Catherine Coulter - Split Second

“Yes, all of us are all right,” he said, keeping his voice flat and soothing. “She’s gone now, Lucy.”

“Yes, she’s gone.”

“Lucy—”

She pulled away from him and leaned back against the oak tree. She began to laugh, and her laughter became wild, uncontrolled.

Savich heard that laugh, saw that she was shaking, her eyes dilated, her face dead white. He began rubbing her arms as he said very slowly, knowing he himself wasn’t all that steady, “You were standing way over there, Lucy, Sherlock and Coop with you. I stood up with the bottles of lemonade, and suddenly here you were, smashing into me; then there was a shot. How did you get here so fast?”

Her laugher slowly died.

“Lucy, how did you know Kirsten was even here?”

“Thank God you’re all right, Dillon,” she said again, reached out her hand and cupped his face in her palm.

“Hey!” It was Coop, and he was panting, frowning at the two of them. “What happened, Lucy? I saw you plow into Savich. Did you see her? What’s going on? You look like you’re freezing.” He shrugged out of his jacket and laid it around her shoulders.

Sherlock, clutching a crying Sean close, was on Coop’s heels. She stared from her husband to Lucy, her heart pounding hard and fast, fear so thick in her throat she could only get his name out before her throat closed. “Dillon—”

He touched her, then lightly stroked Sean’s head. “I’m fine, sweetheart. Hey, Sean, everything’s okay.” He looked at Lucy, who was staring down at her feet. He looked back at Sherlock, and a very clear, silent message passed between them. This can’t ever happen with Sean again.

He held both Sherlock and Sean tightly against him. “Lucy knocked me flat; she was protecting me. I’m fine. Now, Sean, Mommy’s going to take you back to the car, and I’ll be with you guys in a minute, okay?”

But Sherlock wasn’t about to leave him, and so Savich kept talking to Sean, who was still clutching his Frisbee tight in his hand. Savich looked over at Lucy. “How did you ever see Kirsten before she shot at me, Lucy?”

Lucy simply shook her head and turned at the sound of sirens, growing louder by the second.

Coop said, “Remember how Mr. Lansford bragged about how he’d taught Kirsten to shoot a rifle? Thank God she missed you.”

“Yes, she missed me,” Savich said, “but only because of Lucy.” He hugged her to him. “Thank you, Lucy Carlyle, for saving my life.”

If you only knew, Lucy thought. Savich slowly released her. She stood motionless, saying nothing, and she was staring down at the leaf-strewn ground, then over at the oak tree where the bullet had struck, hugging Coop’s jacket around herself.

You’re an experienced agent, Lucy Carlyle, but you’re much more shaken than any of us. Why?

He walked to the oak tree, dug out the bullet casing. If Lucy had been a second later—a split second—he would be dead.

Three teenage boys had told Coop they’d seen this jazzy woman, carrying something under her arm wrapped in a jacket, jump into a dirty dark blue Chevy Monte Carlo, with a ding on the back passenger-side fender.

They talked over one another until a tall, skinny kid won out because his voice was the loudest. “Short red hair, in spikes like a punk, you know. She was tall, and kind of skinny.”

They’d nailed Kirsten down to the “jazzy.”

“Dude, sir, she was flying. Ponce here yelled after her, and she shot him the finger and was outta here.”

“She nearly clipped a fire plug, you know, headed out of the park on Clotter Street.”

“Clotter’s one-way, heads right to the Potomac.”

“That old Monte Carlo, she floored the sucker, rooster-tailed gravel.”

Coop, the dude himself, looked around now at the half dozen agents sitting at the CAU conference table. “Any ideas where she would go? She should be desperate, low on money, no supports left that we know of, having to rob or steal most everything she needs.” Then he frowned. “Of course, we can’t be sure of that.”

Savich said without hesitation, “She isn’t going anywhere until she kills me. Today she nearly did.” He looked at Lucy, who was sitting silently next to Coop. She looked as if she wasn’t there, as if she were far away, in a world no one else could see.

Ruth said, “Bruce Comafield wasn’t just trying to scare you, Dillon. She must be fixated on killing you, given the chance she took trailing you to the park and opening fire on four armed agents.

“So, you’re not going to be alone until we bring her down. No more playing Frisbee in the park. In fact, we all think you should camp out here in the CAU. We’ll bring in veggie pizzas.”

Like that was going to happen, Savich thought. Then he realized he hadn’t eaten, and he was hungry. One of Dizzy Dan’s pizzas sounded pretty good.

Dane said, “I still don’t understand how you did it, Lucy, how you came to knock Savich down the second before Kirsten fired at him. What did you see?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Beneath the table, Coop took her hand, squeezed it. Her skin was cold—not a surprise, given that death had crouched on her shoulder that morning. And what she’d done, knocking Savich down like that, had scared him just as much. Savich had flirted with shock as well when he was standing there digging out the casing in the oak tree, but he’d focused on his son, jollying him out of fright, telling him what an adventure they’d had, how Marty was going to be so jealous she might not speak to him for a day or two. Still, Coop knew both Savich and Sherlock had to be worried sick about Sean, about how death had brushed too close to their little boy.

“Lucy?” Savich said.

Eric Clapton sang out “Tears in Heaven.”

“Savich here.”

A brief pause, then he said clearly, “You’re talking too fast, Kirsten. Say that again.”

Ollie was out of his chair, racing to trace the call.

Everyone at the conference table leaned toward Savich. Savich’s face, Coop saw, was red with rage, but that rage didn’t sound through in his voice.

“How did you get my number, Kirsten?”

They all stared at Savich’s cell, silently praying that she would keep talking until Ollie located her phone. They could hear her screaming at Savich, something about Bruce Comafield.

“Bruce died because he was with you, Kirsten. It’s on your head, not mine.”

More screaming.

“Truth is, I’m sorry he died. I was thinking I could put it out he was alive and lure you back to the hospital to try to save him. But he didn’t make it.”

More screaming, then a moment of silence before Savich said, “If you were me, you’d have thought about doing the same thing, wouldn’t you?”

That was good, Coop thought, keep her arguing. He saw Ollie was nodding at them through the glass door. Dane and Ruth were out of their chairs, racing to the elevator, Ollie with them, still talking on his cell.

Savich continued after a moment, voice calm and slow, “Would you have come to the hospital to see Bruce?”

Coop heard cursing vile enough to curl his mother’s hair. After she’d run down again, Savich said, “You’re not going to have another try at Ann Marie Slatter. She’s safe now.

“No, don’t congratulate yourself on that, either. The redhead isn’t dead; your drugs didn’t kill her. She’s very much alive, and she will stay that way, just as Ann Marie Slatter will.

“Listen, Kirsten, you need to stop this. What you’re doing isn’t about them, anyway. You need to meet me alone, and we can have it out. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Or do you want to hide and try to shoot me from a hundred yards away again? Yep, we found where you’d been crouched down, waiting to get a good shot at me. But you missed, didn’t you? Why was that? I guess you’re just not good enough.”