Mount Mercy

He looked away. “It was just for a second.”

Every dormouse instinct in me begged me to let it go. Confronting people isn’t in my nature. But he needed to hear this.

I shook my head. “It’s not just that one time. When you faced off with Colt at the hospital, part of you wanted the fight. And the Congo. And Libya. All those warzones.” I took a deep breath. “I—I think part of you wants to die because you feel guilty about...them. And I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Corrigan stared at me, stunned at what I’d just blurted out.

I looked down at the table, heart thumping. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I probably should have been more subtle. I sort of skipped social skills 101.”

He just kept staring at me. Each time I dared to glance up, his expression had changed. He went from shock to fury and then to sadness and finally defeat. I couldn’t take that. I’ve made things worse! I kept my eyes fixed on the table.

Until a warm finger hooked me under the chin and lifted my head so that I was looking into his eyes. Eyes that had changed again to show deep affection...and hope.

“You’re not the one who’s fucked up, Beckett,” he said. He went silent for a moment. I could see him struggling, bracing himself to get the word out. I don’t know if he realized he was squeezing my hands, but I hoped it helped. “Yeah,” he said eventually. He looked almost surprised that he’d managed to say it. “Yeah,” he said again. “I did want—I did want to die. Sometimes.”

I had to fight past a huge lump in my throat to speak. “Did?”

He looked deep in my eyes for a long time before he finally nodded. He wanted to be sure and I think he wanted me to know he was sure. “Did.”

And he pulled me by the hands towards him and leaned forward and drew me into a slow, tender kiss. I could feel the cold wind lashing my cheeks and playing with my hair but it didn’t matter: a warm glow was pulsing through me, right down to my toes. And I understood something: he was my missing puzzle piece, the perfect balance for me, just as my mom had been to my dad.

When we broke the kiss, Martha was standing there next to us, plates in hand. She said nothing as she set them down, but she had a huge grin on her face.

We ate quickly, before the freezing air cooled the food too much, and it was fantastic: crispy strips of bacon that melted in your mouth, mounds of piping-hot, buttery scrambled eggs and huge mugs of steaming coffee. There’s something about a hot breakfast when you’re really, really cold. I watched Corrigan as I sipped my coffee, feeling the first stirrings of hope.

An alarm started to blare, a long continuous bell that I’d never heard before. As I looked up, the doors to the bank burst open. Wasn’t the bank closed?

It took me a second to register that the men pouring out of the bank all had guns. “Oh Jesus,” I whispered.

A police SUV had been cruising down the street. It screeched to a stop and Earl and his young partner Lloyd jumped out, guns drawn.

“Get down!” yelled Corrigan, even as he grabbed me around the waist and bore me to the ground.

And then the world became deafening gunfire and breaking glass as the shooting started.

38

Dominic

GUNFIGHTS always look so exciting in the movies. That’s because they don’t show the collateral damage. When you’re a bystander, it’s very, very different.

There were at least ten gunmen, some carrying bags in one hand and handguns in the other, some toting assault rifles. As they poured out of the bank and tried to cross the street, they came up against Earl and his young partner, Lloyd, firing from behind their SUV. So they fanned out instead, spreading the fight all the way down Main Street right when it was full of people going to work. My ears rang with the staccato chatter of gunfire. And then, between the shots, the screaming started.

I’d been under fire before, in the Congo, even taken a few bullets myself. I knew we had to get behind something, but we were caught out in the open: there was nothing. All we could do was to get down low and pray. A gunman ran past us and one of the cops fired at him and missed. I heard the bullets pass overhead and the plate glass window of the cafe came crashing down in a million glittering shards. The people inside began to run and scream, but there was nowhere to run: the place was too crowded for them to move.

I already had Beckett down on the freezing sidewalk and I was trying to cover every inch of her body with mine. My heart was slamming in my chest. What if she gets hit? What if I lose her? I knew the most dangerous thing in the world is someone firing a gun indiscriminately and right now, both sides were in a wild panic, spraying bullets at anything that moved. Earl and Lloyd were just small-town cops and probably hadn’t ever been under fire before: they were operating on instinct, scared out of their minds. And the gunmen just plain didn’t care.