Chapter 13
Her elbow jammed into the sidewalk, and her head smacked hard as more snapping noises—gunfire, Fern sluggishly realized—erupted all around her.
She screamed at the short cracking bursts, at the pinging of metal and shattering glass.
A heavy body pinned her to the ground; it was Cal.
She could trace his cologne when she dragged in a breath.
The engine of the car driving by roared again, the tires peeling as they spun, and the gunfire stopped. The only sounds were the ringing in her ears and Cal’s voice.
“Fern? Damn it! Open your eyes.”
She had them squeezed shut. When she opened them, she saw the running board of the cab and sparkling, broken glass on the curb next to her face. Her cloche too. Cal took her shoulders and rolled her onto her back. His black hair hung down across his forehead, and blood smeared his right cheek.
“You’re hurt,” Fern said, her throat cinched tight.
“Are you hit?” he asked, his hands patting her down.
“No, no.” Although she couldn’t feel any part of her body. Except her head, which throbbed with bright pain.
Shouting came from all around them. Screams.
“Get up, come on,” he said, breathless as he pulled Fern upright.
Her shoes were only half on her feet. As she wiggled her heels back into them, she saw the cab driver and retched.
He lay sprawled on the sidewalk. Blood smeared his shirt; his body had been riddled with bullets.
A chunk of his forehead from his brow to his temple was missing.
“Don’t look, Fern. Don’t look.” Cal spun her away from the driver toward the building’s front doors. The panels of glass had shattered. The blare of sirens tunneled into her ears as people along the sidewalk slowly closed in on the gruesome scene.
Immediately, Cal stumbled. Fern clutched at him, trying to keep him on his feet. That’s when she saw it: a dark red stain blooming on his white shirt under his suit jacket.
“You’ve been shot,” she hissed, her whole body flashing cold, then hot.
Cal put a hand to his stomach and drew it away, staring at the blood on his palm. “Shit.”
Blood quickly spread through the fibers of his shirt on the left side of his abdomen.
“We have to get to a hospital.” Although she had no idea where it was. Fern turned to shout for someone to call for an ambulance when Cal pulled her back to him.
“No hospitals,” he said, his voice husky. He tugged her along with him toward the back lot of the factory.
“But you’re bleeding!”
Her ears still rang with the phantom sounds of gunfire, and when she looked over her shoulder, back toward the cab, her vision blurred.
The driver had a circle of horrified onlookers now, but they were also watching Fern and Cal with alarm.
Knew they were somehow involved and perhaps to blame.
Her stomach heaved. The driver had only been waiting for her because she’d asked him to.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been here when the shots erupted. Sirens wailed in the distance.
“I got a doctor,” Cal said as they finally stumbled around the corner of the building and out of view. More people were running toward the bullet-riddled Checker taxicab. Cal tugged the suit jacket panels closed to hide his bloody torso.
“Where?” Fern asked.
“On Evergreen, a few streets over from here. He’s close,” he said, breathless. He coughed and groaned, then swore a string of oaths under his breath.
He reached into his pocket and, with his bloodied hand, slapped a ring of keys in her palm. “You’re driving,” he rasped. “I don’t think I can.”
He then broke away from her and leaned against the creamy yellow paint of his Roadster. It was parked in the lot with dozens of other cars, rather than in the elevator lift. Fern’s heartbeat raced and stuttered.
“Me?” She gaped at him, the keys jangling in her fingers. “I don’t know how!”
“I’ll walk you through it.” He braced himself against the car and limped to the passenger side. He stood there, staring at her from across the top of the car. “I need your help, Fern.”
She stared at him, her throat aching, head spinning.
He could have run back inside when he heard the pops of gunfire and saw that car careening toward them.
Instead, he’d thrown her down and shielded her.
Fern nodded tightly and opened the driver door.
Her hands shook as she sat and gripped the big, thin steering wheel.
Cal dropped into the passenger seat. The blood had spread and darkened. It covered his hand as he clamped it to the wound.
“Ignition,” he said, gesturing to the place Fern needed to insert the key. She fumbled but did as he said. He pulled levers under and on the dashboard, then reached over to the steering column and adjusted levers to the right and left of the wheel, leaving smears of blood on everything he touched.
“Left foot down on the clutch,” he said. “And when I pull the choke, press your right foot on that button on the floor there.”
