The Taken

Chapter Three

In the dream, Grif was driving through the desert, waiting for Vegas to rise out of the inky darkness like a neon mirage, just as he had fifty years earlier. Evie was straining forward next to him, as if she could force the car faster with the weight and heat of her body, like she could bend the entire world to her will with her curves alone. She’d always been like that. Taken the not-inconsequential gifts God had given her-beauty, jets, guile-and parlayed them into bigger game than her Iowa roots allowed. More than what her simple family had expected of and for her. Certainly more than what Grif could give.

He felt it when she finally shifted, turning to him, though he didn’t dare look back. “Your love should have saved me.”

“I know.”

“You weren’t strong enough.”

Grif kept his eyes on the narrow, snaking road. “I know that, too.”

“Are you strong enough now?”

Was he? He had a strong title, Centurion, and a strong job, helping others. And even if Centurions were the lowest celestials on the totem pole, he was still an angel. That had to count for something.

But would he be having these dreams if he were truly strong? No. He’d have already healed from the trauma of his death and moved on into Paradise. Tightening his hands on the wheel of his dream ’fifty-six Chevy Bel Air, Grif sighed. Incubation was supposed to have pulled these flashbacks from his mind. Yet they regularly reached up in the guise of a dream or an unintended thought and coldcocked him, like a fighter sprung early from his corner. And in that brief, flashing moment, even in the Everlast, Grif remembered, and felt, it all.

“I don’t have to be strong,” he finally said, refusing to dwell on it. “I’m dead.”

And that’s how he got through his days. His job was to escort Takes to the Everlast, that’s all. Didn’t matter if their deaths had been accidental, if they’d been murdered, or if they’d severed the rip cord themselves. It wasn’t his responsibility to figure out how they’d gotten that way. Not anymore.

Evie laughed beside him, like she could read his thoughts.

“Yet you still help people. Never could break you of that soft habit, could I? All the time, helping others instead of just keeping your head down and doing for us. And look where it got you. Look where it got me.”

He finally did turn to her, and she was just as pretty as he remembered. Eyebrows plucked into perfection above irises of dipped chocolate, blond hair styled into waves so flawless they were severe. But she was also angry. “I don’t know where it got you,” he said.

He’d never seen her in the Everlast. She’d probably bypassed it, went straight into Paradise. That’s what the pure angels did, right? And that’s what she’d been to him. His angel. His Evie.

His wife.

But right now she was his conscience.

“Yes, you do,” she said accusingly, just as Grif knew she would. He’d had this dream before. And what Evie didn’t say, but what still rose in the dark between them, was that if he hadn’t died, he could have saved her. And that was really why it was so hard to look at her: all that beauty and life and energy straining forward in anticipation of a future that would never come.

He scrambled for an answer, trying to think of something that would make it better-

“Hey, man.”

Coming to with a hard snort, Grif squinted, and tried to focus. Darkness, layers of it, crowded in and he shook his head. He had no idea where he was. Then the marching band took up again in his skull, and he remembered.

“Hey,” the voice said again. “Over here.”

Bleary-eyed, wiping drool from his chin, Grif turned his head. Dark lumps rose from the ground in uneven mounds, and a brick wall speared up at his back. The sky rose darkly behind that.

“Where am I?” he rasped.

“Man, and I thought I was wasted.”

The voice found form in the face of a shaggy-haired man who sat up among the lumps on the ground, plastic shifting around him as he peered, too closely, at Grif. The man’s breath kept Grif from doing the same. He recoiled. The pounding in his head throbbed.

Breathe.

“Yo, how’d you find this place? This is prime real estate. Usually nobody bothers me out here.”

“Ain’t gonna bother you,” Grif said, the words guttural, and scraping raw. Clearing his throat, he focused on bringing his senses back to life. That’s what was happening, after all. He was coming back to life.

His first observation was of the dark. That, and the chill. It was predawn, by Grif’s best guess, and nighttime in the desert was notoriously cold. He already knew from the bungled Take that it was winter but hadn’t noticed until now. Then he remembered it’d been late winter the last time he’d been in Vegas, too.

A cricket chirped, pricking his ears, and a breeze caught on the plastic bags around him, but the thumping headache was still rattling his brain’s pots and pans, making it hard to concentrate.

Breathe.

But he already was. The cold was only pressing in from the outside now, and his insides were beginning to thaw. He willed his hands to move, concentrating on touch as pins and needles shot into his limbs. He tried to sit up.

