Phoebe crawled to her feet, saw Alan down on one knee with a gun shoved in his face, saw Michael bleeding with a knife jammed into his back, and all the world seemed to slow to a crawl.

Seemed to freeze.

Got icy cold.

Phoebe shivered, and exhaled, and her breath plumed away from her in a long, thin stream.

Save my daddy, Chick whispered inside her head.

Cold flowed into her right knee, silencing the pain, and Phoebe stared at the knife in Michael’s back, and Chick screamed, Hurry.

Phoebe did not stop to think. She lunged forward, and her knee held, and her hands wrapped around the knife handle.

In the weird, nightmarish slow motion of dreams, where terrible things unfold at an unstoppable crawl, Phoebe started pulling the knife out. She could see Michael’s finger beginning to tighten on the trigger, even as his head started to turn toward her.

She focused on the left side of his back, the place where his heart should be, and with all the strength in her, shoved the blade in between Michael’s ribs — and blood spurted against her hands.

But not enough.

Michael’s right arm flopped, and the gun went off, not against Alan’s forehead, but lower, and a blood rose bloomed low and to the right on Alan’s chest.

And Michael sagged, but brought the gun in his hand back against Alan, who was falling, and Phoebe twisted the knife.

The universe slowed to a molasses crawl.

The bright flood of hot blood as she yanked on the knife.

Michael’s arm steadying, his grip on his own handgun solidifying.

His finger tightening on the trigger.

Phoebe yanking the knife out.

His finger tightening.

Her jamming the knife into the side of his neck, blood fountaining from his back, and then from his jugular.

The wobble in his hand, his arm, as the shock of the blood loss overran his adrenaline at last.

The flash from Michael’s muzzle, the sound no more than a soft pop above the tearing wind and a sudden burst of slashing rain.

The splash of Michael’s blood against Alan’s face — Alan’s sagging face.

Alan collapsed, and Michael dropped on top of him, and Phoebe dropped the knife and tried to catch Alan.

Felt her knee wrench.

Fell.

Pain — fast hot explosive agony — hatched and ripped and clawed newborn and ravenous into her right knee. Bad pain. Important pain. Doctor-save-me pain.

She screamed at it but kept going, dragged herself in a wounded-dog three-legged crawl to Alan, and rolled Michael partway off of him.

Michael flopped, facing her, and for a moment she froze, staring.

He was looking at her. Right at her, with a fixed stare that chilled her blood — and then she realized that he wasn’t blinking. Wasn’t breathing. He was, at last, dead.

“Come back from that, you fuck,” she snarled and turned her attention to Alan.

She shoved the dead weight of Michael the rest of the way off of Alan, struggling because she was hurt — more than she wanted to think about or face — and the pain in her knee was keeping her from getting good leverage. The air around her got still colder, colder than air could be. Inside her head, the child’s voice screaming, Hurry! Hurry!

Cold and terror sucked the breath out of Phoebe’s lungs. Her hands trembled. She pulled Alan’s shirt up, found two small holes in his chest. One on the left side, one lower and to the right. They looked so small. Little horrible dark holes with blood bubbling out of them, with black edges, powder burns tattooed into gray-white skin.

Alan’s eyes were open, but he didn’t seem to see her. He wasn’t breathing — at least she couldn’t see his chest rise or fall — and she screamed at him, “Don’t you die on me!” She got to her hands and knees — oh, God, the pain — dully aware of the awful fire in her knee. Of time passing. Her fingers sought for a pulse at Alan’s neck, and her cheek felt for the movement of air from his nose and mouth, and she got nothing. Nothing.

The whisper inside her head was fading. Chick was fading, the icy cold was blowing away in the wind and the rain — as if Chick was wearing thin, or had grown tired. Or maybe as if she had given up.

But Chick had one last word for Phoebe.

Believe, she said. And she was gone, and the last of the cold vanished with her.

Phoebe didn’t let herself look at the bullet wounds in Alan’s chest, at the blood on his shirt and her hands; she didn’t let herself think about how hopeless this was. She lifted his jaw to clear his airway and blew two deep breaths into his lungs, and felt his chest rise. And heard bubbling.

Bad sounds.

Don’t leave me, she thought.

She found his sternum and, shaking, rested the heel of her left hand on it, and put her right hand atop her left hand. She interlaced her fingers, and lifted them so they didn’t touch his chest. Balanced most of her weight on her good knee, because something awful was happening with the bad one, but she didn’t have time for that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

It had been a long time since she’d taken a CPR class, and she fought to recall everything all at once. She knew she had to keep her elbows straight, had to keep the heel of her left hand right on top of his sternum. She mustn’t bounce. She could rip up his ribs or even tear holes in his heart if she did this wrong. She didn’t dare do it wrong. But she couldn’t let fear paralyze her. He wouldn’t live without her.

Fifteen counts, she thought, and put the weight of her upper body into the first push. “One and two and three and four...” she counted out loud, doing one compression at each count.

Her life, lived in shadows, streamed in front of her eyes. The shadows of what might have been, endlessly replayed; of what might have been prevented, endlessly regretted; of who she might have become had she not chosen so badly, allowed foolish honor and pride to keep her from listening to her screaming instincts, if she had only...

Everyone had regrets, though. Everyone looked in the mirror one day and said, “If only I had...”

She’d taken her risk at last, had let herself find love and experience true happiness. Bittersweet though these days since she’d met Alan had been because they showed her how hollow she had let her life become. These few glorious days meant everything to her. She had, at last, truly lived.

Please, God, if you’re up there, if you’re paying any attention to this, don’t let me screw this up. Let me do it right. I just found him. I’ve waited my whole life, and I just found him. Please don’t let me lose him this way.

I love him. I never even dared tell him that, but I love him. Please give me the chance to tell him.

Fifteen compressions, two breaths, fifteen compressions, two breaths, check for a pulse, check for breathing, start over.

He promised me we were going to make it out of this. He promised me we were both going to make it out of this.

The silence moved through her and around her.

“I love you,” she told him, feeling for his pulse, praying for his breath, finding nothing. “You have to live. Because you promised me.” She fought against tears, against the swelling in her throat, against her own ragged breathing that would interfere with what she had to do to — to breathe for him, to make his heart beat for him. To hang on for him.

Believe. She didn’t know if she could believe. She didn’t know if she had any belief left in her.

She had never felt so alone.