Twenty-five yards…
Gator’s heart was about to come right out of his chest like the tiny monster in
Broker coming on with the shotgun, irrational. Barely twenty yards away now. He’d lost it. Eyes pure psycho in the firelight. Gonna shoot no matter what.
Even with the world blowing up all around, burning shit falling from the sky, instinct demanded that Gator protect himself from crazy people. He switched the pistol toward Broker, thrust his arm and jerked the trigger.
The instant the man holding Kit took the pistol out of line, away from her head, Nina’s right hand flashed for the small of her back.
This time it didn’t come up empty.
She smoothly drew the.45 jammed in the drawstring of her sweatpants, swept it up, set the stance, slapped her left hand over her right, and extended. The iron triangle formed in her heart and forked down her arms. Undeterred by the fire and blowing snow, she instinctively pointed, not aimed. Squeezed hard on the grip. Soft on the trigger.
Chapter Fifty-six
“What’s Mom doing now?” Kit asked.
“She and Sergeant Barlow are putting a pressure bandage on her back,” Broker said.
“What did you call it again?” Kit said.
“The bandage? It’s called a flutter valve-”
“No.” Kit knit her dirty forehead. “The way she’s hurt?”
“It’s called a sucking chest wound.”
“But it’s on her back,” Kit said.
“Her lung’s hurt, her lung’s in her chest,” Broker said in a calm voice. He stood on the road, oblivious to the raw carnage-scented smoke and fire; far enough back from the barn to be alternately chilled by the gusting wind and roasted by the flames. The night seemed softer, the barn burning down, the snow tamer, twisting on spiral zephyrs. The clouds still swirled with that orange glow, surreally enhanced, like Photoshop, by the blaze and rising smoke. But he couldn’t really tell; he was drunk, on fire with adrenaline and relief.
So he just hugged Kit astraddle his hip and watched her face carefully in the flickering light for signs of shock. So far all she showed was an unwillingness to release her hold on the cat. And a voracious curiosity. Her wide green eyes were drinking it in; the burning barn, the body off in the snow, all the cops showing up, and her mom and the trooper sergeant working at strict combat speed to stabilize Cassie Bodine.
“What’s that shiny stuff?” she asked.
“It’s plastic wrapping from a bandage pack. They’re taping it over the bullet hole and leaving a corner loose…”
“Why’s that?’
“So Teddy’s mom can breathe, honey,” Broker said.
“Isn’t she cold?”
“More important now to get her lung working; see, it was collapsed,” Broker said.
Kit chewed her lower lip and scrutinized Nina and Sergeant Barlow, who knelt fifteen feet away. They held Cassie Bodine in an upright sitting position. They’d ripped away her clothes, and she shivered-eyes dilated, face waxy gray, naked to the waist. Her bare flank and lower back were splashed with orange Betadine disinfectant and frothy lung-shot blood. When they finished the tape job, they nodded to the two volunteer firemen crouching around them, holding a blanket as a windbreak. Nina and Barlow briefly discussed the bandage with one of the firemen, then scooted out of the way.
The fireman then covered Cassie with the blanket and lifted her carefully in a fireman’s carry, keeping her upright while a third fireman gently fitted an oxygen mask to her face. Then they started walking down the road to where Howie Anderson stood, lit by the headlights of six police cars parked three by three on either side of the road. He held a mobile radio in his hand and was looking up into the fitful sky. Keith Nygard knelt next to a stretcher at Anderson’s feet, where the woman who’d kidnapped Kit was swaddled in blankets, her head a loose mummy wrap of bandages. Right after Barlow discovered Cassie breathing, she’d found the other woman staggering from the barn fire; blind, her face and scalp a crisp.
When Nygard saw them bringing Cassie, he stood up, went to her, and put an arm lightly around her shoulder. He looked to Howie on the radio, said something to Cassie, then tilted his face up into the night.
Another fireman stood next to Broker with a blanket, wondered with his eyes if he should cover Kit.
“Not yet, we’re good,” Broker said quietly. He held Kit tighter as Nina approached, watching her stoop, wash her bloody hands in the snow, then wipe them on the thighs of her ragged sweat-pants. Standing, she swiped her hands a few more times down the front of her jacket, leaving a dirty crimson stain on the black ARMYtype.
Nina reached up and stroked Kit’s cheek with her knuckles, the cleanest part of her hand.
“Is Teddy’s mom-” Kit said.
“She’ll make it. Needs a good surgeon, though. Think she’s got some rib splinters in that lung,” Nina said, looking up at the sky. “They’ll have a good medic on the Air Force chopper. One of the EMT guys said the emergency room in Bemidji is alerted, should get them there in minutes. Got a couple surgeons reporting in.” She smiled at Kit. Keeping her voice low-key with tremendous effort, she said, “You’re gonna get to see a Blackhawk land in a snowstorm, Little Bit.”
Broker and Nina working so hard at reassuring calm, they were almost moving in slow motion.
More urgently, Nina’s eyes flitted up to Broker’s. He nodded to her.
“She told me she wanted to talk to us. But said she better get with a lawyer first,” Nina said. Then she turned. “Look, honey, here it comes.”
They stood on the road in a tight huddle and watched the helicopter descend like a ferocious electric-eyed steel insect. Broker shielded Kit’s face with his free hand from the tempest of rotor-driven snow. Watched them load the casualties. Two guys jumped off the bird, in parkas; one of them was wearing a tie.
“Here come the suits,” Broker said in a dreamy voice, still floating on flowing adrenaline. His voice was lost in the clatter of the chopper lifting off.
Nygard, fiercely protective, steered the two guys away from Broker, Nina, and Kit. He walked them over to the side of the house, where two more state cops and eight deputies from three counties had gathered to gossip about the relative merits of the 1911.45-caliber Colt semiautomatic pistol, longest-serving handgun in the U.S. Army’s inventory.
The new arrivals viewed Gator Bodine’s brains scattered on the snow like red scrambled eggs. Then they observed the pistol Nina had left in the snow, slide locked open, magazine out. Broker didn’t pay them much attention. Wasn’t the first time he’d seen a bunch of men, mouths gaping, staring at his wife.
Gliding, holding Kit so tight he could feel her heart thump, Broker reconstructed it; Gator’s jerked shot had passed a foot over his head as Nina drilled a bullet an inch above Gator’s left eyebrow. Barlow had found Cassie and the burned woman. Nygard had yelled for help. Broker scooped up Kit. Nina ran to assist Barlow. Nygard had dashed into the burning barn, found the keys in the Nissan and backed it out.
Now the yellow tape was being strung. Procedure was setting in. Nygard escorted the two office guys over to the Nissan that was parked a hundred yards away. They huddled for a moment. Apparently having found something,