Never mind, he thought, barely able to lift his head. Though it wouldn’t be long. He was already feeling stronger, less panicked, so he settled back to wait. One thing he’d learned in his half-dozen years as a P.I. was when to act and when to sweat out a moment. Most people didn’t have the discipline to be still and wait. Grif didn’t have a problem with stillness or discipline.

The same obviously couldn’t be said for his companion. “You got some funky threads there, buddy. You first come around that corner, I thought to myself, Jimmy, ol’ boy, that man is straight up Dragnet. Like some old detective and shit.”

Two points for the wino. At least the man’s babble gave Grif another concrete detail to focus on. He was, indeed, wearing his favorite suit, the gray flannel with give in the sleeves, his white shirt, black tie. For some reason, that had a smile crawling up his face. Material things had no value in and of themselves, he knew that. There was no difference between a diamond and a brick in the Everlast. Only those things God had assigned value to could sustain a soul.

But this was the suit he’d died in, and though he’d worn it ever since, it hadn’t felt like this in the Everlast. The soft, clean cotton never caressed his skin like a lover’s touch while there. This sort of touch was a gift only the living possessed, though most never realized it.

“Missing your stingy brim, though,” Jimmy, still babbling, observed.

Grif perked up. Where was his hat?

Frowning, he looked up in time to spot a star hurtling across the sky. Grif followed the movement, eyes tickling so deeply in their sockets that he gasped, and for the first time in half a century, he sucked in raw ozone and earth instead of the silky cosmos.

And dust, he thought, choking. And decay, he realized, scenting the trash around him… fruit rinds, coffee grounds, half-finished meals that used to be animals. Human waste. The unwashed bum. No wonder the Pures would rather Fall than don flesh.

But then Grif covered his face with his palm, and was reintroduced to himself. The hotel soap he’d showered with fifty years earlier, the Sen-Sen he chewed after every meal, the faint whiff of coconut in his pomade, and beneath it all… flesh. Warm, gritty, and real.

And it was the flesh-the sinful flesh-that finally grounded him. No sooner did he have that thought than click. The radio found its signal.

For one brief moment his senses were amplified. He could scent the shadows. He could taste the night. Yet before he could reach out and touch anything, it was all whisked away, the protective blanket of the Everlast ripped entirely from beneath his chin. All that remained was its knowledge, buried in the coils of his gray matter.

Grif sat up, then rose unsteadily to his feet, bracing against the dirty brick wall for support. He had to figure out where he was.

“Yo, Dick Tracy!” Jimmy called, as Grif began walking away. “Buy me a brewski, right? I let you crash at my pad… least you could do!”

Grif had no idea what Jimmy was talking about, not until he rounded the corner and caught sight of pumps, a glowing storefront, and a dark-haired man standing cross-armed with his back to Grif. Ignoring the man for now, Grif looked up at the backlit sign. Gas station. Perfect.

On a hunch, Grif checked his pants pockets for his wallet. Opening it, he saw it, too, was as when he died. Same amount of money-and lucky for him he’d just cashed out at the casino cage-and the same photo of Evie that he carried with him everywhere. He took time to study that with his new-old eyes, then tucked it safely away, just like the dream.

His watch was on and working. His piece strapped to his right calf. Lot of good that did me, Grif thought wryly, before frowning. Odd, though. His driver’s license was missing. He coulda sworn he’d had it on him when he died.

Grif didn’t know if the dark-haired man heard his sigh, or just sensed Grif behind him, but he turned suddenly, giving a startled curse when he saw Grif. “Where’d you come from?”

Grif hesitated, then jerked his head in the direction he’d come. “Checking on the local wildlife.”

“You mean Jimmy?” Worry replaced wariness. “He all right? They didn’t get to him, too, did they?”

“They?”

“You know,” the man said, in an accent that curled in the air like smoke. “The ones who chopped up the woman across the street.”

Grif glanced in the direction the man had been staring. In the background a wide sun was beginning its push over mountains wearing robes of dark purple. In the foreground was a truck stop, rigs idling white smoke in the cool morning air. And across from the closest of those was a sagging two-story motel with an even more depressing café riveted to its side. It was littered with yellow crime-scene tape, and what had to be a whole unit of patrol cars.

Grif hadn’t run very far.

“Jimmy’s fine,” he said, heading inside the station. It was brighter, more crowded than in his time and with a security camera straight out of a science-fiction movie, but still clearly a gas station.

“You a cop?” the man asked, following. He slipped behind the counter, pulled down the Luckies Grif pointed to, and tossed over a book of matches. “Or maybe a reporter?”

