Paralyzed Read online

  Crack.

  She prayed the noise of the gun firing would wake up someone in the neighborhood. They would call the police, check the license plate, maybe get the entire scene on video.

  “Get in!” Carl shouted at her, and she scurried around to the passenger side and flung open the door as another gunshot split the air around her. As soon as she was in the car, Carl slammed on the gas, and they jolted ahead.

  “Buckle up.” His voice was rigid. His whole body radiated tension as he leaned forward and gripped the steering wheel. “I haven’t driven this fast since college.”

  CHAPTER 15

  The Honda lurched forward, squealing ahead of Gino.

  “He had a gun.” Kennedy was breathing hard, her brain branded with the image of the firearm swinging low in Gino’s hand.

  “Take a deep breath and calm down,” Carl told her. How could he talk about calm at a time like this?

  “But he had a gun.”

  Carl swerved around a corner. “So let’s be thankful we’re both alive and focus on staying that way.”

  He yanked the steering wheel the other way, and Kennedy was thrown against her door. The wipers still smeared across the windshield.

  “Sorry about that,” Carl muttered.

  “Do you know where this road leads?” Kennedy held onto the bottom of her seat.

  Carl glanced in the rearview mirror. “Looks like we’re gonna learn.”

  He turned down the next side street and clunked over three speed bumps. The sound of the car’s bottom scraping against the pavement zinged pain through Kennedy’s ears all the way to the roots of her teeth. It was probably a ridiculous gesture, but she pushed down the lock on her door.

  “Good idea.” Carl did the same.

  “Do you know how to get out of this neighborhood?” Kennedy asked after he turned down yet another road and sped past a school.

  “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s this way.”

  She wasn’t reassured. “He’s still following us,” Kennedy announced, stealing a peak in the mirror.

  “Yup.” Carl sounded tense but not necessarily afraid. Since he was a pastor, did that mean he was more prepared to die than the average churchgoer?

  They sped through a stop sign, and Kennedy clenched her jaw. She couldn’t relax it even when she tried.

  Carl looked both ways before swinging out of the subdivision onto the main road. “You should see if you can get a license plate number.”

  Kennedy turned around, expecting to be shot in the face the moment she faced Gino’s car. The Honda whizzed past the streetlights so fast that they had almost a strobe effect. She could only see one or two characters at a time but figured she could rattle them off if she had to.

  “Do you have your cellphone?” she asked.

  “It’s in my pants.” Carl adjusted his weight to one hip. This was no time to be prudish. She reached into his back pocket and pulled out his little black flip-phone. Her fingers only shook a little as she dialed. Everything would be fine. She’d call the police. They’d send the squad cars to save them in a minute. Two at most.

  “It’s going through.” She held her breath and waited for the operator’s voice.

  “We’re sorry. All lines are busy at this time. Please hold.”

  It had to be some kind of joke. This wasn’t customer service for some mail-order clothes catalog or online bookstore. This was serious. Life or death. And she was on hold?

  “They’re busy.” She could hardly believe the words herself.

  Carl nodded. “Must be this wind. The power’s out in Medford. Our house was hit for a little bit earlier. Whole neighborhood went dark for half an hour or more.”

  “So people are calling 911? In the middle of the night?”

  Carl was winding down one street after another, and Gino was working hard to pull up in the lane next to them.

  She glanced out her window. “He’s getting closer.” She could see the black car in the other lane. There was no way Carl’s little Honda could outrun him.

  “Don’t worry about Gino.” Carl kept his eyes on the road.

  “But he’s got a gun,” Kennedy reminded him. She had no idea how long Carl’s old car could keep up this kind of pace and hoped the engine wouldn’t give out. Were cars like horses? Could you work one until it fell over dead?

  “I know.” Carl’s voice was calm and steady. “But he’s got to focus on his driving. It’s not like in the movies. You can’t drive and shoot at the same time.”

