She hears the shot piercing through the silent room—and she jumps, reliving the moment right then and there, hearing the breaking glass as it shattered to the ground.
She says that she sees him fall. She sees his limbs become flaccid, and plummet to the ground. She remembers that his eyes failed, his body jerked in ways beyond his control. There was blood on her hands, her clothes. “There’s blood everywhere,” she sobs desperately, groping at the ground. Dr. Rhodes says that Mia is experiencing an episode of psychosis. I push the doctor’s hands away from me, wanting nothing more than to soothe my daughter. I am making my way to her, to Mia, when Gabe reaches for my arm and stops me.
“Everywhere. Red blood everywhere. Wake up!” Mia smacks her hands against the ground and then pulls her knees into herself and begins to rock, furiously. “Wake up! Oh, God, please wake up. Don’t leave me.”
Gabe
Christmas Eve
I’m not the first one into the cabin. I spot Hammill’s fat face in the crowd. I grab him by the collar and ask what the fuck that was all about. On a normal day he could kick my ass if he wanted to. But this isn’t a normal day; today I’m a man possessed.
“He was gonna kill her.”
He claims Thatcher didn’t leave them a choice.
“Or so you say.”
“This isn’t your jurisdiction, asshole.”
Some wannabe—looking no more than nineteen, maybe twenty years old—comes from the cabin and says, “Bastard’s dead,” and Hammill responds with a thumbs-up. Someone claps. This is apparently the sniper, a kid too stupid to know better. I remember when I was nineteen. The only thing in the world I wanted was to get my hands on a gun. Now the very thought of using it scares the shit out of me.
“What’s your problem, Hoffman?”
“I needed him alive.”
They’re all making their way inside. An ambulance makes its way through the snow, sirens blaring. I watch the red and blue, red and blue, screaming through the dark night. EMTs unload, trying their damndest to steer a stretcher through the snow.
Hammill follows his guys in. They all hike up the stairs and into the cabin. There’s a floodlight illuminating the inside until someone has the common sense to flip on a lamp. I hold my breath.
I’ve never met Mia Dennett before in my life. I doubt that she’s ever heard my name. She doesn’t have a clue that for three months now, she’s been the only thought on my mind, the face I see when I wake up in the morning, the face I see when I go to bed.
She emerges from the cabin, marshaled by Hammill, his grip tight enough she might as well be cuffed. She’s covered in blood, her hands and clothing, even her hair. It stains the strands of blond hair red. Her skin is a frightening white, translucent in the obnoxious glow of the floodlight, which no one has the courtesy to turn off. She’s a ghost, a phantom, with an empty expression on her face; the lights are on but no one’s home. Tears freeze to her cheeks as she slips down the stairs and Hammill jerks her back to her feet.
“Me first,” Hammill vows as he leads Mia away from me. Her eyes graze over my face. What I see in her is Eve, thirty years ago, before James Dennett, before Grace and Mia, before me.
Son of a bitch.
I’d kick his fucking ass if I wasn’t so worried about frightening Mia. I don’t like the way he touches her.
Inside I find the corpse of Colin Thatcher sprawled awkwardly across the floor. Once or twice as a street cop, I helped pull a stiff from a wreck. There’s nothing like it in the world. The feel of dead flesh: hard and cold the instant the soul leaves it. The eyes, whether open or closed, lose their life. His eyes are open. His flesh is cold. There’s more blood than I’ve ever seen. I force the lids down and say, “It’s nice to finally meet you, Colin Thatcher.”
I think of Kathryn Thatcher in that shitty nursing home. I see the look on her deteriorating face when I break the news.
Hammill’s guys have already gotten to work: crime scene photos, fingerprinting, gathering evidence.
I don’t know what to make of the place. It’s an inadequate living, at best. The place reeks. I don’t know what I had expected. A medieval head crusher and knee splitter? Chains and flails? Handcuffs, if nothing more? What I see is an ugly little place with a gosh-darn Christmas tree. My own apartment is more dreadful than this.
“Check this out,” someone says, letting a parka drop to the floor. I stand, my legs cramping. Into the Formica someone has carved the words We Were Here. “What do you make of it?”
I let my fingers run over the words. “I don’t know.”
Hammill comes into the cabin. His voice is loud enough to wake the dead. “She’s all yours,” he says to me as he gives Thatcher a little kick—just in case.
“What’d she say?” I ask for conversation’s sake. I don’t really give a shit what she told him.