Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, places, and events are property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, and Alliance-Atlantis. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made. For entertainment only.
A/N: A the Anonymouse, your review for Chapter 10 consisted of the letter "I". I'm going to assume that the site ate the rest. Either that, or it's a nifty new way of flipping someone the bird over the Internet.
Flack sat in the sports bar and stared across the table at Hawkes, who looked back at him with unabashed curiosity. The bar wasn't Sullivan's, thank God, full of cops just off second watch and smelling of the city, but it was dark and quiet and smelled of yeast and wood polish. At quarter to three in the afternoon, it was too early for the Little-Leaguers, and the barflies in business suits hunkered at the bar paid them no mind.
If he weren't on the clock, he'd have had a drink in kind since the subject he was about to pursue was unpleasant and left a sour taste in his mouth, but he was on the clock, and so was Hawkes, and so they sat clutching glasses of flat soda.
"So, what's up, Flack?" Hawkes asked casually, and took a sip of his drink, ginger ale with a shot of cherry syrup. "Why'd you invite me down here instead of to Sullivan's? It's closer."
Flack shrugged and took a gulp of his watery Coke. "Just thought it'd be more private." He grimaced at the bland, vaguely metallic aftertaste.
"Private for what?" Bemused, but Flack thought he detected a hint of wariness.
Flack turned his glass in his hands and listened to the ice chatter and clink inside. "I just need to ask you somethin', is all," he said. "About the bombing."
Hawkes' expression grew somber. "I'll answer what I can, but I'm not sure what I can tell you." He picked up the cherry bobbing in his drink and dunked it by the thin stem. "The case file would probably be more informative, and I'm sure Mac would be happy to let you see it now that the case it closed."
"I don't need Mac to let me see shit, Hawkes," he snapped. "I know damn well what my gut wound fuckin' looked like." He stopped, took a deep breath, and continued. "'Sides, what I need to know ain't in any report. It's about Rebecca."
Hawkes' shoulders tensed, and he studied the oak-paneled wall over Flack's shoulder. He took a sip of his drink and held the glass loosely between his fingertips. Finally, he said, "I'm not sure what you think I can tell you."
"What happened to her, Hawkes? What happened to her while I was in fuckin' La-La Land?"
Hawkes turned his gaze on him. "She's never talked to you about it?" The question held the faintest whiff of the incredulous, and for a brief moment, Flack wondered if it was because Rebecca had talked to him about it, had maybe spilled every nasty little detail of it onto the good doctor's lap over cups of espresso in some cozy little coffee shop on the East side. Maybe she'd told him the whole story between sobs and bites of fresh, warm baguettes.
She'd do it, too. Not out of faithlessness, but to protect you. Your mother told her the bombin' was her fault, and part of her-hell, most of her since we're bein' honest here-believes that. So how can she complain about just desserts to the one she thinks she hurt? 'Specially when you told her yourself that she'd done enough damage? And isn't that little gift still payin' dividends after all this time? She's a good wife, sweet, and the last thing she wants to do is add to your pain and give your ma another reason to roll her eyes and call her a burden under her breath.
So, maybe she took her pain to someone else, to the good doctor, with his long, surgeon's fingers and his compassionate bedside manner. What's a doctor's job but to heal? He's always understood her better than any of your friends and colleagues. Frankly, it's pissed you off more than once, his intimate, easy knowledge of the whys and wherefores of her CP. It's not fair because he never had to work for it, never had to fuckin' earn it. He just had to read a book. In your less flatterin' moments, you suspect he probably knows the best way to fuck her, too.
You've always consoled yourself with the thought that while he might be an expert on her disability, he doesn't know jack shit about her. He got the housin', but you got to lift the hood and watch the motor run. You knew what went on inside her head and heart more intimately than any man alive. Hawkes knew what she had, but you knew who she was. That distinction kept the jealousy at bay, kept your blue eyes from turnin' the deepest shade of green. Now you're not even sure of that anymore.
"'Course she's talked to me," he muttered. "I just don't think she's tellin' me everything. You know how she is." Hawkes' rueful nod did nothing to ease his simmering pique.
"I do," he said. "That woman thinks the sun rises and sets on your say-so. She was bound and determined to stay by your side until you woke up. Declared war on sleep and food, and when Mac got to see you first when you came out of surgery…" Hawkes shook his head with a wry, fond smirk. "Let's just say I don't think Mac is going to be on her Christmas list."
