I don’t know how long I slept, a few hours or a whole day. All I know is that when I woke up, the pain was tremendous, but my thoughts were clear again.

I rolled out of bed, those stars back in my vision for a long second. The pain hadn’t changed. I thought it would have, but it hadn’t. I touched my side where the bullet had gone in and felt the bandages, the dampness on the outside. And the pain that flared with that light touch.

She was right. It was infected.

I used the bathroom and then slipped out the door, careful not to wake her. She was in a chair, next to the bed where I had lain, my blood staining the stack of towels she’d placed under me. She was clearly exhausted, the lines on her face marking every minute of worry she’d wasted on me. She shouldn’t be here with me, shouldn’t be stuck in this situation. I couldn’t help but think this was all my fault. I had to make it right.

But first things first.

The sun had yet to begin to lighten the sky. Two other cars were parked in the lot, one a large SUV that probably held a traveling family, the other a small sedan not unlike the one we were driving. I popped the trunk on our car and found a small tool box, taking from it a screwdriver I could use to remove the license plates. I worked as quickly as I could, which still wasn’t as quickly as I should have, and popped them off, trading them with the ones from the other sedan. The owner likely wouldn’t notice. At least, I hoped not.

I was drenched in sweat by the time I was done even though the nights were finally growing cooler. I rested for a second in the front seat, struggling to take a few deep breaths. When I finally felt in control again, I pulled out of the lot and went for a drive, searching for what I knew I’d find somewhere nearby, somewhere near the small farms and little ranches that always seemed to crop up around these little towns.

Sure enough, I spotted what I needed not five minutes from the hotel. I wondered for a moment if it would be too risky to hit a place so close to where we were staying, but decided we wouldn’t be around long enough for it to matter.

The building, like the hotel, was short and squat. It wasn’t as big, but attached to the back were a couple of stables and a small barn that looked to be housing a couple of goats at the moment. I hesitated again, the thought that someone might live in the building crossing my mind. But there were no vehicles around, no lights, no sign of life. It was probably okay. And probably was the best I could do today.

What was the worst that could happen? Getting shot? Already been there, done that!

I parked half a block away, wishing after the first yard or so that I hadn’t. The pain was growing exponentially. I pressed my hand against it, vaguely aware of heat radiating from all sections of my body, but especially that bandaged area. I was running a fever.

Not good.

The building had a small, narrow door at the back, like the kind old farm houses might have leading to the mud room. It was glass, the panes dangerously close to the doorknob. I broke one out and reached inside, thinking almost giddily how amusing it would be to cut my hands again with broken glass. There was a running theme in my life these days, it seemed.

The door opened, but no alarms sounded. There was no keypad by the door, nothing to suggest there was an alarm wired to this particular door. I was afraid I knew why when I spotted that the only exit out of the room was another, larger, steel door. But when I tested the knob, it opened easily.

And led into an exam room.

Veterinarian offices all smelled the same, like wet dog and vitamins. I stumbled across the room to the cabinets, searching the shelves for anything I might be able to use. Unfortunately, there was little more than dog treats and gauze in here.

The next room was just another exam room. I stumbled along, my shoulders bouncing against the walls, looking in each room I passed. I finally found what I was looking for, locked up in a storage area on the far side of the building. Locked, but in a glass cabinet.

Like that was a brilliant idea!

I smashed it with my elbow, pausing to make sure I hadn’t just cut an artery under my bloodied sports coat, but all seemed well. It was too dark, and I was too tired, too sick, to stop to read labels. I scooped everything in the cabinet into a doggy treat bag I found in one of the exam rooms.

It was a long fucking walk back to the car, but I never saw a soul, never heard a siren, never felt the bite of an attacking dog.

I closed my eyes as I sat behind the wheel of the car and prayed my luck wasn’t running out.

Malaika was awake when I arrived back at the motel, pacing a hole in the thin carpet.

“Where the hell have you been?”

I held up the bag. “You said I needed antibiotics.”

I stumbled from the movement, overbalancing myself. I fell back into a chair and cried out as the movement jostled my stitches. Malaika was immediately at my side, her hands all over my face, but not in an erotic way.

Too bad.

