Chapter 94 second quarter

Another siren blared along with the first. "We have to get out of here," Esperanza said. "Help me up Beth." Each of them took her by one arm, dragged her up, and with great difficulty carried her quickly toward the dark place behind the motel.People have started to gather.Decker pushed aside two men running from the apartment building behind the motel. "What happened?" one of them asked. "A gas tank exploded!" Decker told him. "Do you need help?" "No! We're taking this lady to the hospital! Go find other survivors!" Decker held Beth, inevitably feeling her shake with every step he took.

He and Esperanza paused before running out of the dark alley opposite the motel.After several people ran towards the burning place, they immediately carried Beth along the street and lifted themselves off the ground, as if a huge fist had slammed into themselves.Surrounded by bright lights and deafening explosions, it was as if the concentrated force in the center of a thunderstorm had hit him.He was weightless, unable to see, hear, or feel, before being slammed onto the wet sidewalk behind the dumpster.He rolled onto Beth, shielding her from the fragments of the explosion that fell around them.Something brushed past his shoulder, and he flinched in pain.Something slammed next to his head again.Shards of glass were scattered all around him.

Then, the shock wave died away, and he felt an excruciating roar in his ears.He felt the rain, heard people shouting from nearby buildings, and realized that Beth was moving under him.She coughed, and he feared he was going to suffocate her.Dazedly gathering strength, he tumbled off her, barely noticing the chunks of cinderblock that surrounded them. "Are you hurt?" "my leg." He examined her legs with trembling hands.By the light of the fire in the wreckage of the motel, he saw a plank of wood lodged in her right thigh.He pulled out the splinter, and a lot of blood gushed out of the wound, startling him. "Tourniquet. You need a—" He tore off his belt and tied it over the poked wound on her leg.

Someone groaned.A figure moved behind the dumpster.Slowly, the figure sat up.Decker shuddered with relief, knowing that Esperanza was alive. "Decker!" The voice did not come from Esperanza.The roar was so loud in Decker's ears that it was hard to tell which direction the shouts were coming from. "Decker!" This time Decker understood, looking beyond the fire-lit pools of water in the parking lot.On the street ahead, McKittrick's Pontiac engine was idling.Fragments from the explosion prevented them from entering the parking lot.The car was parked just right to run towards where the Oldsmobile was parked.No one saw them.

"You drive!" Decker said, "I'll be right behind her!" Esperanza slammed his side of the car door and turned the key in the ignition.In the back seat, Decker steadied Beth from rolling to the floor.Oldsmobile sped away. "How is she?" Esperanza asked. "The tourniquet has stopped the bleeding, but I have to take it off. If she doesn't have circulation in her leg, she's going to get gangrene." Blood spurted out as Decker let go of the bandage, knocking him down. Startled, he quickly reached into his travel bag on the floor behind him, grabbed a shirt, and pressed it over the wound, acting as a pressure bandage.Beth was lying in the backseat, and he leaned over her. "Does your stomach hurt? Do you have double images when you see things?"

"Dizziness." "Hold on. We'll take you to the doctor." "Where?" Esperanza asked. "Back to Manhattan. We went west into Clostertown, left at the next intersection, left at the next." "Then go east. Get back on the interstate," Esperanza said. "Yes. Then south." Decker stroked Beth's cheek. "Don't be afraid. I'm here. I'll take care of you. You'll be fine." Beth squeezed his hand. "McKittrick is crazy." "Worse than Rome," Decker said. "Roma?" Esperanza frowned back at him. "what are you talking about?"

Decker hesitated.He had made up his mind never to talk about Rome again, but Beth and Esperanza had nearly died from what happened there, and they had a right to know the truth.Their lives may depend on it.So he told them... about the 23 Americans who died... about Renata and McKittrick and the yard where he had hurt Renata that rainy night. "Is she a terrorist?" Esperanza asked. "McKittrick fell in love with her," Decker explained, "and after Rome failed, he refused to believe she played him. I think he went to her to tell him the truth, but she made him believe She really loved him, and now she's using him again. To get me, to get the money Giordano gave McKittrick."

"She hates you," said Beth weakly. "She's been saying she wants revenge. All she wants is to make you suffer." "Take it easy. Stop talking." "No, it's important. Listen, she keeps yelling at McKittrick about what you did to her brother. What did you do?" "Brother?" Decker looked up.He recalled painfully the nightmarish incident in that courtyard in Rome. After the fragments from Renata's bomb cascaded, Decker felt movement to his left and turned quickly.A lean, dark-haired man in his early 20s stood up from behind the dumpster. He was one of Renata's older brothers.The man hadn't expected Renata to detonate the bomb so quickly.Although he held the gun in his hand, he wasn't aiming at Decker—his attention was completely absorbed by the screaming from the other side of the yard.He stared wide-eyed in astonishment, watching one of his older brothers struggling to slap flames in his clothes and hair, ignited by a ball of fire falling from a burning building.

