trying to make an introduction, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of someone special enough to do. He knew the folder she brought was business, and he didn’t particularly want that part of his day to return yet. He pulled on his gloves.
Tracey joined him. “They had exactly one left. It’s perfect.” She held up a baby mug with a colorful balloon bouquet formed into the ceramic sides she’d bought at the restaurant gift shop and then slid it back into the sack. “My extended list Christmas shopping is officially done.”
He held her coat for her. “You’re absolutely sure? No second cousin of your hairdresser’s mother you’ve forgotten on your list?” he teased.
She hit him for the teasing and then slipped into her coat. “Admit it, you enjoyed this morning.”
He smiled at her. “I’ll admit shopping with you is an experience.”
“And one you come back to enjoy every year.” She pulled on her gloves and beamed at him. “Let’s go find dessert.”
“Tracey-”
She laughed and picked up the sack with her final purchase, and he held the restaurant door open for her. “You’ve got ten minutes, don’t you? Time enough to slip into the candy shop for a piece of homemade fudge?”
“I suppose Connor can take that long to say good-bye.” He was aware of Connor lingering behind them at the table with Marie and Bryce, and he purposely gave them privacy for a few more minutes. He steered Tracey around a group of teens on the sidewalk. “I need one more gift for the chief’s sister, Susan, so let’s also stop at the department store you like and see-”
Shots rang out. One slapped into the fender of the car parked at the curb right behind them, and a second shattered a display window ahead of them.
Before the glass could be pulled downward by gravity Marsh had Tracey covered and moving toward the only shelter reachable, a gray sedan parked at the curb ahead of them, shielding her head with his arms and blocking her body with his.
Pedestrians screamed, scattered.
The back car window above them exploded as two bullets slapped into it. Something hit brick. Something hit people. He could see people falling. Tires squealed as the shooter tore away from the scene.
He could feel adrenaline stretching his nerves to the point his heart wanted to explode. “Tracey, stay-”
He realized his gloves were covered in blood.
“Tracey-”
Her eyes were open and blank, and that was her blood washing over his coat sleeves. His hands searched frantically. Back of the neck, into her brain, already gone… his mind put together the realization she was dead, but the word didn’t have a meaning with it.
“She okay, buddy?”
A hand rested on his shoulder, and the light blocked as a guy leaned over him to see. “Oh, man. That’s three he hit.”
Three.
The shakes made it hard for him to release her to lay her back on the sidewalk; he rapidly shoved together his scarf and gloves to provide a cushion for her head. Not even a final breath or a whispered word, just gone. “Tracey-” He choked on tears as he tried to untangle the way they’d fallen and moved to sit up beside her.
Her mug had spilled from the sack and cracked into three pieces. The new silk scarf she’d bought that morning tied loosely at her neck had knotted to one side and gotten dirty. A hard fist in his chest made breathing labored, and his hand kept shaking as he touched under that scarf. No pulse at all. She was still pretty; he closed her eyes so she wouldn’t keep looking at him.
“Don’t move me.”
The cried words behind him registered, and he realized the commotion around him now was crying and pleas, and while he didn’t want to care, he turned his head to look and saw a sidewalk deserted but for injured and those who had braved coming back to help. Cuts, broken arm, twisted knee, the perils of the stampede to move away… and shooting victims.
He struggled to his feet and walked north down the path of the gunfire and saw the man who had stopped by him working to help a young man shot in the leg.
Red hat. He saw the color resting against the bookstore building brick wall and angled that direction. Caroline sat against the building, one leg bent, her arms lax at her sides.
“Hey, lady,” he offered softly.
Awake, eyes focusing on him, but not moving on her own.
He struggled to kneel without falling. He shifted her coat to see. Her blouse was covered with blood. Struck in the chest up toward her left shoulder, a few inches over and the bullet would have hit her heart. “Hold on, Caroline.” He tried using her scarf to make a pressure bandage, but the material was too thick and not solid enough. He pulled over one of the shopping bags littering the sidewalk and tugged out a yellow silk blouse. She groaned as he pressed it tight against the bleeding. “I know it hurts.”
Her head rolled toward him, her eyes clear as they looked into his. “Bloody Irishman, he shot right into the crowd not bothering to aim beyond shoving the gun out the window and yanking the trigger while he drove with the other hand.”
“You saw him?”
“Tall guy, Irish, the curly side of red hair; had this crazy four-leaf clover hanging from his rearview mirror. Driving a cab. Looked right at me.” Her eyes began to drift from focusing on him. She tried to smile. “Funny the things you remember when a guy points a gun in your direction.”
She coughed and her eyes closed against the pain. He saw the alarming sign of blood at the corner of her mouth. Her breathing began to shallow out.
“Stay with me.” He tried to ease her down to lay on her side, knowing at least one lung was filling up with blood.
In an instant she’d drifted away from him.
“Paramedics are coming.” His Good Samaritan knelt beside them and shoved around a coat he had brought over to give her some protection from laying on the concrete.
“I need them here first; she’s hit in the lung.”
“The kid that got hit in the leg will make it. The lady with you, your wife?”
“Fiancee,” he choked out.
“I just wanted you to know there’s a nun with her.”
He nodded because there weren’t words to say.
“Marsh, hold still. Are you hit?”
Connor wasn’t taking his shake of his head as an answer and tugged at the coat, searching for himself. There was so much blood on him now Marsh wasn’t even sure himself anymore that none of it was his own. Everything hurt.
Marsh leaned against one of the parked cars, and he watched the nun sitting with Tracey, holding her hand, being more comfort than he’d been able to be to her. Tracey wasn’t Catholic, but if she’d been alive she would have liked the fact the lady cared enough to say a prayer for her. “Marie?”
“Bryce has her. Shots took out the window of the restaurant, but we were still too far back inside.”
“Tell me someone spotted the cab.” His voice sounded odd to him, old, hollow. He should be feeling anger, but he wasn’t feeling much of anything beyond the hurt.
“Irish guy, four-leaf clover hanging from the rearview mirror; every cab in the area is being stopped. I wish she’d been able to tell you which cab company; there are a lot of cabs downtown today.”
“He was shooting at me.”
“I know; you said. I think it was broader, partner.” Connor pressed hard on a gash on Marsh’s arm. “Put your hand here and keep pressure on it. You’ve got some flying-glass cuts.”
He obeyed but wondered why he should bother. “Caroline’s not going to make it.”
Connor looked over his shoulder at the ambulance, where paramedics were rushing to lift the stretcher inside,
