Evan froze between Van Sciver and Joey, his body tugged in opposite directions. A few strides ahead was the man who had killed Jack. And fifteen yards behind, Joey stood doubled over, the life draining from her body.
A feeling overtook Evan, that of free-falling through the night sky just as Jack had. There were no bearings, just a spin of sensation and the pinpoint light of distant stars.
He stared at the butt of the fallen rifle ahead, the dilated pupil beckoning his thumb.
Van Sciver was breathing hard. “Looks like I clipped her superficial femoral artery.”
Evan glanced back at Joey. She gasped, her legs nearly buckling.
Evan tore his gaze away, took another step for Van Sciver.
“She’s gonna die,” Van Sciver said. “You wanna be with her when she does.”
Evan halted again, teeth locked in a grimace.
He thought about Jack plummeting through a void, his willingness to step off a helicopter to protect Evan.
The best part of me.
Evan took an uneven step backward. And then another. Then he spun and ran to Joey.
Behind him he heard Van Sciver’s laugh, the rasp of sandpaper. “That’s the difference between me and you.”
Evan reached Joey as her legs gave out, catching her as she collapsed.
He flicked out his Strider knife and sheared her jeans to the thigh, exposing the bullet hole. There was blood, so much blood.
The femoral artery, just as Van Sciver had said.
Evan initiated the bone phone. “Tommy, get here. Now. Get here now.”
He did not recognize his own voice.
He clamped his hand over Joey’s thigh.
“Copy that,” Tommy said. “En route.”
“Now. We have to get her to medical.”
Across the stretch of dirt, Evan watched Van Sciver wriggle his shoulders up the side of the Tahoe, shoving himself to a standing position. He fell into the driver’s seat.
The SUV drove off, its momentum kicking the door shut.
“You let Van Sciver … go,” Joey said weakly.
Evan pictured again the serene expression on Jack’s face as he’d stepped from the Black Hawk, and he understood at last what had filled him with such peace.
Joey blinked languidly. “Why’d … come back for me?”
Evan drew in a breath that felt like broken glass. He said, “That’s what my father taught me.”
He bent over Joey, his hand still sealed on her leg. The sound of the Tahoe faded, leaving the valley desolate, overtaken by late-twilight gloom. They were a stone’s throw from the busiest freeway intersection in the world and yet not another human was in sight.
She looked up at him, her emerald eyes glazed.
“You were supposed to jump,” he said. “Across the freeway. Away from all this.” His eyes were wet. “Goddamn it. What did I teach you?”
She said, “Everything.”
Her dark hair was thrown back, exposing the bristle of that shaved strip, the faraway city lights turning a few strands golden, and he realized that at some point over their days and nights he’d come to know the scent of her, a citrus brightness off her skin.
“You’re okay,” he said.
“You’re gonna be fine,” he said.
“You’re worth it,” he said.
Her lips pressed together. A weak smile.
He tightened his clamp on her leg.
Headlights swept the valley, a vehicle approaching. It parked, the glare making him squint.
The door slammed shut. A figure stepped forward, cut from the brilliance of the headlights.
Not Tommy.
Candy.
Evan’s last ray of hope left him.
Candy approached, appraising them.
“Find what they love,” she said. “And make them pay for it.”
Evan would have to let go of Joey’s leg to reach for his knife on the ground.
He did not.
He stayed where he was, his palm covering her wound.
He closed his eyes, saw his tiny feet filling Jack’s footsteps in the woods. This was the path he was born to follow. A path into life, no matter the cost.
When he opened his eyes, Candy was standing right over him, the barrel of her pistol inches from his forehead. In his arms he could feel Joey’s breaths, each more fragile than the last.
Evan stared up the barrel at Candy. “After you kill me, clamp this artery.”
Candy said nothing.
He said, “Please.”
The end of Candy’s pistol trembled ever so slightly. Her face contorted.
Evan looked back down at Joey. After a moment he sensed the pistol lower. Candy eased back from view. He barely registered the sound of the SUV driving away.
Joey jerked in a few shallow breaths. She raised a hand to his cheek, left a smudge of blood under his eye. He sensed it there, a weighted shadow.
“I see you,” she said. “You’re still real.”
As he heard Tommy’s truck shudder to a stop behind him, her eyes rolled up and closed, and her head nodded back in his arms.