Eve screamed.
Joe was staggering back, slowly falling to his knees.
“Oh, God.” Eve ran forward and sank to her knees in front of him, trying to hold him. “No.” It couldn’t be happening. “No, Joe…”
Black was running for the rifle on the ground a few yards away. He didn’t reach it before Gallo was on him.
Gallo’s arm went around his neck, jerking it back. “Say it’s a lie, you bastard.”
“You did it.” He was straining to get the rifle. “You know you-”
Gallo’s arm tightened and twisted, breaking Black’s neck.
He fell to the ground, dead.
“Eve.”
Eve was hardly aware that Gallo had spoken. She was carefully laying Joe on the ground.
Her fingers were checking the pulse on his throat. Alive!
Relief surged through her. But unconscious. Going into shock. The blood pouring from his chest. How long would he stay alive?
“Eve.” Gallo was beside her now. “I need to-”
She ignored him as she reached for her phone and called Catherine. “Joe’s hurt. We’re going to need an air ambulance. I hope he doesn’t die before it gets here. Come and help me.” She hung up.
“Let me help you, Eve.”
She didn’t look at him. “You can’t help me.” She was trying to stop the blood. “I can’t even look at you right now. I’ll deal with you later.”
Pressure. She had to apply pressure. But what if the blade had torn an organ?
“You think I killed her.”
“I think Black was telling the truth,” she said unevenly.
Gallo was silent for an agonized moment. “So do I.”
When she glanced up, he was gone.
It was all a hideous nightmare.
Oh, Joe, why did you come?
I knew it would happen.
Why didn’t you let me go?
“Eve.” Catherine dropped to her knees beside Joe. “I should have stayed. I shouldn’t have left you to go after Cara.” She was examining the wound. “It’s bad.”
“I know,” Eve whispered. “I don’t know how bad.”
“Neither do I. I called for help, but I don’t know how long they’ll be. We need bandages, blankets. We have to get him warm. He’s still wet from the lake.”
“He swam the lake?”
“He would have swum the Atlantic to get to you.” She took off her jacket and wrapped it around Joe. “I’m going to hike to the cabin and get some supplies. I have to take Cara with me and tuck her in there until the ambulance comes. She’s waiting on the path. I would have been here sooner, but I had to coax her into coming with me. She was like a frightened animal. She’s sort of shell-shocked, but I was finally able to convince her she was safe now.” She jumped to her feet. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
“I’ll know it.” She was stripping her own jacket off to help form a makeshift blanket. “Why did you do it, Catherine? Why bring him here?”
“Blame me, if you like, but he wasn’t going to have it any other way. I could at least keep an eye on him if he was with me. I did what I thought best.” She looked down at Black. “Joe killed him?”
“Gallo.”
“Where is Gallo?”
“Gone.”
“Why did- You can tell me about it later. I have to get to that cabin.”
Eve didn’t watch her leave; her gaze was on Joe’s face. She lay down beside him, her hand keeping pressure on the wound while she cuddled close to try to share her body heat.
“You’re going to be fine, Joe,” she whispered. “You can’t leave me. You’ve got to get well and strong and let me tell you how much I love you. No, that’s all for me. Get well so that you can live life to the fullest, be what you want, take what you like.”
He didn’t stir.
Was he growing colder?
Panic was rising, and she held him tighter.
“Live, Joe. Hold on…”
“Open your eyes. Coffee,” Catherine said.
Eve opened her eyes and straightened in the waiting-room chair. She took the Styrofoam cup. “Thanks.”
“Though maybe I shouldn’t have bothered you if you were dozing.” Catherine sat down beside Eve. “You’ve been living in this room for almost two days.”
“I wasn’t dozing. I just wanted to close everything out for a while.” Stark, shining corridors, doctors, nurses, worried family members.
Joe in ICU.
Death hovering, ready to reach out and take him.
“No word yet?” Catherine asked quietly.
Eve shook her head. “Still critical. They don’t know whether he’s going to live or not.” Her hand clenched on the steel arm of the chair. “I know. He can’t die, Catherine. Not for me. Not because I won’t let my Bonnie go. He’s so strong. He should live to be an old, old man. If I hadn’t come into his life, he would have.”
“We all make choices.” Catherine took a drink of her coffee. “Joe chose you. He didn’t regret it. The first time I saw you with him, I realized you had something special together. If there were bad times, then he thought the good times balanced them out. That’s all anyone can ask.”
“No, it isn’t,” Eve said fiercely. “You can ask for the best, the ultimate, if you care about someone. That’s what Joe should have.” Then she wearily leaned back against the wall. “But I couldn’t give it to him.”
“Your coffee is getting cold,” Catherine said. “Stop all this emotion and drink it. You need the caffeine if you’re going to spend any more time here.”
That was like Catherine, Eve thought. Blunt, authoritative, cut to the chase. But on occasion she could be as warm and comforting as a hand-stitched blanket passed down through loving generations. Lord, she was glad she’d had Catherine beside her for the last few days.
She lifted her cup to her lips and tasted it. “It’s not cold yet.” She asked, “How is Cara?”
“Short-term, fine. No physical damage but a few scratches. I hired a nice motherly woman who had nursing experience to take care of her in a small house near St. Louis County Hospital. Judy Clark is getting better, and Cara will be able to go to see her mother every day. I think that’s what she needs.” She grimaced. “Long-term, who knows? She’s going to have nightmares for the rest of her life thanks to Black.”
“Love can do a lot to heal wounds. I’ll bet on Judy Clark to bring her through this.” She didn’t speak for a moment. She took another sip of coffee. “Have the police found John Gallo yet?”
“No, it’s as if he disappeared off the face of the earth.” She paused before saying, “You haven’t spoken about Gallo since the first day we got Joe to the hospital. I didn’t know how you were feeling, so I didn’t want to push you. Is there anything you didn’t tell me? I will find him, Eve.”
“No, I told you that he as much as confessed to killing Bonnie.” She looked down into her cup. “A fit of madness, Black called it. I don’t think John even remembered it.” Then the rage returned, sweeping reason aside. “But how could he not remember? It was Bonnie.” She fought to control herself. She was on the edge of spiraling into an emotional tailspin about Joe, and she didn’t need thoughts of Gallo to push her over. “I didn’t want to believe it. Isn’t that stupid?” she said unevenly. “Yet there have been so many times that I realized he wasn’t- For God’s sake, he even told me he’d had moments of madness. I just couldn’t connect it with Bonnie. Not after I grew to know him better.”
“And he managed to con you. I can see how he would be able to do that.” Catherine frowned. “But why would Queen bribe Black to take the blame?”
Eve rubbed her eyes, trying to think. It was hard to concentrate on anything but Joe. “Let’s see, Gallo was unstable. If he’d found out that he’d killed his own daughter, he might have broken down and gone ballistic. He knew too much, and Queen had to maintain at least minimal control of him. He didn’t want Gallo thrown into an asylum, where he’d probably spill everything. So he set up Black as the patsy for John to blame and hunt down. It was safe as long as Queen kept Black just out of John’s reach.”