Second Shot полностью

“I wasn’t about to blow anyone’s brains out when he was so close to a child,” I said sharply. “She-”

And my voice deserted me as my brain stopped driving it, suddenly entirely diverted onto another track like it had swerved off a highway and gone crashing into an ice-cold river. My eyes flew to Rosalind’s and her smile widened.

“Well, well,” she murmured. “You finally got it. I was beginning to think I was going to have to come right out and say it.”

“It was you who shot me,” I whispered.

“That’s right,” she said, pride overlapping. “Must have been at least forty yards, in poor light, moving target. One heck of a piece of shooting, even if I do say so myself.”

“Not particularly,” I said. “After all, I’m not dead yet.”

Her satisfaction dimmed. “As good as,” she said, gesturing with the barrel of the Beretta. “Look at you, Charlie, all crocked up. What use are you to anyone? Didn’t the British Army teach you that old rule about it being better to wound an enemy soldier than to kill him?”

“Yes they did,” I said, remembering Sean telling me much the same thing as we left the hospital. My reply to him still stood. That only applies if the soldier cant fight, Rosalind. Give me half a chance and then see what I can still manage. ..

Matt had raised his blotchy face from his hands, confused. “But they said Simone shot you,” he said unsteadily, his eyes streaked with red. “That’s why the police killed her. She shot you.” His insistence was almost childlike. Say itisntso.

I shook my head, gently “Rosalind did it,” I said. I turned back to her. “How did you fool the ballistics people? The police told me the gun they found with Simone was a match.”

“She dropped it in the snow and they didn’t find it right away-what with the EMTs scrambling around working on you,” she said. “Did you know your heart stopped at the scene, by the way?”

I shook my head again. “No, I didn’t.” I gave her a tight little smile. “I suppose then, technically, you did kill me.”

She pulled a face. “So anyway, what with all the confusion, it wasn’t hard to get the gun I’d been using into Simone’s hand. All it needed was for you not to make it, and the whole thing would have been neat and tidy But, they called in the LifeFlight helicopter and flew you over to Lewiston and damn me if they didn’t put you back together again.”

I was silent. I thought of the shadowy figure I’d registered watching me as I lay bleeding into the bottom of that ditch, and of the doctor with the perfect smile. I thought of Simone, bursting through the trees with the wild look in her eyes and the gun held rigid out in front of her-of how it had looked and how it was. And I thought of Ella’s terrified face when I’d been moments from killing her grandfather and, at some level, she’d known what I was contemplating.

Is that why you hurt Charlie? she’d asked when Neagley and I had gone back to see Rosalind. I’d thought Ella meant the slap in the face, but she must have seen who was behind me….

And finally, I remembered Reynolds’s words that day right here in this very room. I wonder what will happen, he’d said, if I put another round through your leg in just the same place as the last....

At the time I’d had too many other things on my mind for that last piece of information to penetrate. How could he have known the details of exactly how I was shot, unless someone had told him? Someone who’d been there at the time and seen it happen.

When I looked up again I found Rosalind checking her watch. She got to her feet, smoothing down her clothes. As businesslike and no-nonsense as she’d been since our first meeting.

“OK,” she said. “Time’s up. Let’s go.”

I’d stiffened with sitting for so long and getting up off the sofa again was a struggle. Matt hooked his hand under my elbow and for once I didn’t shrug off the assistance. Rosalind watched from across the room, her expression cynical as the pair of us staggered upright.

“She can manage-get the door,” she said sharply, and Matt dropped my arm right away, obeying without hesitation. He looked beaten. His eyelashes were so wet they had clumped together, and the end of his nose had turned very red.

No help there, then.

As I made my way across the room behind him, limping heavily, my mind was turned inwards, and it was burning.

I needed a way out, and right now the prospects for that looked slim enough to qualify as anorexic.

Rosalind forced Matt to drive us back down to the main street and out on Route 302 towards Intervale. I sat in the front seat along-V side him, with Rosalind in the back this time, where she could cover the pair of us with the Beretta.