  Kennedy hoped he was right. What would a full-time pastor know about those kinds of things, anyway? She glanced out the window right as they sped under a street lamp. The driver was scowling behind the wheel, quickly gaining on them and about to pass on the right.

  “That’s not Gino.” Confusion slowed her mind. Her body tingled with an electric fear. “It’s someone else.”

  The back window rolled down.

  “He’s in the backseat,” she squealed.

  “Duck!”

  Kennedy could hardly hear Carl’s shout over the sound of her own scream. Glass shattered on top of her as the window exploded. Shards rained down in her hair, in her eyebrows.

  Kennedy screamed again as a second shot rang out.

  “I’m gonna get us on Main Street. The police station’s that way.”

  “Oh my God, oh my God.” For the first time, she realized that phrase wasn’t only using the Lord’s name in vain. It could also be a prayer.

  “Tight curve,” Carl warned. He leaned into the steering wheel with his whole body, and Kennedy cried out in pain as her arm bashed against the door.

  “Hallelujah!” Carl exclaimed. “We lost them!”

  Kennedy glanced in the passenger mirror. The black car had missed the turn, but she only felt a slight breeze of relief because her arm was firing pain all the way down to the bone.

  “You all right?” Carl asked.

  Something was sticky. Something was …

  “I’m bleeding.” She held up her fingers as disbelief swirled around in her gut. “I’m bleeding.” She hadn’t realized how terrified she was until she heard the tremor in her voice.

  “From the glass?” Carl asked. His words were coated in hope that only thinly veiled his own fear.

  “I’m bleeding.” Her breaths became shallow. She reached up and turned on the overhead light. “I think I’ve been shot.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “All right,” Carl whispered. “All right.”

  Panic laced his voice, mirroring the panic that swelled up inside her.

  “Let me just think. If I take Riverside to Governor’s Ave, I can get you to the hospital. You need to apply pressure. You need to …”

  The pain hadn’t been that bad until she realized what it was. The shoulder of her leather coat was torn. She couldn’t even see skin beneath, just blood. What kind of diseases would infect a wound like that? She looked at her arm again, and her vision blurred.

  “I don’t feel too good.” She had time to turn her face away from her injury before throwing up. It wasn’t until her stomach was empty that she realized what she had done.

  She didn’t dare raise her eyes to Carl but stared at his dirty pants leg. Where was that Kleenex he had given her?

  “I am so sorry,” she stammered. “Here, let me help you …”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Carl didn’t take his eyes off the road.

  “I’m really, really sorry,” she repeated, her fear and pain giving way to the mortification that warmed the pit of her stomach, shouting blaring accusations in her ear.

  “It’s ok.”

  She had never seen Carl so serious. Was he mad at her? Of course he was. If it hadn’t been for her, he wouldn’t be sitting in a smelly mess. His car wouldn’t be all smashed in, and they wouldn’t be fleeing for their lives. She’d be lucky if he ever spoke to her again. She’d probably have to find another church and …

  “Sandy did that, too, you know.”

  “W
hat?”

  “When she was in labor with Jordan and I was driving her to the hospital.” His voice was lighter now. A little more like normal. “Puked all over herself, the car, my arm.” He let out a little chuckle. “Man, the orderly who met us at the ER, he took one look at her, went back inside, and came back with some gloves and a face mask just to help her in the doors. Can’t blame the kid.”

  Kennedy laughed, but the jerky motion made her shoulder hurt even more.

  “We’re just a few minutes away from the hospital, kiddo.” Carl squeezed her knee. “You just hang tight.” And then, in his comforting deep voice, Carl started to pray. He thanked God for keeping them safe and asked him to keep Gino far away from them. He prayed for the police and all those impacted by the power outages. He prayed for the doctors and nurses they would soon meet, and asked that if it was God’s will they could have a chance to spread the love of Jesus to them.

