposed and anguished. “If the phone’s not in the Jeep, Karl’s pickup is parked behind that clump of trees down in the south field. He went out there to check to see what kind of vehicle whoever was looking in our windows had driven. Then he walked up to the house, following the tracks.”

“Okay,” I whispered, half distracted by the continuous sound of Hayden’s renewed complaining. “So?”

“You’ll have to go get Karl’s pickup.”

“How do we know someone’s not out there?” I asked, thinking Martin was nuts. I wasn’t about to leave him.

“No more shots,” Martin said succinctly.

“Unless they’re waiting for us to stand up so they can shoot again,” I protested.

“He would’ve come closer by now and picked us off, if he was still out there. I’m assuming he just wanted Rory.”

I glanced over at Karl, whose face was a waxy color I associated with Madame Tussaud’s. He was covered with sweat, and blood, and bits of stuff. He looked very bad. Martin had spots of blood on his shirt, mostly on the back where glass slivers had pierced the material as he lay covering me. There was one long cut over his right eye that looked particularly bad, hut I reminded myself that head cuts bleed worse than anything. I couldn’t give myself any comfort over his color, though, and I knew that something worse than a few cuts was wrong with Martin.

I found myself too scared to ask him.

“Take the baby,” Martin said.

“What?” This was crazy. It had begun to snow again.

“Take the baby.”

“Are you serious?” I said savagely, because I was terrified. “Out in the cold, and I don’t know who’s out there? I’ll drive back here, we’ll load Karl in the pickup bed so he can keep his leg stretched out. I’ll get the baby then.”

“I’m thinking you should drive straight to town. Don’t stop.”

“Martin, I can’t leave you,” I began, unhappy all over again to hear how distraught I sounded.

“Go!” he said harshly. “For once, don’t think about it!”

He knew something I didn’t.

“Okay,” I said, trying to sound less tearful than I felt. I accepted the keys he handed me, the ones he’d taken from Karl’s pocket. I ran back up the stairs, bundled and wrapped up Hayden.

Then I stood by the front door, terrified of stepping out. I looked into the kitchen at Martin sitting by his friend on the floor. From somewhere, Martin dredged up the strength to give me an encouraging nod.

In retrospect, my agreeing to leave him sounds crazy; but at the time I was so seriously upset that Martin’s request made some kind of sense to me. Though I was absolutely terrified, I stepped out into the snow holding the baby.

The cold hit me in the face. But no bullet. I was at the Jeep in four steps, looking through the windows. No phone. It had been taken. There were footprints, sure, but in the gray dim light and falling snow they were surprisingly hard to follow, and there were many other footprints in the parking area now.

So I began my trek through the falling snow clasping Hayden, who at least at this moment was quiet. I scanned the whiteness, looking for some sign of life out here in the bleak fields, but I saw nothing. A bone-scraping wind sprang up and scoured my face, and flakes clung to the knit cap I’d pulled over my hair. Hayden snuffled against my chest. I clutched him closer.

It was no great distance to the copse, perhaps not even a half mile, but the ground was uneven and the contours concealed by the snow. Halfway there I became aware that I was crying, and I nuzzled the baby’s cheek as if he could comfort me. I knew something was wrong with my husband, and yet he had told me to leave him. Did Martin think the shooter would come around the house to make sure of Rory, and therefore invent some reasoning to make sure I left?

And then I realized why Martin had told me to take Hayden.

Hayden was my insurance.

Martin knew the shooter wouldn’t try for me if I was holding the baby. Hayden was the whole point of this. I wasn’t even sure what “this” was, but Hayden was the center. Now I had the protection of Hayden’s presence: and Martin didn’t.

I nearly decided to turn back twice, even stopped and physically began to reverse, but I couldn’t seem to figure out anything. I was shocked and freezing and desperate, and the remembered urgency of Martin’s tone kept me on my course.

The snow and the baby and the rough ground made the walk seem twice as long as it actually was, but finally I was among the trees. There was Karl’s black pickup, carefully parked so it was unobtrusive. I got the keys from my pocket and climbed in awkwardly, the baby making an upset choky noise in protest at the continued cold.

I laid Hayden on the floor on the passenger side. That was the best I could do. Then I scooted the seat up so my feet could reach the pedals. The pickup started on the first turn of the key just like the Jeep had, which was a real blessing, and it had an automatic shift, which was another blessing. The heater roared into life, and after a few minutes I felt a sheer, pathetic gratitude for the onset of warmth. I began backing out of the trees. When I’d turned the truck to face the road, I saw a little track at least two vehicles had made. Under those tracks must be the dirt road Margaret had told me about.

I followed them up the gentle slope to the county road, figuring the smoothest ground would lie that way, and though the pickup lurched a couple of times, we reached the road in one piece.

I started to turn the wheel left, toward town. Then I thought longingly of the Granberrys to the right, so much closer.

But Martin had said to go to town, and Martin always had a reason for making a decision. So I prepared to turn left, and I peered both ways to see if anything was coming.

It surprised me that something was.

And to compound the surprise, the traveler was Margaret Granberry, in her Dodge pickup.

She stopped when she saw me by the side of the road and lowered her window.

“What are you doing?” she called. “Isn’t that Karl’s truck?”

“Margaret, you should get home and lock the doors!” I yelled. “Someone came up to the house and shot him!”

“Shot
Karl?”
Margaret’s pale face looked even whiter, and she jumped out of her truck, which she left running in the middle of the road, and made her way swiftly over the packed snow to my window, her hands shoved in her pockets.

“He’s bad,” I told her. “I have to get to town to get help.”

“What about Martin? And Rory?” Margaret asked.