Jackson staggered up. For one terrible instant their eyes locked on each other. And for the first time, LuAnn was staring at Jackson’s real face.
Jackson looked down at her hands. He touched his face, felt his own skin, his own hair, his breath coming in great gasps. Now she could identify him. Now she had to die.
The same thought occurred to LuAnn. She dove for the gun at the same time Jackson pounced on her; they slid together along the porch, both straining for the gun.
“Get off her, you bastard!” Riggs screamed. LuAnn turned to see the man, deathly pale, standing at the window, his shirt entirely red, the gun in his shaky hands. With an enviable bit of speed Jackson leapt over the porch railing. Riggs fired an instant too late, the bullets striking the porch instead of flesh.
“Shit!” Riggs groaned and dropped to his knees, disappearing from LuAnn’s line of sight.
“Matthew!” LuAnn sprung to the window. Meanwhile, Jackson had disappeared into the woods.
LuAnn raced through the door, pulling off her jacket as she did so. She was next to Riggs in an instant. “Wait, don’t pull it out, Matthew.” Using her teeth, she tore her jacket sleeve apart and into strips. Next, she ripped open his shirtsleeve and exposed the wound. At first she tried to staunch the bleeding with the cloths, but she couldn’t. She searched under Riggs’s armpit and applied pressure with her finger at a certain spot. The flow of blood finally stopped. As gently as she could LuAnn pulled the knife free while Riggs’s fingers dug into her arm, his teeth almost biting through his lip. She tossed the blade down.
“Matthew, hold your finger right here, don’t push too hard, you need to allow a little blood to flow through.” She guided his finger to the pressure point under his arm that she had been pressing against.
“I’ve got a first-aid kit in my car. I’ll dress it as best as I can. Then we need to get you to a doctor.”
LuAnn retrieved her gun from the porch and they hustled out to the BMW, where LuAnn cleaned and dressed the wound using the first-aid kit from her glove compartment. As she cut the last piece of tape off with her teeth and wound it around the gauze, Riggs looked at her. “Where did you learn to do this stuff?”
LuAnn grunted. “Hell, the first time I ever saw a doctor was when Lisa was born. And even then it was only for about twenty minutes. You live in the boonies with no money, you have to learn how to do this just to survive.”
When they got to an urgent care center off Route 29, LuAnn started to get out of the car to help Riggs in. He stopped her.
“Look, I think it’ll be better if I go in alone. I’ve been to this place before, they know me. General contractors get hurt a lot. I’ll tell ’em I slipped and stuck a hunting knife in my arm.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I think I made a big enough mess for you already.”
He struggled out of the car.
“I’ll be here when you get out, I promise,” she said.
He smiled weakly, and holding his injured arm, he went inside.
LuAnn pulled the BMW around and backed into the parking space so she could see anyone coming in. She locked the doors and then swore under her breath. Riggs had come to her rescue, for that she could hardly fault him. But right before that she had Jackson convinced that everything was okay. Another minute and they would’ve been home free. God, the timing. She slumped against the seat. It was possible that she could explain Riggs’s sudden and armed presence away. Riggs had been concerned for her safety, followed her, thinking maybe that the man she was meeting was Donovan. But Riggs had done something else, something that she couldn’t explain away. She let out a loud groan as she watched the traffic pass by on Route 29.
In front of Jackson, Riggs had called her LuAnn. That one word had destroyed everything. There was no way he would’ve missed that. Now, Jackson knew she had lied to him about what Riggs knew. She had no doubt what the punishment for that would be. Her spirits had been so high barely thirty minutes ago. Now all bets were off.