“A word-hack?” Grif made a face, tossing exact change onto the counter. Six bills for a pack of cigarettes. He couldn’t believe it. What was that? A 2,400 percent increase in fifty years? He’d consider quitting the habit if he thought he’d be here long enough to properly start again. “I’m gonna need a map. And some coffee for our friend out back.”

The cashier’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not from here, are you?”

Grif wondered if it was the map or his concern for Jimmy that gave it away, but considering the man’s dark eyes, skin, and curling accent, Grif didn’t think he had any room to comment. “A few years since I’ve been in Vegas.”

“Just passing through?”

Grif bent over the map. “Aren’t we all?”

The man shrugged, his attention back across the street now that Grif was no longer a mystery. “Coffee’s in the back. I’ll be outside if you need me.”

But Grif needed him even as the door shut behind him. “Who drew this? An amnesiac monkey?”

Because the map looked deliberately confusing. Red lines, yellow ones, blue. A big squiggly in the middle that meant blast-all. The topography made no sense. He couldn’t even locate the Marquis, the grand hotel where he’d died, and was considering popping out back and asking Jimmy exactly where they were when a tinny voice swept through the room.

“Griffin Shaw,” it boomed, causing the knobs where his wings had been torn from his body to pulse with pain. “Did you really tell one Melinda Childers that a rap on the head was the nicest thing her husband ever did for her?”

The voice had Grif jumping, not because he’d thought he was alone but because it was so familiar. “Frank?”

Whirling, he looked for the Pure who was in charge of the Centurions, but he saw no one.

“Up here.”

Grif turned back to the register.

“Up.”

Grif’s gaze rose to the security monitor behind the counter. Gone were the live shots of the building that’d divided the screen before. In their place was the Pure who appeared to each Centurion in the guise they most identified with authority. For Grif, that meant a sergeant in a detectives’ bullpen, something he’d long stopped questioning.

Glaring through blurred static, and a picture that rolled every few seconds, Sarge crossed his great arms and gave Grif a cold stare. His wings, as black as the rest of him, took up the whole of the screen, though Grif could still see the tips, currently gold-tipped with fury. Hard lines drew his mouth down like a thin hook, and his jaw clenched reflexively. He hadn’t seen Sarge this mad since Harvey brought home the wrong soul.

Frank leaned back, and the celestial camera-or whatever was allowing Grif to view him in the Everlast-pulled wide to reveal a desk that was as broad and imposing as the Pure behind it. “Childers?” Frank repeated, pointing to some papers on his desk.

Grif glanced outside to make sure the cashier wasn’t looking before he answered. “What is that? My folder?”

Sarge just stared. Like Anas, he had no pupils, though instead of her hot open flame, the rounds of his eyes held mist swirling over black marble. “And you told Simon Abernathy he wouldn’t have gotten dusted if he’d stuck to shilling fish and chips on his side of the pond?”

“He was an illegal.”

“Shaw.” Sarge threw down his pen. “You are a Centurion! You are greeting people in the most vulnerable moments of their afterlife. Don’t you remember what that was like?”

“Sure I do,” Grif said, tapping out one of his smokes. He lit it behind a cupped palm, and exhaled before meeting Frank’s restlessly churning eyes. “Though the part right before that gets a little fuzzy.”

Frank narrowed his gaze. “We’re not having this conversation again.”

“Good.” Because Grif had been murdered. No amount of yapping would convince him to forgive it. And, for some reason, he couldn’t forget. “Then maybe we can talk about what the hell I’m doing on this mudflat. In flesh.”

“You have sensitivity issues, Shaw.”

Despite those, or maybe because of them, Grif just blew out a stream of smoke. “Maybe I could put on a dress. Sing a little show tune?”

Frank just stared back at him from the video screen. With his angelic nature hidden behind this familiar guise, it was easy to forget he was created in and of Paradise. Yet, unlike some of the other Pures, Frank didn’t seem to resent the Centurions. Sure, they were celestial misfits; no longer mortal, not truly angelic. But Centurions had still been created in God’s image, they remained His beloved children, and Frank said it was his job to see those souls at peace.

Admittedly, Grif didn’t always make it easy.

“That it?” he asked, when Frank just kept eyeballing him. “You knocked me back to the mud just to talk about my bedside manner?”

“No, smartass.” Frank’s curse was cause enough to raise a brow. “You barred yourself from the Everlast when you did this.”

