Unfinished Business (30 page)

Downstairs, there were more footsteps, and
voices. I recognized Wendell’s, and Jamal’s. Rafe must have brought
the whole crew with him.

“My mother,” I told him. “Cover my mother.
Please. Before they get up here.”

He looked at me for a second before he got
to his feet. I watched as he took the couple of steps over to the
bed.

Once upon a time, almost a year ago, it had
been me tied to a bed. Rafe had burst through the door to save me
then, too. That encounter had ended with another man stabbed, and
bleeding to death on the floor. I wondered whether Hernandez was
headed that way too, and then I realized I didn’t much care.

When it was me on the bed, Rafe hadn’t been
above doing a bit of flirting. With Mother, he simply grabbed a
blanket and draped it over her.

“Thank you.” Her voice was hoarse, most
likely from screaming. And although I couldn’t see her from down
here on the floor, I’m sure she was mortified, and holding on to
the shreds of her dignity with everything she had.

Rafe nodded, and turned away to lift David
and the chair upright. Once that was done, he pulled a knife out of
his pocket and began to cut the ropes. David was sobbing, and the
exertion it had taken for Rafe to get here, had taken its toll on
him too, I saw. I wasn’t the only one sporting bloodstains. The
bandage around Rafe’s arm was spotted with new patches of bright
red, as well.

Once David was free, Rafe put a hand on his
head for a second. They looked at one another, but neither spoke.
David got busy rubbing circulation back into his hands, while Rafe
walked back to the bed and began cutting the ropes holding Mother
to the bedposts. By the time Wendell and crew arrived in the
doorway, she was sitting up, with the blanket wrapped around her,
also rubbing her hands.

Rafe was back on his knees next to me.
“Don’t move.”

“I’m fine,” I told him. “Just shaken up, and
got the wind knocked out of me.”

Although when he put an arm around me to
help me to sit up, I winced at the pain in my stomach.

“We have to get her to a hospital,” Rafe
told Wendell, his voice tight. “She’s hurt.”

“It’s mostly his blood,” I told them both,
which was certainly the truth. Nonetheless, I did feel a little
worse for wear. And I was a bit worried about that wrenching
sensation I’d felt in my stomach. A trip to the hospital—just to
make sure everything was all right—didn’t sound like a bad
idea.

For any of us.

Wendell looked over at Hernandez, slumped
against the wall, still unconscious. “What happened there?”

“He stabbed himself,” I said, leaning back
against Rafe’s arm. “Pretty much.”

They both raised their brows at me.

“It’s true,” David said. He was sitting on
the floor with his back against the bed, still rubbing his wrists.
“He was trying to hurt Savannah. He was on top of her, with the
knife. He said...” He swallowed. “He said he was going to cut the
baby out of her stomach.”

Nobody spoke, but the look Rafe gave the
unconscious Hernandez was everything I had warned Hernandez about,
and more.

“He gonna survive?” Wendell asked, with more
clinical curiosity than caring.

Rafe shook his head.

“How do you know?” I asked. “You haven’t
looked at him.”

He glanced at me. “Cause if he does, I’m
gonna kill him. So he’ll be dead one way or the other.”

Wendell shook his head. “Call an ambulance,”
he told the three rookies, who were crowded into the doorway,
looking at the carnage with wide eyes. “And then go downstairs and
meet the paramedics. Tell’em we’ve got a man bleeding to death from
a stab wound, and some minor injuries.”

All three of them nodded, and they withdrew.
We could hear them start to talk as they scrambled down the
staircase to the first floor.

“Excuse me, please,” Mother said. It was
faint, but dignified. She didn’t look at any of us as she rose from
the bed, wrapped the blanket more securely around herself, and
padded into the bathroom with her head held high. The door closed
with a definite snick of the latch and, a second later, a click of
the lock.

“She’s embarrassed,” I said apologetically.
Softly, so she wouldn’t hear me.

Rafe arched a brow.

“She’s naked,” David told Wendell, also in a
whisper. Mother has bat-ears, and was probably pressing one of them
to the keyhole as we were speaking, but he might as well give it
his best shot. “He made her take her clothes off, and then he tied
her to the bed. And he tied me to the chair. And then we waited for
Savannah to come back.”

