Cora cried Finn’s name into the wind, but there was no answer. Just the terrible blank space where he’d been.
Grief exploded in Liam’s chest. He wanted to shout, but he couldn’t drag in enough air. He wanted to go after Finn to save him. To take the fall for him. He’d shielded Finn from the bullet so he couldlive. So he could have a chance at the happiness he deserved. It wasn’t supposed to end this way. Not like this.
“Liam, stop.” Cora was weeping now, hot tears streaking down her face, but the pressure of her hands on his torso never wavered. “You have to stop moving. You’ll make it worse. Please. You have to remain still.”
He didn’t realize he’d been struggling to rise. With a defeated groan, he let his head drop back to the ground and squeezed his eyes shut. Like a weakling, he sought refuge in darkness, but it didn’t help. His mind kept replaying the image of Finn going over the edge, and the shock on his face as he toppled backward to his doom.
A shout came from just beyond the trees. It wasn’t far.
“Over here!” Cora cried. “We need help.” She tipped her face to the sky as if she could call down heaven itself.“Please.”She glanced at Liam with an expression so shattered he wanted to hold her and do whatever it took to put her pieces back together. “Don’t move. You’re going to be fine. Help is coming.” She didn’t understand that there was no help for him. He was beyond saving now. Maybe he always had been.
Cora was still holding her hands to his wound, but the pain was beginning to fade. In slow increments, the tension in his muscles eased, and his limbs grew heavier, as if he could sink into the ground below and become one with the earth. It wasn’t bad at all this time. It felt almost restful. The last time he’d lost his life, he’d been filled with an emptiness so vast nothing felt real. But this time, he saw and felt everything. The warmth of Cora’s silvery teardrop on his face. The desperate love in her eyes. Her tremulous smile as she tried fiercely to cling to hope.
“I’m sorry.” His apology was barely a whisper, and so very inadequate. Two simple words to represent a maelstrom of remorse and regret. All the lost dreams for a future that would never come to pass.
“No.”Cora lowered her forehead to his, clearly seeing something that alarmed her. Were their hearts so entwined that she could sense him slipping away? “No, Liam,” she sobbed. “You can’t go. Stay with me.”
If only he could. The strength of her love humbled him. He could live a thousand lifetimes and still never deserve it, but by God, he’d take it. She’d once said love was the only thing you took with you when you died—the only thing that mattered. If that was true, then he’d grab fistfuls of this. He’d cloak himself in it. Weave it into every fiber of his soul. And he would never forget that, once, he was an unworthy thief who loved a girl with all his heart. And she loved him back.She loved him back.And it was everything.
28
CORA KEPT HER hands clamped hard on the wound in Liam’s side, her heart tripping painfully against her ribs. Dread was an uncoiling snake in the pit of her stomach as she stared down at Liam’s ashen face. He’d passed out, but she could still see the shallow rise and fall of his chest.Thank God.“You’re not leaving me like this, Liam O’Connor. This is not how it ends for us. Do you hear me?” Every jagged, choppy breath that escaped her was a prayer as she silently begged him to hang on.
“Looks like you need rescuing, girl.” Eli Shelton’s casual observation scraped across her mangled nerves like asphalt on road rash. He was the last person Cora expected as a savior, but in the moment, even street thug Santa was a welcome sight. He ambled toward her out of the woods, hitching the waist of his sagging jeans higher over his substantial beer gut. Then he scratched his dingy white beard and stared down at Liam with a cold, hard assessment that could only come from someone who’d seen life-threatening situations before. Often. “Yeah. He don’t look too good.”
“No,” Cora agreed, biting off a sarcastic retort. Many things about Eli rubbed her the wrong way, but right now she wasn’t going to give in to her burning desire to tell him. “We need help.” Her voice ended on a hitch of desperation as painful emotions threatened to spill over. Fighting for control, she added shakily, “He needs medical attention immediately, or—”
“I reckon he does.” Eli’s slow, lazy drawl made Cora want to stab her fingers into his Harley-Davidson T-shirt and shake the living daylights out of him. If she wasn’t using both hands to keep pressure on Liam’s wound, she would. How could he stand there acting like he had all the time in the world to sit and chat when Liam’s life was waning with every passing second? She was just about to start screaming at him when Eli said something that derailed her train of thought. “Good thing I already called for a mountain rescue. A helicopter’s on its way.”
