“Damn chest hurts like a son of a bitch.”
“I know, I know,” I soothed. “They’ll take care of you.”
“Asshole got my best suit.” Wilson’s gaze drifted away, turned distant. “Wife always said I’d be buried in it.”
“Stop.” I caught his fingers with mine and held tight. Because I’d seen the ruin underneath his coat and knew: some things you couldn’t fix.
“My son,” he said. “You should talk to him.”
“I’m going to bring the EMTs to you,” I told him. “Five minutes. Promise you won’t move until I come back.”
“We gotta find Lucy.”
“We will. But for now, I need you to stay here while I get the paramedics. Okay? Promise?”
“Lucy.”
“Try to be a hero, you’ll just slow us down.”
He closed his eyes. Color leeched from his face as I watched.
“Wilson? Frank! Damn it, answer me.”
His cough came wet and deep.
“I’m thinking it’s not so bad,” he said. “Being a desk jockey.”
Thirty minutes later, I stood with Lieutenant Engel of the Denver PD and watched as the paramedics loaded Detective Frank Wilson, pale and sedated but still alive, into the back of an ambulance.
“We’ll take good care of him,” said one of the EMTs. A woman with dark curls and kind eyes.
“He has a boy,” I told her. “A son in Afghanistan.”
Sympathy surfaced in her eyes behind the professional calm. She gave my arm a squeeze, then climbed into the back.
The driver closed the doors and headed toward the cab.
“Wait,” I said. “Where are you taking him?”
“The K and G. He’s a cop, right?”
Denver Health Medical Center. Otherwise known as the Knife and Gun Club because they had the best trauma center. If you were a cop and the paramedics took you anywhere else, the first thing you did when you got there was look around for a priest.
The driver opened the door. “You need to go, too. You need a chest X-ray. And an MRI. You don’t want to be one of the walking wounded. A bomb can—”
“I know. I got it.”
Clyde and I waited by the gate with the lieutenant as the ambulance pulled away, a feathery plume of dust rising in its wake. When the driver reached the road, he hit the lights and siren and amped up the speed. I watched until the strobe of lights blended into the rush of traffic on the interstate.
“He’ll be all right,” Engel said. He didn’t meet my eyes.
“Sure,” I agreed.
“How about you? You gonna be—”
“I’m fine.” I shoved my hands in my pockets so he wouldn’t see them shaking.
“You’ll go to the hospital later?”
“Of course.”
But I wouldn’t. I’d been outdoors when the bomb detonated and I’d found shelter behind multiple structures before it blew. Which meant I was probably fine. And anyway, the kinds of brain injuries created from a bomb blast are generally subtle, long-lasting, and untreatable. At the hospital, they’d give me aspirin and a rabbit’s foot—equally effective.
Engel cleared his throat. “Get you some water?”
“And some for my dog. Thank you.”
Engel left, heading down the line of vehicles toward a canopy tent where paramedics were setting up a first aid station for what was likely to become command central in the search for Lucy Davenport. I found an empty patrol car and steadied myself against the driver’s door. My eyes burned hot and for a moment I worried my own terror would drive me down. It had been a long time since I’d had to face the aftermath of a bomb. I’d planned on making it forever.
No panty waists, Gonzo whispered in my ear. No fucking girlie yellow-bellied ninnies.
“Shove off,” I said. I’d handled myself just fine in Iraq. But maybe I didn’t have it anymore. I pushed away from the car and stood straight, ignoring the way my knees shook.
During the time the paramedics had been taking care of Wilson, motes of dust had begun drifting back to earth like startled birds returning to roost. In the thinning haze, law enforcement continued to arrive in a cacophony of noise. Flashing lights, blaring horns, the wail of sirens and the screech of tires. Doors and trunks opened, then slammed shut. Feet pounded, men shouted, radios squalled like abandoned children. All around were cops from Thornton and Denver, sheriff’s deputies from Adams and Weld Counties, a handful of departmental brass, and the requisite PR people. On the far side of the gate, the morgue guys chatted with a man I recognized as a forensics photographer—they stood near a series of folding tables where evidence would be collected. The Denver crime scene detectives were busy around their mobile-lab vehicle, and a hostage negotiation team wearing headsets and Kevlar waited on standby. A three-person bomb crew in heavy blast suits conferred a safe distance from the kilns, watching their bomb-disposal robot roll toward the door of one of the structures. Parked along the road was the GPR engineer—he’d be using ground-penetrating radar to scan the area near the kilns for Lucy or any other victims.
Further away, Thornton SWAT and their bomb-detecting K9s had spread through the complex, checking and clearing each space. Their voices, strong and masculine and confidence-inspiring, echoed among the structures as they called to each other.
All of this manpower, all of this investigative and forensic talent and sheer show of strength, should have made me feel better. But I looked at the silent, indifferent silos looming overhead and I thought about what I’d seen in that kiln. Thought about what Cohen had found in the Davenport home and the severity of Wilson’s wounds and the knowledge that all of us had arrived too late to save Samantha Davenport and maybe her daughter. And I ran hard into a truth I’d known since Iraq. You could throw everything you had at a problem—firepower, manpower, logistical support. You could get a lot of really smart people working on it. You could even get a lot of people to sacrifice their lives for it.
And, in the end, might be all you’ve got is the same problem and a higher body count.
Forget saving the world. Sometimes you can’t even save one small child.
I swiped at my eyes as Lieutenant Engel reappeared with a large bottle of water. He looked at my sweat-sheened face, and I could see the debate raging behind his eyes. Let her do her job or insist she go to the hospital? And from there take a quick hop over to the psych ward.
He passed me the bottle. “I tried to find a bowl for your partner there. They didn’t have anything.”
“I have a bowl in my bag. We’re good.”
“If you want to get to the hospital straightaway, we can get your full story later.”
Anger flared like the strike of a match. I looked down so he wouldn’t see the heat in my face. Staying near the bomb crater now would keep me from developing avoidance behaviors. Familiarity bred contempt—or at least acceptance. No different—I told myself—from getting back on a bicycle after a fall.
“I’ll wait,” I said.