She dropped to the road, like her puppet strings had been cut all at once. “NO!” Red screamed, ramming her elbows down to push Oliver away.
“No, Maddy!”
She slammed her fingers and forehead against the cool glass of the windshield, eyes circling the lump of her clothes out there, Maddy’s darker ponytail.
Reyna was crying. Arthur too, hands covering his face. Oliver didn’t say a word. Not a fucking word.
Red screamed again, her breath fogging up the window, a cloud to take Maddy away. She screamed, and the glass threw it back at her, echoing around the RV.
No, wait. Red swallowed the scream, forced her mouth shut. The fog receded, but the echo didn’t go, muffled, muted, from a different world. Someone else was screaming. Outside.
It was Maddy.
“She’s alive!” Red shouted, watching as the lump outside shifted, ponytail falling to the other shoulder. “She’s alive!” Red screamed, turning back to the others, to Oliver and his pale face, no longer golden.
The five of them stared at each other, eyes wide, for half a second, the sound of Maddy’s scream hammering at the windows. She was hurt. She was shot. Someone had to go get her. Red’s eyes locked on Oliver’s, but he looked away.
“I’ll go!” Red said, shoving Oliver and Simon out of her way. Move, for fuck’s sake. She’d been out there for three minutes and the sniper didn’t take the shot. Like Oliver said, she was immune for some reason. She was the one who had to go get Maddy. Her Maddy.
Red charged down the RV to the front door. As she reached out for the handle, that small voice of doubt piped up, whispering in her ear. But Maddy was dressed like Red, and he’d taken the shot. Maybe she wasn’t immune after all, or maybe the sniper somehow knew it wasn’t her. But it didn’t matter either way because Maddy was out there, screaming. She needed Red and Red would go. No time for doubts.
She slammed the handle down and pushed open the door. It crashed into the metal side of the RV as Red tore down the steps.
“HELP!” Maddy’s scream had found its shape, lingering beyond the edges of the word. “HELP ME!”
“I’m coming, Maddy!” Red screamed back, the soles of Maddy’s sneakers beating against the dirt road as Red sprinted toward her and the headlights.
She jumped over the crumpled form of Don.
It was a race. Her against that red dot. Don’t think of it, don’t think of it now.
“I’m here!” Red shouted, crashing to her knees beside Maddy, dust hovering around them both, held there by the headlight beam.
Maddy was lying there, pitched up by one elbow, face creased in agony. Red looked her over and she saw. The new stain on her jeans. Growing and growing. Around that huge hole there, in Maddy’s thigh. A gurgle of blood gushing out, pooling through the material around it. So much blood already, dripping to the road, pouring out in time with Red’s heart, battering in her ears.
“F**k,” Red hissed, her hand hovering over the wound, bright red overflowing, darkening as it spread through the jeans. “F**k.”
“Don’t leave me, Red,” Maddy cried, staring up at her.
“I’m not leaving you.” Red lowered her face so they were eye to eye. “I’m not leaving you, okay, Maddy? I promise. Never.”
“Okay,” Maddy cried through the pain, tears falling into her open mouth. “He shot me. It’s bad, huh?”
Red’s head wavered, between a nod and a shake. “It’s bad,” she said, “but Reyna can help you. I need to drag you inside the RV, okay? There’s nothing I can do for you out here.”
“Okay,” Maddy said, the word swallowed by an awful scream as she tried to sit up.
“It’s going to hurt like hell, but I need to move you quickly, okay?” Red pushed up to her feet.
“Don’t leave me!” Maddy screamed, watching her.
“I’m not leaving you, Maddy!” Red crouched down behind her, where Maddy couldn’t see. “I’m right here, and you’re coming with me.”
Red slotted her arms in under Maddy’s armpits, reaching forward until her elbows were locked in.
“I don’t want to die!” Maddy cried, her breath rattling through her throat. “You’re not going to die,” Red promised her. But she couldn’t promise
that, she didn’t know. That was a lot of blood already. “Okay, three, two, one, go.”
Red raised Maddy off the road, her legs bent as she skated backward.
Maddy screamed and screamed, her feet dragging through the dirt.
“Stop!” she screamed, the worst sound Red had ever heard. “Stop, Red, it hurts too much!”
“I’m sorry, I can’t!” Red said into her ear, checking the path behind her, over her shoulder. It wasn’t clear, Don was right there, but Red had to keep going.
She stepped over Don, her sneaker pressing against his empty hand, harder than flesh should ever be. Maddy’s feet got tangled in his as Red dragged her over the body.
“Red, stop!” Maddy screamed. “Just for a minute!”
“I can’t!” Red screamed back, tightening her grip. She didn’t know if Maddy had a minute left. “I have to get you inside!”
Maddy’s hands grasped Red’s arms, nails biting in.
