Tips for Living(91)

“I swear I won’t tell anyone you killed Hugh and Helene. Let me go,” I begged breathlessly.

“Sorry, dear girl. It will be quick. You will not suffer.”

It happened so fast. He was reaching for the book when I heard a whistling sound, followed quickly by a thud. The gun plopped into the mud. Abbas let out a deep grunt. Amazed, I stared at the steel arrow sticking out of his right shoulder. Bright red blood oozed from the wound through his wool coat. He staggered sideways, lowing like a cow giving birth, and then fell over. He writhed on the ground, clutching his arm, his horrid, bulbous eye aimed at me.

I finally let out a scream.

A man in khaki camouflage came running through the curtain of white holding a crossbow in one hand. I saw the alarm on his face as he rushed over and bent down at my side. His breath steamed warm mist at my cheek.

“Lady, are you all right?”

I couldn’t speak, only gasp and nod. With eyes wide, I stared at Abbas as he whimpered and bled all over the snow.

“I had to do it,” the hunter said in a panicky voice. “I heard what he said. He was going to kill you.”

He pulled off his belt, hurried over to Abbas and began tying a tourniquet around the bleeding arm. As I watched him work, I came back to myself. I could feel the throbbing pain in my foot again, the burning sting of icy water on my legs and arms. I also felt an enormous surge of gratitude toward this stranger. If he hadn’t acted so quickly, I’d be dead. Or if I’d survived the gunshot to my head, I’d possess the mental capacity of a parsnip.

“What’s your name?” I rasped.

He glanced over.

“Jake.”

He’d finished with the tourniquet and was packing snow on the wound.

My throat was thick. “I’m Nora,” I said, trying to get up. I saw the gun lying in front of me, steaming in the muck. Overwhelmed, I collapsed again. “Thank you, Jake,” I said. “Thank you for saving my life.”

Abbas moaned as Jake finished tending to him and returned to my side.

“You’re freezing.” He helped me sit up and peel off Grace’s coat, which was sodden and heavy with brackish water. My lower legs and feet were soaked. He stripped off his camouflage jacket. “Here, put this on,” he urged. Shaking, I managed to slip into the dry jacket and stick the ninja notebook back in my waistband. Jake removed a phone from his pants pocket.

“I’ll call 911 and stay with him until the ambulance gets here. You need to get warm. Think you can make it to the duck blind over there?”

“Where?”

I peered in the direction he indicated. I was completely snow-blind.

“Hold on,” he said. “This will help.”

Jake unzipped a compartment at the back of the hunting jacket and removed an emergency flare. He struck a match, lit the fuse and planted it in the ground. A fountain of orange sparks spouted into the air. I could finally make out the dark, rectangular shape of the duck blind less than a dozen yards away, barely visible in the waning light. Limping through peach-colored snow, shivering and growing numb with cold, I was suddenly overwhelmingly tired.



Wailing sirens, men’s shouts and crackling radios clashed in the distance. I opened my eyes, completely dazed and confused. Why was I lying in the corner of the duck blind, curled in a ball, trembling all over, and hugging myself for warmth? How did I get there? What was going on? Hypothermia was muddling my brain. It felt like I was underwater. Ice-cold water. My body was sinking, incredibly heavy, while at the same time my thoughts were slowly rising to the surface. I remembered waiting in the snowy woods outside Pequod Point, watching Tobias in the kitchen . . .

Suddenly Mac burst through the door with an EMT bag. He dropped it and roared.

“Nora!”

Al followed in his red Pequod Ambulance jacket and Little League cap, carrying a small oxygen canister. On the verge of swooning, I tried in vain to sit up.

“Don’t move,” Mac ordered, bending down and taking my wrist. “Rudinsky, get the thermal blanket. Stat!”

“I’m on it,” said Al.

Mac’s white hair flashed red and blue hypnotically, in sync with the pulsating lights coming through the open wall of the blind. He let go of my wrist, wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my arm and pumped. In a trance, I watched Al float a large, silver rectangle of foil onto my body and tuck me in. Then he stood up and glanced toward the ruckus outside.

“I think the cops are about to head over here, Mac.”

I was still struggling to emerge from my stupor.

“Cops?” I repeated, bewildered.

Mac released the pressure ball. It hissed and he frowned.

“She’s disoriented. Her pulse and BP are low. We need to get her warmed up,” he said, and began rubbing my legs briskly under the blanket through my jeans. They felt like wooden logs. He mumbled and shook his head as he worked. “What the hell did you get yourself into, Nora? What happened out there?”

I closed my eyes and attempted to make sense of the scrambled images.

“There were turtles. Hugh was a goat.”

Mac stopped massaging and clipped an oxygen line under my nostrils. A sweet stream of air flowed in.

“We need some preheated saline in here, Al. Is the PQ Fire Team still outside?”

Al nodded. “I’ll get them to warm up a drip. Looks like they’re just about to load the victim into their rig.”