Backfire

“How did you know?”

“We’re FBI. You’re not.” She leaned back and clipped a handcuff around his right wrist. “And it turns out you’re not as good as you thought you were. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to—” She grabbed his wounded arm and was pulling it back, Xu yelling in pain and fury, to fasten them together, when her brain registered the sound of a shot and a spear of sharp bright light before everything went black.

Something was wrong. Savich double-parked the Taurus and ran toward the FBI van across from the Fairmont, where he knew Sherlock and two other agents were positioned. He heard the explosion, saw the glass bursting outward from the sixth floor, followed by gushing smoke and flames.

And then he saw Sherlock through the throng of panicked people, barreling through the crowds, shoving people aside. She was after Xu, and Sherlock was catching him. Savich watched her leap forward and tackle him. They disappeared from sight.

He shoved people out of his way, yelling Sherlock’s name. Then he saw her astride Xu’s back, cuffing him. Suddenly there was a loud cracking sound from somewhere behind him, a rifle shot, he registered it in an instant, and he saw her head bloom red. His heart froze in his chest. Xu threw her off and scrambled to his feet, one handcuff dangling off his right wrist, and disappeared into the crowd.

Savich couldn’t believe what he’d seen, simply couldn’t accept it. He had to get to her, had to see her smile at him and tell him it had all been a dream, nothing more. Above the mayhem he heard a ferocious growling sound he realized was coming from his own throat. He saw frightened faces staring at him, but he ignored them. People dove out of his way. His vision narrowed to an arrow of misting red, like blood—no, not blood. He’d get to her, he’d find it was all a mistake, that what he’d seen was a lie his own brain had spun together, nothing more than that. When he burst out of the last scattering knot of people, he saw three teenage boys huddled over Sherlock, protecting her from the stampede.

He grabbed one of the boys’ arms, pulled him back. “I’m FBI. Keep the people away—you, call nine-one-one.”

Savich stared down at all the blood streaming down her face, matting her hair to her head. She was lying on her side, utterly still, and he was afraid in the deepest part of him that she was dead. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. He was afraid to touch her, afraid that when he pressed his fingers against her throat there would be no pulse, there would be nothing, and it would mean she was gone. His fingers hovered, then finally touched the pulse point in her neck, pressed in. He felt her pulse. Yes, she was alive. He ripped a sleeve off his white shirt and pressed down on the blood streaming from her head. His hands were steady and strong, but his brain was a wasteland of chaos. But she was alive. Nothing else mattered.

One of the boys asked, his voice shaking with a mixture of fear and excitement, “Is she dead?”

Savich barely registered the question. It was outside of him, not important, only she was important. He could see he was pressing on a deep gouge the bullet had made along the side of her head. But how deep? There was so much blood with a head wound, too much. He pressed down harder on the wound and put the fingers of his other hand against her bloody neck to find her pulse, to reassure himself again it was there. He touched her vivid hair curling over his hands, wet with blood.

He said, more to himself than to anyone else, “She’s alive.” Saying the words helped to make them real.

One of the boys said, “The nine-one-one operator said everyone in the city is rushing to the Fairmont.”

“Billy, what are you doing? What is going on here?”

“Mom, we’re okay. We’re helping the FBI. One of the agents got shot.”

Savich blocked out the parents’ voices, leaned close to Sherlock’s bloody face. “It’s okay, sweetheart, you’re going to be fine. You’ve been shot—well, let me say it’s more than a graze, but still, the bullet didn’t hit your brain.” He pressed his cheek against her bloody hair, and thanked God the shooter’s aim wasn’t true. He wondered for only an instant who the shooter was.

“Savich! Where’s Sherlock?”

It was Eve. Billy’s parents pulled him and the other two boys out of the way. Eve fell to her knees beside her.

Savich raised his face, now nearly as bloody as his wife’s. “I saw the explosion blow out that window in Xu’s suite. Are you all right?”

Eve waved that away. “Your face—”

“It’s Sherlock’s blood,” he said.