23 Minutes (19 page)

Daniel says, “And that won't happen if you put the gun down.”

“I don't want to get arrested either,” Wallace says.

Daniel shakes his head. “Can't help you there,” he admits. “But the penalty for attempted armed robbery is less than for murder.” Very gently, almost pleading now, he says, “Put the gun down, Wallace.”

Zoe feels the gun going tap-tap against her temple as Wallace's hand begins to shake.

“All I wanted,” Wallace says, “was a fresh start.”

“I understand,” Daniel says.

The barrel of Wallace's gun digs firmly into Zoe's flesh. “Yeah?” Suddenly he's angry again. “Someone like you understands someone like me? Is that what you're saying?” He speaks very slowly and distinctly. “If I have to kill her, it will be your fault. It will be because
you
made me kill her. Are you so cocky you can live with that, Mr. Fancy-East-Ave.-Office P.I.? Knowing you made me kill her?”

“Killing her gains you nothing,” Daniel tells him.

And Wallace finishes, “Except for the satisfaction of knowing you didn't want me to.”

And that
, Zoe thinks,
is that.
A deadlock. A dead end. A dead draw.
Stop thinking “dead,”
she tells herself. But, of course, she can't.

A voice behind Zoe announces, “Yeah, well, I don't want you to kill her either,” and Zoe realizes it's bank guard Bobby. She guesses, by the way Wallace has stiffened, that Bobby has located the gun she saw go sliding under the furniture of the bank manager's office. She gathers that Bobby is holding
his
gun at
Wallace's
head. Wily P.I.
that he is, Daniel, who was facing that direction, had kept his face from showing anything during Bobby's approach, had kept his eyes from wavering off Wallace.

“Even if,” Wallace says, “one or both of you get a shot off before I can, even if you put the bullet in my brain and I'm dead in an instant, in that instant my finger
will
tighten on the trigger, and she's dead.”

Déjà vu
, Zoe thinks. She knew what Wallace was going to say, before he said it, because she has heard him say much the same thing already.

And she has seen the result.

If she could get her mouth to work, she would warn Daniel to back up, because he's about to get her blood all over him. And she knows how hard it was for her to get
his
blood off
her.
It is only in this moment that she feels it is well and truly gone.

Daniel is still looking at Wallace, not at Zoe. Same as last time. He even has much the same scared and desperate look in his eyes as he did then, though it is not his life in danger. He says, “Nobody has to die.”

Does his voice have a tremor? Or does it just sound that way to Zoe because she herself is shaking?

“You don't want to hurt her,” Daniel says to Wallace. “And I'm willing to take her place. I'll walk out of here with you.”

At which point Zoe's voice
does
work. “No,” she tells Daniel, though every ounce of self-survival instinct is telling her to shut up. “He says he'll let me go once he's safely out of here. You said he wasn't a bad man. We have to trust him.”

Zoe
doesn't trust him. On a scale of one to ten, she fears her chance of survival is probably about one. But if Daniel takes her place, she suspects his chance will be lower.

Finally, finally, Daniel is looking at her. She's convinced he can read her mind. And, in turn, she can read his. They both know he's never going to agree to let Wallace take her out of here.

And apparently Wallace can read
their
minds, too. They are at an impasse. She feels him take a steadying breath. His arm tightens around her neck.

She remembers what it felt like to get shot, that run-into-by-a-freight-train feeling, but she also remembers that—at first—she didn't even know she'd been hit. Maybe she'll be lucky and this will be like that. Maybe she'll be dead before she knows it.

Zoe always wondered, when she read in history class about people getting their heads chopped off, how quick a death that was. Did Marie Antoinette, did Anne Boleyn, did Sir Thomas More die the instant the blade cut through their bodies—or did it take a second or two for their brains to stop sending signals? It would be kind of grim to think they might have gotten a dizzying, disorienting view of their place of execution as their severed heads bounced free from their bodies. To imagine that they had time to think:
Yikes! Is that my own headless body I just caught a glimpse of?

