Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels (43 page)

I had no more options. Despite the pain, I spun around as best I could and placed my hands and my feet on the giant motor. I simply pushed as hard as I could, ripping my hair out by the roots, forcing myself loose. My consciousness waved in and out, like a bad movie, like a flickering film. My lungs burned but I didn’t breathe. I just pulled. Finally, thankfully, something gave way. With a great searing pain, I pushed one final time and then I was suddenly loose. I popped to the surface like a cork. I sucked in great gasps of air, trying to pull myself out of the water by the chain that hung over me.

That’s when I realized I wasn’t alone. The sun had broken over the horizon, and in the misty rays of morning light I saw Kirby, coming through the door, looking at me in shock. Our eyes met, and then he was running to me, reaching out for the chain I held onto, pulling me toward him.

He managed to get me to solid ground, holding me tight and lowering me to the cement as my legs ceased to function. I had been under water for too long—probably two minutes, at least.

“You’re half frozen,” he said, tears filling his eyes. He pulled off my wet coat and flung it away, and then he covered me with his own and held me close.

“You’re bleeding,” he said. “There’s a lot of blood.”

“Hurry,” I whispered. “We’ve got to c-catch them b-before they all get away.”

“No,” he said. “We have to get you to a hospital. You’re freezing. Oh, Callie, did they shoot you?”

I shook my head, trying to make him understand.

“The police,” I rasped. “Use the radio on the b-boat to call the police.”

He pulled off his shirt and wrapped it around my waist, the pressure tight against my wound. Then he laid my head gently on the ground and then ran to the police boat, which was still tied there to the cleat. He climbed on board and grabbed the mike. He told them what was happening, reading off to them some coordinates from the GPS unit he held clutched in his hand.

“Tell them,” I said, speaking as loudly as I could, “tell them the Tanigawas and Tia Lynch are on a b-boat headed to Baltimore. They are armed and d-dangerous.”

I described the boat and even remembered most of the serial numbers, all of which he repeated into the radio.

“I think Litman left here by land, also armed,” I rasped. “And there are two officers down.”

I felt myself drift toward unconsciousness. The cold feeling was replaced by an odd weightlessness, a sort of floating sensation.
Maybe I’m flying,
I thought, but then I opened my eyes to see that Kirby was carrying me and we were outside. I wouldn’t have thought he was that strong, but he held me gripped in his arms and pressed his way through the thick brush, straight toward the road, my head tight against his chest, his heart pounding beneath my ear. He was sweating, even though he wore only a thin T-shirt in the morning cold.

“Don’t go to sleep, Callie,” he pleaded, moving as quickly as he could in the heavy undergrowth. “Stay with me now.”

“How did you find me?” I asked, drowsiness nearly overtaking me. I didn’t feel cold anymore. I felt warm now. I felt very, very warm.

“I tracked you,” he said, breathing heavily from the exertion. “Yesterday, when you came to my house for lunch. I put my grandmother’s Personal Tracking Device in your coat so I’d know where you went.”

“You did? I didn’t see it.”

“I told you, it’s tiny. I clipped it onto the back of your jacket. You wouldn’t even have known it was there.”

“But why?”

“Because I knew you were going to include yourself on that INS raid, one way or another. I didn’t want you in danger. As it was, I almost didn’t make it in time.”

We finally reached his car, the Mercedes SUV, which was parked on the side of the road. Kirby lowered my feet to the ground and then dug in his pocket for the keys. I felt a giggle well up inside of me as I tried to stand. I felt delirious, despite the pain that coursed through my side.

“Oh no,” I said. “I’ll get blood all over your seat.”

“Why are you laughing?” he asked, unlocking the door and swinging it open.

“Because I thought it would be ketchup! Now it’s blood, but I thought it was gonna be ketchup! From the hamburgers!”

I kept laughing as Kirby lifted me onto the seat and buckled me in. He slammed the door, and wild laughter filled the car as he ran around to the driver’s side and climbed in.

