Midas

14

Speech delivered at 6:07 P.M. on November 13, by Thomas Wilton Anderson, the president of the United States

My fellow Americans,

This afternoon, evil struck again, trying to insinuate itself into the very fabric of American life. Today, at 12:34 P.M., a suicide bomber detonated a bomb in New York City, in a Manhattan restaurant, La Cucina, killing twenty-eight people, including himself, and injuring nearly fifty more.

Some people, in what I believe is an unfortunate and dangerous attempt to politicize today’s tragedy as well as the tragic bombing of Harper’s Restaurant nine days ago, are already saying that these evildoers have succeeded in infiltrating our everyday lives, that they are successfully destroying the things that make America great. I say they have not succeeded. . that they will never succeed. Not under my watch. No one will ever be able to successfully attack the core of our greatness. Because that core comes from strengths that are almost unimaginable in the world in which our attackers live. Our strength comes from faith, faith not only in a wise and just God, but in wise and just people. In the American people. Our strength also comes from our freedom, from our many freedoms. And right now I’m declaring another freedom-one we’ve always had, one this country was founded on, one that we must exercise yet again, not happily but proudly: the freedom to fight back. And I mean more than simply strike back. I mean strike first. Strike hardest. I’m talking about the freedom to seize control of our own lives. The freedom to make other people pay-and pay big-time-when they try to take away our freedom.

My administration has been working very closely with the FBI and the CIA since the bombing at Harper’s. I must commend our intelligence agencies, for they have moved swiftly, decisively, and effectively, which is not easy when dealing with the kinds of shadowy networks we’re dealing with. As a result of their actions we now know the identity of the first terror suspect, the madman who blew himself up in Harper’s, killing so many people. His name is Bashar Shabaan. He was an Iraqi citizen, with links to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, and he had been living here, in the United States, for three years. We not only know Bashar Shabaan’s identity, we know other members of his terrorist cell and we know the members of his family who provided aid in his evil scheme. Many of those cell members and family members have been arrested and the remaining ones are about to be picked up and arrested. They will be questioned, and, believe me, when we are done, we will have all the answers we need to have. And they will receive all the punishment they deserve to receive.

We also know the identity of today’s bomber: Muaffak Abbas. He was a Saudi, also with links to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, and we have already rounded up family members and supporters for interrogation. We are looking for any and all links between these two villains, and if those links exist, we will find them. And we will find anyone else, any individuals, any groups, connected to them as well. I should add that the Saudi government has been extraordinarily supportive and helpful and wants to make it clear to all Americans that they abhor any and all acts of terrorism and will continue to do their best to rid their country and the world of such evildoers.

As you can tell from these results, we have moved swiftly, we will continue to move swiftly, and we will get results.

Standing beside me are Vice President Phillip Dandridge; the attorney general of the United States, Jeffrey Stuller; and the assistant attorney general, Ted Ackland. I have spent the last several hours with Phil and Jeff and with Teddy, along with some other key advisers. The vice president has been put in charge of the task force investigating the recent attacks and our enemies responsible for them. He is reporting directly to me. At first, I was going to step aside and let the vice president and the attorney general tell you about some of the decisions and plans that were made today. But then I decided no, I want to speak directly to you myself. Partly because, as everyone knows, next year is an election year and I will be stepping down after two terms, and I in no way want to politicize these proceedings, just as I hope no politician, from either party, tries to politicize these tragedies. But mostly I’m speaking to you because these are things I believe in so deeply and so passionately. These are things upon which hang the future of America, the future of the world as we know it. And I want to make it clear that I expect support for our vision of the future. Not my vision, not the vice president’s vision, but our vision-America’s vision. I expect bilateral support from the Senate and the Congress, support from the media by having fair and accurate reporting, support from judges who will stop their activist agenda so we can do what is right for the country, and military and political support from our allies around the rest of the world. There used to be a saying: You are either part of the solution or you are part of the problem. I’ll say this: If you are part of the problem, get the hell out of our way or we will sweep you out of our way, because right now I am only interested in solutions.

