Private Dublin

Chapter 3

That night, I dreamed of flames and the screams of those I couldn’t save when my Marine Corps CH-46 Sea Knight had been shot down in Afghanistan. I’d been a chopper pilot for the Corps before taking over Private from my old man, and since then had turned his ramshackle outfit into the world’s largest private detective agency. I’d faced danger and death more times than I cared to remember. However, the loss of those men, the jarheads I’d served with, hurt most of all. Even though the NCIS investigation had concluded there had been no way to avoid the crash, I’d still felt responsible. It didn’t matter what the investigators said, or how many people told me I’d done my best. All that mattered was the blood and honor of the field, and I carried my failure with me. It tormented me still when I was low or troubled. To this day, memories of that crash and the ghosts of those men were guaranteed to make me feel as low as humanly possible, but now my failure to protect Justine had become a new nadir, a low from which I could only recover if she did. In my dream, I fled the scorching heat of the fire, abandoning the bodies burning in the wreckage, but when I turned, I saw Justine kneeling on the rocky ground, clutching the gunshot wounds in her belly, blood spreading across the front of her red dress.

“Mr. Morgan,” a voice cut in, and I felt a hand on my shoulder.

I woke with a start to see Dr. Gurdasani, a woman in her mid-thirties, smiling at me gently.

“Mr. Morgan,” she repeated, “Ms. Smith is out of surgery and just surfacing from the anesthetic. It’s early, but we think she’s going to pull through.”

“Can I see her?” I asked.

“In a little while,” Dr. Gurdasani replied. “Once we’ve got her comfortable.”

A “little while” proved to be ninety of the slowest minutes I’ve ever experienced. I’d sent Mo-bot and Sci home shortly after 3 a.m. so I messaged them while I was waiting to let them know Justine was out of surgery and recovering. They both wished her well and asked me to send them updates. With nothing more to do and my desire to see her filling me with impatience, I tried distracting myself by pacing the now quiet waiting room and checking my phone for updates on the shooting. There wasn’t much more to go on, and the sensational stories about the Ecokiller focused mostly on newly released details about the gunman’s victims. The four dead were two security guards who’d been on the door, a server who’d been working shifts to help put herself through UCLA, and a junior studio executive who was being hailed as a hero for shielding his colleagues as they escaped through a fire exit. Social media photos accompanied the news pieces, and I felt nothing but sympathy for their loved ones. I tried not to imagine the suffering of such loss, but it was difficult to push past the dark imaginings that had tormented me in that hospital, a place where the line between life and death was at its thinnest.

Finally, when my patience was ragged and frayed, Dr. Gurdasani beckoned me from beyond the ward doors.

“You can see her now,” she said, and I didn’t bother trying to play it cool but snapped to the medic’s side like a faithful dog.

We walked to the recovery ward in silence, passing rooms containing surgery patients wired to monitors and connected to drips. Despite this display of frailty, I wasn’t prepared for what greeted me when Dr. Gurdasani led me into Justine’s room. Her dark hair was lank and had been tied back from the face that had been so bright and alive only a few hours ago, now pale and clammy. She lay in a bed, a light blanket supported on a frame draped over her bandaged abdomen. I saw she was connected to two drips and guessed one was fluid and the other antibiotics or some sort of medication. A monitor tracked her heart function and a catheter led to a bag hooked to the side of her bed. Her eyes opened as we entered. They were bloodshot and sunken into shadow, and her pupils looked faded. A CPAP oxygen mask covered her nose and mouth, and there was a gentle rush of air with each breath.

“Justine,” I said.

Her eyes filled with tears as she registered me moving toward her.

“You can’t stay long,” Dr. Gurdasani said. She’d hung back by the door. “Justine needs her rest.”

I stood by the bed and gently clasped her hand. It was cold and there was hardly any strength in her fingers.

“I’m going to stay right here until I can take you home,” I told her.

She closed her eyes and a couple of tears spilled from them and rolled down her sunken cheeks. She shook her head, the gesture so slight as to be almost imperceptible.

I lingered. In the quiet broken only by the humming of the machines surrounding her, I realized Justine was trying to talk. I leaned close to her and she strained to be heard through the oxygen mask she wore.

“Find him.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “Find the man who did this to me.”