Shadow Man

myself to keep reaching. I see Alexa's eyes, the O of her mouth as my bullet, from my gun, entered her chest and silenced her forever. This plays over and over again in my head, like film that has been looped. Bang and death, bang and death, bang and the end of the world.

'GODDAMN YOU GODDAMN YOU GODDAMN YOU!' I don't

know if I am screaming at God, Joseph Sands, myself, or the gun. I snatch up the Glock in a single fluid motion, and I am firing it; the black steel jerks in my hand, pow-pow-pow-pow-pow!

Then I hear the click of an empty chamber, a spent magazine. I am shaking, crying. But the Glock, it's still there. And I have not passed out.

Welcome back, I think I can hear it whisper. With a shaking hand, I push the button that will bring the target back to me. It arrives, and what I see fills me with a kind of exultation, tinged with sadness. Ten head shots, seven in the heart. I had hit everything I wanted to, where I wanted to. Just like always. I look at the target, then at the Glock, and I feel that joy and sadness all over again. I know now that shooting will never be the simple joy it used to be. There's been too much death behind it for me. Too much grief I can never forget.

That's okay. I know now what I needed to know. I can hold a gun again. Loving it is unimportant.

I pop out the magazine, grab my target, and turn to Bonnie. She is goggling at the target, and at me. Then she smiles. I ruffle her hair and we head out of the range, back into the shop. Jazz is sitting on a stool with his arms crossed. He has a faint smile on his face. His eyes now are all warm, no cold in sight.

'I knew it, Smoky. It's in your blood, darlin'. In your blood.'

I look at him for a moment, and I nod. He's right. My hand and a gun. We're married again. While it may be a rocky re lationship, I realize that I missed it. It's a part of me. Of course, the gun's not youthful anymore either. It's aged now, and scarred. That's what it gets for picking me as its bride.

2

DREAMS AND CONSEQUENCES

22

BONNIE WAKES UP in the middle of the night, screaming. This is not a child's scream. It is the howl of someone locked in a room in hell. I hurry to snap on the light next to the bed. I see with a shock that her eyes are still closed. Me, I always wake when I start screaming. Bonnie is doing her screaming in her sleep. She is trapped in her dreams, able to put a voice to her fears but unable to wake from them.

I grab her and shake her hard. The screaming dies, her eyes open, she is silent again. I can still hear that sound in my head and she is shivering. I pull her close to me, not saying anything, stroking her hair. She clutches on to me. Soon, her shivering stops. Soon after that, she sleeps.

I disengage from her, as gently as I can. She looks peaceful now. I fall asleep watching her. And for the first time in the last six months, I dream of Alexa.

'Hi, Mommy,' she says to me, smiling.

'What's up, chicken-butt?' I say. The first time I ever said this to her she had giggled so hard she got a headache, which made her cry. I'd been saying it ever since.

She gives me her serious look. The one that both did and didn't fit her. It didn't fit her because she was too young for it. It did fit her because it was Alexa to the core. Her father's soft brown eyes look out at me from a face stamped by both our genes, turned pixielike by dimples that were hers alone. Matt used to joke about how the mailman had dimples, and maybe he'd given me a special delivery, ha ha ha.

'I'm worried about you, Mommy.'

'Why, baby-love?'

Those eyes go sad. Too sad for her age, too sad for those dimples.

'Because you miss me so much.'

I glance at Bonnie, look back at Alexa. 'What about her, babe? Are you okay with that?'

I wake up before she can reply. My eyes are dry, but my heart twists in my chest, making it hard to breathe. After a few moments, this subsides. I turn my head. Bonnie's eyes are closed, her face untroubled. I fall asleep watching her again, but this time, I do not dream. It's morning. I look at myself in the mirror while Bonnie looks on. I've put on my best black business suit. Matt used to call it my 'killer's suit.' It still looks good.

I have been ignoring my hair for months. When I paid any attention to it at all, it was to move it so that it hung over my scars. I used to wear it free and flowing. Now I have drawn it back tightly against my head. Bonnie helped me with the ponytail. Instead of hiding my scars from the world, I am accentuating them.

It's funny, I think to myself as I look into my own eyes. Doesn't really look that bad. Oh, it's a disfigurement. And it's shocking. But . . . taken as a whole, I don't look like I belong in a freak show. I wonder why I never noticed that before, why it's seemed so much uglier until now. I guess it was because I was holding so much ugliness inside. I like the way I look. I look tough. I look hard. I look formidable. All of this fits with my current view of life. I turn away from the mirror.

'What do you think? Good?'

Nod, smile.

'Let's get going, then, honey. We're going to make a few trips today.'

She takes my hand and we head out the door.

*

*

*

First stop is Dr. Hillstead's office. I'd called ahead and he is waiting for me. When we arrive at the office, I convince Bonnie to stay with Imelda, Dr. Hillstead's receptionist. She's a Latin woman with a no-nonsense way of caring for people, and Bonnie seems to respond to this mix of warmth and brusqueness. I understand. We walking wounded hate pity. We just want to be treated normally.

I enter and Dr. Hillstead comes to greet me. He looks devastated.

'Smoky. I want you to know how sorry I am about what happened. I never meant for you to find out that way.'

I shrug. 'Yeah, well. He's been inside my home. Watched me sleep. I guess he's keeping pretty good tabs on me. Not something you could have planned for.'

He looks shocked. 'He's been inside . . . your house?'

'Yep.' I don't correct his or my use of the word he. The fact that he is actually they remains confined to the team, our ace in the hole. Dr. Hillstead runs a hand through his hair. He looks shaken. 'This is really disconcerting, Smoky. I deal with secondhand accounts of these kinds of things, but this is the first time it's entered my life in reality.'

'This is how it goes sometimes.'

Perhaps it's the calmness of my voice that gets his attention. For the first time since I entered his office, he really looks at me. He sees the change, and it seems to bring back the healer in him.

'Why don't you sit down?'

I sit in one of the leather chairs facing his desk. He looks at me, musing. 'Are you upset with me for withholding the ballistics report?'

I shake my head. 'No. I mean--I was. But I understand what you were trying to do, and I think you were right to do it.'

'I didn't want to tell you until I thought you were ready to deal with it.'

I give him a faint smile. 'I don't know if I was ready to deal with it or not. But I rose to the occasion.'

He nods. 'Yes, I see a change in you. Tell me about it.'

'Not much to tell,' I say with a shrug. 'It hit me hard. For a moment, I didn't believe it. But then I remembered everything. Shooting Alexa. Trying to shoot Callie. It was like all the pain I've been feeling over the last six months hit me at once. I passed out.'

'Callie told me.'

'The thing is, when I woke up, I didn't want to die. That made me feel bad in a way. Guilty. But it was still