Step On A Crack

Chapter 84

IT WAS COMING on two in the morning when I slowly, painfully, lifted my head off the laptop keyboard I’d been using for a pillow. I was aware of the earring Maeve had given me. Also, that for the first time in hours, the activity in the makeshift Rockefeller command center had died down to a murmur.

Our work was almost done here. It had taken every ounce of finagling and begging and negotiating, but we’d somehow gotten all but four of the seventy-three million dollars together.

Delta Force had arrived around midnight and was working with the FBI and NYPD tactical people, trying to find some weakness, some helpful detail that had been overlooked. I’d heard that a mock-up of the cathedral was being built at an army base in Westchester to assist the commandos to plan for a breach.

As a kid, the thought of ever seeing soldiers patrolling the streets of New York was ridiculous, a scene from a B science-fiction movie. Seeing the soldiers on the perimeter of Ground Zero and watching the F-14s buzzing the Midtown skyscrapers as they flew air cover after 9/11 still didn’t seem real to me, but it was.

I sat up as an army general came past my desk. Seeing combat boots on NYC ground twice in one lifetime, I thought as I watched the officer and his entourage enter the command boardroom, seemed unfair.

“Why don’t you take a breather, Mike?” Paul Martelli told me with a yawn. He’d just come back from catching some sleep. “Nothing going on here for a little while.”

“We’re coming down to the end of this thing,” I said. “I don’t want to be missing if I’m needed.”

Martelli patted me on the shoulder.

“Listen, Mike,” he said, “we all know about your wife, your family situation. I can’t even imagine the stress you’re under. We’ll call you the second something develops. Now get out of here. Go be with your family. Mason and I have you covered.”

Martelli didn’t have to tell me twice. Anyway, I felt the negotiations were over-they’d won. We still had to negotiate the hostages’ release and whatever kind of transportation the hijackers thought they would need to get them to safety. But all that could wait.

Maeve was sleeping when I came in. I wasn’t about to wake her from such a peaceful state. On her bedside table, Jimmy Stewart was reluctantly receiving a cigar from Potter on the screen of the portable DVD player. I shut it off.

I stood there staring at my dear, sweet wife, the treasure of my life.

I smiled as I remembered our first date. I had just taken my finger off the bell to her apartment when she threw open the door and kissed me. There was a flash of her honey-brown eyes, the spiced sweetness of her perfume, and without preamble, soft lips hit me, and my heart smacked against the back of my chest like a handball.

“Thought I’d save us a little awkwardness later,” she’d said, her smile beaming as I stammered a bit, reeling against her threshold.

“Sweet Maeve,” I whispered now from the foot of her bed. “There’ll never be a man as lucky as me. I love you so much, my queen.” I touched a finger to my lips, then to hers.

Minutes later, I swung crosstown again. There wasn’t a soul on the windswept streets. Even the homeless had gone home for Christmas, I guessed.

I went into the kids’ rooms and checked on them. There were probably visions of PlayStation and XBox dancing in their heads instead of sugarplums, but at least they were snug in their beds as required. Seamus was snoring to beat the band on top of the chaise in my bedroom, cookie crumbs on his cheeks. My eleventh kid. I tossed a throw on him and turned out the light.

My biggest shock came when I stepped into the living room. Not only was there a grand tree, but it had been decorated to the nines. The kids’ gifts had been pulled from the back of my closet, expertly wrapped, and stacked in ten piles under it.

There was a note on the DVD remote sitting on the sectional. hit play, it said. merry christmas! mary catherine.

I did as instructed. A video shot of Chrissy, dressed as an angel and proceeding up the aisle in Holy Name’s gym, filled the screen.

I teared up, but not angrily this time. What an awesome job Mary Catherine and my grandfather had done. What could be more beautiful than this?

Duh, how about Maeve there, healthy, beside you? a voice inside me said.

I didn’t have the strength to listen to voices right now. It would all be over soon. I wiped my eyes to watch as my boys, now shepherds, came wandering from afar toward the stage. God save the Bennetts.