Page 135 of Fire and Bones
My gut went cold—cold, terrified, and empty.
“Not a chance. You don’t have the bubbies for it.”
“Hand it over, GrammaSue.”
“Back off.”
Ronan lunged, grabbed her elbow, and shot that arm upward into the tendrils of a hanging plant. Making a noise somewhere between a snarl and a hiss, the old woman threw her shoulders forward and down. Ronan curled over her bent torso, attempting to wrench the gun from her grasp.
Before I could react, a second explosion shattered the stillness.
Lipsey collapsed, pistol still clutched in her hand.
Squatting, Ronan gently pried the weapon from his grandmother’s lifeless fingers.
He held almost a full minute, back and shoulders softly convulsing in tremors. Then he rose on shaky legs.
Tears running down his cheeks, he swiveled to face me, the .38 clutched in his right hand.
My diaphragm clenched in panic.
CHAPTER 30
Two fitful nights of dark, convoluted dreams. A man’s lifeless form sending red Rorschach blossoms onto grimy black-and-white tile. An old woman crumpling like an unstrung puppet. A skinny man running hard beyond pollution-smudged glass. Grim-faced EMTs. Rolling gurneys. Ambulances and police cruisers flashing red-blue. Red-blue. Red-blue.
Two anxious days of checking my phone. Lunging for the thing every time it rang.
Finally, the calls I nervously awaited. Good news on two fronts.
Deery was out of danger. Lipsey would survive.
A bullet had entered each in the fleshy part of the upper chest, hooked a turn at the clavicle, and exited near the base of the neck. Neither projectile had struck a major vessel.
Weird parallels, but some significant differences. Deery’s trajectory was front to back, his wound superficial. Lipsey’s path was back to front and deeper, resulting in more extensive damage.
Good news on three fronts, actually.
Ryan called the night of the events in Lipsey’s greenhouse. Asleep in my bed at Ivy’s house—thanks to an ER doc’s pharmaceuticals and the silencer on my phone—I failed to answer.
I listened to Ryan’s message the following morning.
Tempe, you won’t believe what an idiot I am. I was so fâché that you canceled on me, I tagged along last minute on a fishing trip to Lac Mabille with a couple of SQ buddies. When I finally cooled down, we were so far off the grid there was no signal and the plane didn’t return for five days. Je suis désolé, ma chérie. I’m back in Montreal. Call me. S’il vous plaît.
His frenzied bilingual sincerity brought tears to my eyes.
Or maybe that was due to an Ambien hangover.
Whatever.
I’d phoned Ryan as fast as my fingers could tap the digits. We’d had a sappy it-was-my-fault-no-it-was-my-fault conversation. He’d described his flight to Goose Bay, his subsequent hydroplane landing on the lake, the eighty-four trout they’d caught. Those parts sounded like fun. The blackflies and mosquitoes, not so much.
Unsure how current Ryan was, I’d recounted all the developments of the past two weeks. The Foggy Bottom fires. The four upstairs vics. The yellow Camry leading to the Stoll brothers. Susan Lipsey’s rant implying that, as part of her vendetta against the Warrings, she’d directed her grandsons to torch the buildings and carry out the drive-by. Ronan Stoll accidentally shooting his grandmother in the greenhouse.
Ryan listened without interrupting or indicating that he already knew some of what I was telling him. When I’d finished, he cursed in complicated Québecois, as expected. Asked if I was truly unhurt, as expected. I said I was fine.
A long moment, then Ryan queried my progress on the tiny subcellar lady. The odd segue surprised me. A quick change-up to allow him to quash his anger at learning that I’d been in danger? I admitted that, sadly, I’d learned nothing more about her identity or manner of death.
“Why now?” he asked after a pause.