I kneel and put my hands together because, perhaps, this is one of those times.
I have blood and bits of brain on me. I am covered in violence. But I bow my head and I pray, a constant, desperate murmur.
"Okay, so Matt gets taken from me, and my daughter, and my best friend. I get carved up and horribly scarred and have nightmares that make me wake up screaming. I spend six months in pain, wanting to die. Bonnie is mute because of an unreal horror some psycho visited on her. Oh yeah, and Elaina, one of the best people I know, a woman I love, has cancer." I pause to wipe a tear from my eye with a shaking hand.
"With all that, I've been dealing. Took me a little while, but I've been dealing." A tear I missed runs down my cheek. I clench my hands until they hurt. "But this. No. No way. This is too much. Not Callie. So, here's the deal. You ready?" I can hear the wretchedness and pleading in my voice. "Keep her alive, and you can do whatever you want to me. Anything. Blind me. Cripple me. Give me cancer. Burn down my house, fire me from the FBI in disgrace. Make me insane. Kill me. But keep her alive. Please."
My voice cracks then, and so do I. Something inside me breaks. The pain of it makes me pitch forward, and I have to put my hands out to catch myself. I'm on all fours, and I watch as tears rain down on the chapel tile. "You want me to crawl?" I whisper. "You want to have someone, ten someones, rape and cut on me again? Fine. Just keep her alive."
There isn't any answer, or even the hint of one. This doesn't bother me. I didn't expect a response. I just needed to say it. Call it talking to God, begging Allah, or just envisioning a goal. Whatever. I needed to plead with the universe to spare Callie. I needed to show that I was willing to give up anything, everything, to save my friend. Just in case it might make a difference.
I walk back out of the chapel to the waiting room. I'd taken some time to try and pull myself together, but I still feel jumbled and shocky and broken. I know that I should be here for my people right now. That's my function. My place. What a leader does. "Any word?" I ask. I'm proud of myself. My voice is steady.
"Not yet," Alan replies, morose.
I look at them all. James looks grim. Leo is pacing back and forth. Alan is as helpless as I've ever seen him. Only Elaina and Bonnie seem calm, which amazes me. They were the ones most recently victimized. You never know where strength is going to come from until it happens. I smell the sterile smell of this place, hear the little "whooshing"
sounds and beeps that always fill a hospital. So quiet. Like a library where people bleed and die.
I walk over and sit next to Bonnie. "How are you doing, honey?"
She nods, and then shakes her head in the negative. It takes me a minute to get it. Yes, I'm fine, no, you don't need to worry about me, that's what she's telling me.
"Good," I murmur.
The door to the waiting room bursts open, and AD Jones is there. He looks frantic.
"Where is she? Is she okay? What happened?"
I stand up, walk over to him. Clickety-clack on the hospital tiles, I notice with the part of me that's still dazed and numb. "She's in surgery, sir."
He regards me for a long moment. "What's her status?"
"The bullet entered the upper chest. Nine millimeter. No exit wound. She lost a lot of blood and they rushed her into surgery. That's all we know." Concise, I think. Crisp, clean, and efficient. I suppress a little bubble of hysteria. Tiny bubbles in the whine . . . He looks at me, his face turning red. I'm appalled at the level of rage I see in his eyes, because it's not something I've ever associated with this man. It dampens the craziness that's percolating inside me. "How long has she been in surgery?" he snaps.
"Two hours."
He turns away from me, a sudden motion. Paces. Whips back, stabbing a finger in my direction. "Listen and listen good, Smoky. I have two dead agents, and another one in surgery. None of you, and I mean none of you, is to be alone from this point forward. If that means some of you have to bunk together until this is over, that's what happens. You don't go to the bathroom or wipe your nose without having someone with you. Got it?"
"Yes, sir."
"No more casualties. Do you hear me, Smoky? No more! "
I take his rage, bend to the storm of it. This is his version of me in the car with Tommy. This is him venting about Joseph Sands. This is him caring. I empathize.
The storm passes, he deflates. A hand comes up to his forehead. I recognize the short struggle. The same one I'd had just moments before. He is the boss. Time to be the boss.
"Let's regroup while we're waiting. Bring me up-to-date."
I fill him in on the arrest of one half of the Jack Jr. duo. I recount the phone call from Elaina, the guy I killed in the parking lot. What happened at Alan's.
"Where's the guy you shot in the hand?"
"He's here," I say. "He's in surgery too. They're trying to reattach his fingers."
"Fuck him," AD Jones snarls.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Bonnie nodding in agreement. It dismays me.
"The other three?" he asks. "All deceased?"
"Yeah."
"By who?"
Who killed them, he means. This will have to be accounted for at some point. Every bullet. "I killed the guy in the parking lot. Elaina shot one of the guys in her house. Alan and Callie killed the other guy, the one with the gun."
AD Jones looks over at Elaina. His eyes have softened. "I'm sorry," he says. Sorry you, a civilian, had to kill a man, he's telling her. She understands.
"Thank you."
"And we think these are all little Jack Jr. proteges?"
"There's not much doubt of that, sir."
"What about the suspect you caught tonight? This is one of them?
For sure?"
"It's not a hundred percent until either he or the evidence says he is, but--yeah . . . it fits."
He nods in approval. "That's good. Real good." He's quiet for a moment, mulling it all over. Looking at each of us. When he speaks again, his voice is softer. "Listen. We're all going to wait here and see if she comes out of this in one piece. We're going to hope she does. When it's over, whether she's fine or not, we're going to go back to work. Get mad first, get sad later."
There are no words of dissent. All I see is a kind of grim resolution. He seems to see it too, because he nods. "Okay, then."
Okeydoke artichoke, I think, another little hysterical bubble making it past my internal force fields. I feel unsteady and sit back down. Someone's cell phone is ringing. Everyone checks, and then I see Tommy putting his to his ear. I'd almost forgotten about him. He is the outsider, and he has pulled away from all of us, settling in to wait.
"Aguilera." He frowns. "Who is this?"
I see a terrible calm come over him. There's nothing relaxed about it, nothing relaxed at all. No, he wants to kill whoever is on the other end of that phone. He looks once at me. "Hang on for a moment."
He walks over to me, holding one hand over the mouthpiece.
"It's him."
I leap out of the hospital seat, followed by almost everyone else. The bubbles are gone, replaced by the bright white light of shock. "What?
You mean Jack Jr.?" I feel as incredulous as I sound.
"Yep. He asked to talk to you."
A zillion different thoughts shoot through my head. This is a complete break in his routine; it doesn't make sense. "Any chance of a trace?" I'm asking Tommy as the resident expert on electronic surveillance.
"If it's not set up already, no."
I'm lost, for just a moment.
AD Jones sighs. "Talk to him, Smoky. Only thing you can do."
I hold out my hand and take the phone. After a single deep breath to steady myself, I put it to my ear. "This is Smoky."
"Special Agent Barrett! How are you?" He's using some kind of electronic device to change and disguise his voice. It sounds like I'm having a conversation with a robot.