“Callie!” he said, taking my face in his hands. “Pull it together for me, honey. Come on. You can do this. I don’t want to lose you.”

I realized that the wild laughter was coming from me. I held my breath and looked up at Kirby, his features blurring in front of me until he became someone else.

Eyes. I could see his eyes. Nothing but his eyes, looking back at me, knowing me. Loving me.

“Tom?” I whispered. “I knew you would come. I love you. I love you so much, Tom.”

Tears filled my eyes, but when I wiped at them I realized it was Kirby again, pain written in his expression as he gently smoothed my hair away from my face.

“We have to get you to the hospital,” he said softly, leaning me back against the seat and turning on the car. “Let’s take your wet shoes off, Callie. Can you feel the heater?”

Like a mother with a child, he tended to my shoes, pulling them off, pulling off my socks, and pointing the vent toward my toes. Using his hands, he rubbed my arms up and down, trying for friction, trying for warmth.

“Isn’t this how the whole thing started?” I asked drunkenly, seeing us in the car the night we first used the GPS unit. “You tried to kiss me.”

In the distance, I could hear sirens coming closer.

“Do you still want to kiss me?” I asked, trying to remember if he ever had kissed me or not. I think he had. Someone had. Someone recently, and not Bryan.

“Just hang on, Callie,” Kirby said, still rubbing my arms. “Maybe that’s the ambulance.”

I don’t know what happened next. My eyes blurred. My ears roared with a sound like rushing water. But suddenly Kirby’s door was flung open, and he was pulled from the car and dragged to the ground, a gun pointed at his head.

Litman.

“You must have nine lives,” Litman said to me, incredulous. He weaved in and out of my focus, and all I could think of was how easily he must have issued the order to harm Gordo, how quickly he had pulled the trigger on Hank. Now he was about to do the same with Kirby. Sweet Kirby, who was only trying to be my knight in shining armor.

“Leave him alone,” I said, my mind momentarily clear. “He has nothing to do with this.”

“He’s in the way,” Litman said, shrugging. “And so are you. I’m just glad I recognized his fancy car when he passed me on the road.”

Then I was hallucinating again. Dewey and Murdock were there with their fishing nets, floating in the morning mist behind Litman.

“I bet mending nets gets pretty tedious,” I said to them, wondering if I was back in the Kawshek General Store. Stinky was there with his chowder pot, raising it up in the air to hit Eddie Ray across the head.

Only it wasn’t Eddie Ray. It was Litman.

And it wasn’t a hallucination.

Bong!

Stinky slammed the pot down onto Litman’s head, knocking him to the ground. Dewey and Murdock followed, casting their net over his body. Kirby kicked at Litman’s gun, knocking it out of reach.

“We got him!”

I blinked, trying to figure out what was real and what was not.

Kirby was real, and he wasn’t dead; I knew that. The net around Litman, trapping his thrashing body, was real. The police cars screeching to a stop on all sides of our car were real. The lights that danced around inside my eyes were maybe not so real.

“That was for Gordo!” I yelled at Litman’s ensnared body.

Then I fell back against the seat, and everything simply went dark.

Forty-Eight

I awoke in a hospital room. Sunlight from the setting sun was softly shining through vertical blinds. Swallowing, I simply laid there, looking at the window and wondering where the day had gone.

Funny, but things were mostly one big blur. I remembered waiting for Litman to pick me up in the grocery store parking lot. I remembered studying the shoreline from the tugboat with my night-vision goggles.

I closed my eyes, trying to bring it all back, working my way through the night step by step. Talking to Gordo’s secretary. Hearing Litman mistranslate the Japanese. Getting kidnapped on a police boat.

“Barbara,” I whispered, recalling her death.

“Shhh,” I heard, and then I realized I wasn’t alone in the room. Kirby was there, sitting on the other side of the bed, and now he leaned forward to touch my arm, gazing at me with concern.

