Don’t let them see you hurt.
He whipped out with the paracord as he rolled again.That low thrum of contact.A scream.The world tilted, black and white: the stars, the sloping line of the trees, Daniel pale and unmoving.
Then Jem was on his feet, somehow, muscles bunching in his thighs as he forced himself upright.He still had a grip on the helmet—miracle—and he swept it around in a wide arc.A chuff of displaced air told him he’d almost connected.
“Come the fuck on!”Jem shouted.
Emptiness answered him.
Branches creaked.Leaves rustled.Twigs snapped.
The man was just a shape defined by the movement of the thick wall of brush.
Jem didn’t follow.His shoulder kept dropping, and he couldn’t seem to stand up straight, but he forced his way back to the trail, keeping parallel to the course of the man in black, but coming out ten yards farther north.No need to make it any easier for him.No need to walk into a knife.
On the trail, the air was ice, dogshit, black.
Something was dissolving at the end of that dark tunnel.
Jem took one pace after him.Then he staggered to a stop.
“You’d better run!”he screamed—it was TV shit, but you had to say something; you had to let them know.
He tried standing up again, and pain tightened its grip on him.Shoulder dropping again, he worked his phone out of his pocket and placed the call to 911 as he stumbled back toward Daniel.
14
He was alive.
That was something.
The thought was blurred, sometimeshemeaning Jem, sometimeshemeaning Daniel.All of Jem’s thoughts were blurred.As he sat in the back of the ambulance, he trembled, part exhaustion, part pain, part adrenaline.But he felt awake, too.Eyes bright.Like he hadn’t felt in a long time.And that feeling kept coming back to him, like he’d shaken off sleep, as he leaned forward, jacket across his knees and shirt rucked up, while a paramedic with the personality of a dog trainer poked him in the back.
“You’re going to have one hell of a bruise,” she said.
“I figured.”
“Might want to have an X-ray.”The paramedic tugged his shirt down.“We can give you a ride.”
“I’m good, thanks.”
Across the parking lot, Trevino was speaking to her partner, Van Cleave.The man was White, probably in his late thirties, and big.His head was shaved, and maybe to compensate, he had a chin puff of brown hair.Earlier that night—Christ, had it really only been a few hours before?—Van Cleave had put Jem through the wringer at the South Jordan police station, while Trevino worked on Tean.Right then, Van Cleave was shaking his head at whatever Trevino was saying.
In spite of the livid marks of fingers on his neck, Daniel had still been breathing when the first ambulance arrived.The paramedics had whisked him away as soon as they’d gotten him on a stretcher.The other men in the park had fled at the sound of sirens, which left Jem alone with a pair of South Jordan city cops, one of them scratching the heavy stubble on his neck, the other fortysomething and looking like he was either going to shit himself or shoot Jem if he moved too fast.They put Jem in one of the pavilions, where he sat in the dark.
More cops had come.
Then SBI.
And now, the pulse of cop lights, making the shadows purple.
Van Cleave waved a hand, cutting off whatever Trevino was saying, and came across the parking lot.He walked like a guy who wanted to take up more space, and Jem curled his hands in his pockets.The paracord was around his neck now, like some sort of gearhead jewelry.
“He’s all right,” the paramedic said before Van Cleave could ask.“Needs an X-ray.”
“I’m fine,” Jem said.“And I want to go.”
“You can go when I’m done with you.”Van Cleave shot the paramedic a look, and the woman snapped off a pair of disposable gloves and climbed down out of the ambulance.The SBI agent waited until she was gone before putting one hand on the door.Jem was too tired to smile, and maybe there wasn’t anything funny about it, but sometimes itseemedfunny, how every asshole acted like they were all from the same family tree—the same way they carried themselves, the same look, even the same moves.This move, for example, putting his arm out like that.Boxing Jem in.In a few seconds, he’d lean in, start to crowd him.