On the porch, Lester moaned again and his eyes finally blinked open, unfocused.
A sheriff’s deputy was the first to arrive, followed quickly by an officer from the Shallotte police department, both coming to screeching halts in the middle of the street, lights flashing. Both men jumped out of their cars and rushed toward them, guns drawn, uncertain what to do.
“Detective Margolis has been shot!” Colin shouted as they approached. “The guy cuffed to the railing was the one who shot him!” Both the deputy and the officer looked toward the porch and Colin forced a steadiness in his tone. “The gun’s still up there. We can’t let these wounds go. And make sure the ambulance is coming – he’s lost a lot of blood and I’m not sure how much longer he can hold on!”
The officer approached the porch while the deputy ran back to his car and shouted into the radio that an officer was down, demanding that the ambulance hurry. Both Colin and Evan kept their focus on the wounds; Evan had recovered enough for some color to have returned to his cheeks.
Minutes later, the ambulance arrived and a couple of paramedics hopped out and grabbed the stretcher. More sheriff’s deputies had arrived by then, along with additional police officers, the street out front now crowded with vehicles.
When the paramedics finally took over for Colin and Evan, Margolis was looking even worse. He was nonresponsive and barely breathing by the time he was placed on the stretcher. The paramedics were moving quickly; the stretcher was loaded into the back and one of the paramedics hopped behind the wheel while the other stayed with Margolis. By the time it was rolling forward, the ambulance had a police and sheriff escort, sirens blaring, and only then did the world start slowly coming back into focus.
Colin could feel the shakiness in his limbs, the nerves beginning to subside. His hands and wrists were coated with the syrupy feel of drying blood; Evan’s shirt looked as though it had been partially dipped in a vat of red dye. Evan wandered off, bent over, and vomited.
One of the deputies went to his trunk, returning with a couple of plain white T-shirts, and handed one to Colin, the other to Evan. Even before Colin gave his statement, he was already reaching for his phone to call Maria and tell her what had happened.
But as he spoke, all he could think about was Margolis.
Over the next hour, as the sky dimmed and finally went black, an even larger crowd of police officers and sheriff’s deputies had descended on the bungalow, as well as a detective from Wilmington and the county sheriff.
Lester was delusional and argumentative, screaming gibberish and resisting arrest before finally being secured in the back of a squad car and sent on his way to jail.
Colin offered a statement to the sheriff, a police officer from Shallotte, and Detective Wright from Wilmington, all three asking questions at various times, then Evan did the same. Both admitted that they had no idea what had happened once Margolis had entered the house, only that he hadn’t been in there long before the gunfire sounded. Colin also told them that Lester could have finished off Margolis, but hadn’t.
Later, after he and Evan had been cleared to leave, Colin called Maria to tell her that he was heading home to change but wanted Lily to drive her to the hospital so Maria could meet him there. As he was talking to her, he overheard a nearby officer tell Detective Wright and the sheriff that the house was otherwise empty, and that Lester appeared to have been living alone.
After ending the call with Maria, Colin stared at the bungalow, wondering where Atkinson had been staying. And why, again, if Lester was so paranoid, he’d let Margolis into the house in the first place.
“You ready to go?” Evan asked, interrupting his thoughts. “I need to shower and change and just get the hell out of here.”
“Yeah,” Colin said, “okay.”
“What do you want to do about your car?”
Colin looked over at it. “Let’s deal with it later. Right now, I don’t have the energy to care.”
Evan must have seen something in his expression. “Are you sure that going to the hospital is such a good idea?”
For Colin, it felt like less of a choice than a requirement. “I want to know if Margolis is going to be all right.”
CHAPTER 28
Maria
Since Colin’s phone call, Maria’s mind had been racing, trying to piece together everything that had happened.
Colin tracking down Lester. Lester shooting Margolis. Lester aiming the gun at Colin. Colin taking Lester down. Colin and Evan trying to save the detective’s life. Margolis being loaded into the ambulance. Lester resisting arrest, screaming that he knew what Maria had done.
Lester.
She’d known all along that it was Lester, that he was the one to worry about, and she kept reminding herself that he was behind bars now. This time, he hadn’t vanished or simply run off; this time, they’d caught him, and he’d shot a cop and there was no way he could get to her.
What about Atkinson? a voice inside her asked.
She didn’t want to think about that. Still wasn’t sure what to make of it. It still didn’t seem to fit…
Too much. What had just happened was overwhelming enough; the fact that Colin and Evan had been in the middle was nearly too much to process.
Lily, Maria thought, was experiencing the same wild flow of emotions; since they’d arrived at the hospital a few minutes earlier, she’d barely spoken and continually scanned the parking lot, watching for Evan’s car. Maria had the sense that Lily needed to see and touch and hold her fiancé, as if to prove to herself that Evan was really and truly okay.