Linda Howard - Kill and Tell

She had fired a pistol before, and a rifle. Her father had taught her those things, too, during those walks in the woods, crouching behind her and helping her hold the heavy weapons steady. She had been only a child, six or seven years old, but the memory was suddenly clear and bright, every image sharp. When Jeanette found out, she was frightened and angry, and they quarreled. Odd how quiet everything was, how still. She centered the sights on his chest and pulled the trigger. The boom was muffled. The recoil jarred her arm.

The slug hit him in the chest, right where she had aimed it. She saw the bloom of red on his white shirt, between the open lapels of the linen jacket he wore. Why, then, did his head kind of explode? Blood and brain matter sprayed out of a large hole on the left side of his head. His eyes bulged a little, and he dropped in a boneless heap.

Abruptly, everything kicked back to normal time. She could hear again, though her ears were ringing. She could see everything in color, with a full field of vision. The harsh smell of cordite burned her nose. And Marc was collapsed on his side in the dirt and gravel.

She dropped the gun and seized him with both hands, hauling him over onto his back. She pressed her fingers into the base of his neck; his pulse was fast, thready. His eyes were half open, watching her, but she knew he was slipping out of consciousness. "I'll… make it," he promised, his voice barely audible.

"You're damn right you will," she said fiercely, tearing his T-shirt open. The edges of the dark hole were blue tinged, and bright red blood continued to bubble and froth as it left his body. She had to get the wound sealed, now. As she turned toward the burly man's body to search it for something usable, a flash of red caught her eye. She whirled back, grabbing up the pistol, crouching over Marc.

"Easy, there," a tall, lean man said, stepping fully into view. He wore a red baseball cap and sunglasses, and he held a pistol in the expert, two-handed grip of cops and other warriors. He surveyed the remains of the senator, then stepped over the body and approached Karen, tucking the pistol into his waistband at the small of his back as he did so.

McPherson's man. "Where have you been, damn it?" she said furiously, dropping the pistol again and scrambling to the other body. She patted all his pockets, searching for a pack of cigarettes. The cellophane wrapper around the pack would make a good seal. Her frantic fingers found only a wallet.

"Damn it, damn it, damn it ! Doesn't anyone smoke anymore?"

"Do you need a cigarette?" the baseball cap man asked politely but with mild puzzlement. She whirled on him with a snarl. "I need a thin piece of plastic to seal that wound." His eyebrows arched over the rims of the sunglasses. Silently, he reached into his front jeans pocket and pulled out a pair of thin latex gloves. "Will these do?"

She snatched them from him. Some gloves were too thick, the latex not pliable enough to do the job, but these were almost paper thin, like the ones put in boxes of hair coloring. "Perfect." Hastily, she slapped a

glove down on Marc's chest, covering the hole and holding it tightly in place. He gasped but immediately began to breathe better as air stopped leaking from his damaged lung. "I need something to wrap around him, to hold this tight," she said. "There are some clothes in a box in there." She jerked her head toward the storage unit behind her. "Cut something up."

"Yes, Ma'am." Baseball Cap looked around for a second, spied the knife in the burly man's throat.

"Jesus Christ, Hoss, you play rough," he said to Marc, a certain amount of admiration in his tone, and stepped over him to lean down and pull the knife free.

Karen looked at the bloody blade and thought of AIDS. She thought of means of sterilization, none of which she had with her. Looking back at Marc, she decided he was in far greater danger of dying from that wound than he was from catching AIDS from a strip of cloth cut with a bloody knife. Baseball Cap was almost frighteningly efficient, plucking a shirt from the box and slitting the seam, then tearing off strips of fabric. The first two he folded before he handed them to Karen, and she pressed them over the wound. He pulled out a dress and repeated the steps, first slitting, then tearing. The resulting strips of cloth were sufficiently long for Karen to wrap around Marc's chest. Baseball Cap helped her do that, holding him upright while she worked. She pulled the fabric as tight as possible, and tied it off with the knot right on top of the wound to apply even more pressure.

"Phone," she said harshly, switching her attention to the next priority.

"I'll take care of it." Baseball Cap jogged down the row of storage units and disappeared out the gate. His progress was silent; he didn't seem to make any noise when he moved. Karen checked Marc's pulse again, watching the second hand of her watch. One thirty-two, way too fast. He was going into shock, his body fighting both blood loss and lack of oxygen, as well as the trauma it had suffered. She dragged his legs up, propping them on the burly man's chest, then positioned herself so her body blocked the sun from Marc's eyes.

"Are you still with me?" she asked, forcing her voice to calmness. He slowly blinked and managed a faint smile. "Yes, Ma'am ," he murmured, duplicating Baseball Cap's sardonic tone. "Status report?"

"The bullet hit your left lung. You've lost a lot of blood, and you're shocky, pulse rapid and thready—" He took a quick, painful breath. "Serious… but survivable."

"Yes." She admitted her fear of the one, her hope for the other. "Stop talking. Baseball Cap has gone to call nine-one-one."

"I need… to talk to him."

