Wild Flower (27 page)

In reply, someone fired a gun, perhaps no more than ten steps away from us. The shock of it sang through my ears, leaving behind a vortex of silence, filled an instant later by shrill ringing. Zack jumped to his feet as though electrified and I rolled sideways, horribly disoriented, and vomited. There was a second gunshot, further rendering my ears useless. All I could see was puke striking the dewy grass. In the next second someone was on their knees beside me, and I fought to get away, choking on sobs and vomit, but it wasn't Zack. Instead I finally realized that Noah Utley was hunched there with me, his hand curled over my right shoulder, his eyes wide with stun in the light of the almost-full moon.

He was trying to talk to me. I made myself focus and heard him say, “Holy shit, holy shit, he just ran away. He's running away. Holy shit, Jilly, are you all right? Holy shit.”

A pistol was on the ground at Noah's knee. I drew myself to one elbow and managed to say, “Call 911.”

“Oh my God, your face is bleeding. Oh my God, are you all right?” he was beside himself with shock, I could tell, his voice sounding as though it was coming to me from down a long corridor. “Here, I've got you.”

Noah helped me up, as gently as though I was made of something irreparably fragile, like tissue paper. He said, “Can you walk?”

I nodded, clutching his arm, and then ordered, “Get…that gun…”

Noah nodded in response, crouching at once to grab the pistol; he caught it up in his hand awkwardly, as though it might bite him, aiming the short barrel towards the ground. With his free hand, he helped me onto the porch, where he seated me at a table. The baby was kicking furiously. My lap was wet, and I realized that I had urinated. Noah set the gun on the table in front of me, fumbled something else out of his pocket, dropped it, and fell to his knees to retrieve what I realized was his phone. He caught it into his hands and pressed the screen, while I scanned the area wildly; Zack Dixon was nowhere in sight. I was shaking so hard that my teeth were rattling.

“Please hurry,” Noah was saying into his phone.

“Why…” It was all I could manage to articulate, but Noah understood what I was asking. He sank to the chair at a right angle to mine, as though his knees had also given out.

“This is so crazy,” he said to me, and his voice was trembling overtly now, his words rushing forth like startled birds. “I was…I was out here to kill myself. I stole my dad's gun and I…oh God oh God…I was going to put the gun in my mouth down on the dock. And then…and then…I saw what he was trying to do to you…”

I blinked.

I reached across the tabletop and took Noah's fluttering hands into mine. He was as cold as a rock dredged up from the bottom of the lake, shaking almost as badly as me, but I held tightly to him. It took almost all of my effort, but I steadied my voice to say, “Noah, it's all right. You saved my life, Noah, you saved me.”

“Jesus Christ, J-Jilly,” and he tipped his forehead to our joined hands, but I heard his words. He rasped out, “You saved mine too.”

“
Jillian!
” I heard Mom's frantic voice then, coming closer.

I tried to call to her but my ability to speak had been robbed. Noah lifted his head and his eyes were bright with unshed tears. Because I was still gripping his hands, he staunched the flow of them with his shoulders, first one and then the other. Mom and Aunt Ellen came into view from the direction of the house, jogging towards the porch in their bathrobes. Mom caught sight of us first and thumped up the porch steps. Somehow the image of my mother, barefoot, her uncombed hair loose over her shoulders, her eyes frantic, caused sobs to come clawing up my throat and I fell apart. She was at my side then, cupping my head against her belly, and my arms went around her waist, as though I was a little girl. In the distance, coming swiftly closer, was the sound of a siren.

“What's going on?” Aunt Ellen asked Noah quietly, her own hands resting on my back.

I couldn't hear what he said. Mom smoothed one hand over the back of my head, repeatedly.

Two police cruisers roared into the parking lot, top lights spinning. Mom bent to my ear and said with quiet authority, “Jill, tell me what's happening.”

I drew back and observed the raw pain on her face as she regarded me, her lips dropping open. I watched the play of emotions cross her features, moving from shock and disbelief to outright fury. She cupped my chin and demanded, “Who did this to you?”

“It was…” I gulped a breath and finished, “It was Zack Dixon.”

