Chapter 41
“Daddy, Daddy, wake up. Don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.”
Bryan heard her. He heard his little girl crying. Felt her hands…felt fire. Pain.
“Please open your eyes, Daddy. Please.”
Bryan forced his eyes open. “Asa…baby…”
“Daddy, Uncle John has a gun with a tube-thing on it. I think it’s a silencer thing. He…has the FBI lady inside. Uncle John has a gun!”
Gun. John. Bryan remembered; how the hell could he forget? His brother had shot him, and Asa…was here. Too damned close to a madman. “Go. Get out of here, baby. Go, now! Take your phone. Get up the street. Go to Courtney’s house. Hurry. Go. Call 911.”
Her best friend since kindergarten lived two blocks over. And Courtney’s parents would help her, keep her safe. He knew that. “Go. Get, Asa. Get to help.”
She didn’t have her coat. She was just standing there shivering in the cold. His baby. “Daddy, what about…you’re bleeding really bad.”
He shifted, as much as he could. “Go. You can’t help me now unless you do what I say. The cops are coming, baby. The FBI guys were already on their way. I’ll be okay. I promise. I’m going to make sure of it. I got to keep your uncle from hurting someone else. Go.”
Bryan wasn’t going to be able to get up. He thought…maybe he’d lost too much blood. He…couldn’t feel his arm. His heart was pounding like maybe…heart attack, too. He just…
“I need you out of here, honey. Go. Do what I say.” He couldn’t protect her like this if John came back. He just couldn’t. “Go!”
“Daddy, I don’t want to leave you.”
Bryan slumped back against the garage wall, the Gibsons’ old stuff surrounding him. “Asa, go! Call 911 and go to Courtney’s. Go.”
The last sight he had of her was his little girl running through the snow toward the road.