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We jump on Dave’s bike and give chase, but we haven’t caught them by the time we leave the neighborhood. Dave has an idea. A terrible one. Lockwood spent two hours at a tiny airstrip before coming to my house.
We arrive just as a Lear Jet goes airborne. I call the FBI, and it takes them almost an hour to give the local cops the clearance to examine the flight records. They arrive in time to spend another hour figuring out the records have been falsified. The plane claimed to be headed north, toward Redding, California, but tracking software shows it actually went south.
The FBI has to wait for orders, but I don’t. Hal and I get on my plane. It’s several hellish hours before the plane we're chasing lands—in a rural area outside San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico. My pilot, Victor, lands in a field, and Hal and I start trying to trace a path from the empty plane to Libby. Fifty bucks gets us a hotel name, and two hundred gets us a dinged up dirt bike. We pull out just as another plane—the FBI, Hal says—flies low overhead.
I'm moaning again, and just like before, the woman is crying. There's something clutching my hand. Someone, and I feel sure it’s Libby. She’s crying.
I squeeze her hand as hard as I can, and the crying stops. “It's okay, Libby.”
I have the strange suspicion that I'm only managing a whisper. She’s crying again. I mean, she is really going at it. I squeeze her hand, and the crying turns to sobbing.
Damnit, Libby.
Her sobs make the burn worse. Darkness starts to fade, and I can see white flames. I feel like I'm choking and I start to struggle against the invisible hands that hold me.
Fuck—oh fuck. I don't like this. Not at all. There are so many voices rising up around me. Someone slaps my face, and I don't think it's hard, but I'm already on edge.
And then there is light. Fluorescent light.
Holy shit. I turn my head left and right, squeezing my eyes shut against the searing pain, and there is Libby, bent over me and crying. And I really must be confused about what's going on, because she's wearing scrubs. Libby looks beautiful in scrubs.
*
~ELIZABETH~
Hunter is in and out of consciousness for almost two days. They say it's not that long considering the bullet's trajectory—through his left lung—and where it lodged, by one of the branches of his axillary artery. He almost bled to death in the hour-long helicopter ride to UC San Diego hospital, and when we got here, they wheeled him straight into surgery, which lasted four excruciating hours.
The nurses let me stay by him in the ICU when he comes out. I'm not sure why, but it probably has something to do with Marchant Radcliffe telling everyone that I'm his fiancé.
His first forty-eight hours in the ICU, Hunter's mostly sleeping. The incision, on his back, around his shoulder blade, is called a thoracotomy and is supposed to be one of the most painful sites for surgery. So they have to keep him sedated. I hate it, and spend probably too much time sitting by his bed, crying. Cross stays with me for most of the first day, but he has to go back to rehab the next. Suri gives me some company, too, and of course Marchant is in and out.
The weirdest thing that happens in the first forty-eight hours is that my mom visits. She's wearing a pants suit—my designer-loving mother's definition of drab—and her hair, which she normally pulls into a dramatic up-do, is flowing down her shoulders, much like mine. I meet her in the ICU waiting room, and when she hugs me, I start sobbing. I have to say, it's one of the weirdest experiences I've had in years. It's even weirder when she says she's staying.
So that's what happens. While I'm asked every imaginable question by the FBI, my mother keeps me fed and brings me clean clothes and tries to make me get some sleep.
On the second night after we arrive—the night Dave tells me that Michael Lockwood, AKA Jim Gunn, AKA a few other names, is being charged with the abduction of Missy King, Ginnifer Lucky, Cross, and I, and the murder of Sarabelle Meyer—I'm a teary mess. I cry a lot, and Marchant charms his way in so the two of us sit side by side in plastic chairs and talk about the mess Hunter's been in. We also speculate over Priscilla, who hasn't been seen since Mexico.
I go into the waiting room and eat some fast food with my mother. This is when I find out that she knows what I did at the ranch. I guess she overheard one of the investigators talking about it. When she first brings it up, I sort of freak out, but it turns out, all she wants to say is sorry.
“I'm so sorry for what I've done to our family with my addiction, Elizabeth. I can't stand to think of how much money I've wasted. It makes me sad that you were so desperate.”
I try to explain to her that I wasn't just desperate—I was also tired of being a virgin—and to my surprise, she says she understands, at least a little.
That actually feels good.
Later in the night, I talk a lot to Hunter. His stats are looking better now, and they want to see some improvement in his breathing, so they've started weaning him off some of his medicines. I'm sitting by his bed, staring at his monitors, when all of a sudden he moans, and I get a peek of his green eyes. He's been squeezing my hand since yesterday, but seeing his eyes...it's amazing.
“Hunter,” I whisper.
He grimaces and turns his head toward me. His eyelids are heavy, his eyes barely open, but I can see him trying to focus on my face. His hand, in mine, squeezes. He gives me the smallest little smile, and in his hoarse voice, he says, “I missed you.”
Tears fill my eyes. “I missed you, too.”
The third day, sometime in mid-morning, Hunter opens his eyes again. He looks dazed, and then panicked.
I rub his fingers. “Hi. Are you okay?”
He frowns, then looks around the little room. His eyes return to mine and his hand squeezes me a little harder. “Libby... I don't know where we are.”
