Shadow Man

trembling. It's coming off him in waves.

'What are you talking about?' I ask, incredulous.

'You just had to fucking taunt him, didn't you? Couldn't resist.'

His words are swollen with venom. 'He's after us, and you had to piss him off even more, had to egg him on. What you always do. Tell us we're fucking invincible and tell them the same thing, and it's all bullshit.' He's picking up his pace, the words tumbling out of him, inexorable. All I can do is stare at him.

'What? You don't remember? Don't remember going on TV back when we were trying to catch Joseph Sands? Talking about how he was a pathetic limp dick, goading him, hoping he'd take the bait?' He pauses, eyes bright, snarling. 'Well, he took it, didn't he? He took it and he killed your family and he almost killed you, and now this psycho is hell-bent on doing the same thing to all of us--and you just won't learn!

Keenan and Shantz are dead--have you learned yet? Does Callie have to die for you to get it?' He leans into me. 'That sometimes, when you play tough guy, other people die?' He pauses and I get the sense of a rubber band being pulled back before being snapped, the trembling silence that occurs just before a roar. He speaks into this silence. 'Didn't getting your husband and daughter killed teach you that lesson already?'

My mouth falls open at this, and in an instant I am poised to slap him. Not a light slap. A broad, full-body backhand across the face. Something to loosen his teeth and bloody his nose. I want to do it so bad I can taste it, like blood in my mouth. Two things stop me. One is the near-instantaneous flash of shame I see come into his eyes. The other is Bonnie. She's standing next to James, tugging on his hand, hard.

'Wha-what is it?' he asks. He sounds as dazed as I feel. She motions for him to kneel down next to her. I watch him do this, as my body shivers and trembles.

She slaps him for me, flat of her palm against his cheek. And although she's only ten, and small for her age, the sound of the smack is like a whip crack in the waiting room.

James's eyes widen in shock, his mouth forms an O, and he stumbles back, landing in a sitting position on the floor. My mouth falls open. Bonnie gives me a brief look, nods, and walks back over to sit next to Elaina.

Everyone is silent. I can feel their stillness and their dismay. James stands up slowly, hand to his cheek, eyes filled with shame and pain and wonder.

I want to say something, but once again, two things happen before I can. Callie's daughter comes rushing through the door, and one very sweaty, exhausted surgeon appears as well. For a moment I'm torn between the two, but Marilyn solves this for me by moving toward the surgeon.

'First things first,' he says, his voice heavy and tired. 'Agent Thorne is alive.'

'Thank God!' Elaina cries.

I want to stagger in relief, fall to my knees. But I don't. The surgeon holds up his hands for silence. 'The bullet just missed her heart. And it stayed in one piece. But it did bounce around a little. It ended up near her upper left shoulder, after, I'm afraid, brushing past her spine.'

The temperature of the room seems to drop fifty degrees at the word spine.

'The spinal cord itself wasn't cut. But it was bruised, and there is some swelling. There was also quite a bit of internal bleeding.'

'What's the bottom line, Doc?' AD Jones asks.

'The bottom line is that she lost a lot of blood and sustained a lot of trauma. She's still critical. She seems stable, but we're not out of the woods.' He pauses, looks like he's searching for a better way to put what he's going to say next. 'She could still die. Unlikely, but that's not off the table yet.'

Marilyn asks the other question. The one we're all terrified of. 'And the spinal cord swelling . . . ?'

'The best bet, in my opinion, is that she'll be fine. The swelling should go down, with no lasting paralysis or damage. But . . .' He sighs.

'We can't be sure, not one hundred percent. There's always the worstcase scenario of permanent paralysis.'

Marilyn's hand flies to her mouth. Her eyes are all whites. I speak into the silence. 'Thanks, Doctor.'

He gives all of us a tired nod and walks off.

'Oh no, oh Jesus . . .' Marilyn moans. 'Not now. I just got to meet her, I . . .'

And the tears start. I move to her and hug her tight as she begins to weep in earnest.

My own eyes are dry. I'm too busy bending, bending but not breaking.

48

WE'RE BACK IN the office, a battered bunch. Elaina and Bonnie are at my house, since Alan's place has become a crime scene. Marilyn stayed at the hospital to wait for news of Callie. She wasn't put off a bit by our leaving.

'Get him' was all she'd said.

James is standing, looking out the window. He won't meet my eyes. I want to go crawl into a hole, curl up, and sleep for a year. But I can't do that.

'You know what the thing is about stress, James?' I say, musing. He remains silent. I wait him out. 'What?' he asks finally, still looking out the window.

'Stress creates little hairline fractures. They start small, and they spread, and then they get big, and eventually the result is that something shatters.' I keep my voice careful, nonaccusative. 'Is that what you want, James? For me to shatter? To just break up and--blow away?'

His head whips around at this. 'What? No. I--' He sounds like he's strangling. 'I just, with Callie . . .' He clenches his fists, unclenches them, takes a deep breath. Steadies himself. Now he looks at me directly. 'I'm not afraid for myself, Smoky. I'm afraid for Callie. You understand?'

'Of course I do,' I reply in a soft voice. 'I was afraid for my family too. Every day. I had nightmares about something happening to them exactly like what did happen.' I shrug. 'But Matt told me the truth once. He said that I was doing what I loved. And he was right. I hate chasing these fuckers, but I love catching them, you know?'

He looks at me for a moment, then nods.

'And I thought a lot about exactly what you said in there, long before you said it. I agonized over it. Did Sands come after us, did he kill my family, because I goaded him? For a long time, I thought the answer was yes. But I realized later that that was bullshit. He came after us because I was coming after him. Because I do what I do. He was going to do it whether I talked trash about him or not. You follow?'

He doesn't reply.

'The point, James, is that it doesn't matter what I say or don't say to Jack Jr. He is coming after us, period. We're his prey now. You want to know his victim type?' I gesture around the room. 'They're all right here.'

He looks at me for a long time before responding. When he does, his response is to close his eyes once, and nod.

I smile. 'Apology accepted,' I murmur.

He looks off for a moment, clears his throat. Everyone else has been silent and watching. Tense. It's like we're all on a hot plate, just waiting to pop and sizzle and burn. The fine machine that is my team is grinding its gears, ready to fracture and explode. I know the real source of this anger is Jack Jr. But I worry that we're going to start taking that anger out on one another. I've always thought of myself as the spindle around which the spokes of the wheel turn. If I'm the spindle, Callie is the motion. The thing that makes the wheel move over whatever terrain, however rough. Her jibes and jokes, her teasing and relentless humor, it keeps us sane. Its absence is like the void of space, and we're ready to fill that void by lunging for one another's throats.

'You know what the first thing Callie ever said to me was?' I say without preamble. 'She said, 'Thank heavens! You're not a midget, after all.' ' I smile at the memory. 'She told me that she'd heard I was four foot ten and just couldn't get a picture of how tall that was in her mind. She kept imagining me as a dwarf.'

Alan laughs at this, a quiet, sad laugh. 'You know what she said when she saw me? She said, 'Oh dear, it's a giant Negro!' '