That makes two of us, he thought, and the unwitting solidarity with his wife, even across the span of time, reassured him and soothed his bristling ego. She's still my girl. Not yours.
"Mac went first?" This was new to him. He'd simply assumed that Rebecca had been afforded precedence as his wife.
Hawkes nodded. "Mmm. Flashed his badge and cited the ongoing investigation." Hawkes grimaced as if he'd swallowed gall and took a cleansing drink of ginger ale.
"That not sit right with you?" Flack asked. Neutral, but he watched Hawkes' face and body language with interest.
Hawkes was silent for a long time. He drained his glass in long, convulsive gulps, and Flack watched the muscles of his throat work without speaking. Finally, he set down his empty glass, leaned forward in his chair, and propped his elbows on the table.
"As a medical examiner and as a CSI, I know how critical time can be in an investigation, and believe me, I wanted to nail the bastard who'd hurt you and killed those other people. I protect mine just as fiercely as anybody else." Hawkes stared at him at this last, as though daring him to disprove the statement.
"But?" Flack prodded.
Hawkes sighed and reached into the cheap, metal condiment caddy in the center of the table for a packet of sugar. He tapped the corner on the tabletop and turned the small, white square in his nimble fingers. "As a man, I know that sometimes you have to do for the people who need it most. God rest their souls, but those six people were dead and not going anywhere but the M.E.'s office, and you were in God's hands. Rebecca was the one who needed help. I'm not sure those seven minutes Mac spent photographing your open wound made a damn bit of difference. All it got you was a higher risk of infection because he forgot to put on a surgical mask. Thank God Dr. Singh put you on massive doses of antibiotics."
Flack was surprised by the diffident timbre in Hawkes' voice. He'd assumed that since Mac had paved the way for his introduction to fieldwork, Hawkes would be inclined to defend his mentor. But he didn't have time to invite him to join the Mac Taylor Is An Asshole Glee Club, so he merely filed the information away for future reference and asked quietly, "Who looked out for her, Hawkes?"
Hawkes pondered the sugar packet in his hand. "We all tried. Me, Stella, Danny. The detectives from your squad came down and paid their respects. The more people came, the more she withdrew. She just pulled into herself and shut down."
Pay their respects, he says. Like you were already fuckin' dead. Of course she pulled in, hid beneath those layers of scar tissue she's built up over the years. Her ability to retreat from the pain of the present's what keeps her movin' into the future. It's how she fights, how she survives.
It drives you crazy on those rare occasions that you get into it with her. It's like fightin' a damn wall, all expressionless face and impenetrable silence. You wanna hash it out right there, lay it raw and bleedin' on the table, but she digs in her heels and sets her teeth, and there's seldom talkin' until she's had a chance to survey the field and flip the emotional dampers to make sure you can't draw blood. It's infuriatin' as hell when your balls are up and your claws are out, but seein' what happened the one time she wasn't ready for your anger, her reservation's a godsend. It's probably saved your goddamned marriage.
She laid it on thick it that waitin' room. You know that without the benefit of consciousness. She had to to protect herself from the crushin' reality that you might die, and from the hatred spewin' outta your ma's mouth in the guise of grief. She went to ground the only way she knew how because you weren't there to deflect the blows, and goin' on seven months later, she still ain't entirely convinced it's safe to come outta hidin'.
"Let me put it this way, Hawkes: who took care of her for reasons other than the tin clipped to my belt?"
Hawkes shifted in his seat. "Well, there was O'Bannion, the rookie from your precinct." He chuckled and shook his head. "Thought he was going to drown her with all the water he was bringing her. She held onto him something fierce."
Flack was hardly surprised. The kid had taken an instant liking to Rebecca, and as soon as he figured out that she was his girl, he'd looked at him like he hung the moon. It had disturbed and perplexed him at first, the kid's avid interest in their relationship, and then one day, he'd seen O'Bannion with his kid sister on the front steps of the precinct, and everything had clicked. Molly O'Bannion was one of the Chair People, fifteen and dragging Spina Bifida around her neck like an albatross.
The kid wasn't tryin' to steal your girl or get his rocks off imaginin' you bendin' her over the interrogation table; he was playin' dress-up, picturin' more possibilities for Molly than life in the cloister of the family apartment in the Bowery or in some institution where dreams and people go to die. If Rebecca could find her prince, then maybe Molly could, too. Maybe it was all right for her to look at bridal magazines and talk about her own weddin' day, after all.
