Shooting Starr

Chapter 6

On the day Caitlyn Brown was to be released, the hospital held a press conference on the promenade outside its main public entrance. The hospital’s administrator and attorney were featured, as was the doctor in charge of the patient’s care and treatment. So were Caitlyn’s parents and the attorney they’d hired on their daughter’s behalf. Various law enforcement agencies were represented, including the FBI, the district attorney’s office and the local chief of police.

Throughout the conference, fit young men with somber faces and flinty eyes kept watch from the steps in front of the crowd, while somewhat scruffier individuals of both genders bearing microphones and video cameras filled the sidewalks and overflowed into the street, snarling traffic for blocks around. The hospital parking lot was choked with satellite trucks and vans bearing the logos of every major news agency in the country and a fair number from overseas-it had been a relatively quiet news week and this was the niece of the former leader of the free world, after all.

C.J. watched the news conference on a television set mounted high on the wall of a waiting area on the hospital’s quiet third floor. Except for one big-bellied, ruddy-faced man leafing through a tabloid newspaper in the row of chairs across from him, he was alone. Closed-captioning was off; the TV sound was on, turned down low.

Leaning tensely forward, clasped hands fidgeting, C.J. listened to the hospital personnel tell how Ms. Brown had received the best possible care and how pleased everyone was with her recovery thus far. Then he listened while the doctor explained about the swelling inside Caitlyn’s brain, a result of the bullet that had grazed her skull, that was affecting the optic nerve. And no, there was no way of knowing at this point whether her blindness would be permanent; they would have to wait for the swelling to go down in order to determine whether or not there was significant damage to the optic nerve itself.

At that point the red-faced man, who was wearing overalls with a short-sleeved T-shirt, and a ball cap bearing a tractor manufacturer’s logo over thick iron-gray hair, gave his newspaper a shake and grunted, “Helluva thing, innit?”

Without taking his eyes from the screen, C.J. agreed that it was. He was watching the law enforcement contingent take over the microphones, shuffling around and muttering as they got themselves sorted into the previously agreed-upon speaking order. After some throat-clearing and fidgeting, the chief of police admitted there was no new progress to report in the search for the gunman who’d killed Mary Kelly Vasily and wounded Ms. Brown and two police officers. And that it was too early to determine whether the body of a male Caucasian in mid to late forties that had been discovered shot to death and dumped locally near an abandoned mill had any connection with the case.

The D.A. then stepped up to assert that the decision had been made not to return Caitlyn Brown to jail, and that the FBI would be placing her in protective custody at an undisclosed location.

The FBI representative’s remarks consisted mostly of “I’m sorry, I can’t comment on that,” in response to questions fired at him from all sides by members of the press corps.

About the time the questioners were showing signs of impatience and the organizers of the press conference looked as though they might be getting ready to pack it in, a change came over the crowd. As if, C.J. thought, a stiff wind had sprung up out of somewhere. The young blond CNN reporter came into view, looking excited and holding a microphone in one hand. She had the other hand up to the side of her head, cupped over her ear.

“…word that Caitlyn Brown is coming out of the hospital at this very moment. Tim, I’m going to try and get over there-”

There followed a confusion of rapidly changing pictures, garbled sounds and jerky images, and then a partly obscured view of the hospital’s ambulance entrance, where someone in a wheelchair had apparently just emerged through the automatic sliding door. The wheelchair was being propelled with some urgency across the pavement to where three dark sedans with tinted windows waited, engines idling. There were only glimpses of the chair and its occupant, surrounded as they were by hospital personnel in light-colored slacks and tunics and men in neckties and dark suits. Nevertheless, it was possible to determine that the figure in the chair was slender and slightly built and was wearing dark blue sweats and a black-and-yellow baseball cap that didn’t quite cover the bandages swathing her head. Also a pair of dark-rimmed sunglasses.

“Why,” the red-faced man said in an awed voice, “looka there, she ain’t but a little bit of a thang.”

C.J. nodded absently. His eyes were riveted on the TV screen and he was trying his best to follow the jerky, jostled images of a pale face all but obscured by huge dark lenses. Then there was only a closing car door, and dark-tinted windows reflecting back excited faces, open mouths and shoving microphones against a blue September sky.

