She could have shot him. Accidentally, the first time, when he’d appeared from somewhere in the junk pile, calling her name, and then on purpose the next time, when her brain had processed the whole freaking fiasco and decided that, yes, not only had Burke showed up at her shoot-out, but he was proposing to go running into shotgun fire to drag Gillies off that dock.
Jess could have shot him herself, to save the heartbreak later.
But she didn’t shoot Burke. She kept her pistol trained on the wreck as he inched up toward the dock, and when he glanced over to where she crouched, half covered behind an old fishing tote, she waited until she saw him nod to her. Then she stood and opened fire on the ship at where she’d last seen the shotgun, and she fired and kept firing and could hardly bear to watch as Burke dashed down the length of the dock to where Gillies lay perforated and probably dying.
Burke made it to Gillies at about the same time as Jess emptied her magazine. She glanced across the dock and saw Burke bend over in front of Gillies and grab him under the shoulders and start dragging him back down the dock.
She slammed another magazine into her pistol and swung around toward the ship again, and as she did she saw Dougie Bealing rise up with the shotgun from the main deck now, swinging that boomstick he was carrying down toward Burke. There was no time to think; Jess squeezed off as many shots as it took to knock Bealing backward, and as Bealing fell, that big shotgun fired off, and on the dock Burke flinched, and Jess thought, for a heart-stopping moment, he’d been shot.
But Burke hadn’t been shot. He kept going. Dragged Gillies backward as the last echoes from Jess’s pistol and Bealing’s shotgun faded away. Jess kept the ship covered as she scrambled to the dock, meeting Burke at the threshold between gravel and lumber and helping him pull Gillies to the clearing.
Gillies was alive, she saw, though he was hurt bad, bleeding through his county jacket through multiple wounds to the chest. Jess helped Burke lay him down, gasping, on the crushed gravel rock of the clearing, and before she could ask, Burke was slipping out of his own coat and tearing his shirt into strips, pressing it into Gillies’s chest to try to staunch the bleeding.
Jess still wasn’t sure what Burke was doing here, but there was no time to ask questions, not now.
“I have to call this in,” she told Burke. “I need an ambulance, stat.”
Burke looked up from tending to Gillies. Met her eyes. “Do it,” he said. “He’s not going to last if you don’t.”
She started, “But you—”
“I’ll get out of here before they come,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.”
She stared into his eyes a beat, mind racing, but she didn’t say anything. And then Gillies gasped again and looked up, and his eyes saw Burke and went wide. “Burke?” he said, weak.
Jess stared at Gillies. Wondered if Burke had banked on this, on Gillies recognizing him. Wondered what he would do.
But Burke didn’t react.
“Just hold on,” he told Gillies. “Hold on, buddy. We’ve got help coming.” He looked up at Jess again. “Call it in,” he said. “Hurry.”
* * *
He waited until Jess had called in the shooting. Until she’d put down her radio and set to helping Gillies. Until it seemed as though she had the situation under control.
Until she’d looked up and met his eyes over Gillies’s prone form, told him softly, “Go,” and he’d understood that whatever she thought of him, whatever she believed he’d done, she wasn’t going to turn him in to the law.
Then Burke stood. He left Jess with Gillies, but he didn’t run for the trees. Not right away.
He went back to the dock. Hurried down the length of it toward the wreck at the outer end, and it felt to Burke like crossing the Rubicon. He wanted to be with Jess. He was tired of being without her, tired of the death that had followed him since he’d arrived in this town. He didn’t want to do what he believed must come next, but he’d come here for a reason that he needed to see through.
Burke reached the end of the dock and climbed the ladder quickly to the deck, where a pistol lay on the steel and a man lay beside it, flat on his back, struggling to breathe and bleeding from a hole in his chest. The man’s hands were pressed to the red blossom on his shirt, and Mason knew he’d be dead within minutes.
Another man lay dead a few feet away, a big man with a scraggly beard clutching on to a shotgun. Mason looked at the men close and could tell the first man was Jordan, from the description Rengo had given him.
He knelt beside Jordan. The dying man watched him, expressionless, his hands bloodied.
“I need to know who killed Brock Boyd,” Mason said softly. “I don’t have much time, and neither do you.”
Jordan stared up at him and struggled to breathe and said nothing.
“I know you knew Charlene Todd and I suspect it might have been you that killed her,” Mason said.
Jordan still didn’t answer, and Mason cast his eyes around the entryway for something he could use. He didn’t want to hurt this man, but he didn’t want to leave here and for this violence to have all been for nothing.
“You tell me who killed Boyd,” Mason said. “Tell me why he’s dead.”
Jordan exhaled, shallow and ragged. Wincing at the effort. He blinked and his eyes shifted and he seemed to be seeing Mason clearer. He muttered something and it came out soundless, just spittle and blood flecked on his lips.
“What’s that you say?” Mason leaned down closer as Jordan tried to find another breath, and it took some time and was obviously painful, but eventually Jordan found it.
He whispered, just barely loud enough for Mason to hear him, “Broomstick.”
“Broomstick?” Mason repeated, hoping Jordan would find enough life left inside him to elaborate, but it was too late; the man’s eyes went glassy and still, and he stared up past Mason and said nothing more.
And Mason waited, but Jordan didn’t move again, or breathe or blink, just lay there in silence with the hint of a smile on his face. Mason could hear sirens on shore now, shouted voices and slamming doors, the rev of engines and the squeal of brakes, and he knew he’d got all he could out of Chris Jordan and it was well past time to leave.
He pulled himself to his feet and dropped down to the dock, and ran as fast and as quiet as he could to the shore and the junk piles and the safety of the darkness.