Game (Jasper Dent #2)(125)

Assuming Hat doesn’t come back. Assuming I don’t die of blood loss. Or some kind of infection.

Leaning against the bench, Jazz winced and gasped at a new bolt of pain from his leg. He thought he might be able to get the bullet out. There was a chance. The fact that he was still thinking was a good sign. The fact that he could still breathe on his own. He wasn’t in shock after all. He was just stunned by what had happened, ramped up on insane amounts of adrenaline. And now he was coming down.

Which, oddly, made him want to sleep.

No. Don’t sleep. Right now, sleep equals death.

And if I don’t want to let it get to that point… there’s always the bleach. Drink it down and end it all on my terms.

Stop being so defeatist!

Defeatist? Try realistic. There’s nothing in here that will help me get out. No way to get through that door. No way to get through the walls. Sure as hell no way to open that lock from the inside.

You’re contemplating suicide already? You’ve been in here all of ten minutes.

He decided that the colloquy in his mind was not a good idea, so he quashed it.

Of course, these two freaks didn’t have a single narcotic or Band-Aid between them. They didn’t even have antibacterial soap. Just water and detergent and bleach.

And plenty of knives.

All right, let’s get this going.

He gathered a few things, then slid back to a sitting position at Dog’s bench, right next to the killer’s body. The angle of Dog’s shoulder made a perfect place to put his cell phone so that the light stayed pointed at his left leg, jutting stiffly out in front of him.

Let’s see what we’ve got here… blood flow is consistent, but not spurting….

Now when you go cuttin’ up legs, Billy said from somewhere in the past, you watch out for that there femoral artery up in the thigh. He’s a big sumbitch, and you so much as nick him, you’ll know it.

Thanks, Dear Old Dad. The anatomy lessons are helpful.

The fact that the blood was dark, not bright, plus the fact that it wasn’t gushing told him that the bullet had avoided the femoral and most of its bigger branches. Which was a damn good thing. The fact that he was able to move the leg at all told him that the femur was probably still intact. The bullet hadn’t shattered or cracked his bones; it was lodged somewhere in the meat of his leg.

He spilled a little bleach on the small knife he’d borrowed from Dog’s workbench. It had a vaguely medical air about it, sort of scalpel-ish, and Jazz knew that Dog had used it to make the preliminary incisions when gutting his victims. Well, if it was possible to redeem a medical instrument, he was about to try.

He hoped the bleach would kill any random germs floating around on the knife. He poured some water on his leg to clear the field of operation for himself. More blood immediately welled up from the bullet hole, but he had a better view of it now.

Okay. Okay. You can do this, Jazz. You can do this. You’ve seen this on TV. You make a—what’s it called—you make a lateral cut. You just cut right across the hole. Open things up a little ’cause you need a hole bigger than the bullet in order to find the bullet. Then you dig out the slug and you’re done. Piece of cake, right?

But first… bleach. Right on the wound. To clean it. Just to be safe.

A burst of excruciating pain that was solar in its heat and scope burst from his leg and he actually screamed out loud, “Oh, Jesus Christ!” at the top of his lungs, and wept uncontrollably. He shook, the knife vibrating in his hand, and he had to grab his left leg with his hand to keep it from jittering out of control. The pain roared through him and he sobbed without self-consciousness, cried like a little boy as the bright, hot rage of agony slowly—over an infinity, it seemed—dulled to a throbbing ache.

He wiped his eyes and used the edge of his bloody shirt to blow the snot from his nose. In the dim light of the cell phone, his leg looked grayish, with splotches of blood and what appeared to be fizzing bubbles of bleach. He splashed a little water to clear the field again, and then—before he could think about it any further—he brought the knife down on his leg and he

cutting through

Oh, no.

See, Jasper, Billy said, guiding his hand in the past, it’s just like

No. No.

His hand jerked and new pain lanced up his leg. Blood welled up in the trench he’d carved. But he was lost in his own memory, in his own past.

a knife in the sink and then

And then in my hand.

just like cutting chicken—

And it was. It was, he realized. Billy had been right, all those years ago.

knife in the sink, knife in your hand

Cutting his own flesh. Felt just like the dream and felt just like cutting chicken and

No no no no no no no

With a cry, he flung the knife away from himself; it landed in a dark corner, a ghostly clatter of chains in the haunted house the storage unit had become.

He couldn’t do it.

He couldn’t complete the cut.

Not while Billy echoed in him, laughing, encouraging.

I cut someone. As a kid. It’s not just a dream. It was never just a dream. He actually made me do it. Who? Who did I cut? What did he make me do?

He stared at his leg. Fortunately, the cut he’d made was shallow. Especially compared to the hole the bullet had punched into him.

Snap out of it, Jazz. You didn’t go into shock before. Don’t do it now.