3. Paige
I said goodbye to Oscar ten minutes ago. He didn’t want to climb up the tree at first and kept trying to scurry down to the ground, but after the third time I turned him around, he scrambled right up and disappeared. He didn’t look back, but I know he’s going to miss me.
Now I’m sitting on a boulder, trying to wipe the tree sap off my fingers and trying not to cry. Just like every other release, it’s bittersweet. I’m thrilled for the ones that get better, but I miss the crap out of them.
I take a deep breath and let it out. I need to get back to my car before it gets dark so Gina doesn’t send out a rescue party. Plus, dumplings sound like the perfect pick-me-up. I blow a kiss up to Oscar somewhere high in the branches, my fingers still smelling like pine sap.
It’s only a five-minute walk back to my car so—
Pop.
I freeze. My shoulders stiffen.
“What was that?” I whisper-ask Oscar, knowing full well he’s gone and that he wouldn’t be able to answer me even if he were still here.
Was that a gunshot?
Bang.
That was definitely a gunshot. I drop down to a squat to hide.
Pop pop pop.
Bang. Bang.
That’s more than one person shooting. It might be more than two people shooting.
Do I stay here, or do I make a run for my car? The shots sound close but not that close. But how the hell do I know? I have no idea how to tell how far away guns are. I need to get out of here.
Pop. Pop.
No, I should not run to my car—the shots are coming from the direction where I parked.
Pop.
What the hell am I supposed to do?
That tree. I’ll hide behind that tree. I get up and run over, leaning my back against it.
But this tree is really skinny and not hiding me at all.
I should run over to that wider one, stay there until the shooting stops.
But that’s the tree where I released Oscar. I don’t want to draw any attention there.
I drop down to the ground on all fours, my knees instantly soaked by the wet ground seeping through my thin scrubs. Sharp rocks dig into my hands, and twigs scratch my wrists as I crawl behind the boulder I was sitting on. It’s tall enough to give me cover.
Maybe the gunshots came from hunters? Is there a hunting season in Chicago?
Will the hunters see me on all fours and think my tan coat is a deer? But if I take it off, I’ll freeze. The inside lining is pink, maybe I should turn it inside out? If they’re hunters, seeing pink would tell them not to shoot. But if they’re bad guys, seeing pink might be a red flag that there’s a witness. Dammit.
I’m facing the direction the shots came from so I can see if anyone is coming this way, but maybe I should turn around so I’m poised for a getaway sprint if they come this way. I turn.
But if I don’t see them coming, how will I know when to run? I turn back.
I am not handling any of this right. What the hell am I doing?
Get up, Paige. Get up off your hands and knees and squat behind the rock. That way, I can see them coming and run. That is, if I don’t have a heart attack first since my pulse is thudding so hard, it’s drowning out other sounds.
Headlights glare up the access road, coming from the direction of the gunshots. Can they see me? I think it’s dusky enough now that they can’t. Hopefully, my jacket and mint-green scrubs blend in with nature. Thank god I’m not wearing my bright-pink scrubs.
An SUV speeds by. Did they see me? Is that the shooter fleeing the scene? Or are those the good guys running away from the bad guys? Or was it just hunters and now they’re going home?
I’m just going to stay here longer. Crouching, as still as possible. For another hour. Maybe all night.
It’s pitch black now.
I’ve been hiding here so long—hours?—so motionless, my legs are cramped. All the adrenaline has worn off and I’m shivering even in my winter coat. And I have to pee. Like painfully need to pee.
And of course my phone is long dead.
Okay. It’s go time. It’s got to be. I can’t stay in the woods all night. I have to assume that the guys with guns left, that it was them in the SUV that sped past. No reason for the shooters to wait around for the police to come.
Why haven’t the police come? They probably were just hunters and I’m completely overreacting.
I stand up and stretch my legs. Pins and needles shoot through my left foot, my toes tingly and prickly. I don’t know if I can put any weight on it until it wakes up, so I shake it.
Without my phone’s flashlight, it takes me twice as long to follow the path back to my car. Plus, I stopped to pee in the woods and that added a few minutes because somehow, in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, with no one around, I got stage fright.
I finally reach the parking area and there she is, my beat-up old Chevy Blazer, Jolene. I let out a long breath. She’s safe and sound. As I was walking back, I had this weird feeling Jo-Jo would be riddled with bullets or on fire or something out of a movie. But no. She’s fine. Just as dusty and unwashed as I left her.
But. . . What the hell? Her interior light is on.
Why is her interior light on?
Dammit, my battery. But I guess it hasn’t drained all the way since the light is still on, so it should be f—
The rear passenger door is open.
