From the back, Josie heard the squeal of a zipper and the ripping of Velcro as Sawyer tore into the first aid pack. “Jesus,” he said. “I don’t have anything. I can’t take her vitals. I can’t—”
“Do whatever you can,” Josie told him. “I’ll get us there as fast as I can.”
“Hang on, Lisette,” he muttered. “Her airway is clear. Pulse is thready. Multiple wounds to her chest and abdomen. I’ve got gauze. Not a lot, but I can use what’s here to pack some of these. No sucking wounds, thank God.”
“QuikClot,” Josie said. “We all carry it in our cars. There should be some in the kit.”
QuikClot was a hemostatic dressing. It looked like gauze, but it had an agent in it that stopped bleeding more quickly in wounds. Soldiers in combat often carried it with them. When it became available for civilians to purchase, the Chief had added it to the first aid kids carried by all officers on Denton’s force.
“Got it,” Sawyer said. “This will help. Lisette! Lisette! Stay with me.”
Josie pushed the patrol car as hard as she could, doing nearly eighty miles an hour down the long mountain road into town. Once she hit the residential area, she slowed only enough so that she didn’t hit anyone or anything. It felt as though the hospital was hours away, when they’d only been driving for minutes. Josie took the long hill up to the hospital at sixty miles per hour and screeched into the Emergency Room ambulance bay. The patrol officer whose vehicle she’d taken must have called ahead, because Dr. Nashat and several of his staff members were already outside with a gurney, waiting for them. By the time Josie got out of the driver’s seat and limped around the car, they already had Lisette strapped in. Dr. Nashat, one of his residents, and four nurses jogged alongside as they rushed Lisette inside. Josie looked to her right to see Sawyer standing there, arms slack at his sides, covered in Lisette’s blood.
He turned toward her. His expression was a combination of fear and anger. “What the hell happened out there, Josie?”
Josie swallowed the hysteria that rose in her throat. “Someone was in the woods and they—”
He advanced on her, cutting her off. “Someone was lurking in the woods and they decided to shoot an eighty-four-year-old woman?”
“No, I don’t know. We were just standing there, and she saw something, a gun.”
“I thought you guys were looking for an eight-year-old girl, Josie.”
“We were. But there’s more to it—”
He pointed a finger toward the Emergency Department doors. Josie noticed his entire arm shook. “What kind of person would shoot an eighty-four-year-old woman, Josie? She walks with a goddamn walker. She’s not a threat. You’re a police officer. Didn’t you have your gun? What in the hell happened out there? You’re not hurt. You’re not shot.”
Josie couldn’t seem to push the words out. How it had been so dark and happened so quickly, and how she couldn’t see anything. How she’d already been shot at once that day. How the killer was aiming for her, not Lisette. The feeling of Lisette’s steel grip on her arm, the way that Lisette had whipped Josie off-balance like she weighed nothing, how her body rose up in front of Josie before the second shot—all of those things kept repeating in Josie’s mind. Sensory memories, shadows across her shock-addled brain.
“She put herself in front of me,” Josie choked.
“What?”
“She was protecting me.”
“Bullshit,” Sawyer spat.
But he hadn’t been there. He was Lisette’s grandson by blood, but he didn’t really know her. He hadn’t spent a lifetime knowing her. He had no idea the lengths that Lisette would go to protect the ones she loved. He had no idea the things she had done to protect Josie from the very moment that Josie came into her life. If he did, he might not look at Lisette the same. Of course Lisette would protect Josie—instinctively and reflexively. Completely without thought or regard to her own safety. In that horrible moment, Josie was a scrawny kid again and Lisette was imbued with the strength of a mighty lioness whose ferocity overcame any physical limitations she might have.
“She shouldn’t have been out there,” Sawyer said. “In the dark, out in the woods. What is wrong with you?”
“Me?” Josie shouted. “My grandmother is a grown woman. No one has ever told her what to do, and no one is starting now.”
“Our grandmother,” Sawyer said. He turned away from her and brushed his cheek with his sleeve. When he turned back, Josie saw that he had left a streak of Lisette’s blood below his eye.
“I’m sorry,” Josie said. “Our grandmother.”
She walked over to him and tried to touch his hand, but he jerked away from her. He turned away again, his shoulders trembling. Josie waited a moment. She tried to touch him again, but he moved out of reach. “Just go,” he said. “Go check on her. I’ll call Noah.”
Josie realized then that she didn’t have her phone. It was somewhere along the tree line with her gun. “Tell him he has to secure the area where she was shot. It’s a crime scene.”
Without looking at her, he nodded. Josie ran through the trauma bay doors. She followed the sounds of tense shouting and Dr. Nashat’s voice barking instructions. They had taken Lisette to one of the glass enclosures, but the door stood open. Lisette’s clothes had been cut off and discarded on the floor. Her arms, chest, and abdomen were peppered with small round wounds where the buckshot pellets had penetrated her clothes and skin. Blood leaked from each one and smeared across her flesh. Some bled faster than others, and two of the nurses worked quickly to staunch the flow. Another nurse tried to get her vital signs. Dr. Nashat tweezed pellets out of her arms and dropped them into a basin. An
