Chapter Thirty-Seven: Wednesday, January 4, 2006, New York

The sun had come up—barely—to chase away the pre-dawn gloom. It did little to warm the Manhattan rooftop, currently filled with police and crime scene technicians collecting evidence.

"What the hell?" Detective Mike Logan swore when the tech who had been examining the vic's body—the perp's body, because sometimes they were one-in-the-same, and this was just Logan's lucky day—told him the girl had been killed by an unknown object that had pierced their chest, hard enough to go through the breastbone. A similar weapon had pierced the dead girl's calf.

Girl.

She couldn't be more than seventeen or eighteen years old.

She also appeared to have brought a high caliber riffle to the rooftop of the building across from Burch's apartment and unloaded several rounds through his windows. One of those bullets had gone through Burch's shoulder. Docs still weren't sure if he was going to make it.

But who or what ended you? He asked the dead girl.

There were scratches over her face and blood all over the roof.

"Logan?"

He looked up at his partner, Megan Wheeler. "It's 1989 all over again," he told her.

She frowned.

Right. She was too young to have been around in '89.

"Elliot Burch. Cathy Chandler." Logan said their names, knowing they wouldn't mean much to Wheeler beyond the obvious: shady billionaire recently married to a Hartford, Connecticut judge; ADA Chandler, aka, the D.A.'s "golden girl".

One of these things is not like the other.

"They had…connections back in the day," he explained to his partner. "To each other."

Wheeler gave him a look. "You mean they dated."

"Yeah, something like that." Logan stalked around the roof looking for something. Anything. Wheeler followed after him, so he kept talking. "Then one day Chandler goes missing. Some of us thought Burch was involved. Makes sense, right? He was always in the middle of something, even if nobody could ever prove anything. The one time the feds caught him red-handed, he managed to weasel out of it. Anyway, Chandler was gone for something like six months. Everybody thought she was dead, even her buddies down at the DA's office. Then outa nowhere, bam. She's back. And nobody knows how or even who found her. All I know is right around the same time, there's this string of grisly homicides. We're talking horror movie stuff," Logan told his partner. "Topping it all off is the scene where this Gabriel character was allegedly holding Chandler's kid, a kid nobody knew she was pregnant with. And a couple of Gabriel's guys? They were killed by the same kind of weapon as what took out our girl here. We never did catch the killer."

He spotted Warner—Medical Examiner Dr. Melinda Warner—arriving on the rooftop at last.

"Hey!" Logan waved to her.

"Detective." Warner flashed a grim smile at Logan and Wheeler. "Hell of a way to start the day."

"Worse for her," Logan nodded at the vic.

Perp.

"Do me a favor," he said. "Compare her wounds to the ones from the scene on Staten Island in '89."

Warner gave him a speculative look. "You think it was a crossbow?"

"No. I think it was the same crossbow."

"You know there's no way to prove something like that," Warner advised.

Logan shrugged. The chances of catching whoever did this seemed even slimmer than catching whoever was responsible for the blood bath seventeen years….

"Seventeen years ago," Logan said aloud.

Warner and Wheeler looked at him.

"Somebody compare that kid's DNA with Gabriel's," he said.

Wheeler frowned.

"I got a hunch," Logan told her. "This might be more than some kind of mafia hit. Or hit gone wrong." Again. "This might be personal."

But who or what had saved Burch's life…again?

Whoever it was, Logan would bet his pension that it was the same person or persons who had ended Gabriel and recovered Chandler's kid.

And someday, he was going to get to the bottom of it.

….

Eric Camden left his wife, who had finally dozed off, with their eldest son in the family waiting room, with the promise to Matt that he'd be back soon. The last few hours had been…harrowing.

No, that wasn't the right word. He didn't have the right word. He wasn't sure the right word existed.

After loading Simon into Diana Bennet's car, Caroline had dashed back into the apartment building, Devin Wells on her heels. If it hadn't been for Simon's injury…so much blood…. Eric couldn't get the memory out of his head, his son in his arms, barely conscious.

Shot.

"In the tunnels, entrance near Zach and Samantha's…."

That's what Caroline had said and somehow those words meant something to Fin Tutuola and Diana Bennet.

