Free After Darkness Fell by David Berardelli

You did this! Damn you, you did this to me!”
    “It’s not her fault.” I struggled to keep the panic out of my voice. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this. This is my fault. And if you want to do something about it, you have to deal with me.”
    He turned awkwardly in my direction. His eyes closed and his head bobbed as he struggled to stay awake. As he fought to keep from collapsing, I brought my right hand down and behind my back. Despite my growing fear, my experience took over, steadying my hand and closing it tightly around the comforting grips of the .357.
    Fields instinctively leaped to her left.
    Morgan’s eyes shot open; he jerked his head in her direction.
    I pulled out the .357 and shot him in the head. The force of the powerful caliber slammed his right side into the pavement. The shotgun clattered to the cracked concrete three feet from him, just beyond the blood and brain splatter.
    Fields pushed herself up and studied the scene on her hands and knees. She looked at me, turned back to the dead biker, groaned, bent over and threw up.
    ***
    While I waited for Fields to recover, I struggled to keep myself in control. The woman I loved was almost killed with a shotgun, and this would have happened just ten feet away from where I was standing. In spite of my military training and everything I’d faced in the last six months, the fear swept violently through me, and I felt the blood turn to ice in my veins. I had to fight it. Take down the enemy , my inner voice kept telling me, over and over. Forget the fear, the urge to run away, and take him down .
    That was what I just did, and now that it was all over, I had to listen to the inner voice once again. This time it said, Do it and forget about it. Put it behind you and move on .
    Move on . Somehow, that important tidbit just wasn’t working right now. Not with what I was looking at.
    Her head down, Fields knelt on the ground, her arms crossed as she hugged herself. She sobbed quietly and made no effort to look up and see where I was, or if I was still there. I recognized shock when I saw it, and knew that people dealt with it in many different ways. Fields was fighting it in her own way. She was surrendering, holding everything in while coming to grips with what she’d just been through.
    Although she needed time, we couldn’t stay here. The bikers could be coming back, for all we knew. Or that damned compact. Whatever the case, we had to get back on the road.
    I knew something about interrupting people in their grief or shock. I also realized how dangerous it was. But I had no choice. I approached her quietly. If I could get her back to the truck, we could get out of here. She could continue crying in the safety of the truck, and I’d let her have her privacy. It would take at least twenty minutes to get back to the farm. Once there, she could lie down and rest.
    “Brooke? It’s me. I think we’d better leave.”
    No response.
    “Brooke? Please ...”
    Still no response.
    Taking a deep breath, I reached down and gently touched her right shoulder.
    She pulled back sharply, as if bitten by a poisonous snake. She spun around to face me and through the long tangles of her hair covering parts of her face I could see the terror blazing from her large glossy eyes. Drool beaded from her lower lip and had gathered on her chin. She looked like someone who had just been given a frightening glimpse of Hell.
    I’d seen this same expression many times before, years ago. I’d seen it on vest killers just before they activated the bomb. I’d seen it on gang members when a police assault weapon turned their way. I’d also seen it on children packed tightly into vans for export in the slave and prostitution trade, as the rear doors opened and sunlight shined on their faces for the first time since their confinement. This expression had haunted me for many years, and I didn’t care to see it ever again.
    I surely hadn’t wanted to see it on Fields.
    I