Specifically, what Zoe is wondering—beyond how badly a bullet to the brain will hurt—is whether she'll be aware, as she falls, of the splatter of her blood on Daniel kneeling in front of her.

She closes her eyes, because she doesn't want to see.

Wallace can only kill you once
, she reminds herself. She takes her stolen, wet, stupid, useless paperwork, and she smacks his face with it as hard as she can.

The sound of the gun going off is louder than she expected.

But the freight train is right on schedule.

CHAPTER 14

W
ELL
,
SHE HAD ASSUMED DYING WOULD BE FASTER
.

And quieter.

Zoe opens her eyes a crack, determined to close them again quickly if there's the gunshot equivalent of any head-bouncing-off-the-executioner's-block view to be seen.

What she sees is Daniel, his blue eyes not six inches from her own. He's saying something, but she can't hear a thing over the ringing in her ears.

Ear. It's her right ear that seems to have become home to a vast and inexhaustible collection of clanging cymbals.

She goes to touch her right ear and finds Daniel's hand there already. She feels for her left ear, and her fingers brush Daniel's other hand—not covering that ear, but close by. Supporting her head? Maybe? She has to concentrate to get her bearings. She is sitting, not kneeling—which was her last recollection—and not lying down on the floor bleeding out. Or at least she doesn't think so. Surely she would know by now, even if she was a little slow about catching on that other time. But she doesn't want to embarrass herself by being the last to know, so she glances around for blood splatter.

None to be seen.

What she does see is one of the bank tellers unlocking the front door to let in the police. Customers and staff getting up off the floor.
And Wallace, face down on the ground practically within touching distance, his hands clasped behind his head, with Bobby's knee on his back, Bobby's gun pressed to the nape of his neck. Apparently Bobby is a better bank guard than Zoe has given him credit for. No one is dead.

No one
is dead.

Not her. Not anyone.

“I didn't hurt her,” Wallace is protesting. “And, even if she
was
hurt, that wouldn't've been my fault. My gun only went off accidentally when
you
ran into me.”

“Oh,” Zoe says to Bobby, not sure if she's whispering or shouting, “you overpowered him.”

Bobby, looking a bit pasty and wobbly, manages a smile of sorts as he first shakes his head—well, it's more of a twitch—then nods toward Daniel to indicate
he
was the one who did the running-into. But before Zoe can turn to thank Daniel, Bobby indicates for her to look up to the ceiling.

There's a hole, with plaster dust still wafting down like a late-season sprinkling of snow—just like Rochester in March. Or April. Sometimes May …

She forces herself to focus. She wasn't knocked over by the force of the bullet hitting her, but by Daniel tackling Wallace, forcing his gun arm up so that he fired into the ceiling.

“Thank you,” she says to, or shouts at, Daniel.

He takes his hand away from her ear, which makes the noise in her head get louder.

“Ringing?” he asks sympathetically.

She can hear him through her left ear, over the racket in her right. She nods because she doesn't want to be obnoxiously loud,
like those hard-of-hearing people who refuse to admit they
are
hard of hearing. She presses her own hand against her ear, even though she liked it better when Daniel was doing it.

Charlotte has come up behind Daniel and is looking at Zoe appraisingly. “Tinnitus,” she proclaims.

Daniel nods. “Should go away over the next few hours.”

Well, that's a relief to know.

Charlotte is nodding, too. Until she helpfully adds, “Unless there's permanent hearing loss. That happened to my brother-in-law when he set off illegal fireworks two summers ago. But you should know, one way or the other, within twenty-four hours.”

Daniel scowls at Charlotte, but she doesn't notice because she's leaning in close to Zoe. “Thank you,” she tells Zoe. “You were very brave.”

“Very, very brave,” Daniel amends.

“No.” Zoe shakes her head, because she
knows
how terrified she was.

But Charlotte nods emphatically. She says, “I was not. I was, in fact, a disappointment to myself. I will hold you up as a model.”

