All Our Yesterdays (13 page)

“James!” I call. “James!”

“Marina!” He spots me in the crowd and waves me over, and the officers surrounding him part to let me through.

“Are you okay?” I ask. “What happened?”

He looks a little dazed, but unharmed. “Someone shot at the hospital.”

Finn’s caught up to me and hears him. “Oh my God.”

I shove him. “See! I told you. I
saw
them shoot at him.”

An officer standing at James’s side abruptly stops speaking into his radio. “Excuse me, miss, you said you saw the shooter?”

“Yes, I was watching out the window.” I turn back to James. “Are you okay? You’re not hurt?”

“I’m fine,” he says. “You’re white as a sheet, though. Are
you
okay?”

I nearly laugh, but it comes out as a kind of strangled sob, and I throw my arms around his neck. Even with my eyes closed, the world is still spinning. I bring a hand up to his head to hold him tight and feel something warm and slick between my fingers.

“Miss, what did the shooter look like?”

I pull away and look down at my hand. It’s smeared with blood, vivid red against my skin.

“He’s bleeding.” My voice comes out small and weak, and I have to work to raise it. “Someone help, he’s bleeding!”

James touches his dark head and pulls back bloody fingers with a bemused expression. The swarm descends on him once more and sweeps him off into a nearby exam room. I go to follow, but the agent who was giving orders earlier blocks my path.

“Miss, I’m Special Agent Armison,” the wall of a man dressed in black says. “I need to know now: what did the shooter look like?”

Em

“Damn it!” I slam my hand against the side of a brick building six blocks from the hospital. It stings, but I deserve it.

“It’s okay, Em.”

I pace back and forth. “It’s not, and you know it! That was our chance, and I blew it. I can’t
believe
I missed.”

“Did you miss,” Finn asks, “or did you jerk away?”

“I-I don’t know.” I clench my fists until my nails bite into my palms. “I really don’t.”

“It’s okay. We’ve still got two days before the doctor comes back for us. All we have to do is follow him and wait for another moment when he’s alone.”

I shrug off the hand Finn’s put on my shoulder and lean my forehead against the rough wall. “I just . . . I saw his face. And he was
James
again, you know?”

“I know.”

“And whatever that was that happened to me . . .” I turn to look at him. “What the hell was that?”

“As soon as you pulled the trigger, your eyes went blank, and you started blinking like crazy.” He shakes his head, like he’s trying to stop himself from picturing it. “You couldn’t hear or see me. It was like you were
gone
.”

“I saw the first time I met James,” I say. “It was like I was living it again.”

“Oh man,” he whispers. He reaches for me again, but stops himself. “I’m sorry.”

“He just . . .” I bite the inside of my lip. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“Not yet.” Finn takes my face in his hands, so gently that he must think anything more will break me. “But we both know it won’t last. The James we knew is already gone.”

For the first time in months, I cry. Not the girlish tears I used to shed, sniffling and pouting, letting the tears roll down my cheeks like someone in a movie, but deep, guttural sobs that shake my whole body.

Finn holds me tight, like he’s afraid I’ll shake myself to pieces and his arms are the only thing that can hold me together.

I think maybe he’s right.

Marina

“The shooter,” Agent Armison says again. “What did the shooter look like?”

“I . . .” I can’t think with James on the other side of that wall, bleeding, maybe dying. I try to follow him, like I’m caught in the pull of his gravity, but the agent steps in front of me. “I-I don’t know. . . .”

“Yes, you do.” Agent Armison bends his face close to mine, so that his eyes are the only thing I see. “Focus, now. What did the shooter look like?”

I have to do this. It’s the only way they’ll catch the people who shot at James. But how do I say it? How do I tell him what I saw? “There were two of them. . . .”

He gets on his radio. “This is Armison. Stand by for description.” He looks back at me. “Okay. What did they look like?”

“One was a g-girl, and one was a boy,” I say. “They looked like . . .”

“Like what?”

“They looked just like”—I turn to Finn—“the two of us.”

Agent Armison stares at me for a second. “You mean they were about your age? Had your same hair color, what?”

“No, I mean they looked
exactly
like the two of us. Maybe a little older, but otherwise . . .” I stop at his expression. “I
know
it sounds crazy, but—”

He gets back on his radio. “This is Armison. Disregard my last.”

“No, don’t!” I say. “You have to catch them!”

“Marina . . .” Finn touches my elbow.

“Miss, you’ve had a shock—”

“No!”
I pull my arm away from Finn. “I’m not imagining things; that’s what I saw!”

“I know. It’s okay,” Agent Armison says. “Let’s go into one of the rooms here, and I’ll ask you some more questions, all right?”

“What’s the point?” I say. “You won’t believe me. Is it even legal to question me without my parents here?”

“You’re not under arrest, Miss . . . ?”

“Marchetti,” Finn oh-so-helpfully supplies.

“Come with me, Miss Marchetti,” Agent Armison says, “and you can explain to me exactly what you saw. Your friend can come with us, too.”

“He’s not my friend,” I say, but I go because I can see there’s no getting out of this.

We’re at the door of the employee break room where Agent Armison is leading us when Luz and Vivianne find us. Vivianne, who’s a lawyer but also the closest thing James has to family right now, is clearly torn about where she’s needed most. She turns to Luz.

“Can you go be with James?” she says. “And come get me if he’s badly hurt or asks for me?”

