Ed Gorman - Ticket to Ride

I had a gun, but Adair had Lynn. “You could’ve helped, too, McCain. People always say you help when they’re in trouble. You should have figured out that that fire was arson. You owed it to Karen.”

“I didn’t know Karen.”

“Everybody knew Karen, and everybody loved her, too.”

Any other time, his madness would have made him a forlorn figure living out some impossible romance in his mind. But he had the gun and he had Lynn and he had already killed two and maybe three times, depending on how William Hughes was. Pity him afterward, Samuel Johnson had said of hanging killers in old London. That applied here too.

He began moving in small jerky steps toward the hall. He wasn’t having an easy time of it. Shuffling along with a hostage in tow isn’t easy. You have to keep a tight grip on her while always keeping track of what the other guy is doing. The hostage could make a break for it; the other guy could make a sudden move you couldn’t respond to quickly enough.

Then I realized his plan. He wasn’t going to take her with him. He was going to use her to get to the car and kill her before he got in it. Nobody was guiltier than Lynn, by his logic. Karen had been her sister. She’d betrayed Karen by not avenging her death. He’d killed the men involved. Now he would have to kill her too.

“God, stop him, Sam! Stop him!” Lynn’s voice was raw, her face a portrait of confusion and shock. Spittle ran down the left side of her mouth. Her knees kept buckling. Adair had to redouble his grip every thirty seconds; otherwise, she’d slide out of his grasp. She slipped into the low moan I’d heard many times in people who were starting to withdraw from reality following a traumatic event. She was coming apart. I had to help her.

I forced myself to stand up straight. For the moment, Adair was wrestling with her to keep her upright. She had to cooperate. If he had to drag her, he’d leave himself open. I’d get an easy shot at him.

I took two steps and started weaving. A new layer of freezing sweat caused me to shiver. Just moments ago I’d been boiling despite the air conditioning.

As I righted myself, my eyes met Adair’s. He had Lynn back under his control. He was watching me closely. I assumed that to him, I might have been trying to distract him, give Lynn a chance to bolt. He couldn’t be sure whether I was for real or just acting.

“God, McCain, are you all right?” Lynn said.

“Doesn’t look like your savior’s going to save you.” Adair vised her neck even tighter.

The worst of the cold was gone, one large convulsion of it that had nearly knocked me down. My palm was so sweaty, I had to squeeze the gun so tight that it hurt. I was still dizzy. I needed to move with great deliberation.

Adair started moving again. They went three or four steps and she kicked him. Both his face and his voice registered the pain. For a millisecond his grip loosened, just enough time to take a single unencumbered step. But he was quick and he was pissed. He swung her back to him and smashed the side of her head with the bottom of his gun. She slumped in his arm. Blood snaked down from her temple. He was better coordinated than I’d guessed. His eyes had never left me.

But he paid a price for knocking her out, and as he started moving again, he discovered what the cost was. Conscious, she walked with him. Unconscious, she was dead weight. An ungainly hundredpound bag of flesh, bone, blood, and water. He cursed. He couldn’t just hold her now, he had to hold her and drag her.

Another convulsion rocked me. I needed to reach out for something to lean against, but there was nothing. A drunkard’s walk as I tried to move forward. One step, two steps, three-

This time I couldn’t stop myself from starting to fall. I didn’t sprawl, though. I was able to hold my descent to one knee.

And that was when it happened. I wasn’t sure of anything until it was over. Instinct guided me. I was too weak to think anything through.

When I dropped to my knee, he opened fire. But he hadn’t been fast enough to follow me down. Two blasts went over my head and tore into some kind of glass in the living room.

He got so intent on killing me that he loosened the arm that held Lynn. She slipped from his grasp to the floor, leaving him unprotected.

I fell sideways because of sheer weakness. He blasted at me again but again he wasn’t quick enough. He’d fired just as I slumped over.

I had a target and I took it. Somehow before it all came crashing down, I got a shot off. I was conscious long enough to see him start to crumble, an expression of complete surprise on his face.

Then Linda Raines called my name and I was gone.

The second day, the doc let me have roast beef and mashed potatoes for dinner. My mother visited twice and told me that my father was a bit stronger than when I’d last seen him. Molly and Doran stopped by to tell me that they were off to New York to meet his editor and to find the nastiest lawyer available for his false-arrest suit against Cliffie. Jamie brought me the new issue of Ellery Queen and informed me that Turk wouldn’t be suing me after all, because his lawyer wouldn’t do anything until Turk paid off his bill. And since Turk was broke and Jamie wouldn’t loan him any money, the suit was off.

Judge Whitney appeared all imperious and immediately began telling the nurses on the floor how to rearrange my room and complained that they weren’t stopping in to check on me often enough. And Wendy brought me the newspaper that told of Reverend Cartwright’s second failed attempt to destroy Beatles records.

LOCAL PASTOR NEARLY DROWNS; SAVED BY PROTESTOR

Yes, it seemed that Cartwright’s attempt to start tossing albums and 45s off Indian Creek Hill turned disastrous when a strong wind came up and blew him right off the cliff and into the water sixty feet below. The only person thinking quickly and clearly enough to help him turned out to be one of the high-school boys who’d shown up to taunt him. The fifteen-year-old dove off the cliff, located the drowning pastor in the choppy water, and then swam him to the narrow shoreline, where he administered CPR. All that would be left for Cartwright now would be to order a nuclear attack on his ever-increasing mountain of Beatles material.

The third night, Wendy snuck in a sausage pizza and two cans of beer inside a shopping bag. It was fun hiding it all from the nurses. Wendy was really good at playing innocent, even though the two nurses who came by sniffed the air and looked at her suspiciously. Around eight thirty when one of the nurses popped back in to tell her that visiting hours were over, Wendy said that since we were getting married this coming weekend, she would appreciate it if she could stay in my room all night.

The nurse, an older sentimental soul, gave one of those smiles contestants on quiz shows do when they’ve just won a new Chevrolet. “That’s very nice, miss. I’ll tell the people at the desk so they’ll let the night nurses know.”

When she left I said, “That’s a pretty expensive pizza. Marriage.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t want to get married any more than you do, Sam. But I like having a boyfriend.”

“So you wouldn’t marry me even if I asked you?”

“Oh, God, you’re not one of those, are you?”

“‘One of those’?”

“You know. You don’t want to marry me until I say that I don’t want to marry you, and then you want to marry me just so you can prove that I really wanted to marry you in the first place.”

“Gee, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about but, it sounds kinda fun.”

“You know damned well what I’m talking about.”

The nurse was back with half a dozen roses in a white glass vase. She placed it without ceremony on my rolling table. She plucked the tiny white card from it and handed it to me.