And because Caroline had insisted, instead of taking Simon to a hospital or calling the police, Eric took his son to some clinic in Hell's Kitchen, which wasn't as rough a neighborhood as it had been when Eric was going to seminary in New York, but it wasn't his first choice of places to take his injured son, that was for sure. They'd been on the way when Diana got a call from Devin. Sarah was home. She was alive. The details were fuzzy.

Even after talking to Annie, the details were fuzzy.

But Annie was here. Matt was with here. Sarah had been admitted. The doctors believed she would make a full recovery. And after Peter Alcott, an elderly doctor who ran a free clinic in Hell's Kitchen, had stabilized Simon's condition, he'd made a few calls and transferred him to St. Vincent's as well.

So far, no police officers had been by to inquire about the shooting.

At the same time as the ambulance had arrived to transfer Simon to St. Vincent's Dr. Alcott had gotten the call about Elliot Burch. Eric was fuzzy on those details, too, but Dr. Alcott caught a lift to the hospital in the ambulance and raced to surgery as soon as they arrived.

Elliot Burch's condition was critical.

Eric made his way to the surgical waiting room. Fin was there. So were many of the odd assortment of people he'd met over the last few days: Samantha and Zach Carmichael, Erik and Bri, Kip. Some were asleep; most were awake.

George Huang was notably absent. So was Joe Maxwell.

Across the room, Devin Wells paced pacing while Sam Hill looked anxious. Robbie Wells smiled at Eric as he came in. Fin nodded in Eric's direction, a silent greeting. A sandy haired man slept on one of the sofas, a little girl not much older than Savannah snuggled up next to him. Even asleep, the man looked exhausted.

"I hope I'm not intruding," Eric said softly, not wanting to awaken those who were sleeping. Sleep was a blessing at times like this.

Amy Burch offered up what he guessed was her best attempt at a smile. A girl not around Ruthie's age—maybe a little younger—lay with her head in Amy's lap, Amy stroking her hair; the girl's were curled up in another girl's lap. The other was…she was a child. A bare waif of a teenager.

And yet…there was nothing child-like in the dark eyes that tracked Eric as he crossed over to them.

"This is my daughter," Amy told him, as the girl sat up. "Lauren, this is Simon's dad, Reverend Camden."

"Is Simon okay?" Lauren asked.

"He's fine," Eric promised her. He glanced at the other girl again. Annie had described someone like her. The girl Annie had seen wore some kind of white face paint; she wasn't wearing makeup now, but she was so pale. So thin.

"And Sarah?" asked Amy, her voice drawing his attention.

"She…she's going to be all right. What about your husband?"

"We don't know. Oh, Cathy—!" She rose to her feet when Catherine and Diana entered.

Fin rose to greet Diana while Catherine wrapped her arms around Amy and held her tight. "Elliot's a fighter, Amy. You'll see. He'll pull through this."

Amy just sobbed. "It's not fair! We just got married!"

Fin put his hands on Amy's shoulders. "Elliot told me something once. He said it was okay to believe in miracles. It's okay to believe he's gonna be all right."

"He's going to be okay, Mom," said Lauren. "He has to be."

A new group entered the waiting room, a heavy-set older woman with steel-grey hair, a tall, bald dark-skinned man with a girl about Lauren's age in tow. Eric moved aside to make room for them; the woman turned out to be Amy's mother, Maxine Gray, the man her friend Bruce van Axel, the girl, his daughter Rebecca.

Catherine slipped over to Eric's side, to give Amy's family more room, too. "How is Simon?"

"The bullet went straight through," Eric told her. "He's going to be all right. Caroline…?"

"She's…. There was an incident. She's all right. But she'll need a few days' rest before she can come and visit."

"Is she okay?" said a new voice. It was one Eric knew.

"Simon. You should be resting." He cast an unintentionally accusatory look at the nurse who had wheeled him in.

Catherine knelt down so they were…not even eye-to-eye, Simon had to look down to meet her gaze. "Caroline is fine. She's worried about you." She took his hand. "It took both Vincent and Jake to convince her she needed to stay put." She offered him a warm grin.