Wendell nodded. “He’s done for. Can’t hurt
you anymore.”

He moved over to where Hernandez was
slumped, and put a hand to Hernandez’s throat. Hernandez didn’t
stir.

“If he makes it through this,” Wendell
added, sitting back on his heels, “he’ll spend the rest of his life
in prison.”

“Good. I want him to pay.” David glanced
from me to the locked bathroom door and back to Wendell. “He hurt
us.”

“We hurt him, too,” I told him. “Worse than
he hurt us.”

Not that he hadn’t planned to do worse than
he did.

Breathing was easier now, so I endeavored to
get to my feet. Rafe’s arm tightened around me. “Careful.”

“I’m all right. I told you. It’s mostly his
blood.”

“Mostly.”

“He graced me with the knife,” I said.
“Nothing like what he did to you, so don’t go all macho on me. It’s
just a scratch.”

At least I thought it was. It was hard to be
sure, with the way the entire front of my dress was soaked with
blood.

“I’d like to change into something else,” I
said, and Rafe nodded.

“I’d like that, too.” He lifted me to my
feet, with no concern for his bandaged arm, and made sure was
standing on my own before he let go. “You sure you’re all
right?”

I assured him I was, and he nodded and
reached out a hand to David. “C’mon, kid. Let’s you and me get
outta here and give these women some privacy.”

David let himself be hauled to his feet,
like a cork out of a bottle.

When he was upright, Rafe continued, “We
gotta call your mama, anyway. She’s on her way back to your house,
and we better tell her that maybe she oughta come here instead.
This hospital thing could take a while.”

David nodded and followed him out of the
room. “Is she mad?” he wanted to know.

I have no idea what Rafe’s answer was, but I
could imagine it fell along the lines of ‘if you ever run away
again, someone will tan your hide.’

It wouldn’t be him, of course. He wouldn’t
raise a hand to David, not after the way Old Jim used to knock him
around when he was small. But someone had to put the fear of God
into the boy, because the way he was carrying on was likely to turn
us all gray before our time.

I turned to Wendell, with a glance at
Hernandez. “Is he... will he make it?”

“It don’t look good,” Wendell said. “It
depends on how soon the ambulance gets here.”

I nodded. “I feel...” Not bad, exactly. I
hadn’t killed him on purpose. It had been self-defense, and not my
fault. If I hadn’t managed to twist the knife, I’d be the one
bleeding out from a stomach puncture. But it had still been my
hands on the knife.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Wendell told me.
“He’d have done it to you if he could have. And to your mother. And
David.”

I nodded. I knew that. Still, it was strange
to know I might have taken a life. Even if I’d been defending my
own.

“Will you be OK here on your own until the
ambulance comes?”

Wendell looked at me strangely, and I guess
maybe it was a strange question.

“I want to give my mother something she can
wear,” I said. “And then I want to find something of hers that I
can wear, and take it to another bathroom where I can wash all this
blood off.”

Wendell nodded. “Sure. I’ll stay with him.
But you don’t hafta worry he’s gonna come out of it. He might
survive till the ambulance gets here, or he might not, but he ain’t
gonna get up and start walking around. You’re all safe.”

“Thank you.” I gestured to the closet. “I’ll
just...”

He nodded, and turned back to Hernandez,
whose breath was becoming more and more thready. I went to the
closet and started rooting through Mother’s things for something
that would fit me.

Hernandez was still breathing when the paramedics carried the
stretcher out of the mansion to the ambulance, although he wasn’t
breathing well. They put an oxygen mask on him—how that was
supposed to help a man bleeding to death from a stab wound I have
no idea—and started an IV as soon as he was inside the ambulance.
But the consensus seemed to be that he’d lost so much blood that
recovery was unlikely.

“Why didn’t anyone compress the wound?” one
of the paramedics wanted to know, righteous indignation all over
her face as she looked from Rafe to Wendell and back.

“Multiple murderer,” Wendell told her. “If
he survives, he’ll be spending the rest of his life in prison. It
didn’t seem worth the trouble.”

“Oh.” She looked taken aback. Her colleague
just shook his head and kept packing Hernandez’s wound with
bandages.

