Every August they hiked to the highest spot in Jackson, waiting to see the Perseids, the meteor shower that made the sky look like it was weeping. They’d pull an all-nighter, talking about everything from which Power Ranger was expendable to how you find the person you want to spend your life with.
Hugh had had trouble with that one. In the first place, his judgment had been off; Annabelle now lived in France with a guy ten years her junior, a master baker who competed in the Bread Olympics, as if that was a thing. In the second place, the person he wanted to spend his life with had been placed into his arms by a labor and delivery nurse fifteen years ago.
Now, Hugh glanced over his shoulder. Captain Quandt tilted his head, speaking into a radio. “If you don’t get him to meet you partway, my snipers can’t get a clean shot,” he said to Hugh.
“Not my problem,” Hugh replied, moving forward.
“Hugh!”
He stopped.
“You don’t have to be a hero,” Quandt said quietly.
Hugh met his gaze. “I’m not. I’m a father.”
He squared his shoulders and started toward the clinic door. Behind him, the air was stale with heat; the only sound was the buzzing of mosquitoes.
He knocked. A moment passed, and then he could hear furniture scraping the floor.
The door swung open, and there stood Wren. “Daddy,” she cried, and she took a step toward him, but was jerked back inside. Hugh reluctantly tore his eyes away from his daughter to look, for the first time, at the man he had been talking to for five hours.
George Goddard was slight, around five-ten. He had a five o’clock shadow and a bandage wrapped around the hand that was holding a gun to Wren’s temple. His eyes were so light they appeared transparent. “George,” Hugh said evenly, and Goddard nodded.
Hugh was aware of the pulse leaping in his neck. He tried to keep himself calm, to not grab Wren and run, which could be disastrous. “Why don’t you step out here, and let her go?”
George shook his head. “Show me your weapon.”
Hugh held up his hands. “Don’t have one.”
The other man laughed. “You think I’m an idiot?”
After a hesitation, Hugh reached down and hiked up his pants leg, revealing the pistol he had strapped there. Keeping his eyes on George the entire time, he tugged the weapon free and held it off to the side.
“Drop it,” George ordered.
“Let go of her and I will.”
For a beat, nothing happened. June bugs paused midflight, the breeze died, Hugh’s heart missed a stitch. Then George shoved Wren forward. Hugh caught her up with his left arm, leaving the right outstretched with the weapon dangling. “It’s okay,” he whispered into his daughter’s hair.
She smelled of fear and sweat, the way she had when she was little and woke up from a nightmare. He drew back, threading the fingers of his free hand with one of hers. On the edge of her left palm was a little black star, inked like a tattoo at the juncture of her thumb and pointer. It felt like a sign. “Wren.” Hugh smiled at her, as best he could. “Go on now. Walk to the officers under that tent.”
She turned and looked at the command center, then back at him. She realized in that moment that he wasn’t coming with her. “Daddy, no.”
“Wren. Let me finish this.”
She took a breath, and nodded. Very slowly, she started to back away from him, toward the tent. None of the other officers stepped forward to swoop her to safety, as they had the other hostages. This was on Hugh’s order. Before, George had been hidden behind the security of his door, but now, he’d feel vulnerable. Seeing an approaching cop might trigger him, make him shoot in self-defense.
When Wren was a few steps away, George spoke. “Put down the gun.” He took his own firearm and pointed it at Hugh’s chest.
Hugh bent, slowly letting the weapon slip from his fingers. “All right, George,” he said. “What do you want to do, now? Your call.”
He saw the gunman’s eyes flicker around the rooftops, and prayed that if the snipers were in position, they were well concealed.
“You told me you’d do anything for your daughter,” George said.
Hugh felt his throat tighten. He did not want George talking about Wren. He didn’t even want him thinking about her. He risked a peripheral glance; she was maybe halfway to the command center.
“You keep saying we’re not that different,” George continued. “But you don’t really believe that.”
No matter what Hugh had said to gain George’s trust, he was well aware that there was and always would be a seminal difference between them, and it had to do with morality. Hugh would never take a life because of his own beliefs.
He realized with a tiny shock that exact conviction was what had brought George here today.
“George, this can still end well,” Hugh said. “Think of your daughter.”
“She’ll never look at me the same after this. You don’t get it.”
“Then make me understand.”
He expected George to reach for him, to pull him back into the clinic, where he could barricade the door and use Hugh as a bargaining chip. Or kill him.
“All right,” George said.
The twilight was bleeding, it was the seam between day and night. Hugh saw the gun move. He reached for his pistol, sheer habit, and remembered that he was unarmed.
But George’s gun was no longer pointed at Hugh. It was aimed at Wren—still twenty feet shy of the tent—a moving target Hugh had arrogantly believed he could keep safe.
—
WHEN HIS DAUGHTER WAS YOUNGER, George had read to her from the Bible, instead of fairy tales. Some stories, he knew, just don’t have happy endings. Better for Lil to understand that love was about sacrifice. That what looked like carnage, from a different angle, might be a crusade.
We are all capable of things we never imagined.
Well, Detective, he thought. You asked me to make you understand and I did. You and I, we’re not that different.
Not the hero and the villain, not the pro-life activist and the abortion doctor, not the cop and the killer. We are all drowning slowly in the tide of our opinions, oblivious that we are taking on water every time we open our mouths.
He wished he could tell his daughter that he realized this, now.
He pulled the trigger.
Four p.m.
AFTER HOURS OF TALKING WITH THE SHOOTER OVER A SECURE LINE, Hugh had been lulled into complacency. He had mistakenly assumed that it was possible to reason with a madman.
But then there had been another gunshot, and Hugh’s only thought was of his daughter.
When Wren was two, he had taken her along when he went down to fix a little dock that sat out behind Bex’s property, on the edge of a weed-choked pond. He was hammering treated wood into place while she sat on the grass, playing with a toy her aunt had given her. One minute she had been laughing, chattering to herself, and the next there was a splash.
Hugh hadn’t even thought. He jumped off the dock into the water, which was so murky and clogged that he couldn’t see a foot in front of him. His eyes burned as he struggled to spot anything that might be Wren. He dove over and over, his hands outstretched and spinning through weeds, until finally he brushed against something solid. He broke through the water with Wren wrapped in one arm, laid her on the dock, fitted his mouth against hers, and breathed for her until she choked up the swamp.
Hugh had screamed at Wren, who’d burst into tears. But his anger was misdirected. He was furious at himself, for being stupid enough to take his eyes off of her.
There had been a gunshot, and Hugh was in that muddy pond again, blindly trying to save his daughter, and it was all his fault.
There had been a gunshot, one that struck his sister, and he hadn’t been there.
There was a gunshot, and what if that meant he was too late, again?
Captain Quandt was immediately at his side. “McElroy,” he said. “There’s active gunfire. You know the protocol.”
The protocol was to engage rather than wait and suffer the loss of more victims. It was also risky as hell. When gunmen felt threatened, they started panicking, firing at random.