Sara clenched her teeth, fighting the pain as she tried to stretch toward her hand. She twisted and turned as much as she could in the chair, scratching Nell's good wood floors, pushing her mouth toward the tape.
"Sara?" Jeffrey stood in the doorway, Nell's ax in his hands. "Jesus Christ," he said, looking around the room, obviously searching for the person who had ransacked the house.
"He's gone," Sara told him, still straining toward her hand.
Jeffrey dropped the ax on the floor as he rushed toward her. "Are you okay?" He put his hand to her eye. "You're bleeding." He looked around the room. "Who did this? Who would -"
"Get me loose," Sara told him, thinking if she spent one more second in the chair, she would start screaming and not ever be able to stop.
Jeffrey must have understood, because he took out his pocketknife and sliced through the tape without asking any more questions.
"Oh, God," Sara groaned as she rolled out of the chair, unable to do anything but lie on her back. Her shoulder was killing her and her body felt bruised and battered.
"You're okay," Jeffrey told her, rubbing the circulation back into her hands.
"Robert -"
Jeffrey did not seem surprised to learn his friend had done this. "Did he hurt you?" His expression darkened. "He didn't -"
Sara thought about everything that had happened, what had brought Robert to this point, and said, "He just scared me."
Jeffrey put his hand to her face, checking the cut over her eye and her split lip. He kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her neck, as if his kiss could make everything better. Somehow, it did, and without thinking, Sara felt herself giving in to him, holding on to him as tightly as she could.
"You're okay," he told her, rubbing her back. "You're okay," he kept saying.
"I'm okay," she told him, and with a calming clarity, she knew he was right.
Chapter Twenty-Three
3:17 P.M.
Smith kept smiling at her, waiting to see her reaction. "He raped my mother," he repeated. "Then he killed her to shut her up."
Lena felt neither shocked nor appalled. "No, he didn't," she said, never more sure of anything in her life. "I know the type of man who can do that sort of thing, and Jeffrey's not like that."
"What do you know about it?" Smith asked.
"I know enough," was all she said.
Smith clicked his tongue once. "You don't know shit," he said, petulant. He told Sara, "Let's get this started."
"I can't do a block," she said. "The brachial plexus is too complicated."
"You don't need to do a block," Smith told her. "He's passed out."
"Don't be stupid."
"Watch it, lady," he warned. He rummaged through the case Lena had brought from the ambulance. "Use this," he said, holding up a vial of lidocaine. He took out a flashlight and shone it in his face with a smile. "Now you can see."
Sara did not move.
"Do it," he ordered, his face made more horrific by the flashlight.
Sara seemed about to refuse, but something made her give in. Maybe Jeffrey's condition was too serious to let it go on for much longer. Maybe she was trying to buy some time. Either way, she did not look confident that what she was about to do would work.
She took a pair of gloves out of the box and snapped them on. Even Lena could see that she was scared, and she wondered how in the hell Sara thought she could remove a bullet from Jeffrey's arm with her confidence so shaken.
Sara's hands steadied as she used a pair of scissors to cut away Jeffrey's shirt. If he was awake, he wasn't moving, and Lena was glad he could not see what was going on.
"Lena," Sara said. "I need to know if this is really lidocaine."
Lena felt the weight of her question. "I have no idea," she said.
"Why did Molly make such a big deal about it?"
"I don't know," Lena answered, wishing there was some way to tell Sara the truth. "Maybe she thought she could knock him out," she said, meaning Smith.
Sara took the bottle of medicine and snapped off the protective cap. She picked up a syringe and drew back the plunger.
To Smith, she said, "Pour all the Betadine on the wound."
Smith did not protest the order, and he even used a swab to wipe down Jeffrey's arm. With the blood washed away, Lena saw what looked like a small puncture wound in the front part of Jeffrey's armpit.
Sara took the syringe, holding it above the site. She said to Lena, "You're sure?"
"I don't know," Lena repeated, trying to convey with her eyes that it was all right. Smith was staring a hole into her, though, and Lena looked down at Jeffrey, hoping Smith did not see her certainty.
Sara put the needle right into the wound, and Lena sucked air through her teeth without even thinking about it. She forced herself to look away, feeling a phantom pain in her own arm. She saw Brad had moved closer to Sonny. He licked his lips, looking somewhere over her head. She guessed he was looking at the station clock, and a current of panic went up her spine as she realized that it might be fast.
Smith held up the flashlight so that Sara could see, giving Lena a perfect view of his Navy SEAL watch. There were all sorts of buttons and dials on it, and she remembered from the ad that the time was synchronized with the atomic clock in Colorado, which was accurate to within a millisecond or something impossible like that. The watch was huge, like a chunk of metal on his wrist. In the middle of the round black face was a digital readout showing the time to the seconds.
3:19:12.
Twelve minutes. But did his watch have the same time as hers? As Molly's and Nick's? Lena did not dare check her own watch or look at the clock behind her. Smith would know immediately what was going on and they would all be dead.
"Scalpel," Sara said, holding out her hand.
Smith slapped the scalpel into her palm, and Sara cut the skin, dissecting the flesh as she followed the path of the bullet. She used the remaining medicine in the syringe as she went, finally squirting the bulk of it into the open wound. Lena tried not to watch, but she found herself mesmerized by the inner workings of Jeffrey's arm. Sara obviously knew what she was doing, but Lena had no idea how she managed to remain calm. It was like she had become a different person.
"I need more light," Sara told Smith, and he leaned closer with the flashlight as she probed the arm. "Closer," she said, but Smith did not move. Sara cursed under her breath, using the back of her arm to wipe the sweat off her forehead. She leaned closer to better see what she was doing, her body an awkward arch.
Jeffrey gave a low moan, though he did not appear to be awake.
Sara told Lena, "Watch his breathing."
She put her fingers to Jeffrey's chest, feeling the gentle up and down as he took in air. Slowly, she turned her wrist, trying to check her watch. The room was hot, and sweat dripped down her arm. The metal band had slipped around to the inside of her wrist and there was no way to see the time.
Sara jerked back as blood squirted straight up into her face. She wiped it off with the back of her hand and kept going, telling Smith, "Forceps."
He rooted around for the instrument with one hand, holding the light with the other. Sara used some gauze to wipe away blood, saying, "I can't see it."
"Hate that for you," Smith said, sounding as if he was enjoying the drama.
"I can't get it if I can't see it."
"Calm down," Smith said, handing her the forceps, which looked like giant tweezers. "Here," he said, shaking them in the air.
Sara took the forceps, but she did nothing.
"You're taking all the fun out of this," Smith said, patting gauze around the incision. "You can find it," he coaxed. "I have faith in you."