That was the window Caspian had been waiting for. He fired. The bullet struck just below the kidnapper’s ear. The man dropped instantly, but so did the father.
Fuck! The sniper.
Any doubts Caspian still held that the sniper and the two men might not be working together evaporated. The father stirred, holding his upper left arm. The teenage boy scrambled to his father, dropping beside him. He gripped his dad’s hand and tried to pull him up.
“Stay low!” Caspian shouted. “Keep your heads down!”
The boy and his dad both nodded as they sought cover behind an overturned table.
Caspian scanned the terrace, then turned and sprint-crouched toward Liesel, who was working frantically on Sofie’s wound, her hands covered in her sister’s blood.
“Let me see,” he said, kneeling beside her.
Sofie’s chest rose in shallow, jerky movements. Blood bubbled at her lips. She tried to speak.
“You . . . can’t trust . . . Westcott . . . you . . .”
“Don’t talk,” Caspian said, holding her hand. “Keep your strength. Help is coming.”
Sofie coughed, choking on blood. Then more shots echoed against the nearby building, followed by panicked shouting and police sirens. The terrace was nearly deserted now. Everyone had fled. Only the dead and the three of them remained.
Sofie’s hand clenched his forearm with surprising strength.
“Listen ... to me ... they ... they are ... everywhere,” she managed to say, her voice strained and broken.
Her words stunned Caspian. He knewtheymeant something. But what? He’d heard similar words not long ago.
We. Are. Everywhere.
He’d been in Tanzania then, and now he was hearing them in Mallorca. Both times he’d heard them, they’d come out of the mouth of someone who was dying.
“Who’s ‘they,’ Sofie? Who’s ‘they’?”
But Sofie’s eyes had already rolled back. Her hand gently slipped from his, and her face slackened. He checked her pulse. Nothing.
More gunfire. This time even closer.Shit.
He hadn’t known Sofie, not really, but in those brief minutes he’d shared with the two sisters, he’d seen enough to understand how much Sofie mattered to Liesel. Caspian closed Sofie’s eyes.
“No,” Liesel cried out, then pushed Caspian aside and started compressions. “Come on, Sofie! Stay with me!”
After a few seconds, Caspian said, “She’s gone, Liesel.”
Liesel looked at him, panting, her eyes wild. “No. She can’t be.”
“We have to go. We don’t know who else is coming.”
Liesel’s hands were trembling, and her face was pale, spattered with blood.
She’s shell shocked.
Liesel lowered her head. They didn’t have time to mourn, but Caspian gave Liesel the time of one breath, of one second of silence. He owed her that much.
“We can’t stay, Liesel. We need to get moving.”
Liesel nodded. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand, then said, “Okay.”
“There’s a sniper. Probably on the dock,” Caspian said. “We can’t exit from the terrace, and we need to stay low. Understood?”