Decker shot them both dead. "It's a blood feud," Decker said, startled.It dawned on him that Renata hated him more than McKittrick, and he felt sick.Decker imagined them reinforcing each other's resentment, drawing strength from that resentment, increasingly eager to exact revenge on him.But how to retaliate?They must have argued endlessly about it.What kind of revenge method is most satisfying to them?They could kill me with a single shot while driving by, Decker thought, but killing me wouldn't be enough to satisfy them.They want to scare me and make me suffer. But Decker wasn't just thinking.Beth's startled look made him realize that he had said all this.He couldn't help himself, and the thoughts that made him excruciatingly painful came rushing out of his mouth. "If Renata and McKittrick hadn't been spying on me in Santa Fe, nothing would have happened. McKittrick was forced to leave the CIA, but officially, he resigned. Since On the surface he made a good impression and he was admitted to the Federal Court. He always knew where I lived. When he was assigned custody of you and he found out that the house next door to me was up for sale, his plans were complete gone."

Decker mustered up his courage.All he had suffered to save Beth had been for this moment, and now the moment had come.He couldn't help asking that question, he had to know. "Did you know my background when you first met me?" Beth's eyes remained closed.She didn't answer.Her chest rose and fell rapidly. "Did McKittrick tell you before you came to my office that I had worked for the CIA? Did he instruct you to put on a show in front of me, to try to make you feel close to me, to make me feel Want to spend all your free time with you, literally being a bodyguard who lives next door to you?"

