Hour Game

She reached him, tried to awaken him, but he wouldn't come around. She dragged him out of his bed, through the cabin, out of the houseboat and into the open air, even as her own breath became more and more labored. He lay motionless on the deck, his face a very frightening cherry red.Carbon monoxide poisoning. She bent over him, pulled her hair out of her face and began mouth-to-mouth.

"Breathe, Sean, breathe, damn it. Breathe!"

She kept pumping air into him, giving him every ounce of hers she could until she started feeling sick and dizzy. And still she persisted.

"Breathe. Come on, Sean, please, please! Breathe for me, Sean, breathe for me, baby, please. Sean, don't do this to me. Don't you do this to me. Come on, you bastard, just breathe!"

She checked his pulse and then lifted up his T-shirt and listened to the beats of his heart. They were barely there. She pushed more air into his lungs and then took precious seconds to call 911. She kept going. She was ready to begin CPR if he went into cardiac arrest. But his heart was still beating, she could hear it. If only his lungs would start doing their damn job. She kept pushing air into him until Michelle thought she would pass out herself.He looks dead. He's gone. I've failed.

"Please, Sean, please, don't do this. Don't give up. I'm here, I'm here, Sean. Come on, you can do it. You can do it." She followed one enormous breath after another, willing each one down his throat with all possible speed, to impact with his lungs, expand them, scream at his brain, telling it the fight wasn't over.

You can do this, Sean. It's not your time, damn it, it's not your time. Don't leave me, Sean King. Don't you do it.

She swore and puffed. Puffed and swore, screaming encouragement, trying to reach him wherever he might be, life, death or in between.

Stay with me, Sean. Stay with me. It's not your time. It's not. Trust me.

And finally, it started to turn. His chest began to rise and fall with greater force and regularity; the bright red discoloration of his face began to lighten. She ran and got some water from the houseboat and spread it over his face. Where was the ambulance? They should have been here by now. He was doing better, but his condition could change any second. And if he'd been severely oxygen-deprived for a long time, might there be brain damage? She pushed this troubling thought from her mind and kept tending to him.

As Michelle poured the last of the water over King's face and stood to get more, she glanced down and froze. The laser dot was right between her breasts, dead on her heart.

She didn't hesitate, mainly because she was sick of playing catch-up to a killer always one step ahead of them. And she was furious for missing him the last time, when Junior had died. With dizzying quickness she leaped to one side and in the same motion pulled and fired her pistol. She emptied her entire mag, spreading the shots over a wide enough area to find-she hoped to God-this person who'd taken so much from so many.

She rolled, came up into a squat behind the houseboat's solid rail, dropped the spent mag and slammed in a fresh one. She chambered a round with a quick pull of the slide and peered over the boat's gunwale. Then she heard it, feet running away. She was about to go after her would-be assassin when King moaned very loudly. She was by his side in an instant, all thoughts of the fleeing killer gone. King was trying to sit up, his breath coming in large bursts. An instant later he was violently sick to his stomach. Michelle dipped a cloth in the lake and wiped his face clean and then held him as tightly as she could.

"Sit back, Sean, sit back, it's okay. I'm here. Just lie back. I've got you." She tried to fight back the tears, now tears of happiness. She finally decided to just let them pour down her cheeks. She felt like shrieking for joy as she hugged the man to her chest.

"What happened?" he said weakly. "What the hell happened?"

"Save your breath; the ambulance is on its way."

He focused on her as she cradled his head in her lap. "Are you okay?"

It was only then that Michelle realized she'd been shot. It wasn't the pain, at least not initially; it was the blood flowing down her arm. She felt the hole in her shirtsleeve where the slug had gone through. Just a graze, she thought. No bullet in there, at least she didn't think so. She ripped off the bottom part of her sleeve and fashioned a bandage to stop the blood loss.

"Michelle, are you okay?" King said again, more urgently, though his eyes had closed.

"Never better," she lied.

CHAPTER 69