  He had just said “Amen” when Kennedy heard a car speeding up behind them. She turned in her seat, wincing with pain, expecting to see Gino’s black vehicle.

  “Oh, thank you, Lord,” Carl breathed.

  Kennedy never expected to be so relieved at the sight of blue and red flashing police lights. Carl pulled over and jumped out of the car, raising his arms in the air.

  “Hurry!” he called, keeping both hands high. “She’s been shot.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Kennedy wanted to get out of the van, too, but there was so much glass around her she couldn’t move. The police were here now. That was what really mattered. They would find Gino, put him behind bars where he belonged. Kennedy could go to her aunt’s tomorrow — or was it technically today by now? When she returned to campus next month, she wouldn’t have to worry about panic attacks or post-traumatic stress disorder or anything like that. Gino would face justice. So would Vinny. And she could focus on school.

  Everything would return to normal, and she would be just fine.

  “All right, miss, let’s take a look at your arm.”

  A mustached policeman leaned down near Kennedy’s splintered window. He shined the flashlight at her.

  “Nope. That ain’t glass.” He straightened up, cocked his head, and muttered something into the walkie-talkie on his shoulder.

  Kennedy bit her lower lip. Sure, she was in pain, but it wasn’t anything the doctors couldn’t handle. Nobody was freaking out about blood loss or anything like that. If her injuries were life threatening, she would know it, right? It wasn’t anything like getting stabbed in the back with a four-inch blade. Her arm hurt, but what was a little pain as long as the people who wanted her dead were in custody?

  Wait, they were in custody, right?

  “Did you find Gino?” she asked. “The one in the black car?”

  The officer lowered himself back down by the window. “Easy now. We’ll have plenty of questions. But let’s start by looking at that arm of yours.” He frowned and mumbled something else in code on his radio. What did that mean? Did it mean she was dying? No, he’d be applying pressure if she was at risk of bleeding out, not standing there with his chin in his walkie-talkie, right?

  “Did you get Gino? He’s the guy they just said was another partner in the kidnapping.”

  “Kidnapping?” The officer shined the flashlight in Kennedy’s face. “You the other girl?” he asked after a pause. “The one they picked up with Abernathy’s kid?”

  Kennedy nodded, and the officer let out a slow whistle under his breath.

  “All right. So this Gino just started chasing you guys in his car? What were you doing out so late?”

  She wasn’t sure where to start. At her chemistry final? In the subway? In her dorm room? Had that all really just happened today? Or yesterday. Why did everything get so jumbled and confusing in the middle of the night?

  Kennedy gave the officer a brief rundown of her evening, starting with seeing Gino on the T.

  “You were on that subway? We got word someone sabotaged it. Cut the power and set off a smoke bomb to get people freaked out.”

  “That must have been Gino.” Even saying his name made Kennedy nauseated. Her arm throbbed. “Once we got off the T, I thought someone was following me.” She didn’t want to admit to the police how far she had run in the tunnel. If it really had been Gino, though, how was she still here? Wouldn’t he have attacked? Maybe she started running at just the right time. Any farther down the walkway, and …

  The officer frowned. “Why didn’t you call the police when you recognized him?”

  “I didn’t know who he was. Not yet. But then I got back to my dorm, and my dad sent me the link from Channel 2 with his picture, and I recognized him then, and then my roommate did, too.”

  He interrupted with questions every few sentences, but eventually the entire report came out, culminating with the car chase.

  “And did you get a license plate number?” He frowned again, and Kennedy wondered if he thought her whole story was a farce. Could her mind have made something like this up? She glanced at the window shards on her lap, winced as the pain deep in her arm radiated throughout her entire right side. No, this was no PTSD episode.

  “I saw the license plate.” She tried to recreate the image in her mind like a photograph. “I had it in my head, and then I tried calling, but you guys were busy …”

  She heard the accusatory tone in her own voice. Where had the police been when she needed them?