Beth still didn't speak.She was breathing with difficulty. "Then that's how they get their revenge," Decker said. "Trick me into falling in love with you and then denounce you to the mob. By ruining your life, they want to ruin mine. Will pay them, it makes them so happy." "I see the lights," Esperanza interjected, turning the corner quickly, "the interstate ahead." "I must know, Beth, was McKittrick telling you to try to make me love you?" She still didn't answer.How could he get her to tell him the truth?They were on the interstate when a passing headlight suddenly shone into the backseat.Beth's eyes closed, Decker saw, but not to avoid his gaze.Her body was lifeless and her breathing was shallow.She passed out. At 3 a.m., Esperanza sped up to a brownstone on West 82nd Street in Manhattan, following Decker's instructions.It was very quiet in this wealthy residential area at that late night, and there was no one on the street on a rainy night.No one was around to see Decker and Esperanza lift Beth out of the car and into the foyer of the building.She was getting weaker and weaker, which worried Decker.He pressed the intercom button on Apartment 8.As he'd expected, there was an immediate response without him having to press a button several times before a sleepy voice asked what he wanted.At a service station on the side of the interstate, Decker had made an emergency call to notify the people upstairs.A buzzer sounded, signaling that an electronic device had unlocked the second door in the hall. Decker and Esperanza walked quickly through the door and saw the elevator waiting for them.They went up to the fourth floor, anxious about the slowness of the lift's ascent.As soon as the elevator doors opened, a man burst out of an apartment to help carry Beth inside.He was wearing crumpled clothes that seemed to have been put on hastily.The man was tall, very thin, with a high forehead and a gray beard.Decker heard voices behind him and turned to see a pudgy gray-haired woman with a worried expression closing and locking the door behind them. The man led Decker and Esperanza to the left into the brightly lit kitchen, where a plastic sheet had been spread over the table and several on the floor.Surgical supplies lay on a covered table.Water was boiling on the stove."Wash your hands," the woman in the green hospital uniform said to Decker suddenly. Decker obeyed her orders and huddled with the man and woman in front of the sink, sanitizing their hands with a bottle of bitter-smelling liquid.The woman helped the man put on a surgical mask, plexiglass face shield and latex gloves, then motioned for Decker to help her put the mask, face shield and gloves on.Without delay, she cut open Beth's blood-stained trousers with scissors and rolled the right leg up until the panties were exposed.Blood gushed out of the punctured hole again as the pressure bandage was removed. "When did this happen?" The doctor pressed a gloved finger to the muscle next to the wound.The bleeding stopped. "Forty minutes ago," Decker said.Rain dripped from him onto the plastic sheeting that lay on the floor. "How long did it take you to try to stop the bleeding?" "It started almost immediately." "You saved her life." While the woman wiped the blood from the wound with a medical sponge, the doctor swabbed Beth's injured right leg with an alcohol swab before giving her an injection.But even though the doctor explained that it was painkillers, Beth groaned as he checked the inside of the wound with medical forceps to see if there were any debris inside. "I'm not sure. It's just a quick rough fix, just to stop the bleeding. She'll need radiography and IV fluids. Maybe microsurgery if she hurts the femoral artery." The doctor called Beth again. One shot, this time he explained it was an antibiotic. "But she needs to continue her regular antibiotic injections after she leaves here." The woman wiped the wound with a brown antiseptic, and the doctor, wearing glasses, took a closer look at the wound.There was another small lens on the lens of the glasses, which he turned to his eyes.After the woman had sterilized the area around the wound, she placed a finger where the doctor had pressed down, freeing the doctor's hand to sew up the wound. "You shouldn't have called me," the doctor complained to Decker as he worked. "I have no other choice." Decker observed Beth.Her face was wet from rain and sweat, and had turned a greyish gruel. "But you're not part of the Bureau now," said the doctor. "I thought you hadn't heard about it." "Obviously you don't know, otherwise, you wouldn't dare to contact me." "I'm serious. I don't have a choice. And, if you knew I wasn't approved by the Bureau, you wouldn't necessarily agree to help me." Decker shook Beth's hand.Her fingers gripped his as tightly as if she were drowning. "I'm the one who has no choice in this matter." The doctor continued to stitch the wound. "You told me so vividly on the phone that if I don't help you, you're going to cause chaos in this building." "I don't think your neighbors would approve of your part-time job." The woman who was the assistant looked up at him angrily. "You've messed up our home. You know where the clinic is, you could have—" "There's no time," Decker said. "Besides, you guys treated me here." "That was an exception." "I know of other exceptions you've treated, for a handsome treatment fee. I suppose that's another reason why you agreed to help." The doctor looked up from the wound he was stitching, frowning. "What handsome treatment fee is in your head?" "In my travel bag. I have an 18-carat gold chain, a gold bracelet, a jade ring and a dozen gold coins." "No money?" The doctor frowned even more. "These are worth about $12,000. Put these in a sock for when the going gets tough. Believe me, if you ever have to get out of the country as fast as you can and you can't go to the bank with confidence, these will come in handy use." "We haven't had that kind of trouble yet." "You've had no trouble so far," Decker said. "I suggest you do what you do best with this lady." "Are you threatening me?" "You must have misunderstood. I was encouraging you." The doctor's brow furrowed even more, and he concentrated on a few more stitches. "In that case, my charge for this treatment is $20,000." "what?" "I think those things you mentioned are just paid for." The doctor straightened up and stopped. "Is cost an issue?" Decker stared at the half-sewed hole in Beth's leg. "No." "I don't think so." The doctor resumed his work. "Where are those things?" "Over there, in my travel bag." Decker turned toward where he'd left the bag when he'd helped carry Beth into the kitchen. "What about the rest?" "You'll get it." "How can I be sure?" "I promise you. If that's not enough—" Esperanza interrupted the tension. "Look, I'm useless standing here. I should be able to help." "Blood in the hallway and in the elevator," the woman said. "The neighbors will call the police if they see it. Go clean it up." Her commanding tone suggested that she thought she was addressing a Spanish servant, but although Esperanza's dark eyes flickered a few times, he simply asked, "What tool do I use?" "There are buckets, rags and sanitizer under the sink. You have to wear rubber gloves." Esperanza picked up the tools and went out, and the woman strapped a blood pressure cuff around Beth's left arm.She looks at the sphygmomanometer.The hissing of air in the blood pressure cuff stopped. "How much?" Decker asked. "High pressure 100, low pressure 60." Normal values ​​are 120 and 80. "Low, but not in the dangerous range." The woman nodded. "She's lucky." "Yes, you can see how lucky she looks." "You don't look so good yourself." The phone rang, so suddenly and piercingly that Decker, the doctor, and the doctor's wife all tensed up.Everyone stared at the phone.The phone is hung on the wall, next to the freezer.The bell rang again. "Who's calling at this time?" "I have an intensive care patient." The doctor continued to sew. "I told the hospital to call me if the patient's condition deteriorated. When you called, I thought it was about the patient." He held up his blood-stained glove and gestured to his wife's gloved hand with. "But we can't answer the phone wearing this." The bell rang again. "I don't want you to stop what you're doing either." Decker picked up the phone, "Hello?" "As expected, Decker." Hearing McKittrick's smug voice, Decker's breath stopped.He gripped the microphone tightly, his knuckles turning white. "What's the matter?" McKittrick asked from the other end. "Don't you want to deal with people? Don't you want to talk? No problem, I'll continue this conversation for both of us." "Who is it?" asked the doctor. Decker raised his free hand as a warning to keep quiet. "Looks like I'm not as stupid as you think, huh?" McKittrick asked. "When I saw you tying the belt around that woman's leg, I said to myself, where is he going to take her?" God bless, I guessed right. I was guarding a porch down the street when you arrived. You must have forgotten, they told me about this place too. Just like that, you did exactly what I expected .You know what I think?" Decker didn't answer. "I asked you a question," McKittrick urged, "you'd better talk to me, or I'm going to make this worse than I planned." "Okay. What do you think?" "I think you're losing your style." "I'm tired of this," Decker said. "Note, our deal is still valid. Leave us alone. I won't think of you again." "it is true?" "I won't be following you any longer." "It seems to me, old friend, that you have not understood me. I am following you now." "You mean you and Renata." "So you guessed who was in the car?" "Your level was not so high before. She has been teaching you." "So what? Hey, she wants to teach you something too, Decker—I'm going to show you what it's like to lose someone you love. Look out the window. Front of the building." click.The phone is disconnected.