He went back to Katie, who was just rising to her feet. “Are you OK?” She began blinking rapidly, as if seeing the scene for the first time. Her mouth dropped open slightly as she looked at Brendan’s body. Her breathing increased and a sheen of sweat coated her forehead, sure signs of shock to Carson, who knew exactly what she was going through. He wanted to be sympathetic, but the sound from even her small-caliber weapon must have carried to populated areas, and people were probably calling the police already. He took her face in both hands and redirected her to see only him and not the body, but she refused at first. “Katie, look at me.” He had to repeat himself twice more before she finally turned to him.
“Did I kill him?”
“Yes.” He tried to say it as sympathetically as he could, but this was no time to dance around reality. Still, she closed her eyes and dropped her head in shame. “Look, you didn’t do anything wrong. He would have killed me if you hadn’t shot. This is the big leagues – kill or be killed. You have to understand that. You have to understand what you did was the right thing. Tell me you understand.” Katie shook her head, clearly overwhelmed.
Carson didn’t like killing any more than Katie, but he had the experience and training to handle seeing dead bodies, even those he had created. Katie was not used to such things. He wished for more time so she could come to grips with the situation, but they didn’t have that luxury. It was unfair to her, but he needed her to figure it out right now.
As he wondered how the hell he was going to make that happen, she looked back up at her late husband. Wide and fearful eyes became firm and resolute. She still shook, and her skin was still clammy, but when she looked at Carson once again, he saw she was coming back to him. “OK. OK,” she repeated. “I get it. It’s just hard, you know. Why didn’t he stop? I know he saw me. If he’d have put the gun down, I wouldn’t have shot him. Really, I wouldn’t have.” She was babbling, which was not uncommon in such circumstances.
“I know. I really do. He should’ve dropped it.”
She nodded again. “It’s hard to understand. I don’t get it. What was he thinking?”
“It is hard. And it will be hard again later, once you look back on it and wonder if there was another way you could have handled it. But, trust me, it was a valid shoot. You saved my ass.”
That seemed to have an impact on Katie. She nodded, still processing, but she had already completed the first stage of accepting the situation at a record pace. That alone was impressive, but the clock was ticking.
“We have to go – now.” He helped her to her feet. As before, he collected the phones of all three of the victims and they trotted down the trail and back to the car. Before they heard any police sirens or saw any flashing lights, Carson was back on Route 1 and headed away from the scene at exactly the posted speed limit. Katie leaned her head against the passenger window, struggling to keep her eyes open while Carson went north, taking the long way around the bay in order to throw off anyone who might have seen something they shouldn’t have.
The first hints of a lighter blue were just starting to appear over the Atlantic Ocean as Carson helped Katie up the stairs and back into their room. Not bothering to undress, she collapsed on the bed as Carson, who was still far too excited to sleep, perused his newly-found phones. Like the last time, it didn’t take him long to find a very interesting tidbit, and he used this information to formulate a new plan of action for the following evening, one that had a chance of resolving this issue once and for all.
Now, if I could just figure out some way to survive my own idea.
Chapter 14
The Best Laid Plans
A shaft of bright light turned the inside of Katie’s eyelids from black to a milky brown, prompting her to frown and roll away from the offending rays. Pain pierced her forehead just above her nose, making it seem like a Herculean effort to open one eye and survey her surroundings. Something seemed off, but her exhausted mind was far too involved in trying to get her body moving to consider such abstract thoughts.
She could see into the bathroom, noting the dearth of movement. That’s bad. Why? Picking her head up, she realized the room was empty. Her gun rested on the nightstand and her shoes were on the floor. But that was it.
Wait! Where’s Carson? Although she had been nearly catatonic on the ride home and passed out when they came into the room, he had been with her then, and now he was gone. What the hell?
The rational part of her mind told her nothing was amiss, that if someone had taken him from the room by force, she would have either heard something, be with him, or been lying on the bed with a rather unattractive hole in