And Nicole Rockwell’s corpse replaced Frank on the screen. Grif shot a nervous glance out the window, but the cashier was still staring across the street, giving a play-by-play to whomever he was talking to on his cell.

“Come on,” Grif protested. “I was nice to the working girl.”

Sarge’s words were just a voice-over. “She wasn’t a hooker, Grif.”

Grif sighed. “Yeah. That’s what she said.”

“It’s not what she said, Shaw. It’s what she did.”

And the image fluttered, shifted, and then there was Grif, entering the motel room just as Nicole Rockwell spotted her dead body and began screaming.

“Damn,” Grif whispered under his breath.

It looked more incriminating, more premeditated, from a distance. There was no sound, but he couldn’t fault the picture. Especially after he’d resuscitated Nicole’s body, and she made him turn away so she could dress.

“The girl wanted some privacy,” Grif objected, having seen enough.

“No… she wanted this.”

And Grif watched, slack-jawed, as Rockwell scribbled something on the Moleskine he’d seen lying on the dresser. When his image finally turned away from the window and back to her, she made sure her head was on straight, literally, and that her body was blocking the notebook.

Grif cursed again. “She tricked me.”

“You let her trick you.” Frank’s wide face reappeared on the screen.

“I wasn’t thinking straight!” Grif protested, then finally got the nerve to say what was really bothering him. “You sent me to Vegas. Vegas!”

Frank’s face remained impassive. “It was mandatory. Doing Surface time in the city where you died-”

“Was murdered,” Grif corrected.

“Is part of your rehabilitation and healing process.”

“I’m fine,” Grif muttered.

“Then what are you still doing here?” Frank asked, gesturing at his office in the Everlast.

“You mean here?” Grif motioned around the gas station on the Surface.

The swirling eyes narrowed. “You want to see the rest?”

The rest? Grif frowned. What was left?

But Sarge was shaking his head, and Grif suddenly found he couldn’t hold the stare. He might be slow on the uptake, but he was catching up fast now. His actions had changed something on the Surface. They’d altered fate somehow, and whatever his interference had allowed-whatever Nicole Rockwell had written in that notebook-was big enough to gain a Pure’s attention. No, he didn’t want to see.

But Sarge showed him anyway. The static blurred with a wave of his hand, and there was the same dingy hotel room but a new scene. Another woman and her john entering, freezing when they spotted Nicole’s corpse on the bed. Grif was already gone, of course, and the woman fled screaming, but the man looked around… then pocketed the notebook.

“Who is that?” Grif asked, leaning forward, studying the blond hair, stocky build…

“None of your damned business, that’s who!” Sarge reappeared, and looked like he was going to come at Grif right through the screen. “You are not a P.I. anymore. You’re not even human! Yet you took anchor in a body still pulsing with life, and so that must mean you want the human experience again. Fine. You’re demoted, angel.”

Every instinct told Grif to remain quiet. “What’re you gonna do?” he said instead. “Confiscate my halo?”

Frank’s gaze narrowed. “Go back to the man outside.”

Grif looked at the cashier. He waved when he caught the man looking back.

“The other one,” Sarge snapped. “And take the map. You’re gonna need it.” And the security screen returned to normal.

Muttering to himself, Grif pocketed the Luckies and folded the map, and was halfway to the door before remembering the coffee. When he finally exited, the cashier looked over, scoffing when he saw the steaming cups, one in each hand.

“You’re really not from here.”

But he didn’t follow as Grif headed back around the side of the building, and Jimmy was right where he left him, seemingly passed out, though his head lifted when Grif stopped in front of him. “Here.”

But it was Sarge’s misty, marbled gaze staring out at him from the mortal flesh. Grif jolted, scalding his flesh with the coffee. “What are you doing? Is he… possessed?”

“It’s easy to control those who have no possession over themselves,” Sarge said. “Now look in his left coat pocket.”

Grif set down the cups. “Why?”

“I’m giving you a case.”

“Another Take?” Grif asked, withdrawing a file folder.

Jimmy’s expression altered, both hard and sympathetic all at once. “Not a Take. A case. You think you can do my job, Shaw? Make the decisions and sacrifices required of a Pure?”

What the hell had the Pure ever sacrificed? Grif thought, but Frank didn’t give him the chance to ask. “Open it. Find out more of exactly what it is we do.”

A black-and-white glossy stared up at him, a rap sheet stapled across from that, but he ignored the vital stats and studied the face. He recognized her immediately, of course. The pretty woman he’d seen from the motel window, though pretty wasn’t a word he’d use to describe her up close. Siren would work, and her baby blues were lit up as if she knew it, and it amused her.

