Ghost sat a yard away looking like he was unhappy to have had his fun interrupted. His white pelt was streaked with blood, but he didn’t appear to be seriously hurt. I stood over the shooter and looked down at him.
“What’s his status?”
Khalid rocked back on his heels. “He’s lost a lot of blood, but we’ve stabilized him for transport.”
“Put him in the back of the TacV. Do not transport him until I say so. I need to ask him some questions, but we need privacy. Is he able to talk?”
The shooter answered that one himself. He glared up at me and said, “Fuck you.”
I smiled at him.
Chapter Fifty-six
Starbucks
Southampton, Pennsylvania
December 19, 6:03 P.M. EST
While the shooter was being loaded, I popped the lock on my Explorer, found a plastic container of Wet Ones, and did a quick job of cleaning and examining Ghost. He had some minor cuts from flying debris and a splinter thick as a coffee stirrer gouged into his back. I told him to sit and be still and I pulled it out. Ghost whined and even bared a tooth at me, but it was all show. He braved it out, and luckily the splinter had gone in at an angle so it stuck mostly in the rubbery top skin, missing the real meat and muscle below. The cut didn’t even bleed much. I put a pad on it and wound some surgical gauze around his barrel chest.
“You’ll live, fella.”
Ghost used his “I’m dying, please be kind” face on me, so I gave him a couple of Snausages and emptied a bottle of spring water into his plastic bowl. My hands were shaking so badly I spilled half of it.
Ghost licked my hand and looked into my eyes for a moment before he bent and began lapping up the water. Yeah, the best of friends, no doubt.
My phone rang and I sat on the ground to take the call. Church.
“Ten shooters. Nine dead, one in DMS custody, and—”
He cut me off. “How is Circe? Is she injured?”
“No. In fact, she took out one of the shooters.”
There was a long silence. “She killed him?”
“Yes. But listen, there’s more. Your friend Marty Hanler … he’s gone, Boss. He went down in the initial attack. He never saw it coming, and I doubt he felt anything.”
Church was silent.
How did a guy like him process that kind of news? I’ve buried a lot of loved ones over the years and I’ve had to eat a lot of my own pain, but I also have had friends, like Rudy, my dad and my brother, and for a while Grace to help me deal.
Who did Church have?
All he said was, “That is unfortunate.”
Then he changed his tone, shifting into a “business as usual” mode that I found disconcerting.
He said, “Talk to that prisoner. Find out what he knows.”
“I can’t do that with a lot of civilians around.”
“Then do it in the air. I’m sending a Chinook from Willow Grove. Rendezvous with it in Tamanend Park. It’s two miles up Route 232.”
“Copy that.”
“Is the prisoner stable enough for interrogation?”
“Probably, but he’s a pro. He’s not going to talk—”
“Captain,” Church snapped, “I’m not asking for an estimate on how difficult it is for you to do your job. People are dying and he has information we need. Surely some solutions will occur to you.”
He hung up.
Ouch.
I WAS JUST about to climb into the back of the DMS TacV when Circe came out of the ruined Starbucks, wiping her hands with a wad of paper napkins. Her hair was in disarray and there were bloodstains on her clothes. Ghost wagged his tail at her. Guess he forgave her for being a cat person.
“How are you?” I asked. It was one of those insanely lame questions we ask when nothing more sensible occurs to us.
She shrugged, then shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“You did good work back there,” I said.
Saying that caused a visible change in her. One moment she was a doctor who had spent the last twenty minutes struggling to save lives—she had been surrounded by death and blood, but to a degree she was in a known world and in the center of her own power—then my words jarred her back to the moment before she had entered the coffeehouse. She looked down at the powder burns on her hand. Circe had the calluses of someone who spent regular hours on a pistol range, and she’d handled her gun with professional skill and accuracy. Even so, her face went paler still and her mouth twisted into sickness.
“I don’t understand this,” she said. “Why did they do this?”
“That’s what I intend to find out.”
“I mean … why hit us? We’re not even close to anything yet.”
Her chest hitched as if she was fighting a sob. Or struggling to swallow bile that had boiled up into her throat.
“Where’d you get the gun?” I asked.
“It’s mine.”
“You had it on the plane?”
“Yes. I’m cleared to carry because of my work with Sea of Hope. I have to be ready to fly anywhere at a moment’s notice. Hugo Vox and Mr. Church cleared it for me.”
“You learn how to shoot at T-Town?”
She nodded and brushed a tear from her eye.
“Is this the first time you shot someone?” I asked gently.
She nodded again. “I’ve fired I don’t know how many rounds at the combat ranges … but … but …”
Suddenly her color changed from white to green. She abruptly spun away from me, ran to the side of the building, and threw up in a trash can. I tried to comfort her, but she gave a violent shake of her head and I backed off.
Ghost gave me a “smooth move” look and whined a little as Circe continued to cough up her fear and disgust and—if she was as human as the rest of us—self-loathing.
I understood that. No matter how much you hate someone, no matter how justified you are in pulling the trigger, at the end of the day there are only three possible emotional reactions to killing another human being. You either like it, in which case you shouldn’t ever be allowed to touch a gun again. Or you feel nothing, in which case the words “cry for help” should be tattooed on your forehead and they should lead you away to a nice, comfy therapist’s couch. Or you feel like you just committed an unforgivable sin. After the moment is over, as you stand there feeling the adrenaline ooze out of your pores and the cordite stink of discharged rounds mixes with the coppery smell of blood, you feel the enormity of it. You took a life.
Circe had shooter’s calluses. She had to have prepared for this moment.
That preparation saved lives, but you absolutely cannot fully prepare a person for the reality of having ended a human life. But the fact that it appalled Circe was proof of a heart and mind that was not already inured to basic humanity or corrupted by a disregard for the sanctity of all life.
I wanted to tell Circe this, but this wasn’t the time. She wouldn’t be able to hear it now. Right now she needed to survive the reality of the event, and that would add a layer of callus on her soul.
Damn.
“I got this,” said a voice, and I turned to see DeeDee. She closed on Circe and put a sisterly hand on her shoulder. A lot has been said about “brothers in arms.” In the twenty-first century we’re going to have to broaden that view to include sisters in arms. I backed off and then turned toward the TacV, where my suspect waited.
Interlude Thirty-eight
The Milhaus Estate
Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts