kill in less than a month.”
I knew that the other person he was referring to was the deranged rapist who had kidnapped Felicity on Christmas Eve. I had come very close to pulling the trigger on the gun I’d had aimed at him that night. Fact is I did pull the trigger; I just managed to point it somewhere else first.
“Can you blame me?” I asked.
“Hell no.” He shook his head as he answered. “But like I told ya’ last go around, you need to keep that to yourself ‘cause not everyone is as open-minded as me.”
“Yeah, right,” I grunted and then came back around to the original question. “So, hospital, then what?”
“Home I guess,” he returned.
“Just home?” I questioned. “So I’m not under arrest or anything?”
“Shit, Row,” he exclaimed as he began massaging his neck again. “Not as it stands now, but I can’t really tell ya’ what’s gonna happen at this point. This whole scene is a clusterfuck.”
“How so?”
“Did you happen to catch that big boom just before you went runnin’ across the street like the wild man of Borneo?” he asked.
“Uh-huh. What was that all about?”
“Flash-bang grenade,” he told me. “Special ordinance, used by SWAT entry teams for the element of surprise. Seems that one went off in the front seat of a highway patrol Interceptor.”
“How did that happen?”
He shook his head again. “You’re askin’ the wrong Injun, Kemosabe. Nobody knows. Hell, nobody even knows what it was doing there to begin with. Right now the SWAT commander is crawlin’ all over the guy who was in charge of the van because accordin’ to the inventory, that’s apparently where it came from. The hubcap chasers are pointin’ fingers at City and SWAT. City is pointin’ fingers back at ‘em since it went off in their car. The Feebs are pointin’ fingers at EVERYONE and claimin’ that Federal shit don’t stink. And to top it all off, since Albright’s site commander, she runnin’ around spoutin’ crap about chargin’ everybody with everything.”
I groaned. “Including me I’ll bet.”
“Yeah,” he confessed. “She’s taken your name in vain a few times, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”
“So what about her?” I asked. “Is she so above reproach?”
“You mean tonight?” He scrunched his face.
“Now, earlier, any of it,” I replied.
“Well, she’s site commander so the buck stops with her,” he offered. “But she can bury the whole fuckin’ thing and lay it on someone else, which is what she’ll do, guaranteed.”
“What about earlier?”
“We’ll see,” he returned. “I’m talkin’ to IAD in the morning.”
“You think they’ll listen?”
“Dunno,” he confessed. “All I can do is try. It might take you pressing charges to get anything done.”
A paramedic climbed into the back of the ambulance with us and pulled the door shut then quickly checked my restraints.
“We’re getting ready to roll,” he said. “How are you feeling, Mister Gant?”
“How do I look?” I asked.
He grinned back. “Okay, sir, we’ll have you at the hospital in just a few minutes.”
“Feel free to take the scenic route,” I quipped.
“Ignore ‘im,” Ben told the paramedic. “He ain’t exactly natural.”
I rolled my gaze back to my friend. “So what we were talking about…”
“Yeah?”
“If that’s what it takes, let me know, and I’ll do it.”
“Okay.”
I turned my face back to the ceiling and tried to relax as we began moving. Settling in, I noticed an extra set of pains coming from my left forearm. I slowly cocked my head at an angle and saw the edge of an inflatable splint encasing the appendage. Then I remembered the snapping sound of the bone and felt slightly queasy.
Flashes of memory whirled around inside my skull, always seeming to come back around to Star hanging from the end of the rope. I wondered, if I hadn’t hesitated, would it have been different? If I’d just been there a few seconds sooner, could I have stopped it all from happening? Or at least gotten her down before she choked to death?
As random thoughts tend to do, something that Agent Kavanaugh had said flitted past, and I latched onto it in an attempt to divert my mind. I mulled the comment over for a moment then twisted my head back to face my friend.
“Did Porter have a gun?”
“The scene hasn’t been cleared yet,” he returned. “But they haven’t found one yet, no. Why?”
“Something Agent Kavanaugh said.”
“About the bum from this morning.” He gave me a knowing nod as he made the statement. “Yeah, I heard. Even if they don’t find one, that doesn’t mean anything, Row. He coulda ditched it. Probably did in fact.”
“But he didn’t have one.” I tossed his original answer back to him.
“Not that we’ve found.” He cocked his head and looked at me. “Is there somethin’ I should know?”
“No,” I said in a dismissive tone. “Not really. Just do me a favor. If you see Kavanaugh, explain Twilight Zone to her and let her know I was right.”
“Jeez, Row.” He shook his head. “You and your hocus-pocus.”
“Yeah, me and my hocus-pocus,” I muttered.
The ambulance rocked as it bounced over what was probably a curb then listed slightly as it hooked into a turn. Ben reached out to steady himself, and I saw his right hand was tightly wrapped in gauze once again.
“So how is your hand, Tonto?” I asked.
“Hurts like a motherfucker.”
CHAPTER 40:
“An overwhelming sense of apathy and withdrawal is not that uncommon, Rowan.” Helen Storm’s friendly but analytical voice filtered into my ear from the telephone. “It does not mean that you are unsympathetic.”
The clock on the coffeemaker read 6:58 a.m. I had fully expected to connect with the answering service when I dialed the number to her office. I knew it was early, but I had gotten tired of waiting for business hours to roll around. I had to admit that I felt an almost cathartic sense of relief when she actually answered instead of them.
“But if I had been there ten seconds sooner, Helen…” I submitted.
“It probably would not have made a bit of difference,” she told me. “Rowan, understand that you are human. There is only so much that you can do. Millicent’s loss is a horrible tragedy for you to contend with-both of you. However, you cannot and should not obsess over something of which you had no control.”
It had been a little less than thirty-six hours since my life had run headlong into the floor of the abandoned building at the corner of Ashley and Second Street. At least, that is how I was feeling.
Felicity and I had talked, and she had certainly helped me, but I wondered if I had done her any good. We both had a lot to work through, on many levels. Our relationship had never been more solid, but emotionally we were both chewing our fingernails. We had agreed that we shouldn’t try riding it out alone, especially not after everything that had happened.
“Her parents called me last night,” I murmured.
“How did that go?” she asked.
“It wasn’t pleasant,” I returned with a sigh. “As far as they are concerned, their daughter would still be alive if she had never met me.”
“Rowan, you must understand that they are grieving a terrible loss, just as you and Felicity are. Anger is a
