Charlene was vaguely aware of frantic movement behind her, but she couldn't look away from the thin red rivulets that streamed away from his head.

Somebody put their arm around her, and she screamed and shook them off, even though she knew nobody was trying to kidnap her. She thought it might be Gertie, but, no, it was a female police officer. As more people rushed forward, Charlene doubled over, hacking but not actually vomiting, and violently swung her fists around so that nobody would touch her.

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SIX

"Thank you! Oh, God, thank you!" a woman shouted at Charlene. She had an ugly bruise on the side of her face and her arms were tightly wrapped around the little boy.

Charlene ignored her.

A couple of minutes later, she sat in the back of an ambulance as a paramedic checked her out.

"I'm fine," she insisted. "He didn't do anything to me." Well, he might have permanently destroyed her hearing, and he definitely left some massive psychological damage, but there was nothing this paramedic could do for her.

"Just checking you out to be sure, ma'am," said the paramedic, shining a penlight into her eyes. When he was done with that part of the examination, Gertie was standing there.

"Congrats," she said.

"For what?"

"You saved the kid."

"The police would've saved him."

"We don't know that. The guy could be headed for the state line right now."

"The guy blew his brains out. His dead body is about fifty feet away, if you want to check it out for yourself."

"I know what happened to him."

"He might not have done that if we hadn't interfered. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. If we'd just given the description of his car and left it at that, the police might've caught him without anybody dying."

"He did that to himself, Charlene. He threatened to kill his son and then he committed suicide. Surely you're not blaming yourself for that. You're not, right?"

"What I'm saying is that we don't know how it would've turned out if we hadn't chased him. He might have surrendered. They might have shot him in the leg."

"Yeah, and he might have done what he said he was gonna do—murder the kid and then turn the gun on himself!" Gertie looked completely flabbergasted. "We're the good guys here. If we hadn't been around, maybe the boy would never have gotten back with his mother. No, it didn't have a magical happy ending, but it could've been so much worse. What if we hadn't followed the car, and we heard later that the boy was found dead in a ditch? How would you feel?"

"I don't know how I'd feel. All I can say is how I feel now."