wide and fixed on something to his right. Something else was different. Arty was no longer behind him. Where was Arty, and what was her son looking at?
Amy followed her son’s gaze and she saw.
Patrick was free. He was free and mounted on top of Arty, driving a knife into their captor’s chest repeatedly.
The sensation came back to her. The dreaming sensation. Was her husband really coming to her rescue?
She had to speak. It was the only way to break through her haze and establish some form of solidarity to the moment. If she called out, heard her own voice, and her husband responded, she would know it was real.
Her first attempt came out as a cough. Her second, a whisper. Her third was a weak shout that made Caleb turn but did nothing to penetrate Patrick’s deaf rage. Her fourth shout was as loud as she could manage and it made her husband stop.
Patrick’s head turned whip-quick in Amy’s direction. His manner, the scene, Patrick appeared a ravenous animal startled from its meal. His good eye was huge and bulging. His mouth hung open in a deep pant like a wild dog’s, chest heaving with each breath. His skin tone was pale, heightening the contrast of wet red that flecked his face and neck.
She had his full attention, but Amy called his name a fifth time in an attempt to bring her husband all the way back—she needed this savage to vanish, her lucid protector to emerge. She needed help. Amy could feel herself fading.
66
Patrick turned towards his wife. He knew she’d been shot, and he’d feared the worst. When he saw her upright and calling to him, his rage became something controlled by a switch—the animal was instantly gone, and he started sobbing with relief.
Patrick pushed off Arty’s bloodied chest and jumped to his feet, Arty’s limp body rocking beneath Patrick’s weight before it settled motionless. Caleb was already attached to his mother’s leg, weeping and refusing to let go. Carrie was still hiding.
“Baby,” Patrick said, taking his wife into his arms. She cringed when he touched her and he instantly checked her wound. “How bad is it? Can you hold on?”
She nodded.
He smiled and coughed out another cry. He went to kiss her but stopped short. A frightening realization sunk deep into the pit of his belly. In his lust for vengeance, and now basking in the ecstasy of salvation, Patrick had overlooked a glaring truth.
Two.
One was dead, but there were two of them. Where was the other one? Where was Jim?
“The other one,” he blurted. “Where’s the other one?”
Amy looked as though she didn’t understand.
“The other one, Amy! Jim! Where’s Jim?! Where’s—”
She gripped his arm tight. “It’s okay, it’s okay…” She moved her hand from his arm to his battered face, caressed it. “He’s upstairs. He’s hurt badly. Don’t worry…it’s okay.”
Of course. Of course he was out of commission. How else would Amy have managed to come downstairs on her own?
Patrick wanted details. He wanted to know how she’d done it, and if Jim was truly incapacitated. But his wife’s ragged breathing and crumpled posture buried those questions for a later date—
(and there WILL be a later date, you motherfuckers, he found himself thinking for a quick second, and with more than a little triumph)
—and forced him into action.
“Okay, good,” he said. “Just hold on then, baby. I’m gonna get us to a hospital. Just hold on, okay?”
She nodded, hunched over, clutching her chest. Blood was seeping through her fingers. With her free hand, she rubbed Caleb’s head at her waist then looked around the room.
“Where’s Carrie?” she asked.
Patrick was bent over Arty’s body, rifling through his pockets for car keys. He didn’t look up when he answered his wife. “She’s hiding. Carrie! It’s safe now, honey! You can come out!”
Patrick resumed digging in Arty’s pockets, but was coming up with nothing. “Shit! I can’t find any keys.”
Amy struggled for a breath and said, “Look around. They’ve got to be here somewhere.”
Patrick gave up on Arty and stood. His head went in all directions around the family room, scanning tabletops and any other flat surface where one might throw their car keys. He saw nothing.
“I don’t see anything,” he said. “Jim. Maybe Jim has them.”
Amy looked worried. “Don’t leave me, Patrick.”
“Baby, he might have the only set of keys. We need them to get out of here.”
Amy shook her head. “Do you even know where here is? Do you even know where the nearest hospital is?”
She