To that end, I am going to ask Congress to pass what we are calling the Triumph of Freedom Act. And I am asking that it be passed unanimously to show our support not just for the dead, for those who died in these two horrible attacks, but for the living, those who care about protecting our future.

What is the Triumph of Freedom Act? It’s many things. Mostly it will guarantee that terrorists and terrorism will never get a foothold in our country. We will wipe them out with several bold strokes-and the first stroke will start now, with this Act.

The Triumph of Freedom Act means that we will be able to put any terror suspect’s DNA in a national data bank. This will be an enormous benefit to everyone, to all agencies fighting this sort of horrific crime.

We will be able to clamp down on and seize any assets found in Arab hawala transactions. Hawala is where cash is exchanged and funneled to terrorists.

We will be able to get business records without a court order in all terrorism probes.

We will be able to track wireless communications with a roving warrant.

We will be able to revoke U.S. citizenship of anyone we suspect of militant extremism.

We will be using volunteer civilian groups, trained and armed civilian groups, as terrorist deterrents.

We will be imposing a mandatory death penalty on all known terrorists and anyone known to aid terrorists.

Terrorists and known terror suspects will no longer have the same rights as the American citizens they are trying to destroy. We will no longer tolerate government policies that protect the very people who are threatening to dismantle our government.

Many more details will emerge over the next forty-eight hours. But what I would like to make clear to our friends and to our enemies is this: if we are struck, we will strike back and our strikes will be far more forceful, harder than anything you can possibly imagine. If we believe we are going to be struck, we will strike before you, and those strikes will be just as forceful. I believe this to be my mission as president of the United States: not merely to eradicate terrorists and terrorism but to eradicate the idea of terrorism.

This is a sad and tragic day. But it may also, sometime soon, be seen as a day of hope, optimism, and renewal because it is the day when we declare to people around the world that we are a free nation, under God, and that we will remain so long after our enemies have disappeared.

Thank you and God bless you all.

Justin Westwood spent that evening the same way most of the country did: watching the president’s speech and the omnipresent media coverage that followed it. There was disturbing and intimate film of the bombing-or rather its immediate aftermath-and, partly due to the excessive commentary, it was like watching a gruesome instant replay of the destruction at Harper’s. Interspersed with the painful footage were responses and declarations by various public officials. Senators and congressmen from both major parties were backing the president one hundred percent. The support of the American public was nearly as strong: instant polls were taken immediately after the speech and Anderson’s words received a ninety-two pecent favorable rating. Despite the president’s stated intent not to politicize his actions, the political ramifications were huge and immediate. Within an hour after the president’s speech, a record sixty-eight percent of Americans said they would be voting for Dandridge in the next election no matter who he ran against. Everyone in the government-from both parties-assured the nation that the Triumph of Freedom Act would pass handily. Everyone promised that this was a fight we would not lose.

The most forceful and impressive performance came from Ted Ackland, the assistant attorney general of the United States, who, according to political rumormongers, was very much in the running to be Phil Dandridge’s vice presidential running mate. Ackland was a handsome man, in his mid-forties, Clark Kent-looking with his horn-rimmed glasses and conservative suit and his lean, clearly chiseled body. Ackland was the most eloquent member of the administration, soft-spoken yet commanding, and when he elaborated on the T.O.F. Act-pronounced “tough”-as it was already being labeled, he was both convincing and reassuring. It was hard to dislike Ackland. He did not have the hard edges-or the controversial background-of Attorney General Stuller. Jeff Stuller made people ill at ease, sometimes even frightened them, including members of his own party. He was a man of stern religious upbringing and never wavered in his moral convictions, of which he had many. Pornographers were akin to murderers in Stuller’s book. Foul language was a violation of freedom of speech equal to words of treason. He was famous for never having danced, even with his wife, for dancing was not embraced by his Pentecostal religion, as it was considered frivolous and overtly sensual. The joke, often repeated in the print media, was that Stuller did not believe in sex-because it led to dancing. He was a stern man, with steely eyes and a steelier demeanor. His politics-as a two-term governor of Wisconsin and a one-term senator from the same state-were just as unwavering. He had, at various times in his political career, been branded as racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-civil rights. Stuller rarely responded to such criticism. He didn’t seem to even care about anything his detractors said. When Jeffrey Stuller spoke, it was clear that he did not believe he had ever been wrong or ever would be wrong.