News of your engagement got around quick, and by midday, you'd gotten ten invitations to celebrate with a beer after shift. Even Captain Gerrard offered to toss one back. O'Bannion offered a hearty handshake and was blushin' so hard you thought his head was gonna pop off his neck. Next day, he sidles up to your desk like his pants were loaded and gives you a bottle of 1990 Australian red wine. Hardly fuckin' dime-store hooch, and fuck knows how he afforded it.
For you an' Rebecca's engagement, he said diffidently. You know, to celebrate.
Yeah, O'Bannion, I figured. Thanks. You didn't know what else to say.
You drank some of it that night with Rebecca, and her lips tasted of plum and generosity. The rest you saved for later, other special occasions. Like Rebecca earnin' her Ph.D., or the day she became an Associate Professor of Advanced Mathematics at NYU. You shared the last glass in December 2002, two months before she took your burdens and your name at St. Patrick's.
That was all right, 'cause the kid brought another bottle to the reception, not Australian, but still red. You drank most of that one on the day Rebecca got tenure and a pay bump, but there was still enough for a sip on your first anniversary, enough to make her mouth taste like plum and generosity again. Whether he meant to or not, O'Bannion established your first tradition as a married couple. Special occasions and achievements are commemorated with a glass of red wine, and you never settle for the cheap stuff.
Molly O'Bannion was there, too, dressed in a pretty, blue gown with matchin' slippers on her feet. You danced with her, and O'Bannion danced with Rebecca, though he let her stay in her chair. Guess he thought standin' her up would be a familiarity he wasn't entitled to. He was right. To put Rebecca on her dainty, fragile feet was to hold her close enough to feel her heartbeat, to cup her hip and the tapered small of her back. It was intimacy reserved for a husband.
It was a formal, proper dance, and when it was over, he escorted Rebecca to you on his arm and placed her hand in yours with a respectful tip of his hat and a quiet, Here's your wife, Detective. Then he took Molly, and they danced on the fringes of the ballroom for the rest of the night. Rebecca's fond of him and sends a wave his way whenever she stops by the precinct, and every now and then, he tips his hat in the stationhouse hallway and asks whether any little Flacks are in the works.
It's not a question you'd even acknowledge comin' from anybody else, but you let him get away with it because you know he's only askin' 'cause he wants to see how far the improbable fairy tale of the handsome prince and his princess on her cushion of metal and liquid polymer can go. He's rootin' for it to go all the way so that he can dole out another chapter to his baby sister like a piece of candied hope.
So you clap him on the shoulder and shake your head and tell him he'll be the first to know. Bullshit, of course. If part of you ever takes root inside of her, the only people that're gonna know are you, the doctor, and God. At least until the life you made is wet and bloody and screamin' on her stomach. But he means well, and you see no need in bein' cruel, so you let it ride. Looks like your decency paid off.
He made a mental note to buy O'Bannion a beer the next time they met. "What about my father?"
Hawkes' lips thinned, and he shifted uneasily in his seat. "He didn't say much," he said. He averted his gaze and took a sip from his empty glass. "I think he was in shock. He spent most of his time holding up your mother."
"So he just fuckin' sat there while my mother told Rebecca that what happened to me was her fault 'cause she was sittin' in a chair?"
Hawkes blinked. "She told you about that?"
Flack tipped his glass, caught a piece of melting ice between his teeth, and began to suck. "Yeah." He did not add that she had told him while slumped against the kitchen cabinets in a pile of broken dishes. Nor did he tell him about the blood on her hands and the tears on her face or the absolute conviction in her voice that his mother had been right. It was too raw, and it hurt too much to examine the memory of his abject failure as a husband too closely.
"It was a very tense atmosphere in there, Don. Everyone was on edge. He did the best he could."
"Goddammit, Hawkes," he snarled. "Don't pussyfoot around. Did my father have the fuckin' balls to look out for my girl while I was out? Did he say word one in her defense when everythin' was fallin' around her ears?"
"He looked like he wished the couch would swallow him," Hawkes offered lamely, and looking at him, Flack thought the good doctor felt the same.
"Jesus fuckin' Christ," he muttered in disgust, and sat back in his seat. The chair groaned at the sudden shift of weight.
