Lisa Gardner - Say Goodbye

Kimberly had her Glock drawn, mentally urging Sal on as she scanned the surrounding woods for sign of the gunman. Sal made it two feet. Three. Another rifle shot cracked in the distance. Sal dropped on top of Harold’s body, shielding the fallen agent’s face with his arms as bark exploded off the tree beside him.

“There,” Quincy breathed. “Over there. To the left.”

He pointed with his finger and Kimberly obediently opened fire, allowing Sal to dart up again, grab Harold under the armpits, and heave. He wasn’t going to make it. Not one man pulling one hundred and eighty pounds of deadweight across such an expanse. Someone needed to help him.

She tensed her legs immediately, ready to leap out, and then…

She stopped.

She wasn’t going to go out there. She couldn’t go out there.

She was pregnant. She could risk herself, but she had no right to risk her child. Oh God, she was going to become a mom and one of her first acts of motherhood was going to be staying behind this damn boulder, watching as her own teammate was gunned down.

The rifle cracked again, a distant boom with local consequences. Sal dropped. Kimberly opened fire. Her teammates joined in, a last-ditch effort against an enemy they couldn’t see.

Beside her, Quincy was breathing hard, one hand on Rainie’s shoulder, his other on Kimberly’s arm as he scanned the trees with an intent look.

“Kimberly,” he started.

“Go,” she gritted out. “Help him, dammit. Someone has to help him.”

Quincy dashed out. And Kimberly resumed cover fire, aware of Rainie’s taut form beside her and the tears now pouring down both of their cheeks.

Another shot rang out, just as Quincy reached Sal’s side. The GBI agent flinched, but did not go down. Quincy grabbed Harold’s right arm. Sal grabbed his left. They started to run, Harold’s limp body crashing across the bumpy ground.

Just as Kimberly thought they might make it, that heroism would indeed persevere, another shot rang out, and Sal lurched to his left and tumbled down.

Vaguely, she was aware of Sheriff Duffy rising from behind a dead tree fall. Rifle butt against his shoulder, sighting a light that had flashed in the distance, pulling the trigger. The crack of the rifle, the jerk of his solid body, absorbing the recoil.

Then Quincy had dragged Harold to safety, and Rainie had her arm around Sal’s shoulders, guiding him behind the rock.

Duff ducked back down.

The forest finally, eerily, fell silent.

Harold’s shoulder looked bad. Kimberly ripped open his shirt, trying to clear dirt and debris from the pulpy mess. Harold’s pulse was erratic, his eyes rolled back into his head. If he didn’t get immediate medical attention, he wasn’t going to make it.

Sal propped himself up against the boulder, holding his side. Rainie had tugged away his white dress shirt to reveal a deep furrow along his left rib cage. The wound appeared painful, but on a relative scale, he was in good shape and knew it.

“We need first-aid supplies,” Kimberly murmured. “Bandages, saline flush, an antiseptic solution. It’s all in the packs.”

“Where are the packs?” her father asked promptly.

Kimberly jerked her head toward the other side of the boulder, and her father peered around long enough to wince.

“That’s not going to be easy,” he observed. Most of the packs were still in the clearing, a good twenty feet of exposed space away.

“Gotta do something because Harold’s going from bad to worse and it’s not like an ambulance is gonna come crashing through those woods.”

“I’ll do it,” Sal said, already struggling to his feet.

“Oh, shut up and sit down. You’ve earned enough glory for one afternoon. Time to share the wealth.”

Sal tried to appear offended, but as testimony to his level of pain, stayed seated. “You’re not going to…”

“Nope, I’m playing the role of Florence Nightingale. Which means Dad or Rainie can go for the John Wayne number.”

“We’ll both go,” Rainie decided. “With any luck, the guy is indecisive and two targets will slow him down.”

Kimberly arched a brow to show what she thought of that logic, but didn’t argue. She rolled up her rain jacket as a pillow and placed it under Harold’s feet, then put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. Rachel’s head obediently appeared from around the tree. Kimberly communicated their game plan in a series of silent hand motions. Rachel nodded, and bit by bit, the plan was communicated down the line.

When Rachel reappeared, Kimberly counted down from five on one hand. As she folded her fingers into a fist, Quincy and Rainie dashed out and the agents in the forest once again opened fire.

Five, six, seven, eight . Rainie and Quincy arrived at the packs. Grabbed one for each hand. Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen . Scrambled for the safety of the boulder, shoulders hunched, legs bent, trying to form a smaller target.

Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen …

Rainie and Quincy careened around the boulder, dropped to the ground, and the woods once again fell silent.

Kimberly resumed breathing just in time to realize that Sal had passed out cold. So she ripped open an antiseptic towelette from the first-aid kit and placed it against his bloody side.

Sal awoke with a scream, and from somewhere far away Kimberly could swear she heard a man laugh.

“I gotta get moving,” Sal was muttering over and over again. “Gotta get down the mountain. Owe it to my mother…Isn’t fair.”

Rachel had made it behind the boulder. She had taken over Harold’s care, bathing the agent’s wound in saline solution before covering it with sterile gauze. She glanced up now, and frowned at Sal’s sweat-slicked face.

“Shock?” she murmured to Kimberly.

“No,” Sal answered the senior team leader, wincing through clenched teeth. “Just…being practical. Losing one son…hard enough.”

He had himself to sitting now, back against the boulder, breathing hard.

“Stop moving,” Kimberly barked at him, voice low. “You’re a terrible patient.”

“Think he’s…still around?”

“Let’s put it this way-when the choppers show up with their big guns, I’ll feel better about things.”

She kept her tone light, but both she and Rachel exchanged glances. The radio had continued crackling until Rachel had finally turned it down, fearing it would draw the shooter to them. Ten minutes had gone by without fresh activity, but it was hard to know if that was a good sign or not. Had the shooter given up, or was he circling through the woods, due to pop up at any time, right behind them?

Quincy had taken over Kimberly’s Glock.40 and between him and Rainie were doing their best to keep watch. But there was no mistaking the vulnerability that came from knowing they were on the shooter’s home turf, not their own.

Out on the tarp, the decomposed body had finally stopped moving. Even the spiders had fled and now only the partially mummified corpse remained, a silent reminder of just what Dinchara could do.

Kimberly returned her attention to Sal, bringing a small bottle of water to his lips. He looked worse than she would expect from such a wound, but Rachel was right, that could be the shock of the incident, followed by the adrenaline dump of remaining in perilous circumstances.

“Your mother still alive?” she asked Sal now, wanting to keep him talking while she mopped at his forehead and inspected his side.

“Yes.” She pressed the jagged flesh a little too hard and he sucked in a breath. “Hey-”

“Sorry, grass. Your father?”

“Don’t…know.” She removed a fresh piece of dirt, he gritted his teeth. “She kicked him out…years ago. Finally…got wise…it wasn’t her fault.”