Ridley Pearson - Cut and Run

In total disbelief, Philippe watched his one remaining negotiating tool fly out the window like Peter Pan. The sheer nerve of her jumping out the window-an act he could never have done himself-so pissed him off that he ran to the open wall, leaned out, and trained the gun down on the collapsed and broken form below. He fired off a round, not seeing well enough amid the smoke and confusion to have much of an aim, and then fired again. Missed with both. He sighted more carefully this time, determined to end this, finding the bead and locking it onto her sprawled frame.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a red firefly light onto his chest, his first reaction, like anyone’s who spots a bee or wasp on their person, to swat it off. But it did not fly, for it was no insect. His last thought was recognition of what it was: a sharpshooter’s laser sight creating a red circle at the center of his chest.

And then, a hole. A ripping and shredding as a large-caliber-rifle slug exited a cavity five times larger than it entered.

Philippe was thrown back off his feet as if struck by a truck, arms out to his sides, on the bed of broken glass that jumped around him like sparkling fairies on the floor.

As Larson arrived at the far end of the upstairs hallway, he heard two shots exceptionally close. Bam… bam… the sound of an execution. He arrived at a door and kicked it in, gun extended, only to see a well-dressed man lying dead in a sea of broken glass. Not bleeding, eyes open, and dead.

He might have moved on had he not seen the blue plastic of his smashed BlackBerry on the carpet in front of an empty overstuffed chair.

He checked closets. He spun around in the center of the room, convinced she was here. And then his mind reassembled the shattered windows, the dead guy in the tailored clothes killed where he was, and Larson rushed to get a look outside.

If his mind had been free of emotion, if he’d been able to clinically abstract how it was that this man could lie dead on the floor, he never would have approached the open window. But he was desperate for her now, and he knew without knowing, understood without any evidence whatsoever, that Hope had jumped.

He saw her there down on the asphalt, writhing in the pain of broken bones. And she saw him as well, just before it happened. He made that connection with her, somehow eye to eye, or perhaps heart to heart, from that great distance, the Glock in his right hand.

A red bead lit his jacket. Like a firefly.

His head snapped up to face the edgy sharpshooter somewhere out in all that darkness, and then… the heat of a bee sting, and the world went silent.

The sound of applause. Ethereal. Or the beating of wings. The swirling white lights of angels, and a heavenly chorus rising like a whine. Then, blackness broken by a flickering gray wind and the faces of red pulsing demons all looking down at him. He, the center of attention, the focal point. It was how he’d imagined it might be, all but the strained faces of Hampton, Stubblefield, and Rotem glaring down at him like he’d done something wrong.

“Leave me alone,” he wanted to say. “Let me die in peace.”

If this was death, it felt anything but peaceful.

“He caught the insignia.” It was Rotem, shouting above the roar of the Bell jet helicopter-for that turned out to be the source of the wind and the drumming applause and the flashing red lights. The white spotlights came from the news choppers high overhead.

“Their sharpie caught the insignia on your jacket.” Rotem pointed out the white Fraternal Order of Police insignia on the chest of Larson’s borrowed windbreaker.

“Just as he fired, he jerked,” Hampton shouted. “Took your collarbone and a piece of your shoulder, but left you your heart.”

They had oxygen on him and intravenous in his arms. He tried to speak but could find neither the breath nor the ability to form any words. It was as if he were in someone else’s body and didn’t know the right controls.

The paramedics hoisted him up and passed him off to their colleagues in the helicopter.

“We’re right behind you,” he heard Hampton shout.

Larson felt his stretcher turned and placed down. A flurry of hands in thin plastic gloves rose above him as straps were pulled across him and tightened. If only he’d been able to ask, someone might have been able to answer, and so he tried again, his lips unwilling to cooperate, his brain a tangle of life-after-death and prayer and penance. An incomprehensible moment.

The red and white lights still flashed rhythmically, the only real things convincing him he might indeed be alive. How much a dream? How much wishful thinking?

And then he knew it had to be a dream, for as it turned out, the helicopter was made to carry two, not one. Two stretchers side by side with overhead stainless-steel hooks for the bags of intravenous fluid. There beside him she lay, her eyes open and moving to find his, which absolutely meant she must, too, be alive, or they were both dead and somehow sharing this moment, which wouldn’t have surprised him at all.

He saw on her legs inflated splints, and in her eyes a loving-kindness that confirmed in him this must be heaven, and he didn’t mind a bit.

Finally words did come, or at least he heard himself speak, and he would wonder in the days and weeks and months to come if he’d actually said anything to her. “She has your eyes,” he said.

Her hand twitched, its fingers stretched at the end of an arm bound by nylon straps. It reached for him, for his, and he too pushed with all his strength to move his index finger toward her. Her eyes brimmed with tears, which rolled down her cheeks, clearing tracks through the smudged dirt on her face.

Their fingers did not touch, only wiggled out in space toward each other as the helicopter shook and rattled and thundered as it lifted off. Larson tried to force the snarl of pain into something resembling a smile but didn’t know if it took.

Larson pulled on the oars, working the stubborn tissue and tightness in his left shoulder to the point of pain, and then backing off to where it was manageable.

There was something about Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The smell, maybe, or the darkness of the water. The way the forest crept right to the edge of both the mainland and the island, the trees reflected like tall soldiers.

There were bugs in the air and the smells of early summer-the perfume of fruit blossoms carried on winter’s freshened air spilling out of Canada. He heard a red-winged blackbird’s sprightly, lilting song, heard the rhythm of the oars carving into and scooping the lake’s mirrored surface, heard her joyous squeal and the thrashing of her feet on the island trail as she endeavored to keep pace with him. Penny was a fast little runner.

He looked to see her blond hair bouncing, her smart little body sprinting the trail in a pair of pink shorts and a white T-top. White sneakers and socks her mother had mail-ordered.

“Break… fast!” she called across to him when she knew he was looking.

He met her at the dock and she helped him stow the scull in the old boathouse and wipe down the oars and rigging. She told him of a dream she’d had in the night, spoken in one continuous monologue-of princesses and magic potions, and trees that could talk-that lasted from the boathouse clear up the trail to the sprawling log cabin known only as Baby’s Breath. As they approached the back deck, buttoned down with tubs of recently planted annuals, Hope was there to greet them, a pair of binoculars in hand. Larson slowed as he saw her. Penny rushed past, drawn by the scent of cooking bacon. Hope was clearly distressed.