“Cullen!” Lisa did manage to break free for a moment before a security guard threw her to the ground and covered her body with his.
It was Frank who aimed his gun very carefully, his hand steady when the gunman continued running toward Corinne. Frank called out a warning, loud and clear, hoping the man would stop. Instead, he turned and fired at the security guard, all in one smooth motion. The bullet thunked into a tree beside the security guard’s head. Without flinching, Frank squeezed the trigger. He found he was whispering to himself, “No. No, don’t.” The gunman stood still, staring in dismay at Frank, his gun falling in a strange slow motion from his hand. He looked down at the crimson stain spreading across his chest and then up at Frank before he fell onto his knees and then face down, half on the rocks and half on the lawn.
For a moment there was only the sound of sobbing, and then people slowly began to look at one another, realizing the violence was over as quickly as it had started. Frank kept his gun aimed steadily on the stranger who had shot at him as he walked slowly toward him. Sirens could be heard in the distance, coming closer fast. Frank glanced anxiously at Corinne. She was very still, face down in the rocks.
Minutes later Lisa was climbing into an ambulance with Corinne, clutching Corinne’s purse, tears running down her face. Cullen was being loaded into another ambulance. Lisa pressed a hand to her mouth to keep from crying out loud. “I did this,” she whispered to Corinne.
Corinne was so pale she looked gray. Around her lips was a distinctive blue color that horrified Lisa. “She’s pregnant,” she said unnecessarily to the paramedics, “and she has a bad heart.”
An oxygen mask covered Corinne’s face. She looked small and helpless, very vulnerable and fragile. Already broken. As if she had already gone far away from Lisa. Lisa took a firm hold of her hand, wanting to cling to her, to prevent Corinne from slipping away. “Is she going to be all right?”
The ambulance was moving very fast, the paramedics talking on their radio, putting things into Corinne’s IV. None of them looked directly at Lisa, and none answered her question. She touched Corinne’s stomach, the baby. John and Corinne’s baby. She didn’t want to lose either of them. And if the worst happened and Corinne’s heart gave out, Lisa wanted that tiny little part of her to live. “It’s too early for you, baby,” she crooned softly. “Way too early.”
At the hospital Lisa was hustled out of the emergency room. She could only watch helplessly as they rushed Cullen into a cubicle beside Corinne. A policewoman came in after a long while to talk to her, but nobody said anything about Corinne or Cullen. Eventually the waiting room was filled with people: her photographer, her agent, Frank the security guard. The one person she looked for, waited for, knew she could lean on, the one person she dreaded most, didn’t come.
Dayan. She would never be able to look him in the eye. Why hadn’t she just listened to them all? Lisa hadn’t wanted it all to be true. Murders didn’t happen to regular people; she and Corinne were finished with that world. She had worked hard and found a new life. One that didn’t include murder. She sat quietly, her fists clenched tightly, wanting to cry and cry forever.
Dayan lay locked in the earth, counting the minutes until he could rise without danger. He burst from the soil, dirt spewing like a geyser as he shot into the sky, shape-shifting as he did so. The sun was low but had not set, and the light hit his eyes so that they burned and wept. Or maybe it wasn’t the sun. Dayan didn’t know for certain as he winged his way swiftly across the sky toward the hospital where she lay.
His world. His life. The best part of him. She lay dying in a hospital. He knew it. He felt it. He kept his mind firmly merged with hers so that she couldn’t possibly release her spirit from her dying body. ‘You will hold on.’ He commanded it with every fiber of his being, bent his entire will to ensure her obedience.