Cherry-cream lips and sable-hued bangs stood out against pale skin, stark, even in black-and-white. A rose, blood-orange, he imagined, was tucked behind one ear. He glanced over at the name-Katherine Craig-then back at the photo.

“I don’t get it.”

Jimmy’s mouth moved. “What’s your job as a Centurion?”

Grif cleared his throat. “Secure the Take. Clean ’em up. Bring ’em home.”

Do it respectfully, he added silently. Okay, so he’d learned his lesson.

But Sarge wasn’t through yet. “And when do you meet your Takes, Shaw?”

“When they are most traumatized. Immediately after corporeal death.”

Every Centurion knew that, because that’s why they existed. They were the losers. The few murdered souls that incubation couldn’t cure. Still tethered to the Surface by memory and regret, they were pressed into assisting others to cross into the Everlast. The idea was that helping others would relieve their mental anguish. Then they, too, would be able to enter Paradise proper.

The bum gave him a tight smile. Grif blinked. For a moment he thought he saw fangs. “Not this one.”

“Sarge?”

Frank’s roiling liquid gaze suddenly looked shuttered. “You gotta watch this one, Griffin. See, you might be back on the Surface, back in flesh, but you’re not human. Take away a Centurion’s wings, and all they’re left with is an intimate acquaintance with death.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you can still see death coming. It also means you’re gonna watch that woman die, and you’re going to feel the death as if it were your own.”

Grif froze. That’s what he was doing here?

“No.”

He began to shake his head. He might be a misfit in the celestial realm, but everyone knew the only thing keeping him sane was the protective layer of Everlast that lay between Paradise and the Surface. It was a balm, a numbing cream rubbed atop his sore soul. Flesh would scrub off that balm and expose him. Without it he’d wither.

But Sarge knew this better than anyone, so all Grif asked was, “Why?”

“Because you caused it, Shaw.” Now Frank didn’t look angry, vengeful, or cold. He just looked sad. “Katherine Craig is fated to die because of you.”

Grif’s newfound breath deserted him, but his mind fired fast.

My best friend is waiting outside…

The siren in the car. The way she’d looked up at him in a way no woman had in over fifty years: as if really seeing him. And the blond man who’d pocketed the Moleskine.

Whatever Nicole Rockwell had written in it was going to lead the man directly to Katherine Craig.

Grif tossed the folder to the ground. “I won’t do it.”

Jimmy’s expression, and Frank’s darker one beneath it, didn’t alter. “You’re going to bring that poor girl’s soul home, Shaw. You’re going to see that she gets safely to incubation where she can heal from her death, and the grief over a life and family she’ll never have.”

“No.”

“You will do this so that she damned well doesn’t end up like you. And, Grif? You’re going to do it nicely.” The bum’s nostrils flared, his stare tumultuous and bright. “Keep the map until you get your bearings. You’ve been navigating by the constellations for so long now that the streets mean nothing. Now, go.”

Grif closed his eyes, and the same loneliness that’d run him under when he sank through Nicole’s body wracked him again. Lowering his head, he shook it side to side. “I still remember things I shouldn’t. And the memories will be stronger if I stay on the Surface. Humanity… hurts.”

Silence reigned for so long Grif could almost believe Frank was reconsidering. But when he looked up, the bum’s gaze was bleary, confused, and pinned on the coffee cup next to him. “What the hell is this? Where’s the sauce, man?”

Grif bent, pocketed the folder, and turned to leave. But, just in case, he paused to mutter, “You forgot my damned hat.”

“You forgot my damned beer!” Jimmy replied, but Grif was already walking. He was just out of the drunk’s view when he spotted it coming fast, like a soundless comet or a falling black star. It dropped directly to his side, sending a small puff of dust into the air, causing Grif to cough.

Yeah, yeah, Grif thought, bending down. It’s all dust. We’re all dust. I get it.

But he didn’t give Sarge the satisfaction of looking back or up, and he didn’t give thanks. Instead he dusted off his fedora, settled it atop his head, and kept walking.

Somewhere out there was a woman with powerful blue eyes, a secretive smile, and curves that made him want to cry. A woman he was going to have to face in both this world and the next. A woman fated to die because of him.

Again.

Kit shouldn’t have been surprised at the sun’s ascendance in the sky, or by downtown’s early-morning bustle. Yet she stood at the bottom of the concrete stairway outside the station, shoulders slumped and limbs heavy, as astonished by the urban landscape as she’d be in a foreign country. It was startling that these people had dressed this morning-or not, in the case of the vagrant sprawled to her left-and bewildering that they could now think of coffee, or gambling, or work.