My entire body tenses. My shoulders hunch up. My breaths are shallow puffs of cloud.
I definitely did not leave the back door open. I didn’t use that door at all.
I’m going to hyperventilate.
Someone messed with Jo-Jo. Someone invaded my private space.
My feet are frozen in place, afraid that if I move, someone might see me. I slowly twist my body to look around again.
There’s no one in the parking lot. Just the one dim streetlight, my Jolene, and me. No unusual noises either. Just normal forest sounds, the drone of the highway in the background.
Did someone break into the car to steal my stuff? Joke’s on them, breaking into a broke girl’s car.
I sneak around the back of Jo-Jo to close her door. Slowly, quietly. Am I being ‘stealthy’? I’ve always thought that if the occasion arose, I could be particularly stealthy. Like there’s a stealthy side of me I’ve yet to discover. Like, if ninjas attacked, I could actually take them on. Like I have a secret stealth superpow—
There’s a foot.
Hanging out of Jo-Jo’s open door.
A man’s foot in a big leather shoe that isn’t moving.
Which means there’s a guy— who might be a dead guy —in my car.
I check my cell phone again, praying that it spontaneously recharged itself just a little, but nope.
What do I do?
I can throw a rock at the foot. If it moves, I’ll run. I don’t know where to. Maybe back to Oscar. I’ll hide there until the morning. Gina will realize I never made it home and send the police.
I pick up a golf-ball-sized rock. I’m oddly good at throwing darts, so I should be good at hitting a man’s foot, with a rock, in the dark, from twenty feet away.
Except that I’m not. All I manage to do is whack the door. Sorry Jo-Jo.
But it did make a really loud bang, and the foot didn’t even twitch.
I pick up a decent-length stick. I can whack the guy with it if I need to, if he’s faking it and attacks when I get close.
From as far away as possible, I lean all the way forward and reach out with my stick, almost falling over, to poke the foot.
Nothing.
I poke it again.
Okay, dead. Not the most technical way to decide if this guy is dead or not, but it’s not like I have my stethoscope out here in the woods with me.
There’s no way I’m getting in the car with a dead guy. I’ll pull him out, leave him here, then drive to the police station to report this. Then go home and crawl under my blanket with an entire bottle of wine.
It’s a half-decent plan, and it’s all I’ve got.
I take hold of the guy’s ankle. It’s still warm.
Dammit . If I had gotten here sooner, if I wasn’t so scared and hiding behind a stupid rock, maybe I could have saved him? I might need to switch that bottle of wine to a bottle of tequila to deal with this.
I grab his other ankle from in the car. One, two, three and pull . He’s heavy but slides toward me a few inches. Another big yank, and he’ll be—
“Stop.”
What the hell?
I stumble backward, tripping over my poke-him stick and falling hard onto my ass. “Holy shit. You’re alive?”
“What. . . are you doing?” The guy’s voice is strained. It’s hard for him to talk. But he’s obviously not dead.
I stand up, brush the dirt off my ass, and rub my left butt cheek that took most of the brunt of that fall. “I was pulling you out of my car so I could leave you here.”
“Don’t. . . do that. . . per favore.”
I took Spanish in high school but didn’t absorb much, but I know that means ‘please.’
“Well, amigo, that was my plan when I thought you were dead. But you’re alive. That’s good. But you’re in my car, which is not good. Why are you in my car?”
He doesn’t answer. I take a step closer. The light is so dim inside that I can barely make him out. I reach into the pocket in the back of the passenger seat for my emergency flashlight. I can use it to light up the car, and I can whack him with it if I need to.
Except now that I have enough light to see him, I can see he looks pretty close to death. He’s covered in blood. Drenched. Thank god I keep the backseat covered with a tarp for when I pick up rescue critters.
Looks like he might have passed out again. No way this guy is lunging at me.
“Hey.” I tap his foot with the flashlight. “Hey? Where’s your phone?”
He doesn’t answer. I reach in slowly and pat his pants pockets. No phone.
But not nothing . I felt something in there and it was not for making calls. “Oh my god, I am so sorry about that.” Holy shit, I just touched a stranger’s dick.
But also, good for you, my guy. Good for you.
“Wake up. Hey, wake up!”
He opens his eyes. Wow, those are the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen. Jet black hair, dark tan skin and brilliant jade-green eyes.
He closes his eyes again. “I’m here.” It’s barely a whisper.
Yeah, no duh, you’re here. Here in my car, where you definitely do not belong.
I stare at him. I know it’s wrong to perv out over the half-dead guy who broke into my car and might be bleeding out, but holy hell, he’s all full lips and a broad nose and enough scruff that his five-o’clock shadow has got to be intentional.
