The couple had disappeared around the corner of the aisle, but I couldn’t hear their footsteps over the whimpering baby. I picked Charlie up and gathered her to my chest—and then I felt the thrust of the knife into my back. It was followed by another. And another.
I screamed, upsetting the baby all over again, and turned my head just enough to see my attacker. The woman had circled the aisle and crept up behind me, picking up the knife on her way. She shot me a wicked, triumphant smile as she flicked my blood off the blade.
Shock kicked in, dulling the pain. I could still move my right arm, but the left felt damaged. She’d sliced some tendons, and definitely punctured at least one lung—my breath was coming in hard-earned jags. I fought just to keep breathing. The woman was screaming something at me, and there was movement in my peripheral vision—the man?—but my whole world narrowed to the baby in my arms. I hugged Charlie to my chest, whispering nonsense into her hair and ignoring the fingers that tried to pry her away from me. I felt the warm blood running down my back, into my khaki work pants, but I ignored it.
I was gonna die. For good, this time.
The knowledge filled me with a creeping, acidic calm, but it was replaced by fear for my niece. When I was dead, they could just take her from me. I had no idea what they wanted with Charlie, but it couldn’t be anything good. And I couldn’t save her.
Then I heard the sirens.
Bettina must have hit the alarm button before the woman got to her, bless her passive little heart. Behind me, the woman cursed loudly. The man had stumbled away from Charlie and me, and I heard him say something to her from fifteen feet behind us, calling her Darcy. I didn’t bother trying to fight anymore. I didn’t have to beat them; I didn’t even have to live. All I had to do was keep Charlie safe until those sirens got here. I locked my arms around the baby without squeezing, curling my body to cover as much of her as possible. It probably should have hurt, but my body was in shock by then, and I didn’t notice any pain. All that mattered was Charlie.
I slumped sideways, managing to control my fall enough to keep the panicking baby from hitting her head on the floor. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the couple arguing. As Victor spoke, the woman held the knife up to her lips and absently licked the blood that had run down her hand. My blood. She looked at the hand for a moment, then back up at me with confused surprise.
The last thing I registered before passing out was that although there were streaks of blood and other fluids running down his cheeks, Victor’s eyes had almost completely healed.
Chapter 2
I knew I was in the hospital long before I managed to open my eyes. I’d spent a lot of time in a German hospital after Iraq, and they smell the same everywhere.
I shifted my weight experimentally, and realized I was lying on my stomach, my head turned to the left, my upper back swathed in something with sticky, itchy edges. I was covered by a light blanket that went to my shoulders. My thoughts were fuzzy, and there was a distant sense of pain that I was certain was being smothered by some pretty delicious painkillers. I automatically tried to swallow and discovered that I had a chest tube. And a catheter. Great. Straining with effort, I finally managed to drag up my eyelids.
The first thing I saw was Charlie’s father, John. My brother-in-law was sitting in an uncomfortable-looking chair next to my bed, with his long legs stretched out in front of him and his head propped up on one hand. He wore jeans and a wrinkled canvas shirt with Luther Shoes, the name of my father’s company, embroidered on the chest. John’s eyes were closed, and I studied him for a moment. John was half Arapaho Indian, which is where he got his tawny skin and the black hair that was currently sticking up in uneven tufts, just like Charlie’s did when she slept. He looked haggard and pale, as though he’d been indoors for months.
I hoped it hadn’t actually been months.
The clock on the wall said six o’clock, and dim early-morning light was streaming in through the window. I made a noise in the back of my throat, and John started awake, his dark eyes pinning me to the bed. He leaned forward, looking at my face gratefully for a long moment. “I thought I’d lost you,” he whispered, pushing back a strand of hair that had fallen into my eyes. “I thought I’d lost you, too.”
I made the noise again. “Charlie’s fine,” he assured me, relief in his voice. John was always good at knowing what I needed, often before I did. “I got her checked out; there wasn’t a scratch on her. She’s with your parents now. Elise is there too. We’ve been taking turns here.”
My cousin Elise was a patrol officer with Boulder PD. I relaxed and managed a teeny nod. Then I was struck by a horrible thought: What if Victor and Darcy hadn’t decided to stop for diapers? What if they’d stopped anywhere but the Depot? I winced around my chest tube. We’d gotten lucky.
My left hand was curled up by my cheek, and I raised it and made a scribbling motion. John nodded and took a small pad of paper and a pen off one of those wheeled tray tables. He placed the pad under my left hand and put the pen between my swollen fingers. It didn’t hurt, and I upped my assessment of the painkillers. What happened after? I wrote laboriously.
“After you saved Charlie?” John finished for me, a tiny smile on his face. “I don’t know how much you remember, but you wouldn’t let go of her. The paramedics called me, and I drove to the store—” He paused, the echoes of terror etching lines on his face. John’s house is only five minutes away from my store, but I couldn’t imagine what that drive must have been like. “You handed the baby to me, and . . . and you died, Allie. They said your heart stopped. You looked . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head in wonder.