My heart skids to a halt. No longer tumbling uncontrollably, it simply stops and I sit there, shocked and waiting. Waiting for it to start again.
“I wanted to release you.” Thud, my heart’s weak but it’s working. “I told them to watch where you go if we released you.”
“So nice of you,” I whisper because that’s all I can manage. It hurts to talk. My chest is so tight. I’m fighting to breathe but trying to look strong.
What did he say?
I can’t even focus. Officer Walsh said something. He’s fuzzy. The room is so hazy.
“Open it up!” he screams, his grip tight on the bars across from me. “Who did she talk to?” he questions the silent Walters.
“No one, I swear. No one saw her! This doesn’t make sense.” Whether he’s my friend or my foe, Walters’s eyes flash with fear. I see it. I’m sure of it. At least he doesn’t want me to die. It’s a minor consolation as needles dance on my skin.
Their voices blend and blur. I’m upright one moment, then in the next I’m falling. Walsh grabs me, his fingers in a bruising hold. I can’t breathe, but I can’t move either. I can’t swallow.
I’m blinking though. I can blink for a moment.
“You aren’t getting out of this, Laura.” Walsh uses my first name but it’s shaky. My lips twitch in an effort to respond. Nothing comes out though. Still, I can blink. Even as I get colder and fear wraps itself around me. “Not this way,” he adds as he shakes his head.
“Medic!” Cody Walsh screams. His skin reddens, panic overriding every other expression. “Medic,” he screams out again behind him, laying me down on the hard cement floor.
His hands push against my chest, and then his mouth is on mine. It takes me a long moment to realize it’s CPR. I can’t breathe. I’m not breathing.
“Is there a pulse?” a new voice says. I barely hear it as my vision turns black.
My hearing is the last sense to go. “I’m losing her!”
Seth
A thick coat of dirt and blood covers my hands. That’s why the knob slips at first. I tell myself that’s why it slips and not because I’m on death’s doorstep.
The rusted metal turns in my hand on the second try and even that small movement sends a bolt of pain through my right side. Still on my knees, I lean against the doorframe as the backdoor to the worn, wood-paneled lodge creaks open. Someone built a house back here. The three windows in front were the only light in the darkness on this side of the forest. I could barely see it in the woods but as I came closer, I knew there was someone here. The red paint is long worn off and the back porch is barely stable, but at the very least, the lights are on.
It has to be hours since I’ve been shot. Hours of losing blood. Hours of fighting to stay alive. All I can hear is the rush of my breath as I sneak into the backdoor of the house.
The last thing I need is to get caught, or to unknowingly walk into the enemy’s territory. I don’t know shit about who lives here or how far I’ve traveled. It feels like miles and miles.
I swallow thickly, forcing myself to stand up and lean against the wall. I’m quiet enough, but the dirt comes with me, serving as evidence of my arrival.
The creak of the door is muted in the kitchen. The old linoleum floors haven’t been swept in a long damn time. It takes three steps for me to close the distance to the counter and reach for a neatly folded dishrag. The kitchen is darker than I was expecting, faintly lit by a single light from the room beside it, most likely the living room since a dining room can be seen to my left.
The blood is still damp on the gunshot wound, but some of the skin has dried to my shirt. I grimace as I pull it back, revealing that the bullet passed through me cleanly.
Sucking in a breath, I press the dish towel to the wound both on my front and back and then open every drawer searching for plastic wrap or duct tape—anything to keep the cloth pressed against the wound. I’ve already lost too much blood. The lightheadedness tells me that.
I only spare a few minutes to address the gunshot. I don’t have any more time to give it. I need a phone. Bracing myself against the counter, I eye the place. It looks like it hasn’t been updated since the ’80s and I’m praying that means there’s a landline somewhere. Every step I take elicits a short groan from the warped floorboards.
There are no photos to go by, nothing to tell me if this is a family home or an old man living alone in this house. It could be a hunting lodge this far out in the woods, but I don’t see any guns or trophy mounts. I have no fucking idea. I search the walls of the kitchen then the outlets before coming up empty-handed and moving to the living room. A TV was left on, but no one’s there. Someone is in this house; I don’t know who and I don’t know where, but I know there’s someone here. I wish I had my gun on me. I wish I had anything to go by. Anything at all, but I have nothing. It only takes me half a second to see the house phone, complete with a curled-up cord, on what looks like a foldout dinner table next to the worn, brown reclining chair in the back right of the room.
If I had to guess, I’d say an old man lives here. It reminds me of my grandfather’s place when I was younger. The foldout dinner tables, the bared shag rug and the faux wood panel walls. Even the off-white color of the ceiling and the scent that lingers. It’s from years of smoke.
If I close my eyes a second too long, I can see my pops rocking in the corner chair, smoking a cigar and telling me to keep it down because he can’t hear the TV.
For a moment, it’s too real. Too lifelike in my mind.
The vision is quickly wiped away at the sound of a toilet being flushed behind me. From the back hall.
The realization is jarring and I hide behind the threshold of the door. My back is pressed against it as the sound of a door opening and closing echoes through the first floor. There’s no light in this hall, although it looks like it leads to a garage or maybe a basement. The stairs to the second floor are to the left, back by the dining room.
I pray whoever it is takes their ass upstairs to bed.
I don’t have a gun or a weapon; I don’t have the energy or strength to defend myself. If my grandfather saw a strange man with a gunshot wound in his house late at night, I can guarantee he wouldn’t have asked questions. Shoot first. Or else the other guy might.
I’m as still as can be, barely breathing as I listen to the heavy footsteps. They’re slow, giving more evidence that whoever is here is older or at the very least tired.
I listen to him open the fridge, every sound he makes sounding fainter and fainter as I wait with bated breath, feeling the life slowly slip from me.
He grabs whatever he was looking for and goes back into the living room. I’m just behind the wall, so close to the phone, but blocked by his presence.
My mind immediately wanders to Laura and in a helpless moment, I contemplate begging the man to listen and not attack me. I picture myself walking out into the light, hands up in the air, pleading with him to let me use the phone. How would he react to a dying man who snuck into his house?
I don’t trust him. I don’t trust the situation. I trust no one and if I fail, Laura dies.
I remember every moment I had with her and recalling every second I took advantage of her destroys me, warping my mind and my emotions.