Honeymoon

Chapter 98

I WAS SPRAWLED on the bathroom floor, covered in blood and vomit and some other fluids from my body that were clearly never supposed to see the light of day.

But suddenly I was happy as a pig in shit.

It didn’t matter that I was still aching up and down, inside and out. I was alive.

And on the phone.

“Nine-one-one emergency…”

The satellites had hooked me up. Help would be on the way in minutes. All I had to do was tell them where the hell I was.

I spoke to the female operator. “My name is Agent John O’Hara with the FBI and I’m—”

Being shot at!

I heard the gun blast and watched wood splinter off the bathroom door. A bullet whizzed by my ear and shattered the tile on the wall behind me. It happened in an instant, but it felt like slow-motion.

Until the second shot came. The only thing that one felt like was agony. I’d been lucky on the first. Not so, the next. The shot tagged me in the shoulder, ripping straight through and out. My eyes went to the hole in my shirt as blood began to spurt.

Fuck me, I’m hit.

The phone dropped from my hand, and for a split second I froze. Were it for a full second I would’ve been dead.

Instead, instinct took over. I rolled to my left, away from the door, out of the line of fire.

Nora’s third shot exploded through the door and took apart the tile on the wall where I’d been a second before. It would’ve caught me smack in the chest.

“How do you like that, O’Hara?!” she yelled. “That’s my insurance policy!”

I said nothing. To talk was to invite another bullet. I waited for Nora to say something more, but she said nothing.

The only sound was the muffled, tinlike voice of the 911 operator coming through my phone lying on the floor.

“Sir? Are you there? What’s happening?”

Or something to that effect. I couldn’t tell for sure. I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered at that moment wasn’t the phone.

Slowly I pulled in my left leg and raised the cuff on my pants. I hadn’t packed a toothbrush for the night, but I was packing something else.

I undid the holster and removed the Beretta 9 mm. If Nora had thoughts of storming in, I’d be ready for her.

I gripped the gun in both hands and waited.

Where are you, Nora—love of my life?