CHAPTER 49
JOON-GI
J oon-gi came to on the prickly forest floor, the sharp pain in his collarbone from the second bullet intense but not fatal. He rolled over carefully and touched the wound. The bleeding wasn’t too bad; the bullet must have hit the bone of his clavicle and lodged, instead of penetrating his lung or heart.
He wondered fleetingly how rare that was, because he certainly knew how painful it was.
He lay there for a moment and listened to the sounds of the forest, and of the waves hitting the shore, and of the alarms blaring across the property. At a distance he heard the pop-pops of gunshots.
He turned his head but the guard had long gone from behind the tree to his right.
He rose, the sound of a helicopter thundering overhead, and as he looked up, he could just make out the word on its underside. POLICE.
The pop of gunshots above ceased.
He wondered if they had made it out alive, Lucinda, the girl, and the local man.
He wondered what he should do now. How best to get the help he clearly needed. He listened to the sound of the helicopter landing high above on the cliff. He would need to make his way up there.
He looked down at his first gunshot wound. His thigh was still oozing blood into his cargo pants. He would need a doctor very soon; perhaps the others up there would too.
It was a long, hard, painful climb.
—
AND WHEN JOON-GI REACHED THE summit of the stairs, he saw the carnage.
The house’s vast windows milked white by gunshots. Police officers spilling from the helicopter into the house. More gunfire.
He saw the British woman from the basement pulled out by the police, wailing, gesticulating frantically toward the local man, his body lifeless on the grass.
Joon-gi raised his hands high above his head in surrender as, knees buckling, he called out to get someone, anyone’s attention—and the rest was history.
CHAPTER 50
W hen Joe returns from the diner restroom Nina is hugging Joon-gi. He watches them for a moment, almost outside it all. It’s strange that the worst moments of his life are now so fused with the best.
They were offered the chance to relocate together. To give it a shot and if being stabbed by your witness protection spouse and still wanting to be with her wasn’t grounds enough for commitment then Joe isn’t sure what could be.
Nina didn’t want to be alone, and he didn’t want to be without Nina. It was a simple choice. After all he’d already followed her into hell and back —what was moving to Charlotte?
Joon-gi catches Joe’s eye and breaks away from Nina’s embrace. He offers an outstretched hand to Joe, emotion thick in his eyes. The men shake hands and then Joe pulls him into a hug of his own. Nina tumbles in too, and then all three of the survivors are hugging, laughter coming in body-shuddering jolts among them.
They have made it, and they feel it to their very cores.
When the embrace subsides, they sit and talk, the waitress bringing a third fork and the hours rolling by.
—
IT’S ONLY ON THE DRIVE back to Charlotte that it hits Nina. As they roar down the highway, their smiles slip slowly from their quiet faces and Joe clasps his hand into hers almost subconsciously.
The game is over, the music has finally stopped, and this is where she landed.
The meaning of everything seemed so clear in the house: stay alive, don’t die. It was easy in a sense.
Because now what is she supposed to do?
Outside the house the structure of things loosened, the rules were less obvious, life was opaque and uncharted territory. The clarity and importance of her every move seemed lessened, the point of it all ultimately unknowable.
