the sounds. The screams, the bubbly breaths torturously dragged into a ruined chest, the tiny rustles or whimpers that gave away survivors.
Hugh had seen terrible deaths on Highway 101. The worst was a whole family—mother, father and two kids—killed by a drunk driver who hit their little foreign car head-on. But the drunk hadn’t killed them one at a time, looking into their eyes, soaking in their fear. He hadn’t meant to hurt anyone.
Someone here had meant to hurt as many people as possible. He hadn’t cared about the widows he made, the kids who would grow up without a mother or father.
Hugh and Nell did their job grimly, silently, not stopping long enough to react or think, because they might not have been able to go on. He kept expecting to see a dead face he knew. What if some of the cops had family or friends who worked here?
On the fifth floor, they found no injured and only two bodies, the first just outside the elevators with a single small caliber hole in his temple. A Beretta lay near the middle-aged man in a business suit. In one of the first offices another worker was dead, sprawled over his desk as if he’d been standing behind it. This one had been killed by a handgun as well. Had the shooter been running out of ammunition? Hugh wondered. He’d expended a firestorm to get this far. Where was he?
A rustling sound brought Hugh whirling to face a partition. Damn it, he was getting careless. He jerked his head, and Granstrom silently circled the room to where the movable partition met the wall.
Standing behind a metal filing cabinet, Hugh said, “Police! Come out.”
“Is—is he gone?” The man’s voice cracked.
“Please come out where I can see you.”
After a long pause, a disheveled man in the ubiquitous white shirt and tie edged around the partition. Sweat dripped down his face and his gaze darted around the room. He flinched at the sight of his colleague.
“God!” he whispered. “I heard the shot….”
“Did you see the shooter?” Granstrom asked.
He shook his head. A sob wracked his body. “I hid. God help me, I hid. I should have tried to do something.”
“Unless you were armed, there wasn’t anything you could do,” Granstrom said quietly. “Hiding was smart. Now, sir, I’m going to ask you to exit the building. Officers in the hall will take you down.”
After one last shocked look at the corpse, he stumbled out docilely.
Granstrom rejoined Hugh, her face set. “Sixth floor, here we come.”
He grunted. “I can hardly wait.”
Thou shalt do it better, but he hadn’t. None of them had, or history wouldn’t have replayed itself.
NELL SWAYED, almost falling out of the booth onto the tavern floor. Her new partner saved her, his grip drawing her back to his side.
He was a good guy, she thought woozily. A really good guy. Today they’d gone through hell together. Or was it yesterday? She couldn’t remember. Just like she couldn’t remember why she’d hated him yesterday. Or was it the day before?
Didn’t matter. She laid her cheek against his arm. She’d been wrong. Hugh McLean was the best man ever. She nodded solemnly and tipped slowly forward toward the tabletop.
“Whoa,” he said, setting her upright again.
Best man ever. She could tell he felt the same. Why else would he keep putting his arm around her? Maybe they’d stay partners forever. A vague image of them chasing a bad guy, both of them toddling along with walkers, struck her as hilariously funny. She told him, and pretty soon he was laughing, too. Both of them howled until they were crying and lying in the corner of the booth, with her half atop him.
Their drinking mates, Officers Redding and Gardner, gazed at them in bleary approval.
“Don’t know wha’ was so funny,” one of them remarked. “But it musht have been real good.”
The other nodded solemnly.
Nell and Hugh laughed harder.
“I think I want to go home,” she tried to say, but it came out all slurred.
Up close, his blue eyes were brilliant. Maybe a little bloodshot, she thought critically, but then they’d both been awake for…almost a whole twenty-four hours. She thought. She was trying very hard not to remember why.
Some part of her knew she was going to be very sorry tomorrow that she’d had so many beers. But right now she didn’t care. So what if she got sick, Nell thought defiantly. It was better than…Well, than something. She didn’t let herself think what.
“Me, too,” he agreed. “But whosh gonna drive ush home?”
Her forehead furrowed in thought. “We could go get in the car,” she suggested.
“Okay.” He didn’t move, and she continued to lie comfortably on him. “You feel good.”
She thought about that, too, and nodded. “I feel good. You’re right. But howz…how do you know?”
“You feel good here—” he squeezed her butt “—and here—” his other hand cupped her breast. “Thash how.”
“Oh.” She listened to his heartbeat. “You feel good, too. Right here.” She laid a hand on his chest. She used to not like him, but he’d always had a good chest, broad and well-muscled and, she knew now, hot to the touch.
“Lesh go to the car.” He heaved them both upright. “Good night, good morning, good day,” he told Redding and Gardner. Enunciating clearly, he added, “We’re going home.”
“Don’t drive drunk,” Redding said, which set them to laughing so hard Gardner was banging his forehead on the table.
They wove their way among tables of cops, some coming on shift and drinking coffee, staring incredulously at the others. The parking lot was dark, but paler light tinted the skyline. Dawn. Last dawn, she’d been heading into the station to find out who her new partner would be. By 8:30 a.m., he and she had been in the squad car, lights on, heading to…
A barrage of images flickered behind her eyelids. Pools and splatters of blood. Body bags. Faces contorted in agony. A faceless…
No! She stopped dead and said carefully, “Maybe I need another beer.”
“We’re going to the car,” Hugh reminded her.
“Oh.” They were, weren’t they? That’s why they were standing in the middle of the parking lot. “Where’s the car?” she asked.
He frowned and turned in a slow circle. “Don’t know.”
“I have a car,” Nell said. She did remember that much. They’d returned to the station and left separately, in their own vehicles, they and a dozen others agreeing to meet at the Green Lantern after their debriefing to drown their hideous day.
“Where?” Hugh asked.
She