Heat prickled in Red’s cheeks. Was it from the effort of dragging her best friend, steadily bleeding out, or was the red dot poised there, waiting, and she could somehow feel it on her skin?
Red checked behind her shoulder. The steps were right there, a few feet away. She looked back down at Maddy, screaming wordlessly now, a long red streak staining the road, following them wherever they went. F**k, that was a lot of blood.
“I’ve got her, Red!” Arthur’s voice appeared behind her, crashing down the steps. “You get her feet.”
Arthur’s hands took over from her, slipping under Maddy’s arms while Red darted around to pick up her ankles. The blood had soaked all the way down here, wet against Red’s fingers. It just kept coming. How much could Maddy lose before it was too much?
“Go,” Arthur said, hoisting Maddy up and climbing the first step. Maddy’s head fell back and she screamed.
Red pushed, carrying Maddy’s feet as she tilted, top half going with Arthur, up the last step now, into the RV. Red followed, bringing her legs inside.
“Over here,” Reyna called, pointing at the floor in front of the refrigerator. She had a beach towel ready in her hands. “Put her over here.”
Simon darted forward and slammed the door to the RV shut as Red crossed the threshold.
“F**k,” he said, catching sight of Maddy’s leg, and Red looked again too. So that was what one of those bullets did to flesh and bone. Ripped a hole right through her.
Red looped around with Arthur, laying Maddy down carefully on the floor, sitting up, her back braced against the refrigerator door. She was still screaming, head at an unnatural angle on her neck. Because the strings had been cut.
“I need to put pressure on the wound, Maddy,” Reyna said, her voice firm but even, dropping to her knees beside her, pressing the towel down on the gushing bullet hole.
Maddy screamed harder.
“You’re okay,” Red told her, because Maddy had said it to her before, and maybe it was just the thing you said to people who weren’t okay.
She stepped back to give Reyna space, watching. Red’s hands floated up to her face to stop it from falling open. One hand was wet. Blood. A handprint of Maddy’s blood across her cheek.
Someone grabbed her, spun her around. Oliver’s pale face too close to hers, eyes swollen and red, swimming in and out of her vision like a nightmare.
“How did he know it wasn’t you, Red?” Oliver spat, shaking her whole body, trying to knock the answers out of her. “How did he know?”
“I don’t know!” Red fought him off, leaving another handprint of Maddy’s blood on his shirt as she pushed him away.
“Not now, Oliver,” Reyna said. She didn’t shout, she didn’t have to. The look on her face was enough. “I have to stop the bleeding. Does anyone have a belt?” She glanced around at the group, eyes frantic now that Maddy couldn’t see them.
“For a tourniquet?” Simon asked, pulling up his shirt. “Yes.” Reyna turned to him. “Do you—”
“I have one,” he said, undoing the buckle and sliding the black leather belt out from the loops in his jeans. He passed it over.
“Okay, Maddy, this is going to hurt. I need to tie this above the wound, as tight as it will go, okay? It should slow the bleeding.” Reyna held the belt across both hands, moving the towel.
“Okay,” Maddy managed to say through gritted teeth. Her skin was starting to look pale and pallid, a tremor in her jaw.
Reyna pushed one side of the belt through under Maddy’s knee, then slid the length of it up past the wound. She hooked it around and through the buckle a few inches above the blood-gushing hole, and then she tightened it.
Maddy screamed, weaker this time, breaking into sobs.
“Please, stop,” she begged.
Reyna pulled, muscles in her arms and her neck straining. Tighter, digging into the jeans and Maddy’s flesh. But that red gurgle of blood, it was slowing, bubbling over rather than pouring out as Reyna secured the tourniquet in place.
“Simon, come here,” she said. He did, falling to his knees.
“Press this towel down directly on the wound.” Reyna showed him, and Simon’s hands replaced hers. “Harder than that,” she directed. “More pressure. More. More. Okay, stay like that.”
Reyna pushed up shakily to her feet, wiping the sweat and hair out of her eyes, a pinkish smear from Maddy’s blood across her forehead. She stepped over to Oliver and Red and it was written all over her face, in the fall of her eyes and the set of her mouth.
“She’s bleeding a lot,” she said quietly, under Maddy’s groans in the background. “Could have severed the femoral artery, I’m not sure.”
“What does that mean?” Oliver croaked.
“It means we need to get her to a hospital as soon as possible, or she could bleed out.”
Red’s heart fell into her stomach, curdled there in the acid and the shame. Maddy Lavoy couldn’t die. That couldn’t happen. Red couldn’t let it.
“I’ll stop the bleeding as much as I can,” Reyna continued. “But she needs a hospital.”
Oliver shook his head, and for once, he must be out of plans. His sister was dying and he was the one who sent her out there. Did he feel that guilt, or was he leaving it all to Red? She should have tried harder to stop him, maybe Oliver wouldn’t have actually used the knife. Why didn’t Red try harder?