Luz nods, and I point her toward where they took James. At least someone will be with him. Armison leads us into the employee break room, but my mind follows Luz to the exam room down the hall. If James isn’t okay, I don’t know what I’ll do. I once saw a woman on
Good Morning America
who was stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife by an ex-boyfriend and walked around the mall, totally oblivious, for an hour before someone in the food court suggested she go to the hospital. If that could happen, maybe James was shot and didn’t even know it.

Finn is less rattled. “It was just a cut or something, M. Don’t worry so much. It’ll give you wrinkles.”

“Maybe you should worry a little more,” I snap. “I know this is hard for you to grasp, Finn, but some of us actually
care
about things and can’t just mock everything—”

“Hey.” Finn’s eyes flare. “I care about things. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He brushes past me to sit at the lunch table and leaves me standing in his wake. Agent Armison gestures for Vivianne and me to sit, draws a fancy fountain pen from his breast pocket that looks out of place in his big square hands, and flips open a small notebook.

He takes down our names and basic information, and then says, “Okay, Miss Marchetti. Now, tell me again what you saw.”

The gentleness in his voice sets my teeth on edge. It’s the way you talk to children or mental patients.

“I was watching James out of the window.” I bite off each word. “I heard a shot and looked into the parking lot. There was a boy and a girl running away, and when they turned back, I saw their faces. They looked just like Finn and me. Same build, same hair, same
faces
.”

Armison turns to Finn and Vivianne. “Did either of you see anything?”

They both shake their heads. They were right there, but I was the only one at the window. I’d give anything for one of them to have been standing with me so they could back me up.

“Have you seen anything else strange today, Miss Marchetti?” Agent Armison asks gently, like a wrong word might break me.

“No!” I bang my fist against the table. “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true! You have to believe me!”

Vivianne puts a hand on my knee. “It’s okay, Marina.”

“I believe you’re sincere, Miss Marchetti,” the agent says, “but you’re under a tremendous amount of stress. The mind reacts to that in funny ways sometimes.”

“Fine.” I press my lips together to stop the sob of frustration I feel rising in my throat. “But they’re out there, and they’re getting away because you won’t listen to me.”

Agent Armison looks down at his notepad, unable to meet my eyes, and I feel Finn shift in the chair beside me. Good. I
hope
I’m making them uncomfortable.

“Now, what about earlier, when the congressman was shot?” Agent Armison says. “You were both there, correct? What did you see?”

I cross my arms over my chest and don’t say anything. I don’t have any useful information, anyway, since all I saw was what everyone else did: Nate falling to the floor, people scattering. Of course, I could have gotten the shooter’s fingerprints and Social Security number and it wouldn’t make a difference to this guy.

Finn’s more inclined to be helpful than I am. “I already spoke to one of the agents at the hotel about this,” he says, “but I’m positive the gunman shot from inside the fire exit in the back right corner of the room.”

Vivianne bends her head and closes her eyes. I wonder if what she’s imagining is even worse than what we saw.

“A few other people and I tried to run after him,” Finn continues. “The door led to a service hallway, but it was already empty by the time I got in there, and there were probably a dozen doors going off to different parts of the hotel. We checked a few that weren’t locked, but the shooter was long gone.”

Surprise clouds my anger for a moment. Finn told me he ran after the gunman, but I guess the reality of that didn’t hit me until this moment. While I was cowering in my chair, unable to do any good for anyone, Finn was chasing after a would-be killer.

“Did you see the gunman?” Armison asks.

Finn shakes his head. “Another guy said he got a glimpse of him. Dark clothes, baseball cap over his face. That was it. How was the shooter able to get through the Secret Service?”

“We’re investigating that,” Armison says as he makes a note on his pad. “Do you know of anyone who’d have a reason to want to hurt the Shaws?”

“Of course not,” I say.

Vivianne shakes her head. “No one.”

“Well . . .” Finn says.

I gape at him. “You have
got
to be kidding me.”

“Maybe Nate,” Finn says. “Just because he’s a congressman.”

“Fine. Some right-wing loony maybe, but—”

“But not James. No one could have a grudge against James.”

I forgive him, just a little.

“It
is
possible the second shooting was only a coincidence,” Armison says.

“That’s a hell of a coincidence, isn’t it?” Finn says.

“I know it seems that way, but it would have been extremely difficult for someone from that distance to recognize Mr. Shaw in the dark, wearing hospital scrubs. I’m inclined to think it was a mentally unbalanced person looking for attention, or possibly some gang activity. We’ll check out the security cameras from the parking lot, and until we have whoever it was in custody, the Capitol Police will assign a protection detail to stay with Mr. Shaw and make sure he’s safe.”

“Are those all your questions?” Vivianne asks.

“Can we see James?” I add.

“We’re done for now. You’ll have to check with the doctors.”

Finn and Vivianne shake the agent’s hand across the table, but I’m already at the door. The same agent who’d been guarding the waiting room upstairs is now standing in front of Exam Room A, and he nods at me and waves me in when I approach.

Inside, James is sitting on one of the beds, his feet dangling off the edge like a little boy. He’s pale but beautifully whole, and my stomach unclenches. Luz is patting his hand, and a doctor is bandaging his scalp above the left ear.

James gives me a wan smile. “Looks like I got hit by a shard of brick. Not very dramatic.”

“That’s okay,” Finn says, coming up behind me. “Boring suits you.”

“We gave him a couple of sutures just to be safe,” the doctor tells Vivianne, stripping her gloves. “You’re all set, James.”

“Can I see my brother now?” he asks.

“Let me call upstairs to check.”

The doctor gets on a phone attached to the wall, and I take a step closer to James. I touch his head lightly. “Does it hurt?”