And what the hell was there to laugh about, Kit wondered, anger flashing as a passing woman threw back her blond, perfectly coiffed head-neck white and pristine and unmarked by a butcher’s knife-loosing an inappropriate amount of joy into the world. Kit wanted to grab the sleeve of the blonde’s suit jacket, or maybe a handful of that carefully styled hair, and say, “My best friend was murdered last night. Why the hell are you still alive?”

Why am I? she thought, tears welling.

Why was anyone?

Kit realized she was causing a scene, looking rumpled, dazed, and literally shaking in the sidewalk’s center. Swallowing hard, she wiped her eyes with her cardigan before beginning the long walk to the police lot where she’d parked the night before.

It was still wintry this early in February, but Kit didn’t hurry. Her steps were as measured and precise as an army recruit’s. She even halted stiffly beneath the bald tubing of an old neon sign to stare into a refurbished café where lawyers and D.A.s and those who made their living off of other people’s vices were talking shop and swapping stories. Blue pendant lamps glowed like crystal jellyfish, and the scent of fresh bread and baking sugar rushed out to envelop her when the door was thrown wide.

Kit frowned and stared. The café didn’t look inviting to her. Instead, it looked too hot, like a nuclear reactor. Like it would consume and destroy every bit of life that entered there.

Or maybe she was just projecting.

Hurrying the rest of the way to her car, she slammed the door on the sounds of downtown Vegas, and locked herself in the cocoon-like silence. The familiar squeak and scent of leather wrapped around her like a sumptuous throw. The perfume that’d been her latest flea market find, and that she’d been wearing the night before, tickled her nose. Slumping, Kit let her head fall. She should go straight home and sleep, but she didn’t dare start the car with her hands still shaking. Besides, sleep meant closing her eyes, and even blinking was a nightmare. She’d rather cling to the raw numbness of her fatigue. She preferred her overheated anger at the world.

Swallowing hard, she dialed Paul’s number to see if he’d done any work on the list she’d given him in the station. He didn’t answer, no surprise, but it made her want to gore something with her red fingertips. Forget that it was not yet seven and there was nothing he could have done in three predawn hours. Forget, too, that he’d never been available when Kit needed him, anyway.

But Nicole had. Kit glanced at the metaphorical elephant in the car, Nic’s camera, lying lens-up on the passenger’s seat, its wide, alien gaze locked on her. Nic loved that camera like Kit loved the Duetto, so much that her predominant memory of Nicole was in a one-eyed squint, shoulders hunched as she held the camera to her eye.

“With my shots and your smarts, we’re sure to hit the major wires,” she’d said, pointing the camera up at the room where she’d die within the hour.

“Sure you don’t want me in there with you?” Kit asked, staring at the window.

“The girl was insistent. She wants me alone.”

“I could hide under the bed.”

Nicole raised her brows. “And where’s the first place you’d look? Besides, I’d blow any trust I’d built once you climbed out from beneath a stained mattress with old jizz caked on your kneecaps.”

Kit made a face. “Get me a Brillo pad. I need to scrub that image from my brain.”

“Well, do it from within this George Jetson cockpit. I’ll text you and have you come up when the girl and I have established a rapport. Until then… smile. I’m about to take the photo for your byline.”

Nicole snapped a few shots of Kit in profile, the motel sagging like a battered woman in the background, then smiled as she studied the images. “God, I’m good.”

She was. She could see everything through her lens. So well, Kit thought, that sometimes she was utterly blind without it.

Kit slid her key in the ignition. She should go home. There was nothing outside the safety of this car but more bright sky and oblivious people and futile anger. But how was she to be alone with this grief? It wasn’t that she wanted someone’s shoulder to cry on-her sadness was heavy enough to knock two people over-but it’d be nice to see someone who’d known Nic alive and well, and who’d also feel the loss now that she was no longer either of those things.

So despite the wrinkles in her dress, the bedraggled ends of her hair, and the shadows haunting her eyes, Kit went to work. She would crack soon, she felt it like an animal sensed an impending earthquake, and would have to be home by then. But not yet. Not now. Her grief still hadn’t entered the nuclear reactor’s core. But she knew from previous experience-her mother’s death, her father’s-that when it did, the world as she knew it would be flattened, every particle in her life rearranged, her personal universe blown away.

If only there was a way to take a photo of that.