The red-faced man said sadly, “It’s just a shame, innit? A real shame…”

C.J. let out the breath he’d been holding and agreed that it was indeed a shame. Then, murmuring, “Would you excuse me?” he pushed himself up from the chair and lurched out of the waiting area. Halfway down an empty hallway across from an elevator marked Hospital Personnel Only, he pushed open a door, stepped into a room and closed the door behind him.

“Okay,” he said, a little out of breath, “they’re off. How’s everybody doing in here? You ready to go?”

“I’m ready,” Caitlyn said, breathless as he was. Her silvery eyes stared resolutely into middle distance as one hand lifted to adjust the scarf that framed her face, wound loosely and draped over her shoulders in the style of an Afghani woman. The other hand, relaxed in her lap, cradled a video camera.

Jake Redfield stood behind Caitlyn’s wheelchair. His deep-set eyes, intent and somber, were on his wife. “Okay, then-I guess this is it.” He took a breath, and it occurred to C.J. that the FBI man might not be as cool about things as he looked. “Eve, you know what-”

“Yes, love, I know what to do.” Her tone was somber, too, but her eyes danced. “By now, I’ve made sure everyone in my crew knows about my new protégée from Afghanistan, here for a ‘few days’ to learn about documentary filmmaking. Her name is Jamille, by the way-which means beautiful, I think, in one of those languages over there. Perfect, isn’t it?” Her smile burst forth, as if she couldn’t keep it in check a moment longer.

She dropped into a crouch beside the wheelchair and placed both hands on Caitlyn’s arm. Softly, as if for her only, she said, “Okay, just like we practiced. I’ll be right beside you, you’ll be able to feel me touching you all the time, but if you feel lost or woozy or anything, just stop where you are and keep looking through the camera. I’ll get you, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Caitlyn said staunchly. “You just have to keep telling me where to point this thing so I don’t look like an idiot.”

Eve chuckled richly. “We’ll do the clock thing, okay? Twelve o’clock is straight ahead, ten’s to the left, two’s to the right, six is behind you. Then high or low-”

“So that’s where it comes from,” Caitlyn said in a wondering tone. “‘Watch your six.’ I’ve always wondered…”

“It means watch your back,” Jake said. He kissed his wife and added a husky, “That goes for all of you. I don’t have to tell you-”

“No,” Eve murmured, gently smiling, “you don’t. We’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

“I think it’s best we leave the chair here,” Jake said, frowning at nobody in particular. “On the off chance somebody sees you exit the elevator. You okay with that, Caitlyn?”

She nodded and said, “Sure.” She was already fumbling for the wheelchair’s footrests with her toes.

C.J. dropped to one knee and folded the footrests out of her way. Then he took her feet, one at a time, and lowered them, like fragile artifacts, to the floor. She was wearing sandals, he noticed, and her ankles felt slender and strong in his hands. He rose, breathing hard and slightly lightheaded, and put a hand under her elbow.

Murmuring a polite and barely audible, “Thank you,” she allowed him to steady her for a second, then unfolded herself in that graceful, lighter-than-air way she had. The robe settled with a whisper around her ankles. “I’m okay-I’ll be fine.” Her voice was steady; the breathlessness was only excitement.

“Two o’clock high,” Eve sang out, testing her, and C.J. barely ducked in time as Caitlyn swung the video camera toward him. He caught a glimpse of parted lips and silvery eyes as Eve said with laughter in her voice, “Well done!”

Jake was waiting with poorly disguised impatience beside the door. At his wife’s nod he opened it a crack, gave the hallway a quick glance, then pulled the door wide. “All clear.”

C.J. stepped across the hallway to the elevator and punched a button. Counted heartbeats until the doors clunked open.

“Off we go,” Eve breathed from close behind him.

He turned and saw that she had linked her arm with Caitlyn’s. He wanted to touch her, too-for reassurance, maybe, but for whose? Anyway, it didn’t matter, because he didn’t do it.

When the two women were on the elevator and had turned to face the open door, Eve blew her husband a kiss, then looked at C.J. and winked. He wanted to say to her, “You take care of her, now, you hear?” But again he didn’t.

“We’ll be right behind you,” Jake said.

As the doors slowly closed, C.J. was conscious of a peculiar hollowness under his ribs. As he and Jake made their way to the stairs and down the four flights to the parking garage, moving with a tense and silent urgency, he felt as if he’d just put a newly hatched chick on a plank and shoved it out in the middle of a lake.

