Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris [30]
I catapulted back to my feet so fast I wobbled, aware that cold air was pouring in the window, inexplicably. I looked down at my cold chest. It was wet—not with rain, but with red spots. My T-shirt was ruined. I don’t know why I cared. But I think I screamed, because I already understood on a subterranean level that Tolliver had been shot, that I was cut with glass and covered with blood, and that our world had completely changed in the space of a second.
Six
I must have unlocked the door in answer to the pounding, because Matthew was in the room, and I was not being any help to Tolliver because I was standing there looking down at him, my hands held out in front of me because I’d touched my face and my hands were covered with blood. Since my hands were dirty I didn’t want to touch Tolliver.
Matthew was on his knees beside his son. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and hit 911, though it required more concentration than anything I’d ever done. I gasped out the motel and its location, and I think I said we needed an ambulance immediately, and I said “sniper,” because I was thinking of the word.
In a thought that went by so quickly I couldn’t catch its trailing ends, I was sorry I’d mentioned a sniper because maybe the ambulance wouldn’t come because the driver was scared, and then I tossed that idea overboard and joined Matthew on the carpet, facing him over Tolliver’s body.
I’d been shot at through a window before, and it had been frightening. I’d had glass all over me then, too. But this was so much worse, terrible, it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, because it had happened to Tolliver. That was all I could think of, the eeriness of such a thing happening twice, but I tried to yank myself out of the horror and I tried to help. Matthew was pulling off his shirt and folding it, and he pressed it to the bloodiest spot.
“Hold this, you idiot,” he said, and I put my hands on the pad formed by the shirt. It was soaking through with blood under my fingers.
If he hadn’t rushed back to the door so quickly, I would have accused him of doing this to Tolliver, but I just didn’t think. It was an idea I definitely would have adopted if it had even occurred to me.
Tolliver’s eyes opened. He was pale, bewildered. “What happened?” he said. “What happened? Honey, are you okay?”
“Yes, okay,” I said, pressing down with all my might. “Listen, they’re coming, baby.” I couldn’t remember ever calling Tolliver “baby” in all the years we’d known each other. “They’re coming, and they’ll fix you up. You’re not hurt bad, you’re going to be okay.”
“Was there a bomb?” he said. “Was there an explosion?” His voice faltered. “Dad, what happened? Harper’s hurt.”
“Don’t you worry about Harper,” Matthew said. “She’s fine. She’s going to be okay.” He was examining Tolliver’s wounds with his fingers, pulling Tolliver’s shirt up to examine the skin.
Then Tolliver’s eyes rolled up and his face went slack.
“Oh, Jesus!” I almost moved my hands, but even in the panic of the moment I knew I mustn’t. I’d held on for what felt like hours. It was no time to let go.
“He’s not dead,” Matthew yelled. “He’s not dead.”
But he looked dead to me.
“No,” I said. “He’s not dead. He’s not. He can’t be. It’s his right shoulder, and that’s not the heart. He can’t die from this.” I knew what a fool I was being, but there was no shame in it right at that moment.
“No, he won’t die,” his father said.
I opened my mouth to scream at Matthew, though I don’t know what I would have said, and then I clamped my lips together because I heard an ambulance.
There were