Mom sank to a chair beside me. She looked so horrified that I was at once alarmed.

“He had her on the ground,” Noah supplied in a whisper. He was hugging himself around the torso, still shivering, but his voice had steadied.

“Oh my God, oh good God,” Aunt Ellen said. “Where is he now?”

Charlie Evans, Landon's senior law enforcement officer, and two younger deputies were advancing. Aunt Ellen called, “Charlie, my niece has been attacked!”

Her voice, coming from behind me, was so much like Gran's that for a second I thought my grandmother was here on the porch too.

“Joan, what the devil?” Charlie asked as he lumbered onto the porch. Aunt Ellen bustled into the café, clicking on additional lights. I knew without a doubt that she would have coffee brewing in the next five minutes. Mom did not move from my side, holding me fast. I pressed my right hand to my belly, where the baby was performing energetic donkey-kicks.

“I heard a gunshot not five minutes ago,” Mom said. “It woke me from a sound sleep. And then I ran over here as fast as I could.”

The two deputies flanked Charlie, all of them looking so official and out of place here on the nighttime porch at Shore Leave. I gulped as Charlie took my chin gently into his fingertips and examined my face. I had known Charlie since I was a little girl, and his eyes were full of concern, anger that this had happened to me.

“Tell me what happened,” he said, taking a seat across from Mom, who had drawn her chair closer to mine and had both hands on my back. Catching sight of the pistol, Charlie said, “Boys,” and one of the two deputies ran back to the car. Seconds later he returned and collected up the pistol into what must have been an evidence bag.

“First things first,” Charlie said. “Whose firearm?”

“Mine,” Noah said. “It's my dad's, I mean. I had it out here because…” he choked, looking at me as though for strength. I looked back at him, willing him to continue. He whispered, “I was planning to shoot myself. I stole that from my dad's drawer.”

“And how does Jillian fit into all of this, son?” Charlie continued, calm and authoritative.

Noah said, “I had just gotten here. My car is out on Flicker Trail,” and he pointed lamely towards the road leading back to Landon. “I heard what sounded like struggling and then I saw…oh God…I saw that guy holding Jillian by her neck. I told him to stop. He didn't seem like he was going to, so I…so I fired the gun into the air and then he jumped up and ran. And then the gun went off again, I didn't mean for it to shoot, but it did. Oh God. And then I helped Jilly up here and called 911.”

“Jillian, can you corroborate this?” Charlie asked me.

“Yes,” I said breathlessly. I sat straighter and forced myself to speak calmly. “It happened just like that. Z…Zack,” I could hardly say his name. I started over with, “I came down here just a little bit ago to get my cell phone and it was when I came back outside that he c…caught me…”

“Dammit, Charlie, she can't deal with this right now,” Mom snapped, and I tipped my face towards the sky to contain my tears. Mom was right, but I wanted to tell Charlie what had happened at the same time.

“I want Justin,” I whispered to Mom then, like a child, single-minded. I figured she could make this happen.

She nodded at once. She said, “Let's get you cleaned up, honey, and then we'll call him right away.”

“You want me to call him?” Charlie offered.

“No,” I whispered at once. “Let me talk to him, please.”

“I'll be right here when you're ready,” Charlie said.

Fifteen minutes later Shore Leave was lit up like the Fourth of July. I had showered in scalding water and was wearing clean clothes, bundled into a flannel shirt of Justin's, one that smelled like him. I needed him with a rabid ferocity, and he was on the way to me, as we'd called him like Mom promised; I told Mom that I needed to be the one to tell him I was all right because otherwise he would go crazy, totally ballistic with worry, but my throat was so closed off that I'd had to hand my phone to Mom anyway. Two feet away from Mom, I heard my husband answer with his warm, low voice, thinking it was me on the other end, “Hey, baby.”

“Justin, it's Joan,” Mom said. “Jilly's been hurt. You need to come home at once.”

Oh shit
, I thought, realizing my mistake at once.

There was a split second of hellish silence and then Justin's frantic voice, “Oh God, what's wrong? What's wrong?”

Mom said firmly, “She's right here with me, Justin, but you need to come home now.”

