Blood, Ash, and Bone (24 page)

He rubbed between his eyes. “I’m not sure I want this decision.”

“It’s yours regardless.”

He thought about it, then nodded. “When do I need to tell you?”

“Nine a.m. Will that be enough time?”

He did the math. “I can do that.”

***

When she’d gone, I took a long shower and changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt, then wrapped up in a hotel bathrobe. Trey was still at the desk. It was unusual to see him there in casual clothes, working past his bedtime. But he had a decision to make in the morning, and Trey did not do instant decisions. They only came at the end of a complex and comprehensive process.

I came up behind him and put my hands on his shoulders. “So what do you think you’ll decide?”

“That depends on what this program says.”

“What program?”

“Something I was working on with a professor at Georgia Tech, a sniper preference model.”

I peered at his computer. “What does it do?”

“It uses crime scene information and geospatial criteria to predict the next incident. We’ve only got one shooting to input, but snipers working outside of law enforcement or military assignments operate according to patterns. Higher preference for multiple escape routes, for example.”

“You think this one is police-trained?”

“The data suggest so. Which makes him predictable in certain ways, even if he’s operating asymmetrically.”

I knew that had broken him a little, the thought that one of his fellow peace officers could have turned into a murderer. I ran my thumbs along his trapezius, taut like power cables.

“Are you ready to talk about it?” I said.

He didn’t ask what I meant. Which meant it was already on his mind.

“It’s hard to talk about.”

“Do you want to?”

“No.” He kept typing, eyes on the computer. “But I’ll try. If you want me to. Because it wasn’t something I was hiding. I wasn’t lying to you. It’s something…different.”

I massaged slow deep circles over the middle of his back, the lats and obliques, hard and knotted now, resisting the pressure.

“I’m listening.”

He stopped typing and sat very still. “There was barricaded shooter scenario in a motel near I-85. I’d been on the scene for only a few minutes, not long enough to get a full briefing, but long enough to know that the negotiation team was in play. Their best analysis was that we were dealing with a potential suicide, possibly an SBC.”

“A what?”

“Sorry. Suicide by cop.”

He’d slipped into the vocabulary of the SWAT team leader. Even his sentences changed when he talked about that time in his life—surer, more fluid. I applied steady pressure across his shoulders, easy and sustained, so the hardened muscles wouldn’t fight me.

“It was a tricky set-up—nighttime, close range, multiple civilians, scene not completely secured. Even the .338s would have over-penetrated, and we hadn’t cleared the area fully. We were still gathering intel.”

I could envision the scene. I could see him screwing the scope on a rifle, calculating wind speed, humidity, ambient temperature. He’d have been in black urban tac gear, blending into the darkness.

“The negotiation team thought they could talk him down. They said the risk of collateral damage was high, and that he hadn’t yet demonstrated imminent threat. No hyper-vigilance, no antecedent behaviors.” Trey stared at the computer. “But none of us knew.”

“Knew what?”

“He had a hostage. His ex-wife. She was out of sight, tied to a chair, gagged. There never was a chance for negotiation. He was waiting for the TV news crew to arrive. When they did, he shot her once—point blank range to the chest—then turned the gun on himself.”

Trey stopped talking. I could feel the rise and fall of his respiration through my hands. I pictured him waiting outside the motel with the suspect in the crosshairs, his breath like a metronome, his heart rate stabilized. A study in practiced patience, poised for the signal, the clue, the moment. And then suddenly, spraying blood and panic and confusion.

“I had the shot, but not the orders,” he said. “So I waited. She died at the ER. He died on the scene.”

“Your bullet?”

“No. I could have taken the shot, but until the moment he shot her, the negotiation team thought a peaceful resolution was possible. I’d seen nothing to contradict that assessment.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t a bad call. It was just the wrong one.”

I pulled his face around so I could look him in the eyes. I’d never seen them haunted before. It was startling and disconcerting.

“You followed orders. Based on what anybody knew, they were good orders.”

“Yes. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the next call. And the next.” He exhaled slowly. “It got harder.”

“What did?”

He didn’t drop his eyes. “Waiting.”

