At least the woman had ended up granting permission, so…her phone buzzed.
It was the detective Lily had maligned to her mother, a perfectly courteous woman named Rachel Jones. They’d confirmed the ID on the three perps whose bodies—living or dead—were in their hands. They had a line to follow on who they’d worked for, too. Did Lily want to sit in when they picked the man up?
She did. Lily thanked Detective Jones and disconnected.
“Who was that?” Beth said brightly. “One of your police buddies? Have they decided for sure they won’t arrest me?”
“They’re not going to arrest you.” Lily had told her that several times. “They’ve got names for all of the perps but the one who escaped. The guy in surgery is—”
“You’re right. Why would they arrest me? I didn’t do anything wrong. He deserved it, right?”
Beth didn’t want to hear the man’s name. Having a name made him real, made it a person she’d tossed over that railing, not a lump of meat. Lily understood, but dehumanizing your opponents was bad for the soul…and it was weird for her to think in terms of the soul, but things had changed a lot in the last year. The good news was that her sister wasn’t very good at that particular form of denial. Beth had insisted on coming here to wait until the guy got out of surgery. You didn’t do that for a lump of meat. The bad news was that Beth insisted she was fine, just fine, while her movements grew more frantic and her eyes brittle with everything she was determined not to feel.
After a too-long pause Lily said, “Maybe it doesn’t matter what he deserved.”
“I guess you think it should bother me,” Beth said. “It doesn’t. I defended myself. That’s why I went to Bojuka—so I’d be able to defend myself. And it worked, didn’t it? So I’m not upset.”
“You’re doing a pretty good job of acting upset.”
“I’m not acting. And I’m not…it’s the adrenaline. I was attacked, and all that adrenalin has me kind of wired. But not upset.”
“The adrenaline’s worn off by now.” Lily stood. “His name is Robert Clampett.”
“Why do I need to know that? I didn’t need to know that.”
“I don’t know if Clampett deserved his fate, but I don’t have to know that. You did the right thing, Beth. You did what needed to be done.”
“Aren’t you listening? That’s what I’ve been saying.” Beth stopped moving. Her eyes were too big, too bright.
“Is it what you’re feeling?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I feel. It’s not guilt, but I don’t know what it is. I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me, too.” Lily moved closer and slid an arm around Beth’s waist. “Maybe you can just feel whatever-it-is without naming it.”
“But it has to have a name. Something so large—other people must have felt it, too. There must be a word for it.”
The word was change. Lily didn’t think Beth would know what she meant if she suggested it, though. People didn’t use change as an emotion word, but as a little-c verb—change the oil, the channel, your hair color or your address or your diet. Even the phrase “change your life” referred to an act of volition, taking charge of something and making it better, or at least different. They weren’t talking about the kind of volcanic upheaval Beth was caught up in where ash covered the landscape and lava spewed up into the air and the ground shook and shook, and nothing looked right or normal.
Of course, another word for what Beth felt would be trauma. Lily didn’t think her sister wanted to hear that one, either. “Are you glad you’re alive?”
Beth nodded firmly. “Of course.”
“It looks like Murray’s going to be okay. Are you glad about that?”
“I—he—Lily, he jumped at that man with the gun so he would take the bullet instead of me. I’m sure of it. He—he—” Her breath hitched. Her eyes filled. And at last she started to cry.
Once the sobs hit, they hit hard. Lily wrapped her arms around Beth and held on while Beth cried out some of the confusion. For a long time she didn’t say anything, not until Beth stirred. “Tissue?” She disengaged enough to reach for the box on a nearby table.
“Oh, God, yes,” Beth took the box and pulled one out and blew her nose. “I’m sorry for falling apart like that.”
“Why?”
“You don’t.”
“Just because you haven’t been around for any of my collapses doesn’t mean they don’t happen. Murray’s going to be okay, Beth. What he did—”
“He could have died.”
“He could have, yeah. But that’s the sort of thing lupi do, especially if a woman’s in danger. They heal so much faster than we can, so they go flinging themselves in front of bullets or knives or demons or whatever as if that were a good idea.”
Beth’s laugh was damp and shaky. “That’s it. That’s it. I didn’t want him there, and I was giving him a hard time, and he—he still threw himself in front of that gun!”
The shooter had carried a .22, and Murray had been trained by Benedict. He knew rounds from a .22 weren’t likely to go through him and hit Beth, so he’d jumped the perp. The two of them had tumbled down a flight of stairs, coming to a stop with one of them passed out, the other one dead.
The official version might say that the perp had probably broken his neck falling down those stairs, but Lily knew better. Lupi didn’t like to leave threats cluttering up the landscape if they expected to be dead or unconscious shortly, and they were ungodly fast. Murray had broken the man’s neck the instant they collided. “And in a week or so Murray will be strutting around—”
“A week?” Beth said, eyes widening. “I know they heal fast, but—a week?”
“He might not be back to normal, but he’ll certainly be up and around and thinking he’s pretty hot stuff. And we’ll let him, because he is. He saved you. But Beth…” Lily smoothed her sister’s hair. “You saved him, too. Probably yourself as well, but definitely Murray. When you repelled the second attacker it gave Patrick the seconds he needed to take out the third guy before he could put more bullets in Murray.”
Patrick had been outside. He’d given a sharp whistle to warn Murray of suspicious strangers entering the building, but procedure was for him to remain on post unless summoned—which Murray had done, but Patrick wouldn’t have gotten there in time to save Murray if Beth hadn’t been able to stop the man who’d grabbed her.
“I didn’t repel him,” Beth said flatly. “I flipped him, and he went sailing over the railing. He fell straight down. Lily, he made the most horrible noise when he hit. It wasn’t loud, but it…I keep hearing it.”
Lily nodded. Beth would remember that sound all her life.
“I feel horrible when I think about it, and I can’t stop thinking about it, and I’m not at all sorry I did it, and that doesn’t make sense! And even though I hope that man doesn’t die, that’s really all about me. I don’t want to have killed someone. So I hope he doesn’t die, but not because I really want him to live.”
“Do you think you’re supposed to?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”
“You do. You think you’re all uprooted, but plenty of you is still rooted nice and deep. You just can’t see that for all the debris.” And that clearly had sailed right past Beth, judging by the confusion on her face. “You think we could sit down for a few minutes?”