“Who is he?” Ryan shouted.
“He’s nobody,” Ben said, sounding phenomenally calm. “Just a guy who rents a room.”
“
Just a guy who rents a room
,” Ryan parroted sarcastically. “Does Tim know you were out with him at the bar? Does he know you’re fucking around, just like you accused me of doing?”
“I didn’t accuse you of anything,” Ben said, showing his open palms. “Tim left you for his own reasons.”
“That’s right, he left me for you!” Ryan jabbed the gun in Ben’s direction. Then he started walking forward, as if he was ready to end this, but he stopped halfway into the room. “Where is he? Where’s Tim?”
“At the gallery,” Jason said. “He’ll be gone the whole day.”
Ryan glared at him. “Who the fuck is this guy?”
“Nobody,” Ben repeated.
“Tell me or I put a fucking bullet in his head! Then he really will be nobody!”
Ben didn’t react. Not until Ryan pointed the gun at Jason. Then Ben’s voice cracked as he answered.
“He’s my son.”
Ryan considered Ben disbelievingly, looking back and forth between them. Then he laughed. “I don’t know what sort of sick game you’re playing here. I bet Tim doesn’t know either. When he comes home and finds your bodies on the floor together, he’ll understand what was going on here.”
“And what, take you back?” Ben said, sounding angry. “Do you really want that, Ryan? Or would you rather have so much money that you don’t need Tim—that you don’t need to rely on anybody. Because we can give you that. We have more money than we’ll ever need. I’ll pay you to leave us alone. Right now. Cash. No police, no drama. You get your money, and you get out of here.”
Ryan’s face had gone slack as he listened to this offer. He looked almost serene, like a boy who was desperate to lie down and rest, just for a few moments, just for a few centuries. Then his tired features twisted up again. “All of this
is
mine! You took it from me!” The gun kept jabbing in Ben’s direction. It going off was only a matter of time, whether on accident or on purpose. Jason moved his eyes to the kitchen table, hoping to find a knife. The only items there were a can of Coke, a tea cup, and a basket of oranges. None of them had much potential, but if he could throw the tea cup, hit Ryan in the eyes…
“If you hadn’t come along,” Ryan continued ranting, “Tim and I would still be together.”
“You really believe that?” Ben asked, taking a few steps forward. He stopped when Ryan’s gun arm tensed, but he had made it past the edge of the kitchen table. “Tim would have left you eventually, if only to save you.”
“Save me?” Ryan demanded incredulously. “Oh, so he was doing me a favor!”
Ben raised his hands again, to show they were open. Jason braced himself, feeling Ben had a plan but not knowing what it was. “You overdosed in the hospital. Tim agonized over that. He blamed himself.”
“And he felt so bad that he threw me out on the street? You’re going tell to me
that
was for my own good?” Ryan pointed at himself with the gun.
Ben moved, but he didn’t rush Ryan like Jason expected. Instead he moved sideways. Jason didn’t notice at first, since he had lunged for the tea cup. When he looked back up again, Ben was blocking the way. Standing in his path. That had been his plan all along. Not to attack Ryan somehow, but to protect Jason.
Ryan recognized this and laughed. “Is that really your kid? What did you do, knock up some girl when you were twelve? You can’t protect him. I’ll put a bullet through both your heads. Bang bang!”
“You want the money or not?” Ben asked. “You’ll never get into the safe if we’re dead.”
“I told you what I want,” Ryan hissed.
As if on cue, the front door squeaked open. “Lucy, I’m home!” Tim said, doing his best Ricky Ricardo impersonation. “Whose car is out front?”
Ryan moved back against the breakfast bar. “Don’t you fucking move,” he whispered, standing sideways and keeping the gun trained on them while he watched the kitchen door.
Tim was grinning at his own joke as he strolled into the kitchen. He saw them first—Ben with an arm held out to keep Jason back, like a parent stopping his child from running into a busy street. Jason tried to tell Tim the whole story with one panicked expression. Tim responded with one of confusion, then fear as he took in the gun.
The box he was holding clattered to the ground, a cheerful rainbow-sprinkled donut rolling across the floor. It seemed too optimistic to exist here, too simple and happy, because Jason could no longer see this ending without one of them getting shot. Not unless Ryan broke down into tears and threw himself into Tim’s arms.
“There he is,” Ryan said, sounding bitter. “Mr. I’m-so-fucking-perfect. I like your family. Did you know about that one over there? Do you pretend he’s your son too?”