Ackland was the perfect counterpoint to his boss. He was not linked to the religious right. He had never held an elected office and so had no traceable history of controversial votes or preferences. The speeches he’d made that had been on the record, as well as his performance as a Second Circuit judge, were considered moderate and reasonable. That combination of attributes-even his detractors sometimes referred to him as Ted “Tough but Fair” Ackland-made him a rising political star. There was talk that, if he wasn’t put on the national ticket, he might run for senator in his home state. But the smart money was on the assistant attorney general to get the vice presidential nomination. Dandridge, hard-nosed and humorless, was much in need of someone like the more congenial Ackland if he were to continue the Anderson legacy for another four years.

As the evening progressed, and as responses to the latest attack and to President Anderson’s speech came from around the country, Ted Ackland’s star began to burn even brighter. He spoke in a voice that was unafraid but not hell-bent on revenge. A voice fervently defending the new Triumph of Freedom bill, but also cognizant of its flaws. A voice that was strong but compassionate. In a world gone seemingly mad, his was a reassuring voice of sanity.

And more than anything, that was what the country was demanding right now: sanity.

In his living room, Justin Westwood was finding anything but sanity.

The TV was on-it was impossible to turn off; the violent replays and the constant commentary were a necessary link to the real world-but for Justin, the bulk of his attention was focused elsewhere. When he’d had his fill of sound bites and tough political talk, he’d begun to read through Chuck Billings’s notes. He wasn’t sure why Chuck had gotten them to him. Maybe just for safekeeping, as his cryptic cover letter had stated, but Justin suspected it was more than that. A lot more. There was something he wanted Justin to know. And judging from Justin’s visit from Special Agent Schrader this afternoon, something the FBI didn’t want him to know. So Justin figured he’d better plow through the scrawls. At first it was tough going. The beginning was rife with technical jargon, hypothesizing about various ways the bomb was built and detonated. Justin recognized several phrases from the conversation he’d had with Billings and was able to piece together enough to understand the makeup of the explosive device. There were several pages under the heading “Signature.” Justin couldn’t follow it all but he got the gist. Billings was analyzing the bomb’s quirks, the “tells,” as he called them in the notes. Chuck discussed the primary fragmentation and explained the importance of the use of jacks in that capacity. There were other tells, too, but none as important as the jacks. He stressed the uniqueness of that as a killing tool, noted that if they were used again in another attack, it meant, with great probability, that there would be a specific person in charge. Someone separate from the bomb carrier.

In his scribblings under the “Signature” section, it was clear that Chuck’s biggest desire was to know the exact tone transmitted by the cell phone that set the bomb off. But that was unknowable information. It was also crystal clear that Billings believed that the poor bastard who’d carried the device into Harper’s Restaurant was not the person who’d set the thing off. Chuck seemed convinced that the incoming call was what had set off the detonation. Which was exactly the opposite of what the president of the United States and all his appointed spokespeople were saying after the first attack. The official word was suicide bombing. One man, one fanatic, random havoc.

