25. Deniz
Chapter 25
Deniz
“ E yes open, ?????”
I say it over and over, my own eyes barely on the road as I barrel up the 110. I attempt to get control over myself, to slow down. It wouldn't help anything to get pulled over, with my hands covered in blood, a spent pistol in my backseat, and a half-dead woman next to me.
No. Not half-dead. She’s fine. She’s breathing.
The blonde, unconscious asshole is in my trunk, and half of me hopes he doesn’t make it to help, despite what Clara asked of me. I carefully loaded Clara into my passenger seat, and then used anything I could find in my car to clean up evidence of her presence at the scene. I couldn’t do anything about the other body, but I picked up shell casings. There’s still blood and sick on the ground, and I know my redirection won’t last long. I need to call Charlie. Clara mentioned he had a crime scene girl on the payroll. I also need to wipe the feeds from the cameras in the port, and get someone to pick my car up out of the construction lot. A never ending list of tasks to protect Clara fills my mind, overwhelming my nervous system.
I turn my attention back to her, shuddering in the seat next to me. She needs medical attention. A surgeon. I reach over and check the shirt I packed into her wound, my stomach clenching when I see how much of it is soaked in blood.
I can’t take her to a hospital, I know better than that. A gunshot will raise too many questions that neither of us can answer, not to mention the fucking body in my trunk. It would be simple to wipe her name from any medical records of the night, but I don’t know if I could force myself away from her side to do it before police got involved.
She groans, sweat gathering on her forehead while her eyes twitch under her lids. She can’t die. I can’t let her die.
I’m dialing Taf before I can decide if it’s the right choice or not. He picks up on the first ring.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, no evidence of sleep in his voice.
“????? ?????,” I choke out in Arabic, my fingers shaking against the steering wheel. “She’s hurt. Clara. I can’t take her to a hospital, Taf.”
He’s silent on the other end. The quiet gives me a rare opportunity to feel the gravity of this situation, but I can’t bear it. It feels like the consequences of my actions are locked behind a wall of adrenaline and fear. Get Clara to safety, make sure she’ll live, and then I’ll deal with the hell that comes next.
“How bad is it?” Taf asks, his tone too kind, too friendly. I need Dr. Rakoto and all his confidence right now, not my friend sounding like he’s consoling me.
“She was shot in the hip,” I clip, my foot inching down on the pedal as I make my way toward Taf’s Malibu home. “No exit wound, so I packed the entry. I didn’t see any bone damage, but I can’t tell what it hit. There’s too much blood. She’s in and out of consciousness.”
There’s silence from the other end of the call again. The only sound that fills the space is the angry hum of the engine and Clara’s gentle whimpers of pain.
“Tafika!” I yell, unable to stop the edges of my vision from blurring with tears. “I’m about to hit one hundred miles per hour on the way to your house.”
“I’m not in Malibu,” he says, sinking my heart into my stomach. “I’m in Palm Springs, at Chase’s. We all are.”
It barely makes an impact that my best friends are spending time together without me. I can’t think about how I deserve their abandonment due to my constant outbursts, my unending lies. Not when Clara is murmuring and sobbing in the seat next to me.
I shift without thinking, flooring it across four miraculously empty lanes to make the entrance to the 91. I slip between eighteen-wheelers, physically restraining myself from going over ninety.
“I’m on my way.” There’s no negotiation in my tone. She’ll make it to the desert. I can get there in less than an hour and a half if I keep up this pace.
“Deniz, she might not…” he trails off, perhaps knowing that I can’t bear to hear the words. “It might be safer to take her to a hospital. I can get to Cedars in two hours.”
It’s like my thoughts are in hyperdrive, the adrenaline pumping through my veins infecting them, too. But even without being able to think clearly, I know stopping isn’t what Clara would want. Even when her mother was nearly killed, she helped move her as quickly as possible from the emergency department at Acibadem Taksim to private care in Trani, despite the risks it posed. She put her mother’s life even more seriously on the line, if only to ensure there was less of a paper trail connecting the Costas to the attack. She worked tirelessly to erase all evidence of her mother’s presence in Istanbul.
She’d rather die than put her family’s mission at risk. And I need to make sure neither happens.
“I’m coming to you,” I say, barely keeping my eyes on the road as I watch Clara’s head loll against the window. “Tell me what to do.”
Taf must think I’m insane, and he’s probably right. But I’ve been driven mad by Clara long before this. She is a parasite that has embedded herself in the very core of me, and now I can’t rid myself of her without killing the host I’ve become. The carnal hate between us has become symbiotic, her claws and teeth and soft, warm skin are blades whose cuts I crave.
“You need to hold pressure on the wound,” Taf finally responds, his clear directions soothing the chaos of my mind. “Press your hand against the packing, if you can. It’s going to hurt her, but pain is a good thing right now.”
It’s a reminder I need. I flip on cruise control, the speedometer nearing ninety-five miles per hour, and reach over to her with my right hand. When I press against her hip, blood leaks from the shirt, seeping between my fingers. Clara cries out in pain, her eyes flickering open to reveal eyeballs rolled back in her head. Her skin is waxy and sallow, losing all of its beautiful warmth with every heartbeat.
“Taf…” I start, nausea rolling through me. Not at the sight of her blood, strangely, but at the way she looks half in the grave, a corpse making its final march toward death.
“Pain keeps her conscious, Deniz,” he reminds me before the sound of Chase and Bashir’s voices appear on the other end of the line, their questions faint in the background. “I’ll do my best when she gets here, but press down as hard as you can for as long as you can. It’s her best shot.”
So I do. For eighty-seven minutes, I hold down the fabric stuffed into her wound, pressing harder every time it seems like she slips further away from me. Each cry of agony is torture and an answered prayer, each twitch of her hand a gift and a nightmare. I let Clara’s blood coat my hands, like I’ve imagined for nearly a year and a half, and decide if she lives through tonight, this is vengeance enough.