Дэвид Балдаччи - The Guilty

Robie turned to Victoria. She was within six feet of him now, covering the distance in one long stride.

Two-year-old Tyler could have pulled the trigger and killed him at that range.

And Robie was out of weapons. And ideas.

The muzzle was right in his face now.

He looked at the woman and her smug, triumphant expression.

“I hope it was worth it,” he said quietly.

“You’ll never know how much. Who loves you, Will? Surely not me.”

The shot rang out.

Robie braced for the impact. He imagined himself falling to the dirt, nothing but blackness for a future.

He opened his eyes in time to see Victoria still staring at him.

But the smug expression was gone, replaced with surprise.

And blood was flowing down the side of her face, reaching her lips and then passing to her chin, like a river following its banks.

Robie felt something warm on his face. He touched the spot and then pulled his hand back to reveal the blood there.

Her blood.

The next instant Victoria toppled sideways and hit the dirt, the gun falling from her dead hand.

Robie staggered back as Tyler started screaming. He reached the boy and lifted him up, his injured arm surprisingly numb.

He looked to his left.

And saw the person.

The gun was still pointed at where Victoria had been standing a few moments ago.

Then it slowly lowered.

“Dad?” said Robie in disbelief. He had thought that it would be Reel, with some Herculean effort, standing there.

For one long moment Dan and Will Robie stared at each other over the distance of a fatal shot fired. Then Dan dropped his pistol, hurried over, and hugged his sons with the little strength he had left.

“Wake up, sleepy boy.”

Robie slowly opened his eyes, the effects of the anesthesia fading as he did so. He hadn’t slept this well in years.

As his vision focused Sheila Taggert came into view. She was not in uniform.

“Doc said you came through it just fine,” said Taggert.

Robie slowly nodded. A lot had happened since his father had appeared at the river’s edge and fired that shot. Part of it was blurry and part of it was crystal clear.

They had gone back to the shack, gotten Reel, and driven off in the same ambulance that Robie’s father had been loaded into back at the Willows.

While his father drove with Tyler buckled in the seat next to him, Robie had called Taggert and triaged Reel on the way to the hospital. She had been immediately taken into surgery.

It was only when Reel was safely away that Robie had collapsed from his own blood loss and what was later determined to be a broken clavicle and a perforated artery in his arm that had come close to rupturing.

He had been stabilized and then taken by medevac chopper to Jackson for the surgery that had permanently fixed his injuries.

Robie focused more fully on Taggert. In a croaky voice he said, “Jessica?”

“She’s going to be fine. She came out of surgery fine, Will.”

He closed his eyes and let out a long breath. When he reopened them he said, “My dad showed up in an ambulance? How?”

Taggert drew up a chair and sat down next to him.

“Well, the way my colleague laid it out to me, your daddy sat up in that ambulance, took the deputy’s weapon, and made everyone get out, and then he drove off in the damn thing.”

“But how did he know where we were?”

“I have not been made privy to that information.”

“Where is he now?”

“At home. With Ty.”

Robie slowly nodded again. Though the anesthesia was receding he still felt in a fog. It was disconcerting. He didn’t like it. “Is Ty okay?”

“Physically, yes. Emotionally? It might take a while. I got briefed a little, but you’re really the one who knows everythin’ that happened. We’re goin’ to need a statement from you when you feel up to it.”

“I know,” said Robie groggily. “Don’t worry. I won’t be forgetting a single detail. Ever.”

“So, Laura Barksdale, huh? Who would have ever thought?”

“Yeah,” said Robie. “Who would’ve thought?”

A week later Robie was brought back to Cantrell and spent several hours with Sheriff Monda and Agent Wurtzburger. Evidence linking the crimes across the various states was compared with forensic evidence taken from Victoria’s body. The results matched, and the case was closed on each of them.

The woman had indeed been busy.

He was reunited with Reel the next day.

She was in a wheelchair, looking pale and tired. The shot fired by Victoria had done more internal damage than was first thought. A full recovery was expected to take at least a few more weeks. Clearly not fast enough for her.

After Robie filled her in on everything they sat together in a room at the Cantrell police station.

“Mississippi did not turn out to be so good for us,” said Reel, wincing slightly as she adjusted herself in the wheelchair.

“No, it didn’t.” Robie fell silent and studied the floor. His arm was back in a sling and would be for a while.

“What?” she finally asked.

“I left you behind, Jess. I...”

“You had no choice, Robie. You were between a rock and a hard place. You took Ty. You saved him from that... monster.”

“I was going to come back for you.”

“I had no doubt. I only wished I could have been the one to shoot her.”

“When I saw my dad I’d never been more stunned in my life.”

He fell silent again, his features troubled and brooding.

Reel noted this and said, “She wasn’t Laura anymore; you realize that, right? She wasn’t your... Juliet anymore.”

“Maybe she never was.”

“Like you said, people can rationalize anything.”

“But I keep thinking that none of this would have happened if I had just walked into the house that night and taken her with me out of Cantrell. But I just drove off to a new life and left her behind. I abandoned her. Or at least she saw it that way. And maybe she was right.”

Reel considered this for a few moments. “You can’t put that burden on your shoulders, Robie. You can’t live someone else’s life for them. Hell, it’s hard enough living your own.”

“I guess,” he said, not sounding convinced.

Reel looked down at her hands. “But what happened to her, well, it was terrible.”

He looked at her in surprise. “So now you’re defending her?”

“No. I would never do that. But I guess I can understand how all this happened. We’re not all created the same. Some are more fragile than others. And you never know which one you’re going to get. Or which among us is going to crack.”

The door opened and Taggert poked her head in.

“You guys ready?”

“Ready?” said Robie. “For what?”

“To go see your dad.”

They were driven over in a transport vehicle to accommodate Reel’s wheelchair. As soon as they entered the foyer of the Willows, Robie received a shock nearly equal to that of seeing his father standing under the moonlight holding the gun he’d just used to shoot his wife.

Blue Man was emerging from the front room with Dan Robie.

As always, Blue Man was dressed in a suit and tie, but apparently in deference to his current location, and taking in the heat and humidity, he was wearing, of all things, seersucker.

“What are you doing here?” asked Robie.

Reel just looked on in amazement from her wheelchair.

“Briefing your father and getting debriefed in return. Enlightening. Quite enlightening. I think I’ll leave you to it. I’ll be at the airport. You two are riding back with me. Until then, I have one more person to visit.”