People were standing around them now, looking to see what was happening, but not understanding. “Keep back!” she yelled. “FBI! This man set the bomb in the hotel!”
Sherlock raised her SIG, shoved it against the back of his head. Xu froze. Sherlock leaned down beside his ear. “Give me an excuse, Xu, come on, twitch or move your finger, anything. Let me blow your brains out.”
“How did you know?”
“We’re FBI. You’re not.” She leaned back and clipped a handcuff around his right wrist. “And it turns out you’re not as good as you thought you were. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to—” She grabbed his wounded arm and was pulling it back, Xu yelling in pain and fury, to fasten them together, when her brain registered the sound of a shot and a spear of sharp bright light before everything went black.
Something was wrong. Savich double-parked the Taurus and ran toward the FBI van across from the Fairmont, where he knew Sherlock and two other agents were positioned. He heard the explosion, saw the glass bursting outward from the sixth floor, followed by gushing smoke and flames.
And then he saw Sherlock through the throng of panicked people, barreling through the crowds, shoving people aside. She was after Xu, and Sherlock was catching him. Savich watched her leap forward and tackle him. They disappeared from sight.
He shoved people out of his way, yelling Sherlock’s name. Then he saw her astride Xu’s back, cuffing him. Suddenly there was a loud cracking sound from somewhere behind him, a rifle shot, he registered it in an instant, and he saw her head bloom red. His heart froze in his chest. Xu threw her off and scrambled to his feet, one handcuff dangling off his right wrist, and disappeared into the crowd.
Savich couldn’t believe what he’d seen, simply couldn’t accept it. He had to get to her, had to see her smile at him and tell him it had all been a dream, nothing more. Above the mayhem he heard a ferocious growling sound he realized was coming from his own throat. He saw frightened faces staring at him, but he ignored them. People dove out of his way. His vision narrowed to an arrow of misting red, like blood—no, not blood. He’d get to her, he’d find it was all a mistake, that what he’d seen was a lie his own brain had spun together, nothing more than that. When he burst out of the last scattering knot of people, he saw three teenage boys huddled over Sherlock, protecting her from the stampede.
He grabbed one of the boys’ arms, pulled him back. “I’m FBI. Keep the people away—you, call nine-one- one.”
Savich stared down at all the blood streaming down her face, matting her hair to her head. She was lying on her side, utterly still, and he was afraid in the deepest part of him that she was dead. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. He was afraid to touch her, afraid that when he pressed his fingers against her throat there would be no pulse, there would be nothing, and it would mean she was gone. His fingers hovered, then finally touched the pulse point in her neck, pressed in. He felt her pulse. Yes, she was alive. He ripped a sleeve off his white shirt and pressed down on the blood streaming from her head. His hands were steady and strong, but his brain was a wasteland of chaos. But she was alive. Nothing else mattered.
One of the boys asked, his voice shaking with a mixture of fear and excitement, “Is she dead?”
Savich barely registered the question. It was outside of him, not important, only she was important. He could see he was pressing on a deep gouge the bullet had made along the side of her head. But how deep? There was so much blood with a head wound, too much. He pressed down harder on the wound and put the fingers of his other hand against her bloody neck to find her pulse, to reassure himself again it was there. He touched her vivid hair curling over his hands, wet with blood.
He said, more to himself than to anyone else, “She’s alive.” Saying the words helped to make them real.
One of the boys said, “The nine-one-one operator said everyone in the city is rushing to the Fairmont.”
“Mom, we’re okay. We’re helping the FBI. One of the agents got shot.”
Savich blocked out the parents’ voices, leaned close to Sherlock’s bloody face. “It’s okay, sweetheart, you’re going to be fine. You’ve been shot—well, let me say it’s more than a graze, but still, the bullet didn’t hit your brain.” He pressed his cheek against her bloody hair, and thanked God the shooter’s aim wasn’t true. He wondered for only an instant who the shooter was.
“Savich! Where’s Sherlock?”
It was Eve. Billy’s parents pulled him and the other two boys out of the way. Eve fell to her knees beside her.
Savich raised his face, now nearly as bloody as his wife’s. “I saw the explosion blow out that window in Xu’s suite. Are you all right?”
Eve waved that away. “Your face—”
“It’s Sherlock’s blood,” he said.
Eve said, “Is—is she okay?”
He made himself nod. “The bullet didn’t kill her. She’s alive, but she’s out—” There weren’t any more words. He pressed his shirtsleeve hard against the wound, his eyes not leaving her face.
He didn’t care about Xu, didn’t care if the Fairmont burned to the ground, only about Sherlock.
He looked over at the three boys, Billy’s parents standing protectively behind them, and Savich registered that Billy was as redheaded as Sherlock, tall, gangly, and skinny as a plank. He nodded at them, and manufactured a calm, steady voice. He said to Eve, “These boys protected Sherlock from the crowd. Get their names.” He managed a smile at Billy’s mom.
“Ma’am, your son is a hero, all three of them are heroes. Thanks, all of you.”
He looked back down at Sherlock. “Eve, where’s Harry?”
“He went after Xu.”
No more words; he never looked away from Sherlock’s face until Eve touched his arm. “The EMTs are here, Dillon. Let them take care of her.”
EMT Nathan Everett lightly touched Savich’s shoulder. “You all right, sir? Yes, okay, I see now it’s her blood. You need to let us take care of her now.”
Savich raised his face to a man he’d never seen before in his life. “She’s going to be all right.”
“Yes, sir, yes, she will,” Nathan said, and turned to direct two other EMTs to bring a gurney.
Eve pulled Savich to his feet. He watched them lift Sherlock onto the gurney. She looked nearly lifeless. No, she would live, she had to. “I got the boys’ names and addresses.”
Savich forced himself to focus on Eve’s face. “Are you okay, Eve? And Harry and Griffin?”
“Yes, we were just rattled.”
“Have Harry and Griffin gone after Xu?” He looked at her face, really registered it for the first time. “You look like you’ve been in a war.”
She nodded. “All three of us do. The fire and smoke was from an incendiary device, but we made it through. Xu even had a bomb rigged in the room. Luckily, we’d gotten out before he blew it.”
The crowd melted away from Sherlock’s gurney as they rolled her to the ambulance. Savich walked quickly after her. He said over his shoulder, “Who shot her? It sure wasn’t Xu, since I saw her cuffing him. So who was it?”
