Zig tugged the steering wheel, heading for the exit. “We’re about to find out.”
66
Reagan did stupid things when she was angry. And she was due for another right now.
“I need you to think good thoughts. You got a good thought?” Reagan asked, frantically emptying a red-and-white Target bag, a few of the contents falling to the car’s floor.
Crumpled in the passenger seat next to her, Seabass gave a quick nod like all was well, but there was no hiding the pain. She’d reclined his seat to keep him out of sight, and stretched a bloody beach towel across his chest. His mouth was a ground-up mess from where the bullet had pierced his cheek and kicked through his teeth. In dental terms, he had an Ellis III fracture, involving the enamel and running all the way down to the pulp layers. Even worse, since the nerve root was exposed, it absolutely killed when cool air hit it.
Like now.
“You’re thinking of that woman in Peru, aren’t you?” Reagan teased, though she couldn’t mask the irritation in her voice. Diagonally across the Target parking lot, she glanced for the second time at a gray SUV near the front of the store. Reagan had parked in one of the very last spots, but even from here, she could see two young sisters—around four and nine years old, both of them with messy bird’s nests of blond hair—arguing in a mini civil war.
“Clara, sit . . . still!” the older sister scolded as the younger one squirmed in her car seat like Houdini in a straitjacket. Just like Reagan’s own sister used to. At the trunk of the SUV, their skinny, distracted mom was gabbing on her oversized cell phone, holding it away from her face like a teenager, which made Reagan want to storm across the parking lot and tear it from her hands.
Breathe, Seabass said with a glance, reaching over the car’s center console and cupping his giant paw of a hand over her own. You need a breath.
It was his standard move. He’d used it last year in Montana, when that security guard at the freezer company shot up their car. And in Brazil, when Reagan got drunk and picked the wrong fight. And even back when they were junior enlisted, at Fort Leonard Wood, when that staff sergeant with the Arkansas twang put his hand on her ass and she reached for her gun.
“Will you stop!? I’m fine!” she insisted, slapping his hand away. Four hours from now, when Seabass went down, this was the moment she’d go back to, hating herself for her reaction.
Across the parking lot, the four-year-old sister started crying, kicking wildly in her car seat, and now, all Reagan could picture was her own sister all those years ago, and everything that went wrong on that night she’d never be able to take back. Reagan was stupid that night, too—though not nearly as stupid as—
Seabass again reached for her hand—not to calm her, but for help. He was sinking in his seat, about to pass out.
“Sebby, the girl from Peru . . . !” she shouted, tugging him upward to keep him from aspirating on the blood he was now coughing all over his own chest. His face was bone white, his eyes not focusing. She needed to be fast. Rule 1 in any ER: forget the pain; stop the bleeding.
“Sebby! WAKE! UP!” she exploded, rummaging through the shopping bag. “Look, I got you presents!” she explained, pulling out a football mouth guard and a pack of Crayola rainbow modeling clay. As she opened the clay, she got a whiff of her childhood.
Yanking off a hunk of yellow clay, Reagan stuffed it into the mouth guard. Ideally, she’d use dental cement to create a tamponade at the bleeding area and apply some pressure, like packing gauze into a knife wound. It’d also hold his teeth in place. But with no cement? Modeling clay would do.
“Sebby . . . c’mon,” she pleaded. She pinched his wrist to wake him up. “On two, okay?”
He nodded, still groggy.
“One . . .”
She lifted the mouth guard, filled with clay. He opened his mouth.