I’d never imagined feeling this way, but I couldn’t handle this emotional jerking around. I’d start to feel okay, then I’d get poked in the sore spot, like taking a scab off my knee when I was a kid. In books, the hero was gone after the big blowup. He didn’t stick around in the vicinity doing mysterious shit, sending messages to the heroine by a third party. He hauled his ass into oblivion. And that was the way things should be, as far as I was concerned. Life should imitate romance literature far more often.
If the world operated according to romance principles, Mustapha Khan would tell me that Eric had always been unworthy of me and that Mustapha himself had harbored a deep love for me from the moment he’d met me. Did Harlequin have a line of books for guys-out-of-prison-get-redeemed romances?
I was just distracting myself, and I knew it. I noticed as I pulled to a stop that Barry’s rental car was parked in my yard, but Mr. Cataliades and his van were in town, of course.
I got out of my car and turned around to tell Mustapha that I had company. “You and Warren come on in. I’ll have Eric’s stuff together in a jiffy,” I said. I put my hand on my car door to close it, and Mustapha got off his bike. I raised a hand to Warren, and hearing the creak of the screen door, I turned my head slightly to see who was coming out the back door. I caught a glimpse of someone I hadn’t seen in a long time. I couldn’t recall his name . . .
And he had a gun. He called out my name in a terrible voice.
Mustapha, his eyes hidden behind his shades, was reaching toward me, quick as only a werewolf can be. When I saw that skinny blond Warren, still on the bike, had drawn the biggest handgun I’d ever seen in my life, I had a moment to be afraid. I had time to think, “Oh Jesus, that guy is going to kill me,” when two things happened almost simultaneously. From behind me I heard a crack!, and my left shoulder burned as I staggered because Mustapha was flinging me face-first to the ground. Then a house landed on top of me. And I heard a voice screaming from inside the house, a voice that was not mine.
“Barry,” I said. And a huge bee advised me that it had dug its stinger into my shoulder.
Life just sucked some days.
Chapter 16
At that point, it would have been nice if I could have fainted. But I didn’t. I lay there and tried to gather my wits, tried to comprehend what had just occurred. My shoulder was warm and wet.
I’d been shot.
I slowly understood that Mustapha had tried to save me (and himself) by throwing us to the ground, while Warren had fired at the shooter. I wondered what had happened inside the house.
“You hurt?” Mustapha growled, and I could feel him sliding off me.
“Yes,” I said. “I think I am.” My shoulder hurt like the very effing hell.
Mustapha had gotten to his knees but pressed himself against my car, using the still-open door as cover. Warren moved past us, gun at the ready, looking like a different person from the wispy ex-con who normally seemed a mere shadow of his brawny friend. Warren looked utterly deadly.
“A rattlesnake in a moth outfit,” I said.
“Say what?”
“Warren. He looks like a movie shooter now.”
Mustapha glanced after his buddy-and-maybe-more. “Yeah, he does. He’s the best.”
“Did he get the guy?” I said, and then I groaned between clenched teeth. “Wow, this hurts. We calling an ambulance?”
“He’s dead,” Warren called.
“Good to know,” Mustapha called back. “I figured. Good shot.”
“How’s Sookie?” Warren’s boots came into my constricting field of vision.
“Shoulder, not fatal, but she’s bleeding like a stuck pig. You calling 911?”
“Sure thing.” I heard the beeps and then the voice of the dispatcher.
“Need at least one ambulance, possibly two,” Warren said. “The Stackhouse place on Hummingbird Road.” I felt I’d missed part of the conversation.
“Sookie, I’m going to turn you over,” Mustapha said.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” I said between clenched teeth. “Really. Don’t.”
I could endure the status quo, but I was afraid any movement at all would make things worse.
“Okay,” he said. “Warren’s going to hold this jacket against your shoulder to apply some pressure, slow down that bleeding.”
Big boots were replaced by little boots. “Pressure” sounded painful. Sure enough, it was.
“Shepherd of Judea,” I said through clenched teeth, though I wanted to say something much, much worse. “Wow, dammit. How are the people in the house?”
“Mustapha’s checking on them now. I just glanced in to make sure they were all friendlies. One of ’em’s on the floor.”
“Who shot us?”
“Big guy, looks black but with a lot of white mixed in,” Warren said. “His features are real fine. Well, they were. And his hair is almost red.”
“Wearing . . . a uniform?”
“No,” Warren said, puzzled by my question. But I remembered the face and the hair, and I associated it with a uniform of some kind. Not armed forces . . . if I could just stop hurting, I could remember.
Someone in the house started screaming, and this time it was a woman.
“Why is she screaming?” I asked Warren.
“I guess she’s worried about . . .” Warren said.
I must have missed another second or two. Well, the pressure on the shoulder, Warren was serious about maintaining it. Mustapha was back when I opened my eyes. “Warren’s not supposed to be armed,” he told me.
“Huh?” I said with a huge effort, because I actually was beginning to feel swimmy and weird. Finally. Bring on the unconsciousness, I thought; and for once, I got my wish.
I woke to chaos. The two paramedics who had come to get Tara when she went into labor were now bending over me. They looked intent on their work, which at that moment was wheeling my stretcher to the ambulance.
So here’s the story, a voice was saying in my head. Thoughts don’t have voices, of course, and I wasn’t sure who was telling me this, since I was too tired to turn my head to look around the yard. The gun is yours. Someone gave it to you. You asked Warren to take you target shooting because you wanted to be sure you knew how to use it. He cleaned it for you. That’s the only reason he had it with him. Then that asshole came out of the house and fired at you, and naturally, Warren fired back, since he didn’t want you to get killed. Nod if you understand.
“That’s what really almost happened,” I said, moving my head up and down. The medics looked at me with concern. I had misspoken. “That’s what happened, but not really.” More accurate?
“Sookie, how are you feeling?” one of them asked. The taller one.
“Not too good,” I said.
“We’re getting you to Clarice. You’ll be there in ten minutes,” she said, a little optimistically.
“Who else is hurt?” I said.
“Just worry about yourself right now,” she said. “The guy who shot you, they tell me he’s dead.”
“Good,” I said, and they seemed surprised. Is it not okay to be glad that someone who tried to kill you is down on the ground? If I were a better person, a much better person, I would be sorry that anyone in the world ever got hurt, but I had to face the fact that I was never going to be that nice a person. Even my grandmother hadn’t been that good.
We got to the hospital, and everything that happened after that was really unpleasant. Fortunately, I don’t remember a lot of it. And I took a nap for a while after it was over.
I didn’t hear the whole story until much later that evening. Andy Bellefleur was sitting in my room when I woke up. He was asleep, which I thought was almost funny.