It’s like an olive-skinned Tom Hardy is bleeding out in the back of my car. And even though there’s the metallic stench of blood in the car that makes me want to gag, there’s also a heavenly scent of oranges and cedar and musk, delicious enough that I almost want to lean in and take a deeper whiff.
He tries to prop himself up, using one arm. He’s struggling to get upright in the seat. I don’t really want to touch him, but he’s not going to get up without some help.
“Hey, don’t overdo it. Hold on. Let me help.”
“Grazie.” He smiles slightly at my offer. He definitely wants my help. The state he’s in, he definitely needs my help.
He needs me.
Let’s do this. I’ll sit him up, I’ll seatbelt him, then I’ll take him to the hospital.
No way I’m touching any of the bloody parts of him without gloves on. Luckily, I keep my wildlife rescue supply bag on the backseat floor. I shine the flashlight down onto it. Hmph, it’s open, and there are gauze wrappers on the floor. Looks like this guy already raided the bag. Well, that’s what the supplies are for, I guess. I pull out a set of latex gloves, put them on.
I help him upright. “Where’s your phone?”
“I lost it.”
“Mine’s dead. What do we do now?” I ask, more to myself than to him.
He looks me up and down with those eyes. “You can help me.”
“Yeah, no, I get that. I’m trying to figure out how. I think I should leave you here and then go get the police and an ambulance.”
“Don’t.” He closes his eyes again, taking long, slow breaths.
“Don’t? Don’t to which part? Don’t leave you here or don’t go get the police?”
“Both.”
“But you need help.”
“You. . . help. . . me.”
“Yeah, by getting you someone who can help you.”
“No.” He opens his eyes and looks me up and down again.
Is he checking me out?
His foot nudges my supply bag toward me. “ You can do it. Just. . . you.”
He’s passing out again. Crap. He can’t wait for help.
I don’t have a choice or this guy will die in my car. Holy shit, if he dies in Jo-Jo, will the police seize her as evidence or something? Would I get her back?
He cannot die in my car. And this is already taking too long, wasting precious time. And people are supposed to help people, especially helpless people. Okay, decision’s made.
“Can you get your seat belt on?”
He looks confused. Maybe he’s going into shock?
I climb partway in and reach over to pull his seatbelt on, click it in. I hop out and shut the door, then run around to the driver’s seat. Thankfully, Jolene starts on the first try.
“Don’t worry, the hospital is only a few minutes from here.” I drive off the road, over some grass to get to the access road faster. It’s bumpy, but the actual road from this parking lot winds and twists the long way through the woods in a big swirly loop before connecting with the access road.
“No. . . hospital.”
“Are you crazy? You need a doctor. You need all the doctors.”
“No.” He’s struggling to talk between breaths. “No hospital. No police.”
“Yes hospital, so they can patch you up, and yes police, so they can find whoever shot you.”
“Pull over. Pull over and leave me here. I can’t go to the hospital.”
“I can’t just leave you here.”
He looks at me in the rearview mirror, tilting his head, questioning me.
“Okay, yes, I was going to leave you in the park. But that was before. Now it’s too late for that. I have to get you to the ER.”
“I only need. . . a few stitches. You. . . can sew me up. You have sutures, yes?”
“The ER has to help you even if you don’t have insurance.” I mean, I’m still paying off the $18,000 bill from when my appendix burst, but at least they treated me.
He’s shaking his head. He’s definitely passing out again soon. “Please.” Those stunning green eyes are begging me. “No hospital. I was barely shot.”
“I don’t think there is such a thing as ‘barely shot.’ Plus, you’ve lost a lot of blood. They might have to give you a transfusion.”
“It’s not that bad. . . I promise. . . You take care of me, or let me out here.”
I mean. . . I am pretty good at stitching up the critters. Most of them survive.
Some of them survive.
This guy is no critter, but maybe I can at least patch him up so he’s stable? I’m pretty sure I can. Then he can call his friends or something, and they can come get him.
He’s watching me in the mirror. Waiting. His jewel-tone eyes piercing into mine. “Promise me no hospital.”
“You need the hospital.”
“No. Promise. . . me.” He’s about to pass out again.
I’m about to make what’s quite possibly a very stupid decision. Except that. . . I think he’s right that I’ll be able to patch him up. I’ve gotten really good at it in the past few months.
I take a deep breath in. And out. “Okay. I promise. What’s your name?”
I look back at him in the mirror.
He’s out cold.
Don’t worry, my guy, a promise is a promise. I’ve got you.
Jo-Jo hits another bump. There’s a dull thud in the backseat. I look over my shoulder. There’s a gun on the floor of my car.
What the hell?