I bit my lip. He didn’t need to explain any further. Of course he’d resigned. I would have expected nothing less of him. I put my arms around him slowly, then rested my head in the crook of his shoulder. He didn’t resist, but he didn’t respond either.

“This is where you hold me,” I said.

“Tai—”

“Deal with it and do what I said. I told you before, I’m not going anywhere. Get used to it.”

He did as instructed, solid and reliable. He was calm, yet I could sense the Under-Trey, the one that functioned simultaneously and in parallel with his more carefully-constructed counterpart. And they were somehow intertwined in one man. A man who was holding me very close, and who wasn’t letting go until I told him to do so.

Which I didn’t do for a very long time.

***

He reached for me in the night—wordless, raw, insistent, more submission than seduction. There was need in him, a deep well of it, and I slaked it as best I could with everything I had to offer.

Afterward, I lay on his chest, feeling his heart throb beneath my cheek. Not steady, not controlled. Fierce. Like an animal beating itself bloody against the bars of a cage.

Chapter Thirty-three

A little before seven in the morning, I rolled over to find his side of the bed cold and empty. I squinted into gray light—the bedroom was still, but not silent. In the next room, I could hear the soft tap-tap-tap of keystrokes, the dry-leaf rustle of paper.

I dragged on my robe and went in. Trey sat at his desk in his white shirt and black slacks, his jacket on the back of the chair.

I yawned. “What are you doing?”

“Inputting the final data.”

“What data?”

He handed me a piece of paper without looking up from the computer. It was the crime scene report from the shooting.

“How’d you get your hands on this?” I said.

“Sergeant Underwood sent it.”

“Who’s…Oh yeah. Kendrick.”

He nodded. The brotherhood code. Once a cop, always a cop, always privy to cop information. I examined the report. The preliminary findings were not surprising—gunshot wound to the head—but seeing the diagrams of Winston’s sprawled body, the black and white specificity of his murder, was sobering.

I handed the report back. “When did you get up?”

“Five-thirty.”

His desk was its usual patchwork of diagrams and graphs. I recognized familiar names and places—Savannah’s parks and fields, squares and streets.

“So what’s your decision?” I said.

“I don’t know.”

“Marisa wants something in two hours.”

“I know.” He rubbed his eyes and leaned back in his seat. “I’m sorry. This is difficult.”

“Of course it is. You’re running on four hours of sleep.”

“That’s not what I mean. The algorithms run themselves. The roadways, terrain, the specifics of the crime itself. Input those and the conclusion is clear.”

I waited for him to share said conclusion, but he kept staring at the computer screen. He had a pot of tea at his elbow, cool and half empty.

“Trey?”

He exhaled sharply. “The conference center is a low probability strike zone. So is the ballroom. I ran the data set twice to make sure. Limited access, well-controlled population density, high probability of video recording.”

“So it’s safe for me to go to the Expo? For Reynolds to go to the ball?”

“There’s no such thing at one hundred percent safe. But the Expo and ball pose no greater than average risk.”

And yet the shades were still drawn. His desk was a study in black and white, but the room was a palette of gray and shadow, shifting and insubstantial. He put his head back and stared at the ceiling.

I sat on the edge of the desk. “If that’s the case, why are you still bothered?”

“Because it’s not about the equations.” He got to his feet abruptly and started pacing. “The synthesis of the data is clear. The risk is negligible. And yet I can’t think of you walking out that door without…and it’s not rational, it’s not logical, it’s not…but I can’t.”

I moved to stand in front of him, and he stopped pacing, hands on hips. I pressed my fingers against his temples, gently but firmly. He closed his eyes. I kept my voice low and calm.

“Listen to me, Trey. That’s not a box you can live in. The lid locks behind you.”

“But—”

“Shhh.” I pulled his jacket off the back of the chair. I slipped his arms into the sleeves, easing it over his shoulders, smoothing it neatly across his back. “It’s all an illusion, you know. Control. We pretend we have it, and it gets us out of bed in the morning. But it’s not real.”