Why the fuck should you be surprised? Gavin asked pragmatically. He never took up for you when it mattered. When Diana died, he was too busy wallowin' in his own grief and missed opportunities to notice that you were fallin' apart, drownin' in your guilt. You puked your guts every mornin' for three months, and he never once tapped on the bathroom door to see how you were doin'. He didn't give a fuck. When he finally got his head outta his ass and realized there was a problem, what was his perfect solution? To erase her from your lives and pretend she never existed. That was his solution for everything. It can't hurt you if you don't see it. Hey, maybe that explains why he only visited you in the hospital twice in the hospital after you opened your eyes. Maybe he didn't want to acknowledge how close he came to losin' his firstborn and the only kid he had left, or maybe he was disappointed you were still alive and not burnin' in Hell like you so richly deserved.
Bastard's let you twist on an invisible knife since you were sixteen, let you bleed from the gut, mouth, and heart long before Lessing exposed the wound to the light with his pussy little bomb. He's never protected you from a single blow since the day you let Diana die, so why should he look out for that precious extension of yourself that wears your ring and carries your heart inside her chest?
Because he's my fuckin' father, whether he likes it or not, and that should count for somethin', he thought furiously. Even if it doesn't, there should be enough cop left in him to protect the innocent. It's not Rebecca's fault that Diana died, and he never should've let her suffer.
"Do I even need to ask if my mother's behavior improved?"
Hawkes sealed his lips with the damp rim of his glass.
"I need to know what else went on between them, Hawkes. I know there's somethin' Rebecca's not tellin' me."
Hawkes set down his glass and shifted in his seat. "If she won't tell you, Don, then I'm not sure it's my place to tell you, either."
"Goddammit, Hawkes," he shouted, and slammed his palm on the table hard enough to make their glasses bellydance. The melting ice inside chattered in its fading tongue. "I'm not askin' for shits and giggles. She's havin' nightmares, cryin' in her sleep. I can't help her if I don't know what the fuck is goin' on."
Several of the barflies turned on their stools, and Hawkes steepled his long, dark fingers beneath his chin. "I can only tell you what I saw," he said diffidently.
Flack dipped his head in acknowledgement. "That's all I'm askin'."
Hawkes sighed. "On the fifth night of your coma, I found her in the bathroom, hiding underneath the sink. She was hysterical and didn't want to come out. She was crying and rocking and scratching the dirty tile floor until her fingers bled. I eventually pulled her out and convinced her to come to the cafeteria with me."
Flack said nothing. If he opened his mouth, all that would emerge would be a wordless lowing of impotent fury come too late. He had no doubt that Hawkes was right about the blood on Rebecca's hands, but he thought he was wrong about who it had belonged to. It wasn't hers; it was his, stained there by the long hours spent holding his hand and tracing the outline of his wound in the air above his skin. She had taken it on just as she had taken on his name and his sins. But Hawkes had no way of knowing that, and so he'd seen what logic had told him he'd see.
His jaw twitched, and Hawkes continued. "I couldn't make a definitive diagnosis about what happened, but I'd guess it was brought on by stress, lack of sleep, and lack of food. I know for a fact that our trip to the cafeteria was the first substantial food she'd eaten since she got to the hospital-a bowl of pea soup and three slices of dry toast. I had to fight her for that much. I don't think she slept more than an hour at a time, and I think she was popping over-the-counter stimulants-maybe No-Doz or Dexatrim."
"What makes you say that?"
Hawkes gave a loose, one-shouldered shrug that struck him as elegant. "Nobody can stay awake for that long without help, and I don't care what blend of coffee you're on or how much you drink. She had tremors of the extremities."
"In other words, she was jonesin'," Flack said dully.
Hawkes flushed and dropped his gaze. "If you want to put it that way, yeah." He tossed the battered sugar packet back into the caddy. "For what it's worth, I didn't see any tremors once you decided to grace us with your presence. If there was a dependence, it was probably temporary. Have you noticed anything, any undue agitation or uncharacteristic behavior?"
You mean like cryin' in her sleep or wakin' up in the middle of the night to build a nest outta my clothes and sniff my ties? "She's not climbin' the walls or goin' for four-am jogs through Central Park. 'Sides, we don't keep that kinda stuff in the house. Just sugar, coffee, and enough tea to interest U.S. Customs."