Is she serious? It's hard to keep a grudge against someone who says something like that seriously.

Paramedics have come in after the police, and a pair of them kneel beside and in front of Zoe, displacing Charlotte, which is no great loss, but also Daniel. “Hey,” one of them says to her, in that jovial tone medical professionals use when they don't want you to worry, “how are you doing?”

“Tinnitus,” Zoe explains, probably too softly or too loudly.

The paramedic makes a dismissive gesture. “Not to worry. That'll only last a few hours.”

Daniel winks at her, then goes off to answer questions for the police.

She assumes he'll have the sense not to talk about playback, because she certainly has no intention of bringing it up.

The paramedics look her over just short of forever. They inform her that she has a powder burn on her right temple, from the gun going off so close. It didn't hurt until she knew about it, but now it's hot and sore. They tell her that this, too, should go away sooner rather than later.

Partway through their examination, she glances to where she last saw Daniel, wondering how he's doing, but apparently the police have finished questioning him. He's no longer there. She looks around. The bank is not that big: Daniel is gone. Oh, she thinks. Not that she had any right to expect him to hang around and wait for her. She has no right to feel disappointed. What did she expect? She's known him a lot longer than he's known her.

The paramedics talk and talk at her, wanting to bring her to the hospital for observation, but she finally convinces them that she feels fine.

Then it's her turn with the police.
They
talk and talk at her, wanting more details, but she finally convinces
them
that at the moment she can't think straight because she has a splitting headache due to the tinnitus. She doesn't mention that the noise level inside her head is beginning to move down the scale from full cacophony to simple clamor. She gives them her parents' old Thurston Road address rather than saying she lives in a group home on Newell, and promises she will report to the downtown precinct office tomorrow to give her statement. She's trying to leave them
with the impression that she's here with one of the other customers, a responsible adult, and she is just wondering how she is going to get out of the bank without anyone noticing she is in fact alone, when she sees that Daniel has returned.

He nods to the two police officers who have been talking to her, then asks, “Ready to go home, Zoe?” as though he's the responsible adult in charge of her.

Outside, the rain has finally stopped, though the sidewalk has puddles the size of small ponds. There are crowds of onlookers, including reporters from the local news. But Daniel has timed their exit to coincide with that of the bank manager, who is giving an official statement, and they make it past the police tape without anyone stopping them. Daniel has hold of her arm.

“I'm going …” —Zoe nods across the street—“that way.” It's sort of the way back to the group home. Not the most direct route. But
a
way. She knows she has to make peace with Mrs. Davies eventually.

“I'll drive you home,” Daniel says. “We need to talk. Get our stories aligned before we go to the police tomorrow. My car is parked behind the building where we met.”

“Oh,” Zoe says, letting him guide her in the direction he wants to go. She suspects he won't be fooled with the Thurston Road address, with her asking to be dropped off by the curb. Suspects it won't be enough for her to wave good-bye from in front of the house, but that he intends to see her safely inside. “I live in a group home,” she admits. “That is, unless Mrs. Davies has had me kicked out.”

Daniel raises his eyebrows.

“Those papers …” She stops walking. Where
are
her papers?
She hasn't thought about them since using them to smack Wallace. On other playbacks, she's left them behind, but she's never before forgotten them. She supposes this is a sign.

Of something.

She resumes walking. “Those papers I had? I thought … I don't know … that if I took them before anybody could upload them onto the computer, if I destroyed them, then it would be like that part of my life hadn't happened. Like erasing one story and starting another. Anyway, I may have burned some bridges. I called my housemother some pretty ugly names when she caught me taking them.”

Daniel is looking a bit perplexed. “But wouldn't the doctors and social workers who made the evaluations have their own copies in any case?”

Of course they would. Zoe feels about seven years old. That pre–Mrs. Davies housemother was right:
Too impulsive. Too impatient. Doesn't think of consequences.
“Where were you to give advice when I needed it?”