Cass grabs him by the elbow and shoves him our way. The Marine Corps, if I remember correctly, doesn’t actually have medical personnel, but most units have corpsmen with some medical training. He gives a quick check under the rapidly soaking-through bandage, then turns his head to speak into the radio on his shoulder. A second Marine drops down with a collapsible backboard and some rigging.
“Oh, fuck no,” mutters Eddison.
I flick his forehead with bloody fingers. “You will do it and you will say thank you,” I warn him ominously. And then, because he’s my brother and we’re both scared out of our minds, I scratch along his scalp, fingers digging into his shaggy curls. I don’t pull away until the Marines lift him in a smooth, practiced move and transfer him onto the rigged-up board. They carry the board over to the dangling ropes and with a series of knots that seem more fast than safe, to my inexperienced eye, have both themselves and Eddison roped in. Winches in the copter haul them up. The last I see of Eddison is his tired, somewhat mocking salute to the Marines pulling him on board.
Cass grabs my elbow with both hands and yanks me to my feet. “Nichelle,” she reminds me as the copter moves away.
Right. Traumatized child, who has absolutely no idea what’s going on.
She’s wrapped around Sterling, face buried in Eliza’s stomach, her shoulders shaking. Sterling rubs firmly between her shoulder blades, giving her a grounding point.
“Nichelle?”
She shifts her head to look at me with one eye.
I crouch down beside her, trying not to touch either of them with my bloody hands. “You are so smart, and so brave,” I tell her. “You knew just what we were trying to do, didn’t you?”
“Not at first,” she mumbles into Eliza’s shirt.
“But you figured it out. It was so frightening, but you figured it out and you helped us. Thank you, Nichelle. I’m sorry this happened, and I’m sorry I seemed to make it worse at first. And you know what, your mom is at home, waiting, and she is so worried about you.”
She perks up. Not enough to let go of Sterling, but I can see her whole face, at least. “Is she okay?” she asks in a rush. “She was bleeding but I couldn’t see how bad.”
“She’s hurt,” I admit, “but she’s going to be okay. Once she sees you’re safe and sound, you’ll both go to the hospital. Your dad is there already. I don’t know how he’s doing, though. He was in the ambulance before I got to the house.”
Sounds start carrying through the woods, yells and calls for us. Cass puts her phone back in her pocket where she’s standing guard over Cara’s body. “MARCO!” she yells, and there’s a ripple of shocked laughter through the trees.
“Stupid fed,” someone bellows. “The one looking is supposed to say ‘Marco’!”
“I can’t say ‘Polo’ if you’re not smart enough to say ‘Marco’ first!”
Nichelle giggles, even as she looks a bit shocked by it.
“Nichelle, we are really relieved that you’re okay,” I tell her, feeling a little giddy myself. “We might get a little silly. Is that okay?”
She nods with a shy grin.
A small herd arrives in the clearing, mostly uniforms with a couple of agents. A female officer immediately comes over to us and smiles down at the little girl. “Hi, Nichelle. My name is Officer Friendly. Do you remember me?”
It takes her a moment, but then the giggle slips out again. “You spoke at my school. You said your name is really Officer Friendly.”
“And so it is,” the woman says, pointing to her name tag. “Hannah Friendly. While we were out looking for you, the hospital called your mom. Your dad is going to be just fine. And you’ll get to see both of them really soon.”
Nichelle looks over to Cara, but a wall of police officers blocks her view of the body. “I . . . I . . .”
“It’s okay, Nichelle, you can ask us anything.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong, did I? She didn’t take me ’cuz I was bad?”
“Not a single thing,” I answer firmly. “She used to live here when she was a little girl. Her father was a bad man, and hurt her, and when she got really upset about some things, she thought your parents were hurting you, because you were in the same house. You didn’t do anything wrong, and neither did your parents. Promise.”
She studies my face like she’s memorizing it, her dark eyes lingering on the scars I got when I was only a year older than her, and finally nods. “Okay. And I can go home now?”
“Absolutely,” says Officer Friendly, offering her hand. Nichelle takes it and allows herself to be led away from me and Sterling. Eliza helps me stand, because my knees are a bit shaky in a way I can’t entirely blame on crouching.