Something in the silence all around him made him steal a glance at the man next to him, and he saw that the FBI man’s jaw looked as tense and bunched up as his was. He wondered if Jake was feeling the same way about Eve. Well, why wouldn’t he? She was his wife, after all.

And Caitlyn was…

My responsibility. That’s all. And he didn’t know what he’d do if he let anything happen to her. Anything more than had happened already.

He and Jake found a vantage point near the garage entrance where they could watch the hive of activity around the media trucks from behind a planter filled with crepe myrtle. Over by the hospital’s main entrance, some of the on-camera reporters were doing their wrap-up pieces against the backdrop of the building, while others were still finding people in the crowd to interview. Quite a number of people seemed to be doing nothing in particular, while others moved with the efficiency of a colony of ants, lifting, loading, packing up equipment and preparing to move on.

“There they are,” C.J. said suddenly, his voice a fair imitation of a crow squawking from the top of a telephone pole. He’d picked up the glint of sunshine on Eve’s blond head, and next to that the flutter of the pale blue scarf draped loosely around Caitlyn’s. He saw Eve lean close and point, and Caitlyn swing her video camera upward toward a helicopter hovering overhead, just exactly as if she could see it there.

Jake didn’t say anything, but C.J. knew he’d seen them, too. There was a certain quickening, a kind of electricity, an alertness that had nothing to do with the senses. Whatever it was, he recognized it in Jake because it was going on inside himself, too, and he felt a sense of kinship with the man that didn’t have a thing to do with blood. Funny thing was, he didn’t even know Jake Redfield all that well-they’d run into each other at the major family get-togethers, and that was about it. Now, though, he found himself thinking about the man, wondering what made an FBI agent tick, and how it must be to feel about a woman the way he obviously did for his wife, Eve.

And then out of the blue he was thinking about his brothers and their wives-Jimmy Joe and his feisty, redheaded Mirabella, Troy and Charly, with that dry sense of humor and chip-on-the-shoulder attitude of hers. For the first time ever in his life he thought about the people he knew who were head over heels in love with their mates, and knew how lucky they were. And for the first time ever in his life he knew that there was an emptiness inside himself and that it was called loneliness.

What he couldn’t figure out was why he was having those thoughts and feelings while his eyes followed, as if stuck to her by a magnet, the slow and graceful progress of a woman who was, in all the ways that counted, a stranger to him. Yeah, a stranger; she was right about that, after all.

Strange? What else would you call a blind woman with silver eyes, a hijacker of trucks, a rescuer of battered women, and a kidnapper of children-an incredibly beautiful woman who at the moment was hiding herself and her bandaged head in the all-concealing robes of a woman from Afghanistan?

Strange…or crazy, maybe?

Jake, who’d been scanning the thinning crowd with eagle eyes, suddenly seemed to relax. He let out a breath and muttered, “She’s something else, isn’t she?”

C.J. replied fervently, “She sure is.”

He was fairly certain they were talking about two different women, but that didn’t matter. They were most likely both right.

They stayed where they were until the crowd began to thin out and they saw Eve give the wrap-it-up signal to her crew. They watched the two women make their way to the van followed by the other members of the crew, and then the seemingly endless process of getting all the equipment stowed, buttoned down and loaded up. Finally, Eve and Caitlyn climbed into the back of the van and disappeared from view. The rest of the crew sorted themselves out and found seats. Doors slammed. Nobody but the two men watching from behind the crepe myrtle paid any attention whatsoever as the van pulled slowly out of the hospital parking lot and bumped into the street.

Jake looked over at C.J. and let out a breath. “That’s it, then. They’re off. From here on I guess it’s up to you.”

C.J. glanced at him, then squinted off in the direction of the disappearing van. “Yes, sir,” he said.

It was up to him, all right-tell him something he didn’t know. Up to him not only to keep Caitlyn Brown safe, but to somehow put her life back on its rails. Seemed like a lot to expect of a man most people would have thought was still trying to figure out his own direction in life. C.J. was well aware there were some who’d have said it was too much.

They’d have been wrong. C.J. didn’t know how he knew that, but he did.