Reyna returned to Maddy, taking over from Simon, pressing down with all her weight against the wound.
Plan. Plan. Think of a plan to get away, to get Maddy to a hospital. Red looked around the RV, eyes catching on the pattern in the curtains, she and Maddy sitting beside them just seven hours ago playing Twenty Questions, Red zoning out, forgetting her person, place or thing. And now Maddy was
dying on the floor over there and Red had to do something. Think. The more she forced it, the harder it was. And, remember, she’d lost her mind awhile back.
Oliver strayed away from her, over to the sofa, dropping down, his face hidden in his hands.
Red breathed in, emptied herself out, tried to listen to the thoughts in her head, but all she found was an empty hiss. Static. The static. She turned around, the walkie-talkie waiting for her there on the counter. Red walked to it, scooped it up, the familiar weight in her hands. Her job, her responsibility. And now she had another one too: saving Maddy.
They’d not found any interference all night, but morning was drawing closer, maybe someone was up and working in a nearby farm or something… anything. Please, Red begged the device in her hand. There was nothing else Red could do to help Maddy, this was her only job, the only thing she knew how to do. She pressed the + button, cycling up past channel three, through four and five, begging the static to go away, to give her a voice. Any voice. Please.
This was all her fault. Maddy was bleeding out in the middle of the RV
and it was Red’s fault. This was about her, her secret. She was the witness in the Frank Gotti trial, and now Maddy was going to die because of that decision. The men with rifles were here to kill her, no one else. So why didn’t they? Red asked herself, spooling up through the channels, static flickering in and out as she pressed. Why didn’t they take the shot when it was her outside? Why was she still standing, not bleeding out on the road like she was supposed to be? Why Maddy and not her? Red didn’t know, she couldn’t understand it. They wanted their secret and they had it, it was her. Why hadn’t they killed her?
Unless…a thought stirred in her mind, tunneling away as Red’s eyes flicked back to Maddy, and the beach towel steadily turning red on her leg. Red looked away and reached for the thought, pulling at it, thread by thread. Unless she wasn’t the secret herself. Not the fact that she was the witness. Because she was the eyewitness in the Frank Gotti trial, that much was true. But that wasn’t the whole story, was it? What if the secret they wanted wasn’t
just Red, it was what Red knew, the other half of the plan? Maybe they didn’t want her, not alone. They wanted the other person involved, didn’t they? The name they didn’t know, but Red did. Was that why they couldn’t kill her, not yet? Because she hadn’t told them that name? Was that what they wanted, after all these hours and escape plans and two dead people outside and Maddy bleeding out, did they want that name from Red before they killed her?
Everything slotted into place, sense where there’d been none before. Red’s heart was back, acid-wet, hammering against the back of her teeth.
What should she do? She’d already let the plan go a long time ago, said goodbye to it and everything it would give her. But she swore she’d never tell anyone, she swore, and how could she say it here, right in front of them? Cause them more hurt and confusion than they already had. But did Red have a choice? Maddy was bleeding out, surely that undid everything, all the rules of the plan? She would make the same choice, wouldn’t she?
And if that was it, the secret the sniper wanted, would he let the rest of them go? Red would have to stay behind, she understood that, but could the others get Maddy in that truck and drive her to a hospital?
She had to try. For Maddy. She would understand, she would forgive her. Red had cycled up to channel thirteen, but now she switched directions,
flicking back through the channels, toward three, toward the sniper. She was going to give him the name, she had to, if it was the thing that saved Maddy’s life. Everyone would want that.
Static fizzed in her ears and behind her eyes, under the skin of her fingertips.
Down through channel ten. Nine.
Red inhaled. Eight.
Static. Seven. Six.
The static cut away before her thumb pressed the button again. “—check, over.”
A voice broke through the fuzz. Static.
“What was that?” Simon asked, standing up by the door. “Was that the sniper?”
“No,” Red said, staring down at the walkie-talkie. “I’m on channel six.” The static broke off.
“Yeah, the team have removed the truck and the cell tower itself doesn’t look too bad. But some of these antennas are damaged, so let’s get the engineers up here ASAP now that it’s clear. Over.”
Static.
Red’s breath snagged in her throat. Interference.
People were talking on two-way radios and she’d found them, she’d found them, and before she lost them she had to—
Red raised the walkie-talkie to her lips, pressed the push-to-talk button. “Help, call police! There’s a shooter down McNair Cemetery Road and
one of us has been sh—”
A hand came out of nowhere, colliding with the walkie-talkie, smacking it out of Red’s hands.
It fell to the ground, shattering into pieces. The static died with it.
Red’s eyes stayed down there with the broken walkie-talkie, not looking up. Because she knew that hand, the one that came out of nowhere. Knew the black scribbled check mark and boxes by his knuckles, matching the ones on hers.
It was Arthur.
