Born to Die - Lisa Jackson [180]
“Oh, Jesus! Trace!”
Woozy now, the blackness pulling him under, he watched, sliding onto the ground, as she ran to him as if in slow motion. Kicking up snow, the rifle in one hand, a flashlight bobbing in her pocket, she crossed the short, powdery distance and fell to her knees at his side. “Oh, God, you’re hurt!”
“Kacey,” he whispered and reached for her, wanting to wrap his arms around her, to hold her close, feel her warmth, smell her hair ... But his eyes wouldn’t stay open and he was spinning, further and further away ...
“Wait . . . Let me see how badly you’re injured.... Oh, dear Christ, Trace . . .” He heard her sharp intake of breath and saw that she was focused on the dead woman lying next to him. “Oh, my God. Who?” she whispered, then clearing her throat, she moved close to the woman who was nearly her twin. Leaning over the body, she searched for a pulse at the woman’s neck, pushed her ear next to her nostrils. “Gone,” she whispered, then dragged her gaze from the body that was so like her own. Touching him on the shoulder, she said gently, “We have to get you to a hospital!”
He was drifting away, his eyelids leaden, “But Eli?” he forced out. “Where’s Eli?”
“I don’t know,” she said softly, holding him close. He drank in the smell of her, felt her warm, wet cheek against his own as the wintry world, like one of those snow globes turned upside down, seemed to spin around him.
“No,” he said fighting to stay conscious. He had to find his son. Had to!
“We’ll find him,” she promised over the shattering wail of sirens. “You just hang in. You hear me? Trace? Trace! You just stay with me . . .”
But he didn’t. One second he heard her voice, the next he was floating away, wondering how this woman he loved could be two, one dead, one alive.
He sank into himself, heard voices ... men and women . . . couldn’t respond.
Kacey’s alive . . . she’s alive . . . but Eli . . .
He loved them both . . .
“Don’t you leave me, Trace O’Halleran!” she yelled at him from somewhere far off. “Damn it, Trace, it took me thirty-five years to find you and you’d better not die on me. Do you hear me? Stay with me.” Her voice broke. “Come on, Trace ... come on. I love you. Oh, Holy Christ, I love you!”
I love you, too . . .
She was losing him!
Right here, right now, Trace O’Halleran was dying in her arms.
And the woman lying next to him, dead in the snow, she was now certain must be Leanna, his ex-wife, probably another one of Gerald Johnson’s sperm bank children, and mother to Eli.
“Hang in there,” she ordered Trace as the sound of sirens blasted around them and lights bobbed up the driveway.
She didn’t look over her shoulder but prayed the EMTs had the equipment to save him. He’d lost a lot of blood, but she wasn’t going to let him die. Not on her watch. Quickly, she stripped him of his pants, yanking out the flashlight from her pocket to get a good look at the bullet wound in his thigh. Blood was pumping out of the hole in his flesh and she suspected his femoral artery had been hit. She crossed one hand over the other and pressed them to the wound just as she heard, “Hey! Over here!” from a deep voice yelling near the house. Then footsteps and heaving breaths and conversation swirled around her in the snow. “We’ll take over, ma’am,” someone said and she felt a man’s hand on her shoulder.
“But I’m a doctor—”
“Holy Christ, there’s another one!” He started bending over Leanna’s body.
“She’s dead.”
“Hey! Over here!” A woman shouted from the vicinity of Cam’s corpse. “Holy shit, what happened here. Looks like goddamned Armageddon!”
“Here, ma’am . . . I’ve got him now,” the EMT said, turning back to Trace.
“But I’m—”
“A doctor. I know.” He was firm. “Hey, Annie,” he called over his shoulder as Kacey was vaguely aware of colored lights strobing the night. Red and blue flashes through the ever-falling snow. “I could use some help over here! This one’s in shock,” the EMT said and glanced up at Kacey.
The O’Halleran ranch was a madhouse.
All hell had broken loose before Alvarez and Pescoli arrived,