Conflict of Interest

Chapter Forty Two

Kim

Neither of us fully expected to live.

I was pretending to be hopeful for Carrie's sake, which was dumb because she probably saw right through it anyway. I liked to paint myself as the protector, and by assuring her that we'd survive, I'd been giving myself too much credit. Even if she hadn't been too much of a pessimist and a cynic to believe me when I told her it would be okay, I knew she thought death was certain because there was no other way that she'd have confessed to what she had.

So I decided I wouldn't bring it up, out of courtesy. I decided to give her an out.

As one would expect out of an explosion, it was fast, it was loud, and it was the scariest thing I'd lived through to date. And then, when it was over, it was over. And I was still alive. At least I thought I was.

Knowing what I did about blast trauma, I foresaw that I wasn't out of the woods yet. Just because I was still living after the noises stopped didn't mean I hadn't been fatally injured. Primary blast injuries have no external signs, and for all I knew, my entire respiratory tract was going to collapse any moment.

For that reason, I wasted no time.

I had to run, I knew. I got off of Carrie and shook her hard. Looking at her, I could only imagine what I looked like. She was bleeding from several points on her face, which I attributed to a broken window that I was just now noticing above us. Seeing Carrie bleed was still a shock to me; like the rest of the world, I sometimes expected that if you cut her, out would pour ichor. She was dissheveled, short of breath, and likely disoriented. And still, she was so, so attractive to me. But I knew that if anyone could survive a bombing and come out on the other side looking like a supermodel, I was sitting next to her.

She inhaled raggedly, wanting to speak.

"Don't try to talk," I instructed her. "Focus on breathing. Don't move."

I took off running then for Carrie's laundry room, picking up her portable house phone and her fire extinguisher on the way there. Explaining everything to the police while trying to focus on controlling the damage myself wasn't easy. I didn't want to ask for an ambulance because I wanted to stay behind and investigate myself. I wanted to track down Lindsay McVale and impose a capital charge in a state where there were none. I wanted to employ some street justice. But I knew I had to order an ambulance because the last time I'd looked at Carrie, she hadn't looked good. And as soon as my fit of hubris and heroism subsided, I'd probably realize that I was worse.

"The suspect has not been apprehended," I spelled out as the most important part. "She was at the site thirty minutes ago. Five-foot-seven caucasian female, brown hair, brown eyes, and she is armed and dangerous."

"Detective," was what the dispatcher said. "You need to sit down."

"What?"

"You're panting. You're short of breath."

"I was running."

"Detective, find a safe place and sit. EMS is en route."

"Okay," I lied. "I will."

I hung up the phone and looked to the ground, trying to cover my face from the smoke that I knew would be waiting patiently for me when I opened that door. I could have just left it shut and hoped that the fire would burn out, but I'd noticed windows when last I'd been down there, and where there's a window and an explosion, there's oxygen to feed the fire. Luckily there was nothing particularly flammable in the room, save a couple wooden shelving units which had likely already burnt to the ground. I was no trained firefighter and so I sprayed the extinguisher absolutely wildly, not even looking at what I was doing because the smoke was thick and I was just trying not to collapse to the ground. When I was pretty sure it was all out - of course I couldn't see much - I exited, shut the door behind me, and hoped for the best.