Lisa Gardner - Love You More

“No, no, no,” my daughter was crying. “Let me go. I want my mommy. I want my mommy! ”

Shotgun on the ground-couldn’t risk it with my child so close to the target. Finding the rifle instead, yanking out the magazine, fumbling in my left pocket. Always load an M4’s stack magazine minus two in order to keep it feeding evenly, my police training dictated.

Kill them all, my mother’s instinct roared.

I hefted up the rifle, racked the first round.

Fresh blood oozing from my shoulder. Sluggish fingers curling laboriously around the trigger.

The woman towered over Sophie. “Get in the car, you stupid little brat,” she screeched.

“Let me go!”

Another scream. Another smack.

Anchoring the butt of the assault rifle against my bleeding shoulder and sighting the dark-haired woman now beating my child.

Sophie crying, arms curled around her head, trying to block the blows.

I stepped clear of the woods. Zeroed in on my target.

“Sophie!” I called out loudly across the crackling, acrid night. “Sophie. Run! ”

As I’d hoped, the unexpected sound of my voice captured their attention. Sophie turned around. The woman jerked sharply upright, trying to pinpoint the intruder.

She looked right at me. “Who the-”

I pulled the trigger.

Sophie never glanced behind her. At the body that dropped suddenly, at the head that exploded beneath the onslaught of a.223 slug and turned into a puddle of crimson snow.

My daughter never turned. She heard my voice and she ran to me.

Just as a gun cocked in my ear, and Gerard Hamilton said, “You fucking bitch.”

D.D. and Bobby followed the GPS system through a winding maze of rural roads, until they came to a narrow dirt road lined by fire trucks and grim-faced firefighters. Bobby killed the lights. He and D.D. bolted out of the car, flashing their creds.

News was short and bad.

Firefighters had arrived just in time to hear screams followed by gunshots. Residential home was an eighth of a mile straight up, surrounded by deep woods. Judging by smoke and heat, the building was probably fully engulfed in flames. Firefighters were now waiting for police to secure the scene, so they could get in there and do their thing. Waiting was not something any of them were good at, particularly as one of the guys swore the screaming came from a kid.

Bobby told D.D. to stay in the car.

In response, D.D. stalked to the rear of her vehicle, where she donned her Kevlar vest, then pulled out the shotgun. She handed the rifle to Bobby. After all, he was the former sniper.

He scowled at her. “I go first. Recon,” he snapped.

“I’ll give you six minutes,” she retorted just as sharply.

Bobby donned his vest, loaded the M4, and walked the edge of the steep property. Thirty seconds later, he disappeared into the snowy woods. And three minutes after that, D.D. hit the trail right behind him.

More sirens in the distance.

Local officers finally arriving at the scene.

D.D. focused on following Bobby’s footsteps.

Smoke, heat, snow. A winter inferno.

Time to find Sophie. Time to get the job done.

– -

Hamilton yanked the rifle from my injured arm. The M4 fell bonelessly from my grasp and he scooped it up. The shotgun was at my feet. He ordered me to pick it up, hand it over.

From the top of the knoll, I could see Sophie running toward me, sprinting across the property below, framed in white-dusted trees and bright red flames.

While the barrel of Hamilton’s gun dug into the sensitive hollow behind my ear.

I started to bend down. Hamilton relented an inch to give me room, and I hurled myself backward into him, yelling wildly, “Sophie, get away! Into the woods. Get away, get away, get away!”

“Mommy!” she screamed, a hundred yards back.

Hamilton pistol-whipped me with his Sig Sauer. I went down hard, my right arm collapsing beneath me. More searing pain. Maybe the sound of something tearing. I had no time to recover. Hamilton hit me again, looming over me, slicing open my cheek, my forehead. Blood pouring down into my face, blinding my eyes as I curled up in the fetal position in the snow.

“You should’ve done what you were told!” he screamed. He was wearing his dress uniform, topped with a knee-length black wool coat, his wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes. Probably donned the ensemble upon receiving news that an officer had been killed in the line of duty. Then, when he realized it was Shane, and that I’d escaped, was still on the loose…

He’d come to get my daughter. Dressed in the official uniform of a Massachusetts State Police lieutenant colonel, he’d come to harm a child.

“You were a trained police officer,” he snapped now, looming over me, blocking out the trees, the fire, the night sky. “If you’d just done what you were told, no one would’ve gotten hurt!”

“Except Brian,” I managed to gasp. “You arranged his death.”

“His gambling problem was out of control. I did you a favor.”

“You kidnapped my daughter. You sent me to prison. Just to make a few extra bucks.”

In response, my commanding officer kicked me full-force in the left kidney, the kind of kick that would have me peeing up blood, assuming I lived that long.

“Mommy, Mommy!” Sophie cried again. I realized with horror that her voice was closer. She was still running toward my voice, clambering over the snowbank.

No , I wanted to cry. Save yourself, get away .

But my voice wouldn’t work anymore. Hamilton had knocked the air from my lungs. My eyes burned with smoke, tears pouring down my face as I gasped and heaved against the snow. Shoulder burned. Stomach cramped.

Black dots dancing before me.

Had to move. Had to get up. Had to fight. For Sophie.

Hamilton reared back with his foot again. He lashed out to hit me square in the chest. This time, I dropped my left arm, caught his foot midkick, and rolled. Caught off guard, Hamilton was jerked forward, falling to one knee in the snow.

So he stopped hitting me with the Sig Sauer and pulled the trigger instead.

The sound deafened me. I felt immediate searing heat, followed by immediate searing pain. My left side. My hand falling down, clutching my waist, as my gaze went up, toward my commanding officer, a man I’d been trained to trust.

Hamilton appeared stunned. Maybe even a little shaken, but he recovered quickly enough, finger back on the trigger.

Just as Sophie crested the knoll and spotted us.

I had a vision. My daughter’s pale, sweet face. Her hair a wild tangle of knots. Her eyes, a bright, brilliant blue as her gaze locked on me. Then she was running, the way only a six-year-old could run, and Hamilton did not exist for her and the woods did not exist for her, nor the scary fire, or the threat of night or the unknown terrors that must have tormented her for days.

She was a little girl who’d finally found her mother and she tore straight toward me, one hand clutching Gertrude, the other arm flung open as she threw herself on top of me and I groaned from both the pain and the joy that burst inside my chest.

“I love you I love you I love you,” I exhaled.

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.”

“Sophie, Sophie, Sophie…”

I could feel her tears hot against my face. It hurt, but I still brought up my hand, cradling the back of her head. I looked at Hamilton, and then I tucked my daughter’s face into the crook of my neck. “Sophie,” I whispered, never taking my gaze off him, “close your eyes.”

My daughter clung to me, two halves of a whole, finally together again.

She closed her eyes.

And I said, in the clearest voice I could muster, “Do it.”