“Get the hook. Grab her!”

I fight to ignore the pain, my arms stroking, but I’m too slow, going nowhere. I dunk under and let the water take me. Too weak, too hurting.

When I come up again, the boat is farther away. I search for the others. For a moment I think I spot a head, a small dark smudge in the distance against the light from the patrol boat. The boat drifts in that direction, closing in on that person now.

I tread water for a moment, my legs working hard, unsure of my next move. My free arm swirls widely around me, helping keep me afloat. My other arm throbs, useless at my side.

I peer at the patrol boat in the distance, struggling to keep my chin above the waterline. They probably count me as gone now. Dead. Part of me yearns to head after the boat, knowing it’s giving chase to one of my friends. But I can’t. I have to seize my advantage and head for shore. I can try to find the others from there. That’s what Sean would tell me to do. That’s what he would do himself. Turning, I face the shore again and start swimming, using my legs and one good arm. It’s slow going. And painful. I stop several times and float, tilting my face back against the water and storing my strength.

All of me aches with a bone-deep burn. Weariness nips at me, ready to sink in its teeth, but I refuse to let that happen. I know a watery grave will be my reward if I do.

Nausea rolls through me, and I fight that, too. Stopping, I take another moment to rest, dropping my head back. Water laps over my ears. My gaze blurs. Thousands of tiny stars dance against a blanket of dark night, and I rather deliriously wonder why they’re moving like that. Are they all shooting stars? A smile curves my lips at the whimsical thought.

A buzzing fills my head, pulsing in rhythm to the throbbing pain in my shoulder. With my good hand, I try to reach there, to assess the damage. I feel only slick wetness. I can’t distinguish water from blood. I lower my hand and shove away the fact that I’ve been shot. There’s nothing I can do about it right now. Nothing. Nothing to be done about the fact that there’s a bullet lodged in my shoulder and I’m hours from a hospital, stuck in a river. A fugitive. Alone.

If someone had posed this scenario to me before, I would have declared I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving. But that was before. Before I’d proven just how resilient I could be. And didn’t people get shot in the old West and survive? I’ve seen enough of those spaghetti westerns with my dad on Sunday afternoons to know. They lived. I deliberately ignore the fact that that was television and I’m dealing with the real world. A world that has not been kind to me lately.

Gradually sound fades away. I don’t hear anything anymore. No distant shouts. No growling boat. It’s like someone hit the mute button and I’m alone in the world. Floating in endless space. Just me and dancing stars. Water crashing against my face.

I reach for the familiar music that so often fills my mind, remembering too late with a pang that it’s abandoned me. Its absence heightens my loneliness, deepens the ache. I need a song. Crave it desperately. Just one song now more than ever.

Sputtering against the water, I sing a few verses, but my voice escapes broken and hoarse, terrible and off-pitch. I force myself to push through, waiting for the cadence to fill my ears, a six-string orchestra to sweep through and lift me.

It doesn’t happen. My voice stops, quivers, and gives up on the lyrics. Darkness edges my vision.

“Please,” I beg, but I’m unsure who, specifically, I’m pleading with. “Please,” I ask no one again. Help me. “I need . . . please . . .”

Someone.

Water creeps over my head, and my vision blacks out.

* * *

Agency Interview

AGENT POLLOCK: Thank you for coming in to see us today, Mitchell. May I call you Mitchell?

MITCHELL HAMILTON: I didn’t realize I had a choice. Your guys practically hauled me from my house. I guess you couldn’t just interview me there? You had to drag me into this little room? Is this an intimidation tactic?

AGENT POLLOCK: Are you intimidated, Mitchell?

MITCHELL HAMILTON: What do you want?

AGENT POLLOCK: Your sister—

MITCHELL HAMILTON: You took my sister away.

AGENT POLLOCK: So you haven’t heard from her? She hasn’t tried to contact you?

MITCHELL HAMILTON: Why? Did you lose her? (laughter) God, I hope so. Because I’m not going to lie, that would be pretty great. I hope she runs far away and never looks back.

AGENT POLLOCK: You do understand aiding a carrier in any way is a crime under recently added statutes to the Wainwright Act? If you have any communication or contact with your sister and fail to report it, you face legal action.

MITCHELL HAMILTON: I understand that you can go to hell.

FIVE

I TASTE DIRT.

Grit coats my lips and lines my teeth in a grainy film. My tongue, the roof of my mouth—nothing is free from it. Coughing, I move my tongue, trying to work up some saliva. I shift my weight and then groan as my nerves wake to the pain.

My eyes crack open and wince at the blinding light. It only adds to my agony. Like needles stabbing into my corneas. I jam my eyes shut again and take slow sips of breath, as if that will somehow chase off the pain hammering into every pore.

I’m not dead. There’s that. I focus on that. Cling to that. I didn’t drown. After several more moments, I reopen my eyes and suffer the brightness. I have to get up. Get moving. Staying here, facedown in the dirt, equals death. If I don’t get up now, I’m never getting up.