“Pete,” she said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
He simply stared dumbly at her.
Quickly, she stepped around the fallen man. The end of the shard jutted from his ruined eye, his hands weaving around it as if desperate to pull it out but afraid what might happen if he did. Occasionally the heel of one palm would bump the shard and he would convulse and cry out. His right cheek was drenched in blood.
“Pete,” she said, louder now as she came to him. He continued to stare at her. The boy had saved them both from certain death. For now. But he was young, and the guilt and horror of what he’d just done to another human being would no doubt override all others. All he would see was that shard, slicing through a man’s eyeball, over and over again.
She clamped her hands on his shoulder and brought her face close to his. “Thank you,” she told him. “Thank you for helpin’ me. He would have hurt us both before he was through. You know that, don’t you?”
He didn’t answer.
“Look… I know you feel bad, but we’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to run, and I can’t do that on my own. I’m gonna need your help. Are you with me, Pete?”
Expressionless now, his eyes on hers, lips parted slightly, she feared she might have lost him again, this time to himself and not as a casualty of her selfishness, though both incidences were, at the back of it all, her fault. Had she not left him in the first place, he wouldn’t have had to track her down, and wouldn’t have—
Stop it, she chided herself. Just stop. This is gettin’ you nowhere. You start thinkin’ about blame and in a few minutes both of you are goin’ to be walkin’ out of here in handcuffs because you lost the will to move.
“Shit.” She struggled against tears. “Will you do this with me? Will you do this for your Momma?”
At that, a small light reentered his eyes. He blinked but his expression remained the same.
“He was goin’ to rape me, Pete. You had to stop him. And now we gotta get goin’ or they’ll throw us both in jail.”
He wouldn’t, or couldn’t speak.
With rising urgency, Louise noted the faintest strains of red peering through the buildings beyond her window like blood in the cracks between tiles. They were out of time.
On the floor, Red was muttering curses. “Fuggin’…. kill youuu…. they’ll….”
“C’mon,” Louise said, and clumsily guided Pete toward the door, shielding him with her body as best she could from the sight of the wounded man. At the apartment door, she put her hand to his cheek. “I want you to wait for me outside.”
He looked at her.
“I want you to wait outside,” she repeated. “Don’t talk to no one. Don’t go nowhere. I’m just goin’ to be a few minutes. Gotta get dressed, okay?”
She didn’t wait for a response, doubted he had one, so she opened the door and gently pushed him over the threshold. A quick check showed no one in the hall. Satisfied, she stepped back into the apartment, leaving him alone. “Wait,” she told him, with a look of pleading, and closed the door behind her.
“Fuggin… bitch… My eye….” Red moaned. He was up on one elbow, struggling to get up. Louise watched him from the door, her hummingbird heart threatening to stall under the weight of panic.
You can’t leave him like this. You know that.
Red dug his heels into the carpet and after a moment, managed to get to his knees. He swallowed, and glared at her, the ruined eye only adding to the malevolence. “Gonna kill you,” he said hoarsely. “Wasn’t gonna, but now…” He sneered, blood trickling over his lips, streaking his cheeks. Breath rattled from his lungs.
“I’m sorry,” Louise said, and meant it. This was not part of any plan. No one had promised her this. It had happened all on its own, and now it would have to continue.
“Bitch,” Red said, swaying slightly.
Louise took a deep breath and in three short strides was across the room and standing before him. She saw him tense to strike her despite the extent of his injuries, but he never had the chance. She was crouching down and in his face, one hand grabbing a handful of his hair and yanking his head back before he could even draw back a fist. Then, eyes narrowed so she might be spared the full extent of her actions when the memory of them came back to haunt her, opened her free hand and drove her palm against the shard, slicing her own skin and forcing the thick glass into Red’s brain.
He was dead in an instant, his remaining eye wide in surprise as he fell awkwardly back on his legs. As his lungs expelled a breath meant for a scream, or a plea he had not lived to deliver, she reached into his coat pocket and withdrew the pouch Red had retrieved from the guts of the destroyed television. It felt heavy in her hand, and when she opened it and angled it toward the light, she saw what was inside and her own breath left her.
Diamonds.
Swallowing back the terror, she hurried into the bathroom, quickly washed the gash on her hand and bandaged it, then moved to the bedroom where she tugged on whatever clothes she could find, and checked her face in the closet mirror for blood, or any evidence of what had happened here tonight. Satisfied that she did not look too conspicuous, she hurried out to join Pete.
Diamonds, she thought, stunned by the implications of everything that had just transpired in her roach-ridden fleapit of an apartment. But there would be time to think later, if they weren’t apprehended before they even reached the front door of the building. In the forefront of her mind for now, was the fear that Pete had already fled, that his own turmoil had propelled him away from her and she would never find him. His guilt might lead him directly to the police.
But he was there, waiting where she’d left him, and she couldn’t restrain a heavy sigh of relief.
She led him out of the apartment into the cold street, where she was stunned to see that though there was plenty of blood on the pavement amid the stubbed out cigarette butts and beer bottles, there was no body. The grief too, would come later, she knew, but was now glad that there was nothing to see here, nothing to distract her from what she planned to do.
As she hailed a cab and waited for it to slow, Pete finally spoke.
“Where we goin’?” he asked quietly.
Bolstered by this small sign that he was returning to himself, she brushed a hand against his cheek and summoned a smile.
“Home,” she told him.
Finch’s alarm clock showed 8:55 a.m. He sat up, groaning at the immediate assault of pain in his skull, and rubbed his eyes. The phone had dragged him from sleep without consideration for the amount of alcohol he had put away mere hours before, and he was not pleased with the interruption.
Grumbling, he blinked a few times and reached across the bed to the phone and snatched it up, muscles aching.
“What?” he snapped into the receiver.
The voice that came back at him did not alleviate his suffering, but it chased away all thought of sleep.
“Finch?”
He smiled, despite the shock. “Claire?”
“Hi.”
“Where are you?” he asked. Her voice was low, as if fearing she might be overheard.
“Out in the yard. Told them I was going for some air. I’m stuck behind a goddamn bush right now in my pajamas.”