After that came a section on Semtex, which was what Chuck believed the explosive to have been. He had various pages on the different terrorist and criminal organizations known to favor the material-sometimes with names of specific members and their level of expertise. He detailed various signatures in this section, too, but none of them matched up to the bits of information he had about the bomb that went off in Harper’s. Chuck knew manufacturers of Semtex as well as known couriers. He even had various maps-some standard and slipped into the book, some hand-drawn-to show the various ways Semtex was brought into the country. He had put a red asterisk at the top of a subheading labeled “Colombia,” and by the asterisk had scribbled the letters “JW-Piper,” with several exclamation marks after it. This was connected to a map with a thick red line drawn along it, tracing a route from Colombia to Florida, then to Long Island. It took Justin a few moments to decide there was a pretty good chance that “JW” stood for “Justin Westwood,” and that Billings was making a connection between the explosive used to destroy Harper’s and the plane that had crashed in the middle of East End Harbor. Justin knew enough about the way that Billings’s mind worked-or at least the way it was working in this investigation-to begin to make his own connections.

If the guy with the briefcase-the president had revealed his name, Bath-something Shabaan, something like that-wasn’t the one who set off the bomb, if he was only the messenger boy, then it was likely he hadn’t been expecting to be blown to smithereens. That was backed up by the witnesses who said he was on his way toward the front of the restaurant when the cell phone rang and the bomb went off. Shabaan had expected to survive. But the men who detonated the bomb wanted him dead. One less connection to the real source.

If the Piper that crashed in East End Harbor had carried the explosives up from South America, it was also tied to the bombing. Ray Lockhardt had speculated that the plane was carrying drugs. It could just as easily have been carrying Semtex. If that were true, it also made sense that the pilot was murdered. Yet another connection eliminated.

But a connection to what?

A connection to whom?

Justin put the notes down. He was breathing heavily and realized there was a reasonable chance his imagination was running away with him. He was getting spooked. Or just as paranoid as Wanda had accused Chuck Billings of being.

There were too many ifs. Too many broken links in the chain. It was safe to assume that the two bombings were connected, even the government spokespeople were acknowledging that. They had revealed the possible existence of a terrorist cell connected to both events, but they weren’t revealing any direct link between the attack at Harper’s and the one in the city. Without a direct link, it would be almost impossible to find the person or persons responsible for both attacks. Not the two suicide bombers, the person controlling the bombers. It was that link that Chuck thought the Feds were doing their best to hide. It was that link that Justin decided he needed to find.

He wished he could talk to Chuck right now. He didn’t know enough about signatures. Hell, he didn’t know enough about anything. All he had, all he could really tell from the notes, was that he needed to find out if jacks were used as the primary fragmentation for the second explosive. If there were, he’d have the link he needed. He wasn’t sure what the hell good it would do him, but at least he’d have something concrete. But it was highly unlikely he could get far enough inside the investigation to pursue that any further. And the only person he knew who had been inside the investigation-and questioned it-had been killed.

Justin shook his head. What the hell was going on inside his brain?

Signatures? Jacks? Connections? International terrorism?

No, he decided. This was nuts. He was way overthinking this one. The world had turned into a crazy place where things rarely made sense. Where patterns weren’t always logical and where motives no longer came from jealousy or rage but from God or the latest messiah with a message of hate or a desire to find a spaceship to take his followers into outer space. Nope. There was no point in following Chuck Billings’s thought processes. He was looking for something he’d never find. Something that wasn’t there.

One good way to put a stop to that problem, he decided.

Justin went to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and pulled out a cold beer. A bottle of Pete’s Wicked Ale. He leaned against the door of the refrigerator and downed the brew in three large gulps. It made him feel more settled, so he reached for a second bottle, took one long swig from that, and carried it back into the living room. He stared at Billings’s notebook for a moment, listened to the drone from the television commentators. He did his best to resist. It was pointless to keep reading. He’d already decided that. He thought about turning the TV off, putting some good hard rock and roll on his CD player-maybe some Stones, Sticky Fingers, or some Kinks-but his mind wouldn’t stop racing, it just didn’t feel right, and if he’d learned anything at all it was that things had to feel right, so he went back to Billings’s book, flipped it open again, skipped ahead to a page that was covered with circles and numbers. He realized it was a hand-drawn view of the table arrangements at Harper’s.