"Mmm. In that case, stress was the likely culprit."
"Did she say anything to you? While she was hidin' in the bathroom with the dirty paper towels and the used tampons?"
Hawkes rubbed his palms together with a sound like gently-turning pages. "Most of it was incoherent. She did say that 'it was all her fault,' but didn't say what 'it' was."
"Not exactly hard to guess, though, is it?" Flack asked wryly, and stared into his glass of flat Coke. It was mud at the bottom of a stagnant pond.
Hawkes said nothing and wiped tears from the rim of his weeping glass with the ball of his thumb.
Flack thought of Rebecca then, sitting on the kitchen floor in the rubble of their dinnerware, blood on her palms like stigmata. Painted-on eyes and listless, heavy limbs, light as bird-bone inside her clothes when he lifted her onto his numb legs and cradled her to him.
She said it was my fault. Breath and tears scalding on crook of his neck. That if you didn't have to worry about me so much-
Heaviness settled into his chest like croup, the same breathless, crushing pressure that had shadowed him in the hospital and made breathing a conscious, exhausting effort. He swallowed, and the spit lodged in his throat. He coughed into his loosely-curled fist and wiped dry, tender lips with the pads of his fingers.
"Was there anything else?" he managed.
Hawkes hesitated. "Don, I-," he answered slowly.
"Hawkes," he prodded relentlessly.
"Look, there was something the night before you woke up, but I don't know what it was. I walked in on it by mistake. I was bringing Rebecca some soda crackers."
"What did you see?"
"She and your mother were having a…discussion," he said delicately.
"About what?"
Hawkes held up his hands in a placatory gesture. "I swear, I don't know. All I heard was your mother telling Rebecca that she owed it to her because she'd been responsible for nearly killing the only child she had left."
"God," Flack said thickly.
"Rebecca just cried and threw the papers at her feet, and your mother left after that."
"Papers?" Sharp.
Hawkes nodded. "She wanted Rebecca to sign them, but she wouldn't."
"Did you see what they were?"
"No," Hawkes replied.
"Haw-,"
Hawkes glanced at his watch and rose from the table. "I've got to get back on the clock, and so do you, I imagine. See you at Sullivan's after shift on Friday?" Hawkes slipped into his wool overcoat without looking at him. He spoke too casually, too quickly, words running before his legs could manage the feat.
"Yeah. Yeah, sure," Flack said wearily, and gave a half-hearted wave.
Hawkes departed without another word or a backward glance and left him with his thoughts and his watery Coke and the absolute certainty that he'd been lying. He got up and went to the bar, where he ordered a double. Sometimes, the job didn't pay him enough to give a shit about protocol.
In his office across town, Mac sat in his office and wondered why he had never thought to keep a bottle of liquor in the bottommost drawer of his desk. He was a teetotaler during job hours, which meant that more often than not, he was dry, but he would gladly have violated his long-standing rule today. But there was no booze in any of his drawers, and so he settled for the bottle of Excedrin that was in his topmost drawer.
He chewed two tablets and grimaced at the bitter grit of the medicine on his tongue, pool chalk and sand.
Then again, it's fitting, this bitterness. It matches everything else in your life these days. The sweet moments have been few and far between since Claire ascended to heaven on a thick plume of smoke, but they've disappeared entirely since Aiden slit the seal on an evidence envelope and let all the monsters out. Since then, it's been one cascading failure after another, and you've started to wonder if you're cursed. Aiden, Danny, Stella, Flack-they've all been touched by an unkind hand, and through them, it has battered you with the cruelest, black-fingered fist. You thought the worst was over when Stella and Flack picked up their broken pieces and rejoined the march, but not so. That was just a lull, and the storm is gathering on the horizon again, and it's all your fault.
He thumbed through the reports on his desk, and with each page, his stomach grew more leaden. According to every test he'd ordered, nothing was wrong with Lessing. He hadn't been poisoned or beaten or lobotomized to ensure silence. He simply refused to talk, as though he had used the last of his words on the speech he'd read to the judge at his sentencing hearing. He had said all he had wanted to say with the roaring chorus of detonating explosives. A more emphatic statement than any human mouth and tongue could muster.
