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Chapter Thirty-five

Shoshana Nuri, call sign Angel, is dying when Bell reaches her.

Slumped against the side of the Gordo Tunnel, blood slicking her form-fitting flight suit, the last trickle escaping her mouth, her eyes are open, fixed on his approach. Athena sits before her, still and silent, and Bell stops another ten feet past them, in time to see Gabriel Fuller rounding the corner onto the Flashman Tunnel, heading east and out of sight.

He doubles back, and Dana Kincaid is coming down the stairs, rushing toward them. Bell takes a knee beside his daughter, reaches out for Angel, but the woman shakes her head weakly, blinks with what appears to be a supreme effort. Her mouth works.

“Hold on,” Bell says. “Hold on.”

Cherry-red blood froths over her lips. She’s saying something, the same thing, over and over again, weaker and weaker as she stares into Bell’s eyes.

“Didn’t,” she says.

She says it four more times, until it is her last word.

Bell reaches out and closes her eyes. He looks at his daughter, and Athena answers with an expression that breaks his heart, that will haunt him for the rest of his life. It is the look he has seen on children all around the world, on boys and girls, young men and women, who have seen too much and felt too much and suffered too much. The light and joy that was his daughter is gone.

He puts a hand to his daughter’s cheek, puts his lips gently to her forehead. Meets her eyes again.

“I am so sorry,” he says, because in this moment, his duty will not allow him to release the gun in his other hand. In this moment, he cannot sign. He says it again, and he says, “Mom is safe. I love you.”

He gets to his feet, hoping that she understands why he cannot stay with her. Hoping that she will not think him the monster her mother does. Hoping that somehow, someday, she will forgive him.

“Get her out of here,” Bell tells Dana Kincaid.

He heads down the tunnel, after Gabriel Fuller.