Simon managed a laugh. Then, "What about Elliot? I heard… George came to see me. I…please tell me he's going to be all right."

"We don't know," Catherine told him. "But I have faith." She stood and thanked the nurse for bringing Simon to them before taking over, and pushing Simon fully into the room.

Simon held her hand. Amy leaned down and hugged him. They all took turns trying to convince her that she should try and get some sleep or get some air. Eric sat quietly, watching. Listening. At one point, Robbie joined him. They chatted about nothing in particular, besides her asking after his family. Devin never stopped pacing, even when Sam tried to convince him that he was going to wear a groove in the floor.

Eventually, a haggard looking Joe Maxwell arrived. He greeted Eric, clasped hands with Simon, hugged Catherine, promised Amy that it was really over, that none of them were in danger any longer. He told Kip that George was up to his eyebrows in "Fed business", but that he'd be by as soon as he could. He told Eric he'd been by to see Matt and Annie and that they'd gone down to the cafeteria.

"Docs say your daughter in law can go home later today," he added.

Finally, he turned to Cathy to ask about Elliot—and as if on cue, Joel Fleischmann stepped into the waiting room.

"He's out of surgery," he said. "He's not out of the woods," he added cautiously, "But we're optimistic."

Amy shuddered out a sob and her mother caught her, promised her that it was good news.

"It is good news, isn't it?" Maxine questioned Dr. Fleishmann.

"Yes, Maxine. It's very good news," he assured her. "I don't know when he'll wake up, but Amy, if you want to sit with him, you can."

She gave him a shaky nod. A hug. "Can Cathy come with me?"

"Amy," Catherine protested. "You should be the one—"

"He loves you, Cathy. And I you love him." Amy turned to Joel. "So can she come with me?"

"Of course, she can. Fin? Kate?"

The dark-haired girl drew up her legs and hugged her knees. "I should get going. I…want to check in on Caroline."

Fin laid a hand, seemingly very gently on her shoulder. "You okay?"

"I…I am." She smiled, then. "I really am. Catch you later?"

Fin nodded and she smiled up at Catherine and Amy. "Tell Elliot we have a date and he'd better be there."

Amy laughed through her tears. She drew the girl into a hug—Catherine put her arms around the two of them, then Diana, and then Fin joined in.

As if sensing his confusion, Joel Fleischman clapped Eric on the shoulder. "Nahooma," he said, as if that answered everything.

He walked Catherine and Amy out of the waiting room.

…

Despite her buoyed spirits, Amy felt her knees wobble when she walked into the room where Elliot was in recovery, Peter Alcott by his side. Elliot looked so frail. There were tubes, wires, machines.

"The breather is because of the surgery," Peter told her gently. "He won't need it for long."

"But…he was breathing when they brought him in," Amy said, helplessly. She could only recall a handful of times when she'd felt so lost. If it weren't for Cathy, she was sure she would have hit the floor already.

Cathy guided her over to the bedside and Peter stood up. He transferred Elliot's hand to hers while Cathy set the potted plant Garret had sent up to Elliot's bedside table. Then Cathy took a seat on the other side of the bed and took Elliot's other hand. She gave it a gentle squeeze.

"He's a fighter," Peter said.

"He has overcome so much already," Cathy said, as much to Elliot as to Amy. "There has been so much adversity. His father. His life. His business. But through it all, he's never given up." She met Amy's gaze. "Especially on the people he loves."

Amy nodded. She looked over at Peter Alcott. "Do you really think he's going to…." Live. "He's going to make it, isn't he?"

"He is," Peter promised her.

"You're sure?"

"As sure as I have ever been about anything." He touched her shoulder briefly before leaving.

Amy rubbed her thumb across the back of Elliot's hand and thought back to the way they'd met, her car stalled out on the side of the road, on Thanksgiving weekend, no less.

A handsome stranger stopping to rescue me.

He swept her off her feet and won over her heart with his kindness, his warmth, the generosity of his heart.

She sniffled and used her free hand to wipe the moisture from her cheeks.

Amy reached over and laid a hand on her arm. "It's going to be all right. Peter has never made false promises, to me."

"Miracles," Amy said softly.

It was okay to believe in miracles.

And to have faith in what we believe.