52

Coop and Hoder had decided to join her. Darby, watching from the dining-room window, her jacket zipped all the way up to her neck and her hands stuffed inside her jeans pockets, saw their car pull up behind the chief’s truck.

The power for the house was still on, but it had flickered once or twice. The porch lights and the pair of floodlights mounted on the garage must have been turned on before her arrival, because they were turned on now.

It seemed Hoder was having trouble breathing, and his legs were shaky. Coop had gripped the man’s arm tightly to keep him from falling, but Hoder was still doubled over, inhaling great gulps of air. Darby left the house to assist.

‘It’s the altitude,’ Hoder said when she reached him. Snow whipped around their heads, obscuring his face. ‘My lungs are still having a hard time adjusting, and I think my knee has finally given out.’

‘Let’s get you back in the car,’ Darby yelled over the wind.

‘No, I’ll be fine, honest. Just help me inside the house.’

As Darby grabbed the man’s other arm, she heard Robinson’s tinny voice yelling over the satphone’s small speaker. Although she had clipped the phone back on to her belt, she had kept the line open. She brought the phone up to her ear.

‘They’re here,’ Darby told Robinson.

‘A woman called 911 just a few minutes ago to report what she described as “a thundering boom”. We’ve had a few more calls saying the same thing. I’ve got –’

A rifle report echoed somewhere in front of her, behind the wind. A split second later she thought she caught a glimpse of a burning white projectile heading straight for Hoder. She heard a dull thud and the sickening crunch of bone; then she heard the breath jump from his throat as he was knocked off his feet. The phone slipped from her hands, and she lost her balance.

The second shot came just as fast, and, as she staggered and fell into the snow, she heard the round split a tree directly behind her. She had let go of Hoder and was scrambling to her feet when the rifle fired again and there was a whang sound, metal hitting metal. She saw Coop lying face down in the snow, his hands covering the back of his head.

Grab him or Hoder: you can choose only one, she thought.

She went for Coop. The rifle fired again, and then suddenly there was an ear-splitting boom. House and car windows shattered, shards flying everywhere. A great pressure wave slammed into her and sent her spinning. The side of her head struck the driveway, and before she passed out she saw a huge ball of flame, like an eruption from the bowels of hell, light up the night sky.

Day Three

53

Darby awoke to the sight of a dozen eyes watching her.

Body slick with sweat and her heart banging like a snare drum, she blinked furiously until the dimly lit room came into a sharper focus.

Not human eyes – doll eyes. Glassy and lifeless, with long, unnaturally thick eyelashes set in tiny oval faces painted beauty-pageant pretty. All little girls, each one dressed in a different outfit: wedding gowns and farmer’s overalls and period costumes that went as far back as the Civil War. They crowded the six white laminate shelves on the wall opposite the foot of her bed, a row of soft square track lighting shining down on their bright smiles and plump, outstretched arms.

Darby swallowed. Her throat was bone-dry, and the entire left side of her face was numb. Pain there, a faraway throbbing hidden behind some sort of narcotic.

It was then she realized she could see only out of her right eye.

The left eye was completely covered. Gently prodding it with her fingertips, she felt the fabric of a compression bandage. It was wrapped around her head to keep the thick, gauzy dressing from moving.

Darby had been placed in a sitting-up position to reduce the swelling in her head. She was in a hospital room, that much was clear. But this one had been designed for little girls. In addition to the dolls, the walls were decorated with pink-and-lavender wallpaper featuring Barbie the Ballerina, Barbie the Skater – Barbie everywhere, along with Tinker Bell and Disney princesses of every ethnic variety.

The door to her room was shut. A steam radiator hissed and clanked underneath a pair of snow-caked windows glowing with a silver light. Morning light. The wall clock read 8.45.

Then she remembered the rifle shots and Hoder being hit, followed by more shots and then an explosion. It had come from outside the house, she thought. In a panic she wondered if she had glass or debris in her eyes and had been blinded. She swung her legs over the side of the bed. The throbbing in her head increased as she slowly got to her feet.

Darby staggered towards the bathroom, the floor slippery beneath her socks. Her stomach lurched in protest, and the throbbing had transformed into what felt like hot nails being hammered into her skull.

Darby turned on the bathroom light. A bandaged, Frankenstein mess of cuts and swollen skin stared back at her in the mirror. After unwrapping the compression bandage, she slowly peeled away the gauze and found a snake of surgical staples stretching from her hairline to the middle of her cheek, the raw wound covered in a greasy ointment. She was staring at it when the door to her room clicked open.

A sprite of a woman dressed in jeans and a charcoal-grey turtleneck sweater stood in the doorway. The doctor. The stethoscope was always a dead giveaway.

‘Coop,’ Darby said in a thick voice.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Jackson Cooper. He’s with the FBI.’

‘I don’t know him.’

‘Is he here?’

‘No. The gunshot victim was transported to Brewster General and is in critical condition. The others are dead. I’m sorry.’

Darby’s legs felt shaky. She gripped the edge of the sink.

The doctor grabbed Darby firmly by the arm. ‘You’re at the Rockland Family Medical Centre in Red Hill. I’m Dr Mathis. We need to get you back to bed.’ A long sigh of irritation, and then the woman added, ‘I need to redress that wound.’

Darby allowed herself to be led back to bed. She felt numb all over.

‘Your CT scan came back normal,’ Dr Mathis said, and went to work cleaning and redressing the wound. ‘No inter-cranial bleeding or fractures. You have an unusually thick skull for a woman.’

Darby barely heard her, thinking about Coop. He had been lying in the snow not far from Hoder, and he hadn’t been moving.

‘Your eye is fine, by the way,’ the woman said. ‘Now, about your temple and cheekbone … I saw you looking in the mirror, and I know it looks like a God-awful mess, but there’s no need to worry. The swelling will go down in a few days. The bruising should subside in about fourteen days, which will be right around the time the staples should be removed. The wound itself will take some time to heal, but you should consult a plastic surgeon – the same one who did that work on your other cheek. You can barely see that scar.

‘I noticed your left cheekbone was replaced with an implant. What happened there?’

‘Someone tried to split my head open with an axe,’ Darby said, her voice sounding far away, as though someone else were speaking.

Dr Mathis looked uneasy. Nervous. Nice ladies don’t discuss such nasty things, her prim expression said. Nice ladies certainly aren’t involved in such things.

‘How did I get here?’

The doctor stopped working. She tilted her head to the side and eyed Darby quizzically. ‘You don’t remember?’

‘Remember what?’

‘Speaking to Detective Williams. He was here twenty, maybe thirty minutes ago. You were awake.’

Darby had no memory of it.

‘Don’t be alarmed,’ the doctor said. ‘Short-term memory loss is common with brain trauma, even in cases of a mild concussion. I’ve also seen it in cases of post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s a condition where –’