And even though I probably shouldn’t, I find myself sidling between the officers to kneel down next to Cara, a safe distance away from the pool of blood from what used to be the back of her skull. A thin gold chain peeks above the collar of her white jumpsuit. Finding a sturdy-looking twig, I hook the chain and gently pull until a heart-shaped locket falls out.
“Does anyone have gloves?”
One of the agents from Kang’s team kneels across from me, wearing a pair. “Need something picked up?”
I gesture with the twig, setting the locket swaying. “I want to see what’s in it.”
He catches the pendant and opens it carefully. One on side, there’s a picture of teenaged Cara and her plain white teddy bear, red curtains in the back. A photo booth, probably. She’s grinning, and her hair is a faded red gold with blonde roots, growing out from the scarlet her father made it. On the other side, there’s a newsprint cutout of my face, with a halo drawn in sparkly gold ink.
My stomach churns, and I have to bite down on the urge to vomit. “You can close it, thank you,” I rasp.
“Is this healthy?” Cass asks wryly.
The question I asked Father Brendon rolls through my mind. How do we know when we’re doing more harm than good?
“Mercedes, nine years ago you rescued her, and you tried your damnedest to rescue her again today. What happened in between is not your fault. It’s also not your responsibility.”
“She got hurt in the system.”
“So did you.”
I look up at her at that, and she scowls down with an unimpressed glare. “Look, so you’ve never told me, and I’m not asking now, but I’m not completely unobservant, you know? I know you were in foster care for years, but the only home you talk about is the last one. You think I can’t read between the lines that shit happened at the other ones?”
“Only one was very bad,” I admit. “The rest of the time I was moved because my family kept trying to take me back.”
“Still. You, Mercedes Ramirez, you fucking martyr, are proof that the way she chose wasn’t the only way to choose.”
“Has anyone told you recently that you’re bad at this?”
She shrugs and hauls me up again. “I can’t be half as bad as Eddison.”
There might be something to that.
“Come on. Let’s get back to Hanoverian so you can get to Bethesda and check on Eddison.”
I look back at Cara, resisting the pull on my elbow. “I should—”
“Mercedes.” Losing patience waiting for me to look at her, she grabs my chin and forces it. “You gave her every kindness you could. Now try to be kind to yourself. No one is going to desecrate her. They’re just waiting for the medical examiner. Don’t kneel beside her like penance.”
But that’s exactly what it is, or what it should be. Penance. Vigil, maybe. She needed me to save her. Whether that’s fair or not, whether it was possible or not, she needed that from me, and I failed her.
Sterling slides her arm around my waist and joins in the tug-of-war, and the three of us tumble forward, catching ourselves just in time to prevent the Stafford PD from being able to mock us forever.
28
We get back to the Douglass house in time to see Nichelle and her mother ride off in an ambulance. Vic, standi
ng in the driveway, checks over us with worried eyes before yanking all three of us into a hug. The gathered officers and agents laugh at our flailing attempts to regain balance, because Vic doesn’t really need to be landing on the concrete, but Vic just as clearly does not give a shit; he is not about to let us go.
Cass wriggles out first, flushed bright pink. She’s been loaned to our team on occasion, but I don’t think she’s ever had a Hanoverian Hug.
Sterling and I shift to settle more comfortably into the embrace, which feels like home. “Eddison got shot in the leg,” I mumble into his coat.
“I know. We’ll go see him. You just have to give a statement and we can go.”
That would mean letting go.
He keeps his arm around my shoulders even when we all finally stand up straight, and Cass calls Watts so we give our statements directly to her. It’s pretty no-frills, especially in light of what’s to come. An agent discharged a weapon and a suspect died, so IA automatically has to conduct an investigation. The fact that my presence on the scene was borderline not-allowed, requested by the agent in charge but technically against regulations, will make it a bit more complicated. So Watts just has us march through it all together, clustered around the phone like that Mystery Date game we played in middle and high school.
“I’ll get Eddison’s car back to Quantico,” Cass says when the call is done. “You and Watts can trade back in the next couple of days unless you need something right off.”