He didn’t know, either, how to describe the way he felt, watching that van drive off down the road with Caitlyn Brown inside. Bigger, somehow, than he’d felt only a few weeks ago. Definitely older, but also denser…stronger…more like steel than human flesh and bone. Maybe, he thought, thinking of fairy-tales again, it was something like the way one of those knights of old had felt when he strapped on his armor and took up his sword and shield and rode off to find him a dragon to slay.

Caitlyn woke from a light doze as the car’s tires crunched over graveled ground. All motion stopped, and Eve’s touch was a feathery tickle on her arm.

“Caty-honey, we’re here.”

She heard Eve’s door open and felt the caress of a breeze that carried with it the smell of fall and the feel of evening…a coolness, a softness and the rich brown smell of leaves. Eager for more of it, she groped for the handle and opened her own door without waiting for help, and then she could hear the faint spatter of the leaves as they fell all around her, shaken loose by the breeze. In the distance she could hear doors opening and closing, footsteps and voices and the soft woofs of well-mannered dogs.

She swung her legs around, felt with her feet for the ground and stood up, and then had to clutch the door to keep from falling. Her head swam with dizziness-a little from car sickness, perhaps, but mostly just exhaustion. Though she’d managed to sleep a little after they’d exchanged the bumpy van for Eve’s comfortable sedan in Atlanta, it had been hours since they’d left the quiet and safety of that hospital room. Too long for someone recovering from a head injury to be out of bed.

“Hold on, I’m coming…” Footsteps crunched and Eve’s worried voice came closer. “How’re you doing, hon’? You okay?”

“Just a little tired,” Caitlyn muttered, hating her swimming head and hollow stomach. This weakness was new to her; she couldn’t remember ever having had a sick day in her life before. Not like this. “I’ll be okay…”

“It’s been a pretty long day,” Eve consoled, in her bright and cozy way, as she hooked an arm around Caitlyn’s waist. “Don’t try to be brave or sociable, nobody expects you to. You’re probably going to want to go straight to bed. Plenty of time tomorrow to start getting acquainted…learning your way around. Hold on to me, now-”

“My head aches,” Caitlyn said in a small voice. Damn the weakness. Damn the pain. Her ears rang; she drew a shivering breath, on the verge of confessing that she simply didn’t have the strength to take another step. She thought how appallingly humiliating it was going to be to collapse in a heap in front of total strangers.

“Here-what the hell are you doing?” The voice was gruff as the welcoming woofs of the dogs, soft as the patter of breeze-carried leaves.

She shuddered and felt the breeze of movement and the warmth of a solid body, and an arm much bigger and stronger than Eve’s wrapped itself around her waist. Another hooked behind her legs, and she gave a gasp as she felt herself swept up, then cradled against a heaving chest, a thumping heart. A warm, earthy scent filled her senses, strange but somehow familiar…a mixture of soap and Southern cooking and diesel fuel and man, and a hint of an aftershave she’d never learned the name of.

“I got you…”

“Put me down,” she said faintly. “I’m too heavy to carry.”

“Shoot, you don’t weigh as much as a feather,” C.J. scoffed. But his breathing was quick and sharp, and she was certain he lied.

And yet she couldn’t bring herself to struggle, or even argue, not another word. Which ought to have astonished her, alien as it was to her nature to surrender any kind of control without a fight. Except that this didn’t feel like surrender at all. It felt…nice.

Was it shameful to enjoy this so much-the feel of muscular arms around her and the steadfast thumping of a man’s heartbeat against her cheek? If it was, Caitlyn thought with a silent sigh, then so be it. So be it.

She only knew then that she was weak and he was strong, and it felt good to rest her head against his shoulder and let herself be rocked by the rhythm of his long, masculine stride. Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch across the gravel…then the hollow thump of booted feet on wooden steps, scuffing and scraping across wood planks, the squeak of an old-fashioned screen door.

Soft voices, kind voices…

“Bring her right on in here this minute, son. Poor little thing…I expect she’s about worn-out.”

“Sammi June’s room’s all ready for her, C.J. It’s the one closest to the bathroom, and she’ll be next to me so I can look in if she needs anything. That’s the second-”

“I know which one it is,” C.J. said with an impatient-sounding grunt. “It was mine before it was Sammi June’s.”

