Jeff Abbott: Panic

Evan turned the corner and saw his mother lying dead on the kitchen floor.

He froze. He opened his mouth but did not scream. The world around him went thick with the sound of his own blood pounding in his throat, in his temples. The sack of peach pastries tumbled to the floor, followed by his duffel bag.

He took two stumbling steps toward her. Her throat was puffed and savaged, her tongue distended, and the kitchen air held the unmistakable stink of death. He saw a silver gleam of wire wrapped around her throat.

An empty kitchen-table chair stood next to her, as though she might have been sitting in it before she died.

Evan made a low moan in his throat, knelt by his mother, brushed a tangle of her graying hair from her face. Her eyes were wide and swollen, unseeing.

‘Oh, Jesus, Mom.’ He put his fingers over her lips: stillness. Her skin was still warm.

‘Mom, Mom!’ His voice rose in grief and horror. Evan stood. A wave of dizziness buckled his legs. The police. He had to call the police. He staggered around her body to the kitchen counter, where her breakfast still sat: a coffee cup with a lipsticked edge, a plate dotted with plum-jelly drips and a scattering of English-muffin crumbs. Evan reached for the phone with a shaking hand.

Metal hammered the back of his head. He dropped to his knees, his teeth biting into his tongue, the tang of blood in his mouth. The world started to crumple into dark.

A gun pressed against the back of his head; the perfect circle of the barrel was cool in his hair. A nylon rope looped over his head and tightened around his throat with a yank. He tried to jerk away but the gun cracked hard against his temple.

‘Be still,’ a voice said. ‘Or you’re dead.’ It was a young man’s voice. Amused, saying dead in a cruel singsong. Day-ed.

Hands grabbed his duffel bag from the edge of the kitchen, pulled it out of his line of vision. A robbery.

‘Just take it,’ Evan whispered. ‘Just take it and go.’ He heard the rustle of rummaging: his computer, his camera, being removed from the bag. His laptop’s powering-up chime sounded, louder than his own ragged breathing. Then long seconds of silence, fingers tapping on a keyboard.

‘What do you want?’ he heard himself ask.

No answer.

‘My mom, you killed my mom-’

‘Hush now.’ The gun kept Evan’s face tilted forward, almost touching his mother’s dead jaw. Evan wanted to twist around, see the man’s face, but he couldn’t. The noose tightened, pulling savagely into Evan’s throat.

‘Got it,’ another voice said. Male, older than the first. Arrogant, cool baritone. Then the whisper of fingers on keyboard. ‘All gone.’

Evan heard a pop of chewing gum close to his ear. ‘Can I now?’

‘Yes,’ the other said. ‘It’s just a shame.’

Steel cracked against Evan’s head. Black circles exploded before his eyes, edging out his mother’s blank, dead stare.

Evan awoke. Dying.

He couldn’t breathe because the rope scorched his throat and his feet danced in empty space. A plastic trash bag covered his head, making the world milky gray and indistinct. He grabbed at the rope, choked out a cry as the noose strangled him.

‘You took breathing for granted, didn’t you now, sunshine?’ The younger man’s voice, cold and mocking.

Evan kicked his feet. The countertop, the chair, had to be there to take his weight, to save him. He scissored his legs with what strength he had left because there was nothing else he could do.

‘Kick twice if it hurts bad,’ the younger voice said. ‘I’m curious.’

And a blast filled his world. Shattering glass. Gunfire. A second of silence. Then the younger man yelling, ‘Goddamn!’

The rope swung. Evan attempted to inch his fingers under the choking, killing cord. Then another rattle of gunfire boomed huge in his ears and he fell, hit the floor, plaster and splintered wood dusting him. The loose length of the gunshot-torn rope landed across his face.

He tried to breathe. Nothing. Nothing. Breathing was a forgotten skill, a trick that Evan no longer knew. Then his chest hitched with sweet air. Drinking in oxygen, drinking in life. His throat hurt as if it had been skinned from the inside.

Evan heard another eruption of shots, the sound of weight crashing into shrubbery outside the windows.

Then an awful silence.

Evan tore the plastic bag free from his face. He blinked, spat blood and bile from his mouth. A hand touched his shoulder, fingers prodded at him.

‘Evan?’

He looked up. A man stared down at him. Pale, bald, tall. Around his father’s age, early fifties.

‘They’re gone, Evan,’ Bald said. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Ca-call…’ Every syllable was fire in his mouth. ‘Call… police. My… mother. He…’

‘You got to come with me,’ Bald said. ‘You can’t stay here. They’ll be hunting you now.’

Evan shook his head.

Bald reached down, worked the broken rope off Evan’s neck, hauled him to his feet, herded him away from his mother’s body.

‘I’m a friend of your mom’s,’ Bald said. He held a wicked-looking shotgun. ‘Gonna get you out of here.’

Evan had never seen him before. ‘My mother. The police. Call the police. There was a man… or two…’

‘They’re gone. We’ll call the police,’ Bald said. ‘Just not here.’ He propelled Evan fast toward the back door with a shove to his back.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Evan said, fighting the panic rising in his chest. A man he didn’t know, with a big-ass gun, who didn’t want him to call the police. Hell no.

‘We’ll talk later. Can’t stay. I need your-’ But he didn’t finish as Evan left-hooked Bald’s jaw, without analysis or grace, his muscles still primed with fear and grief. Bald stumbled back and Evan ran out the front door he’d left unlocked.

‘Evan, goddamn it! Come here!’ Bald yelled.

Evan bolted into the damp spring air. The pounding of his sneakered feet against the asphalt was the only sound in the quiet of the oak-shaded neighborhood. He glanced behind him. Bald sprinted from the house. Shotgun in one hand, Evan’s yellow duffel in the other, jumping into a weathered blue Ford sedan parked on the street.

Evan tore across the graceful yards, expecting a bullet to shatter his spine or his head. He saw an open garage door and veered into the yard. Please, God, be home. He jumped onto the front porch, leaned against the bell, pounded the door, shouting to call 911.

The blue Ford sped past him.

An elderly man with a military burr opened the door, cordless phone already in hand.

Evan ran back into the yard, yelling at the neighbor to call the police, trying to catch the Ford’s plates.

But the car was gone.

‘W alk me through this morning one more time,’ the homicide detective said. His name was Durless. He had a kind, thin face, with the gaunt healthiness of a long-distance runner. ‘If you can, son.’

The investigators had kept Evan away from the kitchen, but had brought him back into the house so he could identify anything that was out of place or missing. He stood now in his parents’ bedroom. It was a wreck. Four suitcases lay thrown against the wall, all opened, their contents spilled across the floor. They didn’t belong here. But his mother’s favorite photos, which did belong on the walls, lay ruined and trampled on the carpet. He stared at the pictures behind the spiderwebs of smashed glass: the Gulf of Mexico orange with sunrise, the solitude of a gnarled oak on an empty expanse of prairie, London’s Trafalgar Square, lights shaded by falling snow. Her work. Broken. Her life. Gone. It could not be yet it was; the absence of her seemed to settle into the house, into the air, into his bones.