“Let me talk to her, let me talk to her
right now
,” Justin ordered, and it sounded like he was choking.

I grabbed the phone from Mom, bringing my husband's voice to my ear, holding the phone with both hands. Again I mustered all of my willpower to force words past the choking in my own throat. I whispered, “It's me, I'm here. Please hurry.”

“Jillian,” he said, his voice harsh with fear. “Jillian, baby, tell me, oh God, tell me what's wrong…”

“Justin,” I said again, aching, and then I started to cry.

Mom took the phone from me, wrapping me against her side as she explained quietly, “Just get going as quickly as you can. Call me back when you're driving and I'll explain.”

“I'm coming,” he said intently.

It was another fifteen minutes before I saw his truck at last, and I was on my feet at once, moving towards him. Justin barreled into the lot and almost took out the back end of one of the police cruisers. He slammed out of his truck and Mike Mulvey, one of the deputies, tried to detain him but he barked, “Get the
fuck out of my way
,” and then I was down the porch steps and in his line of sight. And then nothing else mattered because I was in his arms. He clung to me, touching my face, my back, my shoulders, his hands moving continuously over me, assuring himself that I was here, and in one piece. I clutched my hands around the material of his t-shirt, holding fast to him, crying again, but in relief.

He rocked me even closer, his lips against my hair. His voice broke as he said my name, over and over. At last he managed to say, “I am so sorry I wasn't here, oh God, I am so sorry. Oh God, sweetheart.” He cupped my face and drew a painful breath, the expression in his eyes severe and intense. He whispered painfully, “Your mouth.
He hit you
.”

I clutched his wrists, close to my face as he held it so gently between his hands. I said with as much strength as I could manage, “He did, but I'm all right. I promise you.”

Justin moved one hand instantly to my belly and I whispered, “He's just fine too, sweetheart. We're all right.”

His eyes were beyond agonized. He said, “Oh God, I will never forgive myself. Tell me. Tell me what happened.”

Though I had already explained the events to Charlie, had told him that I had not been raped, despite the fact that this was Zack's clear intent, we sat down with him again, me on Justin's lap and held close, Justin crackling with the intensity of his anger behind me. He kept saying, “I want him dead,” and “I'm going to fucking rip him to pieces,” which perhaps weren't the kinds of things to be spoken in front of three officers of the law, but Charlie had known Justin his entire life as well and perceived the justification for these statements, and so didn't comment. Instead he kept telling us, “We'll do everything we can to bring him in, don't you worry.”

Already the woods were crawling with every on-duty officer in the area, in addition to a few who were not. Dodge was here, and Jo, Tish and Ruthie. Blythe and Christy had stayed at the campground with the kids, to keep them out of the activity for the moment. Jo was beside herself, fluttering around pale as a sheet on a clothes line. Dodge too seemed unable to keep from moving, and he had added plenty of his own threats on top of his son's; it was his way of offering reassurance, I knew. Curt and Marie Utley had been called, and both of them were sitting with their son, who was wrapped in a blanket and drinking coffee. My eyes flickered over to Noah and I felt a hard punch in the lower gut, considering what might have happened if he hadn't been acting out his plan to commit suicide down on the dock.

Oh God. Life is so crazy, I thought, clinging tightly to Justin's arms, wrapped around me from behind. I don't even mean that in a bad way, but it's so fucking crazy. What if Noah hadn't showed up tonight? Would I be dead right now?

Unwittingly I thought of the way Zack's pale snake eyes had looked, so close to mine. I knew, somehow, that there was a part of him that had wanted to kill me, and suddenly, with the understanding of this knowledge, all of my extra senses rippled back into place, alive and pulsing, bursting forth as though they had been dormant too long and required immediate recognition.

It's all right now, doll, I heard Aunt Minnie say, plain as day in my mind.
You survived and it's all right now. You've been delivered.

Minnie
, I thought wildly.
Don't go yet. Oh God, explain this.

“There's nothing more to be done tonight,” Charlie was saying and I refocused on him with all my effort. He said, “You two go home and get some sleep, if you can. I'll let you know if we discover anything before morning.”