  The officer pursed his lips together in what Kennedy guessed was some sort of approximation of a smile. “Well, if you’re ever in the same situation again, try shouting the number out loud.”

  “What, so I don’t forget?” Kennedy couldn’t recall a single thought that had rushed through her brain after Gino shot through the window. How could she have remembered something as obscure as a license plate number?

  “No, so we can pick it up. We were listening to you guys the entire time, you know.”

  “You were?”

  He nodded. “Our dispatch operator got on shortly after you called. At first we thought we had a hostage situation, thought you were being forced somewhere against your will and had managed to put out a call. Then we put enough pieces together to realize you were being chased, and they sent us out after you.”

  “But how did you find where we were?”

  “Ain’t too hard if the driver names you the cross streets and tells you exactly where he’s headed.”

  Good old Carl. So had he known? Was that why he had been naming the streets?

  A female officer came up to the window. Carl followed her, and Kennedy caught the gleam in his eye as a car approaching in the opposite lane lit up his face in its headlights.

  “They found the vehicle and have the suspect in custody,” the officer told her partner.

  Kennedy let out her breath. Everyone had something to say, even Carl, but Kennedy just sat, letting relief wash over her like water from a hot bath. The excited cacophony was interrupted by the siren of an ambulance speeding toward them.

  “Good.” The policeman leaned down. “EMTs are here. They’ll get you fixed up just fine.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Two men rushed to Kennedy’s window and started shouting questions at her.

  “Can you breathe?”

  “Are you able to move your fingers?”

  “Do you hurt anywhere near your neck or back?”

  She wished they’d just get her cleaned up and let her get some rest, but they kept up the barrage for five minutes or longer.

  “All right,” one of them said. “We’ll get you on the stretcher and take you to the hospital. Won’t take long. We’re just a few miles away.”

  “I can walk without a stretcher.”

  He looked at her dubiously.

  “Really,” she insisted. “I’m fine.” She unbuckled her seatbelt to prove her point.

  “No, don’t do that, miss.” He held out his hand.

  She ignored the gesture. “I’m all right. I don’t need a stretche
r.”

  He gave a little shrug. “Ok.” He turned and called to the other EMT, “Leave it there. She’s gonna walk.”

  “You sure?” he called back.

  Why did everyone treat her like a fragile china doll about to shatter?

  She swept some glass chunks off her lap and held onto the car door to raise herself to her feet. The world spun for a second or two and then settled down again. She smiled at the EMT. “See?”

  He shrugged. “All right. This way.” He gestured toward the ambulance.

  “Doesn’t that seem a little overkill?” she asked. “Carl could drive me in his car.”

  He turned and eyed the maroon mess. “That thing? Does it still run?”

  “It got us this far.”

  “Well, we really need you in the ambulance. We have some paperwork to go over on the ride.”

  Kennedy didn’t argue anymore. The sooner she complied, the sooner this whole ordeal would be over. She walked herself to the back of the ambulance and eyed the gurney, thankful she wasn’t so injured she needed something like that.

  Her shoulder smarted a little as she hoisted herself into the back and sat in one of the seats along the side.

  The paramedic cleared his throat. “Actually, we’re gonna need you on the stretcher.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  He shook his head. “Standard policy. It’s got the best straps. Safer than the seats.” He walked over and propped up the back. “If it makes you feel better, you don’t have to lie down.”

  He was just doing his job, Kennedy had to keep reminding herself. She felt about as useless as a discarded Petri dish as he strapped her down. It was all right. Before long she’d be asleep in a nice bed.

  “How you doing, sweetheart?” Carl stepped onto the ambulance platform and gave her a paternal smile.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “You need anything?” he asked. “Want to call your mom? What time is it over there, anyway? Think she’d be awake?”

  The last thing Kennedy needed was for Carl to call her parents back in Yanji and freak them out. She’d fill them in once things quieted down. “No thanks.” She tried to smile, remembering she was the one guilty of ruining Carl’s whole evening.