Chuck had drawn circles to represent each table and its placement in the restaurant dining room. Each table-including the built-in booths along three of the walls-was numbered, from one to thirty-two. On the next page, Chuck had managed to line up the names of the diners that were covered by the reservation list and match them to the tables they’d been seated at when the explosion occurred. According to Chuck’s markings, the bomb had exploded either at table number twenty-three or table twenty-six, both toward the middle of the room. Justin checked the names on the next page. Jimmy Leggett had been eating at table thirty-one, just a few feet from the explosion. At table twenty-three were two names Justin had never heard of. At table twenty-six was a name he had heard of: Bradford Collins. The CEO of EGenco. Vice President Dandridge’s friend. Attorney General Stuller’s friend.

Justin realized he’d finished the second beer. He decided he could definitely use a third, so went back to the fridge. In fact, he pretty much decided at least one of the two six-packs on the refrigerator shelf was a goner, but halfway back to his living room, his doorbell rang.

Justin glanced at his watch. Ten o’clock at night. He wasn’t used to unexpected visitors at this hour. He wasn’t used to any visitors, he realized. In the nearly seven years he’d lived in East End Harbor, not more than a dozen people-including the exterminator and the kid who cut his grass-had been inside his house.

He headed for the door. Through the shaded glass panel he saw a woman’s figure. He pulled the door open, cocked his head in surprise.

“I’m sorry,” Reggie Bokkenheuser said. He saw that she’d been crying. He must have been staring because she wiped at her cheek with her fingers, brushing away the moisture. “I just couldn’t stand being alone anymore and I don’t really know anybody else.” She waved in the direction of his television, which was still tuned to CNN. “I can’t stand watching it, but I can’t stop. I’m sorry, I just needed some company. If you want me to-”

“No, no,” he said. “Come on in.”

She hesitated, standing on the scraggly straw welcome mat on his screened-in porch. He gently took her by the elbow and guided her inside.

“It just got to me,” she said. “The images, all the blood, the goddamn talk about war and-”

He handed her his untouched bottle of beer. She looked surprised, but when he nodded, she raised it to her lips and took a long swallow.

“I didn’t want to drink alone,” she said. “I didn’t know if I should drink at all. I didn’t know what the hell to do. Every time I thought of something that’d take my mind off all this, I felt like such a coward. Do you know what I mean?”

“No idea,” he told her. “I was just about to get blind drunk.”

She did her best to smile, almost succeeded, wiped at her cheek again and sniffled back a potential tear.

“You moved in already?” he asked.

“This morning. I didn’t have much. And I rented it furnished. All I really had to do was unpack.” They were still standing near the front door. “Look,” she said, “I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to come barging in here.”

“It’s okay. It got to me, too. I’m sure it’s getting to everybody.” He did his best to look reassuring, realized that wasn’t one of his best things. “Did you eat dinner?”

“No. I couldn’t bring myself to eat.”

“How about now? A cheese omelet goes extremely well with beer. And I hope that appeals to you, because the only things I’ve got in the house are eggs and cheese and maybe a frozen steak that’ll take half a day to defrost.”

She used her shirtsleeve to dab at her eyes and nodded. “I’m starving all of a sudden. Craving a cheese omelet.”

So he went inside and made a six-egg omelet, mixed in some strong Epoisse cheese, cooked it until it was firm and nicely browned. She watched him cook, didn’t say a word. Occasionally he would glance up at her. Once, her eyes were unfocused and she was drifting off into her own thoughts. He noticed that she was wearing low-cut jeans, and scuffed black boots that added a couple of inches to her height. And a shirt that was too small, fashionably so, revealing some skin around her midriff. She was not a small girl, he realized. She was a little bit fleshy but it was sensual and sexy. She did not look very much like a cop at the moment, he thought, but then their eyes met, and she was jarred back into the present, so he stopped looking at her and concentrated on the omelet, which was almost ready.

