“Do you feel anything for me?” he asked, his eyes wide and his hands held out like a supplicant’s.
“No,” I said and my voice was flat and dead.
“We’re getting to you, then,” he said. “We’re winning.”
“Who’s we?” I said.
He blinked at the blood and tears. “I’ve been to hell.”
“I know.”
“No. No. I have been to hell,” he screamed and fresh tears poured out of his eyes as his face contorted.
“And then you created some for other people. Quick, Evandro, who’s your partner?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Bullshit, Evandro. Tell me.”
I was losing him. He was dying in front of me as he placed his palm on his head and tried to staunch the flow of blood, and I knew he could go any second or within a few hours, but he was going.
“I don’t remember,” he repeated.
“Evandro, he left you behind. You’re dying. He’s not. Come on. I—”
“I don’t remember who I was before I went in that place. I have no idea. I can’t even remember—” His chest heaved suddenly and his cheeks puffed up like a blowfish and I heard something rumble in his chest.
“Who’s—”
“—can’t remember what I looked like as a child.”
“Evandro?”
He vomited blood onto the floor and looked at it for a moment. When he looked back at me, he was terrified.
My face probably didn’t provide much hope because as I looked down at what had just left his body, I knew he couldn’t live long without it.
“Oh, shit,” he said and he held out his hands and looked at them.
“Evandro—”
But he died that way—staring at his hands as they dropped back to his sides, one knee bent to the floor, his face confused and afraid and utterly alone.
“Is he dead?”
I came back into the hall after stepping into her bedroom long enough to stamp out a single candle trying to burn through her floor. “Oh, yeah. How’re you?”
Her skin glistened with fat beads of sweat. “I’m sorta fucked up here, Patrick.”
I didn’t like the sound of her voice. It was much higher than usual and there was a keening to it.
“Where you hit?”
She lifted her arm and I could see a dark red hole just above her hip and below her rib cage that seemed to breathe.
“How’s it look?” She lay her head against the door jamb.
“Not bad,” I lied. “Let me get a towel.”
“I only saw his body,” she said. “The shape of it.”
“What?” I pulled a towel from the rack in the bathroom, came back into the hall. “Who?”
“The prick who shot me. When I shot back, I saw his body. He’s short but built. You know?”
I pressed the towel into her side. “Okay. Short but built. Got it.”
She closed her eyes. “Screavly,” she said.
“What? Open your eyes, Ange. Come on.”
She opened them, smiled wearily. “’S gun,” she said, “’s heavy.”
I took the gun from her hand. “Not anymore. Ange, I need you to stay awake while—”
There was a loud crash at the front door and I spun in the hall, took aim at Phil and two EMTs as they burst inside the house.
I lowered my gun as Phil slid to his knees in the hall beside Angie.
“Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Honey?” He wiped wet hair off her brow.
One of the EMTs said, “Give me some room. Come on.”
I stepped back.
“Honey?” Phil screamed.
Her eyes fluttered open. “Hi,” she said.
“Step back, sir,” the EMT said. “Step back now.”
Phil fell back on his haunches and slid a few feet away.
“Miss,” the EMT said, “can you feel that pressure?”
Outside, patrol cars screeched to a halt and bathed the windows in lights the color of raging flame.
“So scared,” Angie said.
The second EMT dropped the wheels to a stretcher in the hallway and flipped up a metal rod by its head.
A sudden rattle erupted in the hallway and I looked down and saw Angie’s heels hammering the floorboards.
“She’s going into shock,” the EMT said. He grabbed her shoulders. “Get her legs,” he shouted. “Get her legs, man.”
I grabbed her legs and Phil said, “Oh, Jesus. Do something, do something, do something.”
Her legs kicked into my armpit and I pressed them between my arm and chest, held on as her eyes rolled back white in the sockets and her head slipped off the side of the doorjamb and banged into the floor.
“Now,” the first EMT said and the second one handed him a syringe and he plunged it into Angie’s chest.
“What’re you doing?” Phil said. “Jesus Christ, what’re you doing to her?”
She jerked in my arms one last time and then she seemed to almost float back down to the floor.
“We’re going to lift her,” the EMT told me. “Gently, but fast. On three. One…”
Four cops appeared in the doorway, hands on their weapons.
“Two,” the EMT said. “Get the fuck out of the doorway! We got an injured woman coming through.”
The second EMT pulled an oxygen mask out of his bag, held it at the ready.
The cops backed off onto the porch.
“Three.”
We lifted her, and her body felt far too light in my arms, as if it had never moved or jumped or danced.
We settled her onto the stretcher and the second EMT clamped the oxygen mask down over her face and yelled, “Coming through,” and they pulled her down the hall and onto the porch.
Phil and I followed and the moment I stepped out onto the icy porch I heard the sounds of at least twenty weapons being cocked and aimed in my direction.
“Put the guns down and drop to your fucking knees!”
I knew better than to argue with nervous cops.
I placed my gun and Dunn’s on the porch and knelt over them and held my hands up.
Phil was too worried about Angie to think that they could be talking to him too.
He took two steps after her stretcher and a cop clubbed his collarbone with a shotgun butt.
“He’s the husband,” I said. “He’s the husband.”
“Shut the fuck up, asshole! Keep your fucking hands in the air. Do it! Do it! Do it!”
I did. I remained kneeling as the cops moved cautiously closer and the bitter air found my bare feet and thin shirt and the paramedics lifted Angie into the back of the ambulance and took her away.