suddenly cramped and I gasped with the spasm. This was not a good omen for my getting us out of this scrape.
Emery looked around at the bodies. “Five within twenty-four hours. To think I used to make elaborate plans to do one woman once a year.” He shook his head, seemingly embarrassed at the mess he had made.
Still on my knees, I made my plan. Emery was taller than I, so an underhanded slash across his stomach with the knife would surprise him, and then a quick jab to his right temple would finish him off. The biggest problem was my back. The move was fairly simple, but I did not know how the hell I was going to be able to get up off the floor to accomplish it. I could only hope that the adrenaline building in my system would do its job.
Emery walked over to the counter by the sink where the rest of the Molotov cocktails waited in bottles of Bombay gin, Grey Goose vodka, and Crown Royal. Top-shelf explosives. They had longer strips of cloth than others I’d seen, and these were all connected by a single strip, presumably so he would be able to place them distant from one another, have enough time to light all four, and dash out the back door before the place blew. “I definitely have to place one of these by the agent’s feet,” he said. “I don’t want them to see that her tendons were cut.”
“Was it vodka?” I asked.
“What?”
“In Lynch’s IV bag.”
He put my gun down on the counter and picked up the bottle of Grey Goose. “I figured with all the pain killers he was on, a liter of alcohol going straight to his brain would finish him off but allow me plenty of time to get away from the hospital. How did you know?”
I started to tell him I saw him posing as nurse with the half-empty IV bag and how the alcohol stung going into Lynch’s hand, but Emery wasn’t interested. Still thinking, his eyes drifted off to the primitive IED in his hand and I could imagine him imagining what it would all look like, the sequence in which he would light the fuses before he bolted. He was close enough to me, and I now had my fingers wrapped around the front of my shirt that covered the knife, carefully up on one foot, keeping my abdominal muscles tight and my spine as rigid as possible while prepared for the pain when I leaped on him for our one chance at survival. I just needed to get him to come a little closer, but he backed up instead,
“Brigid Quinn,” he said, “I saw you take the knife. Did you think I would let you get close enough to use it?”
We were very still then, he standing about six feet away and able to move quickly, and I on my knees before him. I was out of options and wondered how it would feel to die. We watched one another for a moment, guessing each other’s next move, and then were both distracted by the soft but unmistakable sound of a shotgun shell being racked.
Cha-chin.
It came from the direction of the doorway between the kitchen and the bar. Emery’s back was to the door and from my position on the floor I could just make out the gun in Coleman’s hands though I couldn’t see her body.
“Don’t!” I shouted, because even in that second I knew what would come of it.
Emery tried to turn but didn’t make it halfway before the roar of the shotgun blast, a surprised look, and the front of his belly blew over me.
Emery was a large man. He didn’t immediately fall, but looked at me, then looked at his midsection, from which the blood started gushing. He was even able to stumble a step and reach out to me before toppling to his knees and falling flat out with his face turned partly in my direction, resting in his own body fluids.
Just to be on the safe side I dropped, too, so my face was about ten inches from Emery’s. I could tell he was still alive.
I could see that the bowl of his pipe was close to his lips. He must have fallen on it and jammed the pipe stem into his throat. That was only insult. The shotgun blast was injury enough. He was coughing up blood around the pipe, and I knew I should move