Worse yet, there was no evidence that Flack had any involvement in Lessing's excursion. He had watched hours of surveillance tape from the psychiatric hospital, looking for any suspicious figures, but mostly searching for Flack's familiar profile in the glare of the streetlights in front of the facility or in the dimly-lit hallways. If someone were involved in Lessing's escape, Flack or one of the other victims' relatives were the most logical suspects. He'd pulled up DMV photos of everyone connected to the tragedy and kept them near to hand while he was poring over grainy footage, but there had been nothing and no one familiar, just orderlies in rumpled scrubs and walking beat cops making their hourly rounds.
He had been so desperate for his revenge theory to hold up that he had started scanning the footage for unlikely suspects-ailing grandmothers on walkers, Federal agents murmuring to the electronic Sybils inside their ears, strolling couples. He had even looked for Rebecca Flack among the passing crowds. Her rage burned the hottest of those marked by Lessing's fire, and never mind that she was conspicuous by virtue of her disability and physically incapable of either violence or stealth. He had finally given up on the footage late last night and carried from it nothing but eyestrain and the sullen, throbbing promise of a vicious tension headache that had blossomed to full strength before noon.
It's a measure of how bad things have become that you consider Flack's unalloyed innocence a turn for the worse, isn't it? You courted the specter of your father's lung cancer to clear Danny Messer, smoked cigarettes in front of the building until your tastebuds registered only car exhaust and the needling bite of aluminum and your tongue was numb inside your mouth. You stained your fingertips with nicotine and wondered if it was the color of guilt.
When Stella slept facedown on her bedroom floor with cordite on her dress and hands like a mark of sin, you busted your balls and the balls of everyone around you to prove that the shoot was clean. Science would be the white knight who saved them both. When Flack fell asleep in a poisonous forest of stone and waited to be roused by a kiss from his lady fair, it was science that distracted the team from the horror of what had happened and proved Lessing's guilt beyond any doubt.
Of course, it also proved that he was mad as a hatter and paved the way for his cushy confinement in a psychiatric ward instead of a barren, grey hole in Sing Sing, but it's best-and easier-not to think about that.
Now you're sitting at your desk and sulking because Flack isn't guilty of…what? You can't even answer that question. You just know that something is wrong with the picture in your head, and as much as you prate about the inviolate sanctity of following the evidence, your gut is what tells you where to start sniffing in the first place. It's telling you to dig deeper, screaming at you, but no matter where you turn, you only turn up dirt and baseless supposition.
This job and your skill at it are your anchors to the world of the present. Without them, you'd be forever lost in the gently-tugging tides of the past, convinced that Claire was still alive and that your bed was still warmed by more than fever dreams. You keep from drowning in your own sorrow by redressing the wrongs of others. It's your only identifying marker, your only link to sanity, and you're afraid that if you lose it, you'll disappear.
Lately, you've been worried that you are losing it, that the magic you could once work is slipping like Flack's blood through your fingers. You're hurting the people you want to protect the most. You've broken Danny in more places and ways than you can count, and even Stella isn't as sturdy as she once was. Each day you look in the mirror, and you're a little paler and a little older than you were yesterday, a little less there. You're becoming a ghost in the mirror.
Now he could add Flack to the list of people he had broken in his mad grab for normality. For the second time, he had accused him of dishonoring the badge he had sworn to protect, and for the second time, he had been wrong. There was no apology he could offer that Don would accept, and he couldn't blame him.
Nor could he shake the feeling that he was right in spite of the mountain of nothing he had on his desk and the greasy knot of guilt in his stomach. He had been a CSI for too long to be this wrong, and before that, he had been a soldier with a sniper's eyes, lying in the desert sand and searching for the shadows of the enemy. He knew wrong even when he couldn't see it, and he knew that there was something wrong with Lessing's night-time jaunt through the city, no matter what the toxicology reports and psych evaluations wouldn't show. But for once, science had failed him, and that knowledge was a maddening, saltwater itch beneath the skin.
He heard Stella's heels clacking on the floor outside his office and swept the reports into a manila folder. She would only ask him why he was wasting time and resources on a windmill tilt when there were real cases that needed more of both, and he would not be able to give her an answer that made sense and was not steeped in suspicion and childish dread.
Because the Lessing that came back scares me worse than the one I put in would not cut it, not coming from a man who had preached the gospel of hard evidence, of the cold, hard truths rendered in milligrams and deciliters. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
The blade sank deep beneath his ribs. The manila folder and the bottle of Excedrin exchanged places, and he waited for Stella to open the door.