"He'll be back." At least, she thought so. He might clear out while the clearing was good. But he returned within a couple of minutes, approaching as silently as he had left, going down on one knee beside Marc. The cap was pulled low, and his sunglasses were very dark, effectively hiding his eyes. His hair was dark brown, Karen noticed that much. She knew, however, that if she walked past him within the next five minutes, minus the cap and sunglasses, she wouldn't recognize him.

"Here." He pulled the pistol from his waistband and reversed it, handed it to Karen. "You'll need this, to match the ballistics. We don't want the cops to come up with any strange bullets, do we? Let's see, what would be a logical sequence of events to account for three dead guys, one wounded, and six weapons, not counting the knife?" He paused. "This is going to get complicated."

"I'll handle it," Marc rasped.

Baseball Cap smiled grimly, little more than a quirk of his lips. Standing, he walked over to the senator's body and stood looking down at it for a moment. "You son of a bitch," he said to the dead man.

"Did you… hear?" Marc asked, gasping again.

"I heard."

Something in the grimness of the tone caught her. Karen looked at the senator's body, then at Baseball Cap. "We both shot him," she said. "At the same time." The bill of the cap dipped once. "Both shots were kills," he said briefly.

"He had my father hunted down and killed." She was surprised at the fierceness of her tone.

"I know." He started to say something else but changed his mind, pressing his lips together. Marc gathered himself. "Can… this man… be linked to you?" He tapped the burly man's body with his heel. Karen understood what he was asking. McPherson had stuck his neck out offering his aid; Marc didn't want anything brought out that would bring the CIA into the situation.

"No. We're clear."

"The… kill book."

"Make it public." Baseball Cap's mouth twisted. "Let everyone know what a bastard Stephen Lake was. It's proof of his motive." His head shifted a little, and Karen knew he was looking at her. "Is he going to be all right?"

"I think so. Yes." She touched Marc's face, and he turned his head against her palm. "But he's not going to be very happy with things for a while."

"You'll keep him in line." In the distance, sirens began to wail. "Jess was right," he murmured. "You're a natural, Chastain. If you ever get bored with local work, give m—give McPherson a call."

"I'll do… that," Marc said, and waved his hand. "Leave, before they… get here. I'll… handle things." Baseball Cap pulled a card out of his pocket. It was a plain white card with a number scribbled on it in pencil. He gave it to Karen. "Call this number, and let us know how he is."

"All right." She slipped it into her jeans pocket.

He raised two fingers to the bill of the cap in brief salute, then walked away, his stride fluid but unhurried, eerily silent.

Karen knelt in the dirt, the bright sun glaring down on her head, and held Marc. He clasped his long fingers around her wrist, and they waited together, listening to the sirens draw closer and closer. Ten hours later, Karen slipped out of Marc's SICU cubicle and went to the pay phone. The surgery had gone well, actually better than she had expected, and feared. The bullet hadn't done as much damage as it could have, because, after piercing Marc's lung, it had lodged in a rib, preventing it from tumbling around. He had required two units of blood, but he was now stable, actually awake, and as unhappy as she had predicted.

She took the white card out of her pocket and punched in the phone number, then her own calling card number. The call was answered on the first ring.

"Yes?" was all he said, but she knew it was Baseball Cap.

"The surgery went well," she reported. "He's stable, will probably be in SICU for another day, and home in a week to ten days."

"Good. Thanks for calling."

Sensing he was about to hang up, she said, "Wait!"

He paused.

Fury bubbled up in her. "What did take you so long to get there, damn it?" she said fiercely, spitting the words out between her teeth.

He sighed, and in the long moment of silence that followed, she thought he wasn't going to answer her. Then he said, "I wanted to know why. I didn't know about the kill book, so… I listened."

"What difference did the why of it make?" she demanded, so angry she was shaking. Marc could have been killed while this man listened .

There was another long pause, then he said, very quietly, "Yours wasn't the only father killed, Miss Whitlaw."

He hung up so gently she barely heard the click on the line, then the dial tone buzzed in her ear. Slowly, she returned the receiver to the cradle and made her way back to SICU. Marc was still awake, his face as white as the pillow beneath his head. He lay very still, not wanting to disturb any of the tubes running into his body in various locations, especially not the ones for which special holes had been made. But his mouth curved into a smile, and he cautiously moved his hand to reach for hers.

She cupped both of her hands around his. "Medina was his father," she blurted. "Baseball Cap, that is." Marc considered it, his eyelids drooping sleepily as the morphine drip worked on him. "Then I'm glad they were both kill shots," he said simply.

Yes. Karen caught her breath. If it was possible for anyone to be killed twice, she and Rick Medina's son had both avenged their fathers.

"I love you," Marc murmured. "Have I told you how damn wonderful you were, snarling 'Doesn't anyone smoke anymore?' You'll make a great trauma nurse."

Somehow, despite everything, he was actually smiling. Karen bent her head and pressed her lips to his hand. "Don't get smart with me," she warned tenderly. "Don't forget, this is my hospital, and I can get the nurses to do all sorts of nasty stuff to you."

He winced and kept on smiling. "They've already done some of it. I think I've lost my virginity."