Page 46 of This is Why We Lied

“Sara!” Will yelled again.

The sound of his need set her off again, this time with purpose. She ran full-out, tucking her arms into her body. The closer she got, the more the air thickened with smoke. The terrain dropped precipitously. Sara went into a controlled slide. She lost her balance at the last minute, nearly tumbling the rest of the way. The wind was knocked out of her, but she could finally see a clearing. She pushed herself up. Started running again. Saw the moonlight tracing the spine of a sawhorse, outlining the tools scattered on the ground, a generator, a table saw, then finally the lake.

The smoke blackened the space in front of her. Sara ran at a crouch along the curving, rocky terrain. There were three rustic cottages. The last one burned so hot that she could feel the heat on her skin. Smoke furled like a flag as the wind shifted back. Sara took another step closer. The ground was wet. She could smell the blood before she realized what she was standing in. The familiar copper penny smell that she’d lived with most of her adult life.

“Please,” Will said.

Sara turned. A trail of blood led to the lake. Will was on his knees leaning over a prone body in the water. Sara recognized Mercy by her lavender-colored shoes.

“Mercy,” Will sobbed. “Don’t leave him. You can’t leave him.”

Sara walked toward her husband. She had never seen him cry this way before. He was more than distraught. He was utterly devastated.

She knelt down on the other side of the body. Gently rested her fingers on Mercy’s wrist. There was no pulse. The skin was nearly frigid from the water. Sara looked at Mercy’s face. The scar was nothing more than a white line. The woman’s eyes stared lifelessly at the menagerie of stars. Will had tried to cover her with his shirt, but there was no obscuring the violence. Mercy had sustained multiple stab wounds, some of them so deep that they had probably shattered bone. The volume of blood was so great that Sara’s dress wicked up the red in the water.

She had to clear her throat before she could speak. “Will?”

He didn’t seem to register that Sara was there.

“Please,” he begged Mercy. “Please.”

He laced together his fingers and placed his palms over Mercy’s chest. Sara couldn’t find it in her heart to stop him. She had coded so many patients in her career. She knew what death looked like. She knew when a patient had already crossed over. She also knew that she had to let Will try.

He leaned over Mercy. Put his full weight into her chest.

She watched his hands press down.

It happened so fast that initially, Sara didn’t understand what she was seeing. Then she’d realized a piece of sharp metal had sliced into Will’s hand.

“Stop!” she yelled, grabbing his hands, pinning them in place. “Don’t move. You’ll cut the nerves.”

Will looked up at Sara, his expression the same that he would offer a stranger.

“Will.” Sara tightened her grip. “The knife is inside her chest. You can’t move your hand, okay?”

“Is Jon—is he coming?”

“He’s back at the house. He’s okay.”

“Mercy wanted me to tell him that—that she loves him. That she forgives him for the fight.” Will was shaking with grief. “She said that she wanted him to know it’s okay.”

“You can tell him all of that.” Sara wanted to wipe away his tears, but she was afraid he would rip out the knife if she let him go. “We need to help you first, okay? There’s some important nerves in this part of your hand. They help you feel objects. A basketball. Or a gun. Or me.”

Slowly, he came back to himself. He stared down at the long blade that had impaled the webbing between his thumb and index finger.

Will didn’t panic. He said, “Tell me what to do.”

Sara let out a shallow breath of relief. “I’m going to take away my hands so I can make an assessment, all right?”

She saw Will’s throat work, but he nodded.

Sara gently let him go. She studied the injury. She was grateful for the moonlight, but it wasn’t enough. Shadows crisscrossed the scene—from the passing smoke, from the trees, from Will, from the knife. Sara pinched the tip of the blade between her thumb and index finger. She tested it to see how tightly it was embedded inside Mercy’s body. The firm resistance told her that the knife had somehow wedged between the vertebra or sternum. There was no way to pull it out except by force.

In any other situation, Sara would’ve stabilized Will’s hand to the blade so that a surgeon could remove it in a controlled setting. They didn’t have that luxury. Mercy was partially submerged in water. The pressure from Will was the only thing keeping her body from shifting with the waves. They were God only knew how far from a hospital, let alone an EMT. Even with all of the help in the world, they would be ill-advised to try to carry both Mercy’s body and Will out of the forest with his hand pinned to her chest. Not to mention the risk of having a living person pinned to a dead body. The bacteria from decomposition could set up a life-threatening infection.

She would have to do it here.

Will was on Mercy’s left side. The knife was sticking out of the right side of her chest, otherwise it would’ve been in her heart, which would have precluded attempting CPR. Will’s fingers were still laced together, but the damage was limited to his right hand. The angled tip of the knife had pierced the web between his thumb and index finger. Roughly three inches of the serrated blade was showing. She estimated it was half an inch wide and razor sharp. The killer had probably taken it from the family kitchen or the dining hall. Her hope was that most of the important structures in Will’s hand had been spared—there wasn’t much going on in the thenar web—but Sara wasn’t taking any chances.