“Just get him to the ER,” Wendell told them.
“Alive or dead don’t really matter. We’ll be right behind you. I
gotta stick with him until we know one way or the other whether
we’re arresting him or burying him.”

He shooed the rookies over to the SUV. “You
all right?” he asked Rafe, who nodded.

“We’re right behind you, too. I want
somebody to look at Savannah. Make sure she’s all right.”

“And I want someone to look at him,” I
added, nodding to Rafe. “From the way those bandages look, you’ve
popped at least half your stitches. At the very least, you need new
bandages.”

Rafe glanced down at this arm and grimaced.
I don’t think it was pain, or even anticipated pain. Probably more
the coming agony of having to sit still while the doctor removed
the old stitches and made new ones.

“David’s coming with us,” he told Wendell.
“His folks are gonna come to the hospital and pick him up.”

Wendell nodded. “We’ll see you there.”

He headed for the SUV.

“What are they doing?” David wanted to
know.

I followed his gaze... not to the ambulance
and the paramedics laboring over Hernandez, but to the three
rookies standing outside the SUV. I wrinkled my brows. “It looks
like they’re playing rock, paper, scissors.”

“Why?”

He looked at Rafe, who grinned. “Figuring
out who gets to ride shotgun.”

“But they’re adults!”

“You should never get too old to play, my
man.” He ruffled David’s hair. “You wanna ride shotgun in
Savannah’s car?”

David hesitated. He glanced at me. “It’s
fine,” I said. “I think I’ll be more comfortable in the back
anyway.”

He nodded.

“C’mon.” Rafe led the way over to the car
and opened the door for me. I crawled in. Then he opened the door
for David, who did the same. Then he walked around the car and
opened the other back door. “Miz Martin?”

Mother hesitated. I held my breath.
Eventually she moved past him with a regal nod.

He closed the door—not on her foot—and got
in the front seat. “Buckle up,” he told David, “this is gonna be
fast.”

It was. We kept pace with the ambulance and Wendell’s SUV the whole
way to the Maury County Regional Hospital. It’s usually about a
fifteen minute drive, but we made it in eight. Both cars had lights
and sirens going, and the Volvo just slid through the intersections
in their wake.

When we pulled in to the emergency room
entrance, a team was ready and waiting to whisk Hernandez into
surgery. I guess they had to do that. It was their job to try to
save lives, even lives that perhaps would be better unsaved.

Of course, I realize that’s not my call to
make. Life and death are above my pay grade. But Hernandez would be
spending the rest of his life in prison if he survived. Maybe it
would be kinder to just let him die.

Not that I was feeling particularly kind. He
had planned to torture and kill me, and my unborn baby. He had
tortured and would happily have killed Rafe. Chances are he would
have killed Mother and David, too. And he had tortured and killed
several other people. He deserved prison. But if he died on the
operating table, I could be satisfied with that.

The team disappeared through the doors with
the gurney, and with Clayton and José flanking them on either side.
The SUV rolled away. Wendell and Jamal looking for a parking space
before joining the others, no doubt. They’d all be hovering over
Hernandez until he either breathed his last, or recovered.

Rafe pulled up in front of the double doors
and stopped the car.

“We can’t stay here,” I told him.

“I know, darlin’. I’ll move the car as soon
as I know you’re taken care of.”

This time he didn’t bother with Mother’s
door, just came around the car and opened mine. And when he’d
pulled me out of the back seat, he scooped me up in his arms.

“I can walk,” I told him, a little
breathlessly, as always when I’m pressed against him. It’s a nice
feeling. I hope it never goes away.

“You’re bleeding. You shouldn’t walk.”

“You’re bleeding, too,” I pointed out. “You
shouldn’t be carrying me.”

“It don’t hurt.”

He carried me toward the doors as if it
didn’t, but surely he couldn’t be telling the truth. The bandage
around his arm was soaked through with blood, and there were
patches of it on his chest, too.

I guess maybe ten years undercover had made
him so good at sidelining his own feelings—pain, anger, worry—that
it was second nature by now.

“You’ll have someone look at you,” I asked
as we passed into the lobby, “right?”

He nodded. “After I know you’re OK.”