“Are you hungry? I’ve got roast chicken and butter beans and mashed potatoes ’n’ gravy and squash pie out in the kitchen…”

They were all murmuring the way people do when they’re trying not to wake up a sleeping baby. Caitlyn was neither one of those things, and it took just about that long for her pride to bestir itself from its unaccustomed dormancy. Her body arched and stiffened-a silent demand-and either C.J. understood or she’d caught him by surprise, because after the first instinctive tightening against her struggles, his arms relaxed and she found herself upright and on her own two feet.

Though none too steadily. As her world tilted on its axis, she clutched at one of those arms with one hand while she held out the other and said in as firm a voice as she could muster, “Hi, thanks so much for having me. I’m Caitlyn Brown.”

The hands that sandwiched hers were small-boned but warm and strong. From a level considerably below hers, a no-nonsense voice crooned in the distinctive music of the South, “Well, we’re glad you could be here. I’m Calvin’s momma. Call me Betty.”

Caitlyn blinked and adjusted her gaze downward. For no good reason that she could think of her eyes were stinging again. “Thank you,” she whispered, then faltered. She could think of nothing else to say. She feared she was one good peppery sneeze away from bursting into tears.

“And I’m Jess-C.J.’s sister. One of ’em, anyway.” The hand that claimed hers next was bigger, longer-boned, its touch cool and sure. The voice, with a more muted accent, came from higher up, maybe even a little above Caitlyn’s five foot seven.

So, she thought, his mother is short and his sister is tall. “You’re the nurse,” she said, smiling. She felt a painful little bubble of fear. I wonder what they look like. They’re so kind…I wonder if I’ll ever see their faces. She imagined them both with C.J.’s chocolate eyes and dimples…golden hair for the sister, silver for the mother. She imagined them beautiful, to match their voices.

“Would y’all like to come on out to the kitchen and have some supper?” Betty asked. Her touch was warm on Caitlyn’s elbow. “Eve, you’d better stay and have a bite.”

“Thanks, but I need to be getting home.” Eve’s voice, from somewhere close behind Caitlyn, interrupted by a rustle and a breeze and the brush of a body…the soft murmurs and barely audible grunts people make when they hug “Before my kids forget they’ve even got a mother. I haven’t seen much of them lately. Mmm, thank you so much, Betty…Jess.”

Then it was Caitlyn’s turn to be caught up in a brief but fierce embrace. Eve’s hair, smelling faintly of lemons, tickled her cheek, and her voice said huskily next to her ear, “Caty, honey, you’re going to be fine. You take care, now-I’ll come see you soon…”

Caitlyn’s mumbled thanks were swallowed up in the general babble of goodbyes and you-come-back-nows, and then Eve was gone, her leaving punctuated by the bang of the screen door.

Kind voices haggled good-naturedly over her, discussing her wants and needs as if she weren’t there, the way people do with small children:

“Let’s everybody come on in the kitchen, now, Caitlyn needs to sit down. You all can do with some supper-Calvin, I know you love my squash pie-”

“Momma, she’s tired. She might just want to go to bed.”

“Well, some soup, then. Build up her strength. Some soup, and-oh, I know, how about some hot cocoa? That’s what Granny always used to fix us-”

“I think I would just like to go to bed,” Caitlyn interrupted in a thin, unnatural voice. A child’s voice. “If that’s okay…”

A child was exactly what she felt like-a very small, bewildered child, lost in a vast darkness. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into a corner, curl herself into a terrified ball and howl until her parents came to find her. Surrounded by well-meaning strangers, she wanted only to hear a familiar voice, feel familiar arms around her, the touch of gentle, loving hands.

“Of course it’s okay. Momma, I’ll just help her up-”

“Well, okay then, you go on. I’m going to make her a cup of cocoa. I’ll bring it in a bit.”

“You think you can make it up those stairs, hon’? Here-put your arm around my waist. C.J., if you take-”

“I’ve got her,” C.J. growled.

There was an instant of silence, then the push of air, warm and dense…and there were those arms again, seeming almost familiar now, one around her waist, the other behind her legs. She was lifted, and there was the same sharp, rapid breath blowing puffs at her temple and the same steady heartbeat thumping under her cheek. She caught a whiff of that half-forgotten aftershave, and the other C.J. smells…and somehow those were already familiar to her, too.

The terror receded a little, but not the darkness. And not the urge to cry.