Sometimes time stands still and though you know you should act, you’re incapable of even the slightest movement and often, your first move is a fraction in the reverse of where you want to go before the momentum changes. That’s what happened.
In a flash, that needling warning shot up Matthew’s spine, but it was a second too late. She had her. He knew Dane wanted to remove the gag from Kim’s mouth so she could hear the rest of the story or just to see what the hell the psycho wanted to add. For the most part, what this Paul guy had to say made more sense than the woman that tried to kill Dane in the backseat of the truck earlier. After listening to everything, Matthew didn’t care. He wanted to kill the both of them. But that wasn’t Dane, despite what she’d have you think.
Kim, having worked her binds loose, jumped up into Dane and yanked the gun away from her and before Matthew could pull her back, two things happened. Paul jumped in between them and then the gun that Kim held exploded.
“Who’s shot?” Matthew yelled but no one answered right away. When Matthew looked over, there was a red bloom spreading out on Paul’s side.
Despite the gun in Kim’s hands, Dane tackled her on the ground and somehow got the weapon away from her.
Two more shots went off and then a third echoed in the parking garage. And that’s when Matthew realized it was Dane who stood over Kim’s body. It was over. She was through.
“Dane.”
She still aimed down at the woman who so easily took her father’s life. Her elbows were nearly locked. Her back right leg stuttered but she couldn’t take her eyes off the woman she’d just killed.
“Dane?” he said again and eased into her, put his left hand under her left elbow and took the gun from her right. “She’s dead. Come on. We need to get out of here before someone comes to look.”
She turned around and went to Paul first.
“Put pressure on it. Matthew, call an ambulance.”
“Dane, no one’s going to come.”
But the guy on the ground was in a really bad way. He grabbed Dane’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Dane. It wasn’t what I meant to happen. You have to believe me. I would take it back any day. I’d give my life for you.”
“Shut up. You nearly did. She was aiming at me before you stepped in. Come on. You’re not dying here. Help me, Matthew.”
They lifted him even though Matthew thought he was a dead man already. The blood loss alone told him so. But he couldn’t tell her that. They got him into the truck. Dane sat with him and kept pressure on the wound. They drove back to the hospital as quickly as they could. Matthew did the talking in the emergency room. They said they found him that way on the street but didn’t know who he was. Dane never took her eyes off Paul.
Once they put him on a gurney, Paul grabbed a handful of Matthew’s shirt. “Take care of her,” he said and then passed out.
Dane walked a few more steps as the doctors rushed the gurney through double doors. Matthew had to pull her back. She didn’t cry but he knew it was all right there under the surface. What concerned him more was that she didn’t talk, either. He put her in the truck. Blood covered their hands, both of them. She never said a word, just looked down somewhere far away.
Later, somewhere keeping to the backroads east of Chicago, when the blood dried to the sticky point, he couldn’t take it anymore and pulled off the side of the road. It was getting dark then. He opened a bottle of water and washed his hands the best he could and wiped down the steering wheel. And then went around to the other side of the truck and made Dane hold her hands out over the ground as cars rushed by. He washed her hands of the tacky blood too. And then took a clean part of his shirt and with the water dabbed off a bloody smudge from the side of her jaw.
“He probably didn’t make it,” she finally said.
He didn’t want to confirm his thoughts. He shook his head because her statement sounded more like a question. “I doubt it. I’m sorry, Dane.”
She nodded.
Because he thought if anyone needed a drink right now, it was Dane Talbot, he said, “Do you…want one of these?”
To his surprise she shook her head and gave him a slight glance. “I don’t…need that now.”
He didn’t understand but he wasn’t going to question her.
They checked into a hotel later that night, off the side of the highway. She was still miles away. He helped her take her clothes off and he put them both in the shower and scrubbed her down with hotel soap in hopes he could take away some of the recent memories and the pain from both the present and the past.
After that, he dressed her in one of his big shirts, put socks on her feet and then put her in bed and held her back close to his chest all night.
At the break of dawn, he was surprised to see her eyes were already open as she watched the first pale light of day through the windows, the birds just beginning to sing.
“Dane, are you, all right?” The back of his hand caressed the soft skin of her arm as a comfort. “You should sleep a little more.”
She shook her head. “We should get going.”
“Yeah. It’ll take a few days to get back to Montana.”
She turned over to look at him, and away from the rising sun.
“We’re not going to Montana.”
“What do you mean?”
She didn’t say right away, but then she stared at the empty space next to him and said, “One down…one to go.”