“Don’t worry,” he said softly. “She’s going to make it. She’s still alive.”

“Barbara is?” I asked, my throat feeling as if it were lined with sandpaper.

“Yeah,” he answered. “She spent most of the morning in surgery, but for now she’s stable. They’ve got her in ICU.”

“But I saw her float away. I saw her drown.”

“Hank pulled her out of the river and kept her hidden until the police got there.”

“Hank?”

I tried to sit up but my arms were weak. Kirby reached for the bed control and raised the head of the bed. Dizziness clouded my vision for a moment, and then receded.

“Hank got shot,” I said, and Kirby nodded.

“That’s right, but he was wearing a bulletproof vest.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s right down the hall,” Kirby said. “They’re treating him for hypothermia and three broken ribs—not to mention a big, nasty bruise on his chest. But he’ll be all right. Without that vest on, he would’ve been dead. Barbara, too, probably, since he wouldn’t have been there to pull her out of the water and keep her alive until help came.”

“What about me?” I asked. “Am I okay?”

Kirby smiled, relief evident in his eyes.

“You, my dear, had a low body temperature of eighty-eight degrees. It’s been a long day, but you’re pretty much back to normal now.”

I looked down at my hands, which were both wrapped in bandages.

“Stitches?” I asked, remembering the cuts I’d made as I tried to slice free of the ropes.

“A few,” he replied. “They also gave you a tetanus shot, and you’re on antibiotics to prevent infection.”

“My head hurts,” I said, reaching up to feel more bandages.

“You lost a chunk of your scalp,” Kirby said. “But there’s not much they can do for it. They expect it to heal eventually.”

“What about my side? I was shot.”

“Actually, you weren’t. You were cut quite badly, apparently from a shard of flying metal. The police have sort of reconstructed everything, and they figure the bullet hit that big motor you were hanging from and knocked a sharp piece of it loose. It sliced into the side of your waist, but no organs were hit, thank goodness.”

“More stitches?”

“Oh yeah, a few. But they didn’t have to operate or anything. Mainly, they’ve been worried about your body temperature.”

I closed my eyes and swallowed, thanking the Lord for keeping me safe. Then I remembered Dewey and Murdock and Stinky, how I had thought they were a hallucination. Were they?

“My memory’s kind of blurry,” I said. “Was Litman really taken down by a big pot?”

“A chowder pot and a fishing net,” Kirby said, grinning. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“How did they know to go there?”

“The three of them were out fishing, and they heard things. The gunshot. The motor on the winch. Litman yelling. They came ashore on the other side of the peninsula and had just reached the road when they realized what was going on. Their timing was just good luck.”

“Their timing was the good Lord,” I said. “He sent them to protect us.”

“True,” Kirby agreed. “though I never thought I’d have a guardian angel named ‘Stinky.’”

I smiled, though it hurt to do so.

“Did the others get away?” I asked.

“Nope. The coast guard caught them outside of Baltimore. The newspapers are giving you lots of the credit, calling you a hero.”

I looked at Kirby, remembering how he had swept in and pulled me from the icy water when I didn’t have the strength left to save myself.

“You’re
a hero, Kirby,” I said. “Did you really track me with your grandmother’s PTD?”

He nodded.

“Followed your progress with my laptop most of the evening,” he answered, looking embarrassed. “The tracking device shorted out once you went into the water, but by then I was almost there.”

I placed my bandaged hand over his, feeling a surge of gratitude for this sweet man. I remembered how he carried me through the brush and tried to warm me in his car. I wondered if maybe our talk yesterday, where we sort of broke things off, had been a bit premature. He was a very special guy. Maybe if we dated a bit I could learn to feel about him the same way he felt about me.

“Hey, Kirby,” I said, meeting his eyes. “Listen. Maybe yesterday, at your house, when I said those things…I don’t know. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe we should try dating for a while and see what happens.”

He looked away and then surprised me by standing and walking to the window. For a long moment he didn’t speak, and when he did his voice was somber.