Tim spared them a glance, one that clearly said ‘let me deal with this.’
“I’m glad you’re here, Ryan,” he said. “Marcello told me you were in town. I’ve been worried about you. Why didn’t you come here sooner?”
Ryan’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You know, I thought about leaving you alone. I tried to find you at first, but then I figured maybe I’d find someone better. Then I saw your little bitch at the bar, and I remembered just how much I hate you.”
“Then point the gun at me,” Tim said. “If that’s what you came here to do, point the gun at me.”
“You ruined my life!” Ryan said, gun arm trembling. “My whole life turned to shit after you threw me out. I fucking hate you!”
“Then point the gun at me!” Tim shouted.
Ryan shrugged, as if it wasn’t a bad idea, and swung the gun around. This wasn’t a threat. Jason could see the fingers tighten on the gun, the tendons on Ryan’s hand tense as he prepared to fire. Jason shoved Ben aside, rushed Ryan with the ridiculous tea cup raised like it was a broadsword. But he was too late. He heard the explosion just seconds before reaching Ryan. Jason smashed the teacup into his ear regardless, tried to throw his weight into him and knock him over, but a stool was in his way. All Jason ended up doing was falling over it, but still he grabbed at Ryan’s wrist, trying to snatch away the gun and failing.
Ryan stepped back, disoriented at first, before he raised the gun and pointed it in Jason’s face. Then his eyes moved, his mouth twitched, and he aimed at something to the left of Jason’s head.
Ben. He was going to shoot Ben first.
A fist slammed into Ryan’s cheek from behind. The gun went off again, this time close enough that Jason’s world became clenched shut eyes and ringing ears. He blinked madly, trying to shrug off the panic jolting through his body. When he did, Ryan was on the floor, Tim on top of him and slamming fist after fist into his face. Ryan’s arms were flailing, striking Tim randomly. The gun was still in one hand, and it was only a matter of time before Ryan remembered to use it. Jason rushed forward, grabbing Ryan’s wrist and slamming it against the floor. The gun was flung from Ryan’s grasp. Jason scurried after it, kicking it by accident and wincing because he was sure it would go off. When it didn’t, he picked it up and swung around.
The scene had changed. Ryan was on his side, moaning and clutching at his face. Tim was on his knees, Ben standing over him before crouching. Tim remained kneeling, shaking his head at something Ben was saying over and over again.
Jason kept the gun on Ryan and stepped forward, not understanding what had happened.
“You’ve been shot!” he heard Ben say through the ringing in his ears.
Tim shook his head again. “I haven’t.” He forced himself to his feet, looked like he wanted to kick Ryan in the side, but instead fell over.
That’s when Jason saw the blood, crimson and wet and turning Tim’s light blue shirt maroon. Ryan got to his feet, forcing Jason to tear his attention away. Ryan pawed at his own eyes, at the blood soaking his face. Then he ran. Jason raised the gun to shoot just as Ben cried out, a horrible panicked scream. Tim was on his back, Ben pressing two bloody hands against a spot near his neck, a pool of blood continuing to spread across the floor.
An artery. Jason set aside the gun. Ryan had fled the room anyway, and more barking was coming from the backyard, meaning he wasn’t sticking around. Jason rushed to Tim’s side, trying to remember what he’d learned in the first-aid course Mr. Hubbard had made him take before the hunting trip.
“I can’t stop the bleeding!” Ben raised trembling hands.
“Let me see,” Jason said, pushing him away. He wasn’t doing much good anyway.
The bullet had gone straight through the meat above Tim’s collar bone. This wouldn’t be so bad—at least not as far as gunshots went—but he was bleeding far too much. Jason didn’t know where all the arteries were, but the bullet had to have passed through one of them. He closed a hand over the two holes and squeezed. Tim moaned in pain, eyes wide and unfocused. The scene was disturbingly familiar—the hunting trip buck, Jason’s hands slipping on the red-stained fur, the animal growing still, the life draining from it. Tim moaned again before his head lolled and he stopped moving. Passed out from the pain, or dead?
“Call an ambulance!” Jason said, but when he looked up he saw Ben already on the phone, stammering out their address.
“They’ll take forever,” Ben said when he hung up. “We’re so far away!”
“He’ll be fine,” Jason said, not knowing if it was true.
“We should drive him,” Ben said. “You pick him up, put him in the car, and I’ll drive.”