She followed his directions, and the engine made a horrible roaring, squealing sound before lurching forward and stalling.
“You gotta give it more gas to idle,” Cal said. “Never mind, I’ll drive. Move.”
“No! No, I can do it.” His face was looking waxy, and he was blinking often, as though he were trying to stay awake. Fern doubted he would have been able to drive out of the parking lot before passing out.
She pressed the clutch again. When Cal pulled the choke, she pressed the starter and immediately gave the engine a little more gas. This time, the car sounded right.
“Press the clutch and shift into first gear, then let up on the clutch while you’re pressing the gas—” The Roadster jerked forward, and they lunged toward the road. Thankfully, no one was on the sidewalk as Fern turned the wheel, clipping the curb.
“Straighten out, straighten out,” Cal barked, but then groaned, and his head flopped back against the seat.
She glanced over at him, the wheel jerking to the side. “Pay attention to the road,” he said, opening his eyes again.
She did, and within seconds, the engine was whining a high-pitched squeal.
“Clutch. Let off the gas for a second,” he said, reaching over to the gear shift. With a groan, he shifted up, and the engine quit whining. Cal fell back against the seat; the effort had taken everything out of him.
“Where am I going?” she asked.
“Commercial,” he mumbled as the car joined traffic. “Next left,” he directed in a low whisper.
Fern pressed the brake as the turn came up, and the car began to judder and lag. Cal murmured that she needed to downshift to a lower gear, and so she did. Her feet worked at the pedals as her panic over his waning consciousness rose.
“Cal? Cal, wake up. Where next?” They were on a road with lots of brick buildings, and cars kept coming toward them. Behind her, a horn blared. She was driving too slowly.
When he didn’t answer, Fern peeled her eyes from the road. His eyes were closed. “Cal!”
“Up ahead. Evergreen. Forty-eight.”
She shifted into a higher gear as they passed a handful of streets, none of them Evergreen.
She was starting to wonder if, in his delirium, Cal had pointed her in the wrong direction when the sign for Evergreen appeared.
Fern slowed, the car juddered, and she shifted down.
She took the corner too sharply. Again, the tires clipped the curb. Cal grunted.
“I’m sorry!”
Panicked, she searched the brass number plates attached to the houses along this street. They were above front doors and on columns lining slim porches of bungalows and cottages. An auto backed out of a driveway, and she nearly rear-ended it before slamming on the brakes.
Cal jerked forward, and another horn blared somewhere.
Then Fern saw it: No. 48, on a metal post topped with an electric lantern on the left side of the street.
The short driveway was empty, so she turned the wheel, letting up on the gas before parking sideways.
The engine sputtered and went silent. With shaking hands, Fern jammed the gear shift into neutral, pulled the hand brake, and got out.
Her legs wobbled as she went around to help Cal out of the front seat.
His forehead glistened with sweat, and the blood stain had more than doubled in size.
“What in the—” A white-haired man with a thin, white mustache opened the home’s front door and stared at the Roadster, which was practically parked on the small front lawn. But then the man stopped, shouted an oath, and rushed down the few porch steps to help them.
“Tell me what you know,” he ordered.
“He’s been shot,” Fern said. “Some men drove by and—”
“Inside, fast.”
For a moment, she worried the gunners were coming down this road now; she even imagined the squeal of tires and pop of gunfire.
They hustled Cal into the house, Fern shoring up his left side, while the doctor—she presumed—draped his bloodied right arm over his short, stout shoulders.
A woman in a flowered housecoat, wearing a kerchief over her faded red curls, appeared down a hallway.
“Get my things!” the man bellowed, and the woman dashed out of sight.
At a pair of open pocket doors, they turned inside a room that appeared to be a physician’s office.
“On the table,” the man instructed. Together, they lifted Cal’s heavy limbs onto an examination table. His legs were too long and hung over the end.
“Not bets, not bets,” Cal murmured incoherently, his lips gray, his cheeks waxy.
“Calvin,” the doctor said loudly as he tied on an apron and hurriedly washed his hands. “Has anyone else been shot? Are more of your boys on their way here?”
“Bets, don’t leave me,” Cal murmured. Bets. Was that a person?
“No. No one else was shot,” Fern answered.
The doctor spared her a moment’s glance, his eyes raking her scarred face. Then, the woman in the housecoat entered through a swinging door in the corner of the room. She delivered a tray brimming with steel instruments.