His eyes were piercingly bright. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“Of course you do.” I buttoned his jacket, then kissed him lightly. He tasted of Darjeeling. “I’ll get a shower and get dressed. Then we’ll find Marisa and tell her your decision.”

“But I don’t know what that is.”

“Of course you do. You’re going to make the logical and rational and sensible one, the one supported by your data. Everyone will be pleased—Marisa, the Harringtons. And then afterward, we’ll go to the Expo, you and me.”

He looked puzzled. “That wouldn’t be overprotective?”

“Not if I ask you.”

I straightened his tie as best I could. He regarded me warily, like I was springing another trap. And in a way, I was. Common ground and compromise, negotiation and ambiguity. I was asking him to stand with me on that uncertain territory, if only for a few hours.

Finally he nodded. “Okay. If you say so. Of course I’ll come.”

I gave up on the tie, patted his lapels. “Good. You can stand in the corner and glower menacingly. The whole thing’s over at five, plus an hour for takedown, which will give us an hour to change for the ball.”

“The ball? But you said—”

“If you can mingle with a bunch of unreconstructed rebels for eight hours, I can manage a hoop skirt for one evening. If you’d like.”

He let out the breath he’d been holding. “I would.”

“You think Gabriella can hook me up with something antebellum on short notice?”

“I’m sure she can.”

“Then it’s settled.” I put my hands on my hips, smiled at him. “We go to the Expo, then we go to the ball, then we go back to Atlanta, and nowhere in there do I investigate a damn thing. The tournament gets planned, the Bible goes into the wind, and the adventure is over. Deal?”

“Deal. Once we go over this, of course.”

He reached behind him and picked up a set of papers stapled into a booklet. I looked at the cover.
Sniper Evasionary Tactics: A Primer.

I sighed. “Oh joy. A manual.”

“I printed it out from the SWAT site. You can read it over breakfast.”

I accepted it and pressed it to my chest. “I will.”

He regarded me, eyes unreadable. He’d have to fix his Windsor knot properly before we met Marisa. The room remained in thin half-light, but I knew that on the other side of the heavy shades, the clear new dawn was sneaking into the sky.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome.” I patted his chest, right above his heart. “Come hell or high water, boyfriend, I’m with you all the way.”

Chapter Thirty-four

We got to the Expo thirty minutes before the doors opened. The parking lot was even worse than before—picketers, news crews, a seething crowd massed at the entrance. I threaded my way inside, Trey at my heels.

“I guess they got the permit,” I said.

“Who?”

“The Klan.”

Inside the cavernous pristine space of the conference center, the rows of tables displayed more artifacts for sale than I would have guessed existed. Revolvers, carbines, bullets, caps, belt buckles, canteens, photographs, newspapers, jewelry, toys. If Walmart had existed in 1865, it would have looked like the Expo.

The Klan had a display too. The same man from the first day sat behind a table, the prim woman beside him, both of them wearing blinding white camp shirts with the triple tau on the front pockets. Booklets and pamphlets covered the table, bumper stickers too.

I looked back at Trey. “So what now?”

He did a quick check of the security cameras, scanned for hidden spaces, located the exits. “Now I find a vantage point where I can see the entire floor. What do you do now?”

“Now I find Dee Lynn—who is waving at me from the table, I see—and I try my hardest to sell some underwear and t-shirts.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

He squared his shoulders and wove his way through the crowd, headed for a corner to put his back against. I pushed my sleeves up and headed for the table. Dee Lynn waved when she saw me coming, practically frothing at the mouth.

“It was a sniper, wasn’t it?” she said.

I put down my coffee. “Jeez. Let me sit already.”

She leaned closer. “The cops aren’t saying so, but I heard people talking.”

“Dee Lynn—”

“They say the shot came from across the river.”

“Dee—”

“They say it was a gang hit.”

“It wasn’t. And I’m done talking about it. I’m here to sell stuff, not gossip.”

I sat down behind my table. Trey was already on the job. I’d watched him enough to recognize the process—first, he’d pace off the building’s perimeter. Then he’d double-check the fire alarms. Soon he’d take up position in a corner, his back to the wall, his eyes sweeping the room.