The truly interesting thing about shock is that one is so numb that it is all too easy—if one is a writer who suffers from an addiction to new experiences—to simply stop mid-escape to ponder the moment. This is what shock feels like? How terribly interesting. Let me mentally document this moment for future stories . . . while I bleed out from a severed artery.

I do not think the artery is severed. It is bleeding quite heavily, though. Also, someone is trying to kill me, and even if I do not bleed out, I will surely perish if I sit here and ponder the matter much longer.

Thunder booms again. I don’t see the lightning strike, but everything is illuminated for just long enough that I can determine a path.

I test my leg. It is sore, but it will move. Ignoring the screaming pain in my arm, I creep to the right, in the direction where Nicolas . . .

Lies dying by the roadside?

I dimly pick up voices, but my blood pounds too loud for me to distinguish words.

Stop and listen, Miranda.

How? I am being pursued by a killer.

Am I?

No, I’m crawling, bleeding, along a hedgerow of brambles. My assailant hasn’t pursued me.

I force myself to stop and listen. Beyond the hedgerow, all has gone silent. I strain. Still nothing.

Is my attacker waiting on the other side for me to pop my head through? Or is he looking for an easier spot to come through himself?

I peer around. With the storm shadows, I cannot see well, but my memory fills in the missing pieces and tells me that the pasture divides with a stone wall, half-swallowed by more brambles. I brace myself to make a run for it, but as soon as I tense my muscles, blood streams down my arm.

I glance around. Then I remember the belt I put on to hold up the trousers. I yank it off and refasten it above the wound. Portia would be so proud of me . . . though she’d also feel the need to say that she’s glad all my endless hours of pestering her with medical questions for my books actually proved useful. Of course, telling her about this would also require telling her that I was shot. So perhaps she does not need to know that I proved such a keen student of her teachings.

I cinch the belt as tight as I can, which is not tight enough, to my annoyance. I am rather light-headed, and I struggle to focus on the task at hand. I give myself a sharp shake and nearly pass out from the sudden movement.

I have lost blood. That is dangerous. Logically, I know that, and yet emotionally, I do not feel it, and that is what gets me up and bolting to that stone wall. I wriggle through a crumbling opening, and then I am crouched on the other side, listening.