Cora gaped at Eli’s smug face. That meant there was still hope. An air rescue was the only way Liam would have a fighting chance. Relief swept over her in cold, tingling waves. Had she not already been crouched on the ground, her knees would surely have buckled. Cora felt an unexpected surge of gratitude toward the surly Booze Dogs president, and she had to fight to keep her hands steady. “Thank you.”
“Ain’t no thing,” Eli said dismissively. “I don’t like cops, but you helped Bear when he got shot. He’s one of ours, and you took care of him, so we owe you.”
Cora nodded, grateful Eli saw it that way, even though she’d have stopped to help anyone in Bear’s situation. Even a criminal. Only a heartless person would ignore someone with a gunshot wound. Maybe Eli was used to dealing with the kind of people who’d prioritize their own desires over someone’s safety in a situation like that. Either way, she was grateful, and she told him.
Eli made a dismissive grunt in the back of his throat and changed the subject to something he clearly felt was more important. “Your police captain scum. Which way did he go? I’ve got my men all over this mountain searching for him.”
Cora winced at the memory of Finn and the captain toppling over the railing to their doom. She gestured to the edge of the viewing platform with her chin. “Th-that way.”
Eli’s bushy white eyebrows shot toward his hairline as he stared over the railing at the open abyss. “Did he now?” The roar of the waterfall hitting the rocks below seemed louder and more ominous than ever.
Cora found Eli’s smile unnerving. It wasn’t his obvious satisfaction that bothered her; she expected that from him. It was the unmistakable twinkle of delight in his eyes. It heightened his resemblance to the right jolly old elf who brought toys to children, which was just creepy.
“He was fighting Finn for the gun, and they both fell...” She trailed off, unable to speak past the painful lump in her throat. It was hard to believe Finn, the calm, steadfast man who’d always been there in the background of her life, was gone. She’d only just begun to understand the depths of his kindness, and he’d become a dear friend.
Eli’s gleeful face suddenly fractured around the edges, and he looked stricken. He uttered Finn’s name and turned away sharply. Then he walked to the edge of the platform and stared down, as if searching for him. Cora knew what he saw—the blinding white rush of the waterfall crashing toward dark, shadowy rocks. Anything or anyone unfortunate enough to tumble over the edge of Providence Falls would be long gone by now. Either sinking to the depths or carried away by the unstoppable force of the river.
Cora quickly told Eli what had happened. “I’m not even sure how Finn got here,” she added miserably. “We haven’t had contact with him in days.”
Eli was standing with his back to her as she recounted everything. Finally, he straightened his shoulders and turned to face her again. He spoke in halting stops and starts, as if each word had to be checked for stability in case they tumbled cracked and broken from his mouth. “Bear told us. Finn was trapped. In the tunnels.” He glanced away for a few moments, then added angrily, “Your captain and Magnus threw him off a ledge and left him to die down there.” Eli wasn’t the type to debase himself by crying—he’d see it as an obvious display of weakness. But Cora could tell he was struggling. His gaze roamed aimlessly over the surrounding forest, and he shook his head. “He was a good man, Jack.” Eli used Finn’s nickname from back when he was the Jackrabbit, participating in the Booze Dogs’ underground cage fights. For a while, Eli had been a type of mentor to Finn, back when Finn was young and angry and aimless. Cora felt certain there was nothing she and Eli would ever have in common, but in this exact moment, she understood and shared his pain.
The minutes ticked by with infinite slowness as they waited for the air rescue, Cora constantly checking Liam’s condition with growing fear. She was no medical expert, but if help didn’t arrive soon, Liam wouldn’t—No.She refused to even entertain the thought of a world without Liam in it. He was going to be okay. To distract herself, Cora decided to focus on a conversation she’d been meaning to have with Eli. He’d grown silent and pensive after her revelation about Finn, but she imagined he wouldn’t remain that way when she brought up his transgressions.
“The police are going to be crawling all over this mountain,” Cora finally said. She was reluctant to bring up the ramifications of the Booze Dogs using a state park to store their secrets, but it had to be said. “I don’t know what you’ve stashed in all those boxes in your cave down there, and right now I don’t care. But it’s—”
“Not your problem, girl.” Eli’s familiar scowl snapped back into place. “My men are moving the last of our things as we speak. Should’ve done it a long time ago, but the hideout’s been with the Booze Dogs since the beginning. Guess none of us wanted to give up going to church.” There went that creepy smile again. He really should just stick to scowling.
“And what about your illegal gambling ring?” Cora challenged. “The cage fighting out at the barn?”