“You’re burning up.”

I gestured to the bag. “That’s what those are for.”

She picked it up and poured the contents onto the bed, digging through the many bottles until she found what she was looking for. She spilled two pills out into the palm of her hand and held them up to my mouth.

“Can you swallow them?”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

I opened my mouth, and she dropped them in, turning to grab a bottle of Gatorade. I drank, surprised at how dry my mouth and throat were. The pills caught halfway down, and my throat seized up, the cough that followed ratcheting up the pain until my vision began to darken again. But the fluid from the Gatorade bottle eased the cough and kept me conscious.

Malaika touched my face again. “You need a hospital. You need IV antibiotics. Fluids. Maybe even a blood transfusion.”

I shook my head. “How do you know all this?”

“Experience.”

I looked up at her. “Bankers work with shooting victims?”

“No, but teenage girls who run off with self-professed gangsters do.”

“That sounds like an interesting story.”

“Not right now.” She took my arm. “You need to rest.”

I shook my head. “We need to move on. We have to ditch the car and put as many miles between us and Ellaville as possible.”

“Quentin, you’re shot. You’ve got an infection. You have to rest.”

I held up the car keys rather weakly. “Then you drive.”

She stared at the keys like they were going to burn her if she touched them. But she took them.

“Okay. But then you don’t get out of bed for at least two days, you hear me?”

“Sounds like fun.”

She slapped my arm, but seemed to regret it. I forced a smile.

“Maybe when I’m better.”

 

 

We drove maybe forty minutes before we hit the next town. I instructed her to get off the highway and drive the back roads, search for a small car lot where the owner wouldn’t bother checking the inventory on a Sunday morning, and there wouldn’t be a lot of cameras waiting to catch any nefarious activity. We found what we were looking for about ten miles east of the interstate.

“Stay here.”

“You’re not in any condition to go wandering around, Quentin.”

“And you’re an honest, law-abiding citizen.” I picked up her hand and kissed her palm. “Let me at least save you from this one indignity.”

The pain was so bad that it almost didn’t hurt anymore, if that made sense. I rolled out of the car and willed my knees to hold me up. The lot sat on a square of grass, the only indication of an actual business being the small shack at the back of the property that was more of a storage shed than anything else. I broke a window and let myself in as I’d done at the vet’s office, pleased to see that the owner of this establishment hung his keys on a peg board, each easily identifiable by a tag on the key ring. I exchanged the keys from the Buick for a set of keys for a dated Prius. Any opportunity to save the planet, right?

Malaika had already gathered our bags from the Buick. I unlocked the blue Prius and handed her the key, and we were back on the road in less than three minutes.

That was about all I could take. I passed out before we were back on the interstate.

 

 

Yuma is a large, desert city. Everything is wide and hot and flat.

I gave verbal directions, as alert as I could be under the circumstances. Malaika had to ask me to repeat things from time to time, but we arrived where I needed to go eventually.

Our first stop was the sad, dirty neighborhood where my family lived. Their building was a tall, narrow thing that looked fairly simple on the outside. I knew from pictures Quaid had sent before his cell phone plan was shut off for non-payment, that their apartment was a one bedroom walk-up with a narrow living room and a galley kitchen. Quaid had the bedroom, and our parents slept on the pull out sofa, when Father was home long enough to sleep.

Quite a difference from the two-story Victorian-style house back on the ranch.

I sat up as she drove slowly past the building, searching the cars parked on the street for signs of trouble. There was nothing obvious, no vans parked across the parking lot entrance. But that didn’t mean they hadn’t beaten us here.

“Your family lives here?”

I nodded vaguely. “It’s been hard on them since losing the ranch.”

She didn’t respond. But her lips were pursed as she watched a homeless man lurch across the street in front of us.

We drove to the hospital next. There were a lot of cars there, a lot of vans, but nothing seemed off. I wouldn’t know for sure, of course, until we went inside. But it seemed good.

Knock on wood.

“Find a motel,” I said. “Something small, where we can pay cash without raising eyebrows.”

She nodded.

It was time. I could feel the darkness creeping up on me again. I knew I couldn’t fight it much longer.

It was a relief when I let it take me over.