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Lucas, startled, pivoted toward the spot where he’d seen the muzzle flashes and fired a tight spread across the bushes, missed, and heard the shooter thrashing through the bushes, heading slantwise down the hill.
He punched the Favorites tab on his phone and Virgil answered instantly: “What the hell happened?”
“Maggie’s shot! He’s coming your way, man, I think he’s heading back across the slope.”
—
Hess stumbled ashe fired, his heel catching on a root, and he fell backwards. He saw Cooper falling as he fell, and then there were more gunshots and close, not from Cooper. Confused, he got to his hands and knees, dropped the pistol, picked it up, and he began half-crawling, half-falling across the slope down the way he’d come. A tree branch ripped across his forehead and he put up a hand to protect his eyes and continued crablike across the slope.
—
Virgil moved downthe slope with his shotgun, couldn’t see through the snow and the foliage, and he continued slipping down the slope while listening for Hess coming toward him.
—
Lucas turned onhis iPhone flashlight and when Cooper tried to sit up he pushed her back down and asked, “Where are you hit?”
“I don’t know, I... my leg hurts.”
She was wearing black jeans and he couldn’t see a wound but ran his hand down her leg and it came back wet and red in the flash. He probed, found the wound. Melton had come out on the porch and screamed, “What happened? What happened?”
“Maggie’s been hit,” Lucas shouted back. “Bring a towel, quick, quick!”
Melton ducked back inside the house and Lucas said to Cooper, “This might hurt,” and he pushed the tip of his finger through the bullet hole in her jeans and ripped the hole wider, then put his index fingers from both hands in the bigger hole and ripped the hole wide.
The wound was on the outside of her leg, which was good, because it wouldn’t have impacted her femoral artery.
“Gonna be okay,” he said to Cooper, who was now lying flat. He turned his phone over and called 9-1-1, interrupted the operator who was starting through her “Is this an emergency?” routine and he shouted, “U.S. Marshal Lucas Davenport. We have a woman shot at...” He looked at Cooper. “What’s your street address?” She told him and he repeated it to the operator. “We need an ambulance andsome cop cars, the shooter is being pursued on foot along I-35 by a BCA agent.”
The operator started to ask another question and Lucas shouted, “Just get the ambulances here, I’m going in pursuit.”
He clicked off as Melton ran up with a towel and he said, “She was shot in the leg, I’ve ripped open her pant leg, the slug went all the way through, you need to put pressure on both sides and hold it there, hard. An ambulance should be on the way but call 9-1-1 to make sure it is, I was pretty abrupt...”
“What are you...”
“I’m going after Hess. I’m hoping Virgil will slow him down.”
Muller, the old lady from the Victorian house, hurried up and said, “I’m talking to 9-1-1...”
“Get them here,” Lucas said, and he ran down the street and at the same time called Virgil.
“Where are you?” Virgil asked, quietly.
“Up on top, on the street. Where should I come down?”
“I can hear him. He’s behind and below me, trying to get down to the street. You should get up to the bush where I was and come straight down the bluff. He has to break out in the open. I’ll see if I can reach him with the shotgun.”
“I’m coming,” Lucas said. “Leave your phone on.”
At the end of the street, Lucas went over the side, crashing through the brush, not trying for subtlety, using the flashlight on his phone to dodge trees and branches, barely keeping his balance as he went. As he got close to the street, he shouted “Phone” and Virgil was there in his ear and said, “You’re above me, go farther to your right. You’re close, I’m at the street.”
—
Virgil broke outinto the street and looking farther right, saw Hess running hard up Pleasant Avenue toward the bridge over I-35. Virgil lifted the shotgun but a car came across the bridge and slowed, and Hess ran right toward it, and as Lucas broke out onto the street Virgil started running and called back to Lucas, “Car in background.”
They saw Hess run onto the bridge and they were forty yards back, running uphill, and Hess was gaining on them. At the bridge over I-35, Hess was about to get off the far end, and Virgil stopped, took aim and fired a shot.
Hess stumbled, recovered, and hobbled toward the sidewalk that ran along the parkway.
