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Miles freezes when he sees the gun. The first shot hits the water. The second shot? Well, that one strikes Miles in the abdomen. The boat rocks under Miles’ feet as he stumbles back. When he looks back up, the other man is gone. Miles’ knees buckle.
The world crashes in around Miles’ ears as he gasps for breath, one hand tucked against his stomach. Blood soaks his shirt, leaking over his fingers, dripping to the bottom of the boat. Miles spares half a moment to consider the merits of phoning for help before he remembers that he left his phone in his car.
There are oars at the bottom of the boat.
Miles could row back to shore.
Or, well, he could try. With the wound in his stomach, he likely wouldn’t make it far. Even the thought of trying makes him exhausted. Or, well, that could be the blood loss.
Miles takes a moment to look down at the wound, still a bit in disbelief that it’s even there. The sight of it triggers the searing pain to suddenly flare. Tears sting at the corners of his eyes, a breath shuddering in his lungs, much like the chills wracking his body. With his coat on, the cold ought to be a nonissue. All things considered, the night air lacks the bite Miles might expect during this time of year, on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day, now, probably. So, the chills grasping Miles’ spine, shaking him like a ragdoll, are not from the cold. Not a good sign, if anything good can possibly still come of tonight.
In the distance, Miles hears the sound of sirens, though the chances they are coming for him are slim. Robert Hammond—or not Hammond, probably, most likely, maybe—set the meeting on the lake for its seclusion. At midnight the night before Christmas, no one would be visiting Gourd Lake. Miles hears a voice in his head cursing his foolishness. It sounds distinctly like his sister.
Miles neglected to inform anyone of his whereabouts, which now, watching more blood slowly seep past his fingers, he regrets. Perhaps he ought to have told Gumshoe, if nothing else, so then the man would have come for him. Miles is, more than most anything else, afraid to die. Fear, though, cannot stop a bullet any more than it can cauterize a wound. He lurches forward with a cough, feeling something wet spurt past his lips. More blood, most likely.
The chances of a bullet puncturing one’s abdomen—likely clean through and out his back, but no, it is not worthwhile to consider that—without causing severe internal damage are slim. If lucky, Miles might lose a few inches of his intestines, lose part of his liver, a kidney, his appendix. Unluckily, though, Miles is stranded in the middle of a lake with no way of reaching emergency services. If a bullet tore his intestines, punctured his liver, damaged a kidney, burst his appendix, Miles will succumb to sepsis, possibly even before his bleeds out.
A dizzy spell washes over him, and carefully, Miles lowers himself from the bench to the floorboards. If nothing else, he can spare the search parties from fishing his body up from the bottom of the lake.
The point of coming out here tonight, to learn more about his father’s death, seems so insignificant now, his goal overshadowed by his impending demise. Perhaps it was inevitable, that he should be lured to his death by the death of his father. It seems his entire existence, then, is bookended by that case. DL-6.
Except Phoenix. The only thing remaining from the before.
Miles never imagined they would meet again, had all but forgotten him in his efforts to eradicate every fond memory of his childhood. Maybe it would hurt less, that his father died, if he didn’t remember his father at all. But that day in the courthouse still haunts him. His search for closure, closing the book on Miles’ life. Maybe it was always meant to be this way.
Sitting in a pool of blood and lake water, Miles Edgeworth closes his eyes.