It hurt Howard to look at it. The doctor had assured him that there weren’t any nerves in the bone, and that the pain where the traction device pierced the skin was minimal. Where Tyrone hurt the most was where his muscles had been torn and bruised in his upper leg when the thigh — the femur — had snapped. This had happened when a half-ton pickup truck, driven by a forty-three-year-old construction worker, had crossed the center line and plowed head-on into the car in which Tyrone had been a passenger in the rear seat. His seat belt had held, but the car had compacted and accordioned enough so that the seat in front of him had been thrust back into his leg, breaking it just above the knee.
Tyrone’s friend, a fourteen-year-old girl named Jessie Corvos, who had been riding in that front seat was in Intensive Care with massive internal injuries, and her prognosis was poor. The car’s driver, the girl’s older brother, Rafael, had three broken ribs, a punctured lung, shattered right arm, broken ankle, and had undergone surgery to remove a ruptured spleen, but was expected to recover.
The man who’d been driving the truck had a tiny cut on his forehead that had taken three stitches to close; otherwise, not a mark on him. The man had been playing pool and downing pitchers of beer with friends at a bar. He had been arrested for driving under the influence and released on bail. His blood alcohol level was 0.21 percent, nearly three times the legal limit when they’d tested it.
Howard had met Jessie and Rafael’s father, Raymond, in the ER. The older Corvos had been pale and shaking, probably in shock, but there had also been in him a tightly suppressed rage. Howard had caught only a glimpse of it. It was like seeing a nuclear fireball through a pinhole some distance away from the aperture: only a speck of intensely bright light was visible, but to move your eye closer would guarantee instant blindness. Raymond Corvos was an accountant, a slightly built, balding man, and mild-looking, save for that hint of white-hot anger.
If Jessie or Rafael Corvos died, then Howard would not want to be the driver who had killed them — he had the impression their father would come for the killer, and Howard would not wish to be standing in his way when he did.
As he watched his sleeping child, he could understand that. Vengeance belonged to the Lord, and Jesus had preached forgiveness for sins, no matter how heinous; but if Tyrone died as a result of some negligent idiot too plastered to be driving, he could easily see appointing himself judge, jury, and executioner, even at the risk of his own soul.
There were some things a man had to do, no matter what the cost.
Nadine came back into the room, carrying a plastic bag and a drink holder with four paper cups of coffee in it.
“He wake up?”
“No. He’s still out. Resting better, I think.”
She handed him a cup of coffee with a corrugated cardboard sleeve on it. He pulled the lid off and blew on the hot liquid.
“They had tuna on white, turkey on rye, and ham and cheese on whole wheat,” she said. “I got two of each. You want one?”
“Maybe later,” he said. “Coffee’s fine for now.
She nodded, took a cup of coffee for herself, and pulled her chair closer to his, next to the bed. She reached out with her free hand, and he took it in his.
He knew they would get used to this. You could get used to almost anything if you had the time. One of them would eventually go home, shower, get a nap, bring back clean clothes, while the other stayed. They’d swap off. But with any luck, they’d be going home soon. There were portable traction devices they could hook up to Tyrone’s leg, once the doctors were sure he’d be okay. The surgery that would come later was relatively safe. There were some rare, but potentially dangerous complications following this kind of accident they’d told the Howards about: fat emboli, blood clots that might break loose and get into the circulatory system to cause problems. After a few days, the risk of these would be minimal.
Tyrone was going to be okay. But — what if Howard had been off on assignment somewhere in some hellhole, doing Net Force’s business when this had happened? It was bad enough, but — what if it had been worse? If his son had been injured so badly that he didn’t make it? Died while his father was a thousand miles away, unable to get back in time?
When he thought about it reasonably, he knew this was an irrational argument. Tyrone could have died in the accident and Howard could have been a block away and it wouldn’t have made any difference. You couldn’t live your life looking over your child’s shoulder, worried every minute of every day about what might happen to him. The Almighty had His own plans. And if He wanted to call Tyrone — or Nadine — home? Well, that’s what would happen, and there was nothing Howard could do about it.
Man proposes, God disposes.
But in his heart of hearts, he felt that if he was there when the call came, Howard might be able to talk God out of it. Offer a trade, himself for his child or wife, and maybe God would go for it. There wasn’t any basis for believing that, God was not known for horse-trading souls, but on some level, he believed it might be different if he was there to make the offer. So going away and not being around to try that deal was heavy on his mind. Maybe he had made a mistake in going back to work for Net Force.
It was something he was going to have to think about some more.
Toni stuck her head into Alex’s office.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“The BCIII sting is about to go down.”
“Really? That was fast.”
She nodded. “Turned out the ‘Chinese hackers’ were in Richmond, they didn’t have far to travel. Jay’s run the feed from a case — and a sticky-cam into the conference room’s big monitor, if you want to watch.”
Alex glanced at his desk. “Might as well. I’m not getting much done here.”
The two of them headed for the conference room. Toni hadn’t been here when this sting had been set up, but she’d seen others like it when she’d been working here before. It was simple enough. Certain kinds of criminal hackers into extortion had been around for years. Generally they’d break into a company’s system, steal files, crash the system, or set up a worm or virus for later, sometimes all three. Then they’d contact the company and offer their services as “computer security consultants.” If the company wasn’t interested, they would trash or steal valuable files, put client lists on the net, and other manner of devilry until the company came around. A lot of mid-sized corporations found it cheaper and easier just to pay the hackers to go away, as long as they weren’t too greedy, and the RBs — that came from “rule benders,” which is what they liked to call themselves instead of “law breakers”—would take their money and move on to another victim.
No harm, no foul, and the company eats the loss as part of doing business.
But a few years ago, the FBI, then Net Force, began using their skills to create fake companies whose profiles were attractive to the RBs. They’d set up shop, drop fake histories and credit ratings into places where they’d be found and believed, and wait. Too confident of their abilities in the electronic world, the extortioners would never stoop to actually going to a library — using shoeware-to-treeware, they called it — that would give the lie to the fake histories posted. Only squirrels played in trees.