He got them each another bottle of beer and they went into the living room to eat. She gobbled her eggs down in what seemed like three bites. He liked the way she ate. There was no pretense to it, no attempt at being dainty. She was hungry and she attacked the food. After her last bite, she ran a finger around the rim of the plate, soaking up the olive oil, then put the finger in her mouth. When she was finished she said, “I guess eating was a good idea.”

“I can make you another one if you want. You practically inhaled that.”

“No, no, that was perfect. But yeah, I kind of like to eat. I’m not exactly the Gwyneth Paltrow/Calista Flockhart type.”

“That’s probably a good thing. I don’t think they’d make such good cops.”

She managed a real smile this time, like something had just loosened up inside of her, and she offered to go to the fridge to get this round of beer. When she returned they sipped slowly from their bottles, in no rush to finish. She talked a little bit more about the bombing, kept trying to change the subject, kept returning to the violence and the shock. Her legs and feet were tucked under her as she sat on the couch. Her boots were still on and for some reason he liked the fact that she knew he wouldn’t care if the leather rested on the couch. At some point, she pointed over to Chuck Billings’s notebook, asked what it was, but he just shook his head and said, “Work.” She asked if it was anything she should know about and he said no. He waited a few moments, then went over and closed the book. He couldn’t help himself. She didn’t seem to mind.

It got to be midnight and they were still talking and the talk had not gotten any less gruesome. She was asking him about the violent things he’d seen and experienced. He told her about one case in Providence. Over a period of six months they’d found the bodies of three women whose eyes had been gouged from their sockets. The ME said that the gouging had come when each woman was still alive. When they caught the guy who did it, they found him living with his blind eighty-year-old mother. He was fifty-six years old, a CPA with a good job, well-liked at the office, but he’d never left home. He couldn’t break away. All he could do instead was leave work at the end of the day and go blind other women, torture them the way he wanted to torture his dear old mom.

Reggie was interested, kept asking questions, so then he told her about a domestic disturbance call. A woman had swung a meat cleaver at her husband and it lodged in his neck. Justin answered the call, said he’d never seen so much blood. The neck was practically severed, but the guy was alive and talking. Kept talking about how his wife thought he’d been cheating on her but he wasn’t. Kept saying how much he loved his wife. Justin called for an ambulance. They took the guy to the hospital while Justin took the wife to the station. The guy died before they reached the hospital. The EMW said that the guy was talking up until the moment he died, still saying how much he loved his wife and how he was sorry he made her so jealous.

Reggie asked him how he dealt with that kind of thing-didn’t it turn his stomach, didn’t it make him hard and insensitive? Justin said that yes, it turned his stomach, but you deal with it. You ignore the horror and do what you have to do until it’s all over. Then the horror returns, inside your own head, and you have to deal with that. And yes, he said, it does make you hard. It makes it difficult to feel anyone else’s pain because you spend your whole life having to put that pain out of your head so you can do your job.

Then she asked him about his own pain.

He knew that she knew. She’d said at lunch that she’d Googled him, had seen the stories about his past. They’d been in the Providence papers when it had all happened, and was rehashed in the media after the Aphrodite thing broke. So he told her about Alicia and Lili, about their deaths, about his helplessness and guilt. He hadn’t talked about it with many people, no more than a handful, didn’t know why he was talking about it now except that the bombings seemed to have turned the whole world upside down and, for the first time, his own loss seemed connected to a greater loss, even seemed connected to the woman sitting on his couch with her scuffed black boots tucked under her.