Jason shook his head. “It’ll kill him. We can’t move him. He’ll lose too much blood.”
“Is he alive?” Ben whispered, dropping to his knees. “Tim?”
Ben reached for one of Tim’s hands, eyes wide in panic.
“Check his wrist,” Jason said, trying not to crumble under his own sorrow.
Ben’s fingers trembled as they moved up Tim’s arm. His whole body was shaking, his breath shuddering, before he looked up in shock.
“I felt something!”
“Of course you did,” Jason said. “He’ll be fine.”
He focused on keeping the wound from bleeding. Jason wanted to remove his hand and use a shirt or something else instead, but worried about the blood loss this would cause. He had a pretty good seal on the wound now, or so he thought. There was so much blood that it was hard to tell. Tim’s normally dark skin was unnaturally pale. Ben was right. The paramedics were taking forever. Jason wished he could slit his own wrist, let Tim gulp down the blood he had lost if that would save him.
Ben was whispering to Tim, saying things Jason felt he didn’t have a right to hear, but that were impossible to ignore.
You promised not to leave me. You promised I would die first. Don’t do this to me. Please stay. Please. I can’t go through this again.
Jason clenched his jaw, forcing himself not to cry. When he heard the sirens come near and then stop, he started shouting to summon help. Ben pulled himself away and ran to the front door. Jason looked at the gun on the tile, praying that Ryan really had left. Surely the sirens had scared him away. Chinchilla was howling now, one long mournful sound.
A police officer entered the room first, gun drawn. Jason screamed at him to let the paramedics through. When they were allowed in, they had to pry his hands off the wound and shove Jason aside. He scurried backward across the floor, trying not to be in the way. He felt relief when they put a specialized bandage on the wound, then felt confused as they placed a collar around Tim’s neck, as if it had been broken. Then Tim was loaded onto a stretcher and rushed from the room. Ben followed after him, and Jason tried to do the same before an officer blocked his path.
“We need to ask you a few questions,” the man said.
“I need to go with them!” Jason responded, trying to push past.
“There isn’t room,” the officer insisted. “Help us catch the person who did this.”
Jason felt deflated as the ambulance doors closed and the vehicle started down the long drive. He nodded his agreement. Then he tried to explain what had happened, but couldn’t stop thinking of the ambulance, and of Ben, who would be all alone with no one to comfort him if Tim died.
* * * * *
Jason stared at the scene from the kitchen doorway, scarcely believing it could be real. A pool of blood on the blue tile, smeared to one side where Tim had been laying. Shards of a broken tea cup, the liquid that had once filled it splattered near the table. Messy footprints everywhere, misshapen maroon ovals, marring what had been one of Jason’s favorite rooms. Now it was a mess, a ridiculous crime scene where a photographer tiptoed around in plastic-covered shoes, camera flashing like a tourist desperate to document his dwindling holiday.
“Son?” The officer standing next to Jason moved the digital recorder closer, hoping it would prompt Jason to speak. Officer Flynn was middle-aged, heavyset, and perhaps a little too young to call anyone son. At least not anyone Jason’s age. “Are you feeling all right?”
“Yes,” Jason said, even though it couldn’t be further from the truth. His heart hadn’t stopped pounding, his every breath feeling forced, as if the normally ignored function now required constant vigilance, lest he forget to breathe entirely. “What was the question?”
“When did you first notice the perpetrator enter the house?”
“We were waiting for Tim to come back when we heard the dog— Chinchilla!”
Jason turned to the backyard where a constant noise finally got his attention. Chinchilla stood just outside, clawing repeatedly at the glass to signal she wanted in. Jason rushed to open the door, a hand on his shoulder stopping him just as he was reaching for it.
“You’d better let me,” Flynn said, nodding at Jason’s hands.
He noticed them for the first time, how they were covered in dried blood, his skin feeling tight and dry beneath the grime. Smears ran up his arm, and his T-shirt made it look as though Jason had also been shot. The knees of his jeans were still damp from where he had knelt in Tim’s blood.
“Do you have a leash for the dog?” the officer asked. “We can’t have her running through the crime scene.”
He told Flynn where to find it, and while the officer went to fetch it, Jason stared through the glass, locking eyes with Chinchilla. She had stopped clawing now that she had his attention and had begun whining instead. Jason felt she was asking him one question. How was Tim? Was he going to be all right? Chinchilla continued to stare, Jason wishing more than anything that he could answer her truthfully and say that everything was going to be fine.