Chapter 32
Don’t Take the Girl
Duke
Watching Caroline fall to the floor, Cash wrapped around her body, I feel like the heart in my chest stops beating.
Aiming my gun, I squeeze the trigger. I’ve never even pointed a weapon at another person.
Until this very second, I wasn’t even sure I would be able to pull the trigger if I needed to.
The anger in my chest is visceral; it’s a physical presence filling me.
I don’t stop to consider what I’ve done as Roger falls, lying in the corner of the closet, blood flowing freely from a single hole in his chest. The terrified scream that erupts from Cash drags me to my knees.
“Caroline, please wake up baby girl, please,” I beg. I check her pulse, weak, barely beating. I watch the blood seep from around the knife sticking out of her. “Baby, please.” I hear the paramedics. My hands can’t find purchase on her, slipping every time I try to grab her.
Please. God, please.
Cash holds on to her like a drowning man, the pain pouring off him in waves as he begs her to wake up. Touching her hair, her face, her chest. She doesn’t breathe. She doesn’t move. He holds her close as the paramedics try to get to her.
Mickey, a man I’ve known most of his life, kneels next to Cash and lays a hand on his shoulder, trying to get to Caroline.
“Cash, let her go,” I tell him forcefully, trying to remove his hands from her.
My hands are coated in her blood and I’m smearing it across her body and Cash’s.
He finally releases her, and they pick her up, careful not to jostle her too much, protecting the knife that now acts as a dam for the blood trying to flow out of her.
“Please, be careful with her. Please,” Cash whispers as they strap her to their stretcher, stabilizing her, taking her pulse, inserting a needle into her.
Blood is dripping from her onto the floor.
There’s more blood outside of her than in, I think.
Cash sits up, looking around before his eyes roll back and he collapses.
I fall on top of him. “Cash, Cash, come on buddy. Cash, don’t do this.”
An officer kneels next to me. “He’s okay, just in shock. Give him a minute.”
I sit back, pulling my knees to my chest and laying my head on them.
They are taking the woman I love down the stairs, strapped to a stretcher, her life leaving a red trail on the floor as they go. My best friend is unconscious on the ground. A man is dead beside me.
I don’t even know how to think around the enormity of the situation.
“Duke, we have to get a statement from you, and from Cash, when he comes to,” the officer, Billy, tells me.
“Not now, Bill,” I respond, my own voice so devoid of emotion, I wonder if I’m even in this room at all.
“Yes, now.”
I stand. I need to go to her. I need to make sure she’s alright.
“No, I have to go to the hospital. We have to go. We have to know if she’s okay,” I tell him, my voice growing increasingly panicky as I consider she might not make it.
I sit back down. I shake Cash. I try to stand; it doesn’t work.
I reach my arm out in the direction they took her.
I hear the sirens get further away. “Where are they taking her, Billy?” I ask.
“I’ll tell you after you make your statement, Duke.”
I fly to my feet and grab his lapels. “Tell me!” I cry, tears flowing down my cheeks.
“Duke, I know emotions are all over the place right now but if you don’t take your hand off me, I will have to cuff you.
You have to make a statement before I can release you.
” He stares me directly in the eyes. “I can either bring you to the station or you can tell me here. But there is a woman with a knife in her side and a dead man over there. And you have to tell me what happened.”
I see Cash moving around, trying to sit up. I crouch down. “Cash, come on buddy.” I help him to his feet, and he takes in my frantic eyes and my tear-stained face.
“Is she dead, Duke?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” I tell him, my breathing shallow and fast.
“Cash, Duke, come out here, so we can talk away from,” he waves his hand at the blood, “all of this.”
Cash’s breathing catches as he looks around, looks at me, looks down his body, blood covering both us and all the surfaces.
“You killed him, Duke.”
“He might have killed her,” is my response as I walk out, following Billy into the living room.
It takes two hours of sitting at her little dining table before the police are satisfied. We washed up as best we could before we sat down, and I watched Caroline’s blood swirl down the drain and my throat felt like it was closing.
I shake Billy’s hand, and he clamps a hand on each of our shoulders.
“I’m real sorry for what happened here tonight, guys,” he tells us the hospital she was taken to but doesn’t tell us anything else.
We head out into the night which is quickly becoming early morning.
The sun will be rising in the next hour or so and I am so bone-deep tired, into my soul, as I walk with heavy steps down the stairs that are covered in blood, through the kicked in door, and to my truck.
I had to surrender my gun to the police, for forensics.
I climb in behind the wheel as Cash joins me.
Everything feels disjointed. Out of order.
The smallest things sticking out in my head.
Leaving the lot, I see Vickie and Pete pulling in.
I don’t stop as we head toward the hospital.
They’ve already transferred her to a trauma hospital in Billings, which means, at least she survived the trip.
The sun lightens the sky as we pull into the parking lot.
I climb out, and unbutton my shirt, trying to remove some of the blood from my body.
Cash and I look like murderers. And maybe I am. I can’t feel guilty for it.
“Good morning,” I tell the woman behind the reception desk as she takes in our appearance and her eyes widen. “We are looking for Caroline Pearce. She was brought it on a med-evac from the Inspiration Clinic?”
Her eyes register recognition. “Oh, yes of course, they said you would be coming. Head up to the fourth floor. They can tell you more there.”
“Is she okay?” Cash asks quietly from beside me.
Her eyes soften at his question. “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t tell you anything down here. Please head on up.”
In the elevator, I press the ‘four’ button, reading the chart above it.
Fourth Floor – Trauma/Intensive Care Unit.
I shove my knuckles between my teeth, biting down to stop the sob creeping up my throat.
Cash stands close to me, his shoulder touching mine as we step out of the door together and head toward another desk.
“Mr. Williams? Mr. Colter? Let me call the doctor; the police called ahead to say you were on the way. Have a seat,” a woman dressed in scrubs tells us before we even fully approach.
“Please, is she okay?” Cash begs her.
“The doctor will tell you everything.”
“Ma’am with all due respect, I saw her wheeled out with a knife in her side hours ago. We drove all the way here and no one will even tell us if she’s alive. Please just tell us that.”
She listens to me, to the pleading in my voice. She types on her screen, moving her mouse around.
“She’s alive. Now please, go into the waiting room. I’ll have someone bring you something to change into.”