And she talked about the losses she’d suffered, too. She was hesitant to reveal too much of herself, would start to say something, stop, give a quick, hard shake of her head as if reminding herself of her own vulnerability, and then she’d bite her lip, stopping the flow of words in midsentence. But she did tell him a bit more about her father, how devastated she was by his sudden death. How alone she felt and how afraid she was to ever be so dependent on one person for a sense of family, for a feeling of love and safety. Her mother had died when she was very young, twelve years old. She’d slipped and fallen from a balcony. Killed instantly.

When she told that story, his eyes moved slightly and she caught the motion.

“Yes, I know,” she said.

“Know what?”

“‘Slipped.’ I always accepted that because it’s what I was told. I was too young to ever think anything but that. But when I became a cop, I guess it’s the way we think, it occurred to me for the first time that maybe it wasn’t just an accident.”

“Is there something that made you think that?”

“She drank. I don’t know how happy she was. It could have been a suicide. I loved my father but he couldn’t have been easy to be married to. He didn’t talk much. Didn’t show much.”

“It doesn’t much matter, does it? Accident or. . no accident. It doesn’t change you or what you are. Or what’s happened since.”

“No. It definitely doesn’t change me.” She gave a half smile. “I am what I am.”

At one o’clock in the morning, he bobbed and weaved his way to the kitchen and the refrigerator, came back and said he was out of beer. Reggie said she didn’t care. She also made no move to leave. When he sat down on the couch, the first time he’d been next to her all night, his hand grazed against her thigh. He pulled it away quickly but she reached out and grabbed his wrist and pulled him closer to her.

“This is really awkward,” she said. “But. .”

“But you don’t want to be alone tonight.” When she nodded, he said, “Neither do I.”

The next few words came out slowly, and she kept shaking her head and stopping herself as she spoke, as if nothing that came out of her mouth was what she really wanted to say. “I can’t. . I mean, I don’t think. . what I want. .”

“You can have my room. It’s the most comfortable bed.”

“Jay, I feel like an idiot. I mean. .”

“I know. Feels a little like high school.” She nodded again, looked down as if afraid to speak. “Get into bed,” he said. “I’ll sit with you until you fall asleep.”

She smiled, thankful.

“I don’t have a spare toothbrush,” he said. And then he added, “I don’t have a spare anything.”

“I’ll live,” she told him. And then she went upstairs.

He waited a few minutes, then he slowly climbed up to his room. He saw her clothes tossed over an old red felt-covered piano bench in the corner of the room. She hadn’t folded them. One leg of her jeans was inside out. One boot was upright, the other toppled on its side. He looked over at the bed and Reggie was in it, under the sheets, the thick blue quilt pulled up to her chin. She was already half asleep. Her eyes were almost closed and she looked peaceful. He could see her chest moving gently up and down under the covers.

Justin gently eased himself down on the bed. She murmured something incoherent, it wasn’t even meant to be a word, just an acknowledgment of his presence. He stroked her hair slowly and softly and she sighed quietly and contentedly. He stayed there, just like that, for five more minutes until he knew she was asleep, and then he stayed several minutes more, his hand not moving, just resting on top of her head, slightly tangled in the strands of her hair. He pushed himself up off the bed, almost in slow motion, careful not to disturb her, and the moment he stood he was overcome with exhaustion. It hit him like a wave of heat, making him dizzy.

He didn’t go to the tiny second bedroom at the top of the stairs. Instead he went back down to the living room. First he sat on the couch, then slowly stretched out. His body was too long to fit perfectly, so he curled his knees up, felt his side sink deeply into the cushion.

He stayed awake for several minutes, listening to the quiet hum of the television, which he’d never turned off, not looking at the screen, instead watching the light emanating from it flicker and reflect off a window.

Justin thought of the woman upstairs. About the smell of her shampoo that still lingered on his hand. About the way the day’s violence had frightened her. Changed her.

He thought about the hundreds of thousands-the millions-of others who were also frightened, who were also changed.

And before he finally fell asleep, he thought about himself. And wondered if he could ever truly be frightened again.

Or changed.

Some part of him hoped it was possible.

But he didn’t really believe it.