Sterling shrugs. “At this point, even if I did need something I wouldn’t know what it was,” she admits.
“Do you have an agent you’d trust to drive Watts’s car back to the garage?” Vic asks. “That way they can just ride up with me.”
“Sure. She’s let Cuomo drive it without too much grief, and he’s back in the woods. I’ll let him know.”
Sterling hands over the keys, and we pile into Vic’s car for the drive to Bethesda. It’s quiet, the CD player crooning one of his favorite Billie Holiday albums. The blood on my hands is starting to itch, but if I scratch or rub, it’s going to flake off all over Vic’s car. Which, granted, has seen a lot worse from his daughters, but still.
It feels a bit like penance, and Cass isn’t here to yell at me for this one.
“Our purses are in my car,” Sterling announces suddenly.
“Okay?”
“I drove to Stafford without my license.”
I twist around to stare at her in the middle seat. She meets my eyes with a sheepish smile and shrugs.
And suddenly I’m laughing my ass off, trying to imagine explaining to a police officer why we were going 135 without a license, and I can hear her giggling, too, and even Vic is chuckling, because he also knows how Sterling drives when she’s determined to get somewhere now. It’s stupid and ridiculous and I can’t stop laughing, until the laughter abruptly turns to tears and I’m sobbing into my shoulder so I don’t get blood all over my face.
Christ.
Sterling unbuckles her belt and slides up between the front seats as best she can, awkwardly bending over the center console, to wrap me in another hug. She’s saying something, her voice soft, no louder than Billie Holiday, really, but I don’t know what the words are. It takes me entirely too long to realize that’s because she is speaking Hebrew, and I wonder if it’s a prayer or a lullaby or a very gentle remonstrance for me to get my head out of my ass.
It’s Sterling. It could be any or even all of the above.
When we get to the hospital, Vic parks and pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, wiping my cheeks and throat. I try to help, but he bats my hands away, and yeah, they’re covered in blood. For some reason I keep sticking on that.
Eddison, we learn, is in surgery, and they’re not sure yet if they need to put hardware in and around his femur. It’s broken, definitely, but given that he’s an active agent, the surgeon is going to do her best to avoid anything that could keep him out of the field. That’s how I remember Bethesda is a military hospital.
Sterling hauls me into a bathroom to wash my hands and face. When we rejoin Vic in the waiting room, he’s on the phone with Priya, letting her know about Eddison. I wasn’t sure he’d call her so late, but then, this is Priya. Not only is Eddison her brother, but she goes semi-nocturnal during summers anyway. Vic’s voice is calm and soothing, the kind of voice we all automatically respond to after so many years. Even Sterling’s shoulders loosen a few inches.
At some point, Vic goes off to find coffee and breakfast, leaving Sterling slumped half-asleep against me. I pull my credentials out of my pocket and fold them back to rest badge up on my knee. My badge is ten years old, and it shows in a million ways. The gold is worn and dull at the highest points of the letters, where the metal rubs against the black leather divider of the credentials case. One edge has a chip from getting slammed onto a curb in a takedown, there’s a line of dried blood down the inside of the U in US that no amount of cleaning can seem to get rid of, and the eagle at the top is mostly decapitated because baby agent Cass, with her fear of guns, used to forget that guns have this thing called a safety. The day Cass murdered the eagle on my badge, which had been sitting on the lane’s ammo shelf where it should have been safe, was the same day she got the range master as her personal tutor. The range master said it was in the interest of everyone’s well-being. Still, blind and burdened Justice stays in stark relief near the center of the badge.
Ideally, our task is to be Justice. Without prejudice or preconceived notions, weigh the information and bring down the sword.
I run a finger along the eagle’s wings, tracing the letters that have shaped almost a third of my life.
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
When I first got the badge, I used to run my finger along the words in almost the same way, tracing them over and over like it was the only way to convince myself it was real. It was new and inspiring and terrifying, and so much changes in a decade.
Some things don’t. It’s still terrifying.
I knew better than most going into this that the FBI isn’t, can’t be, anything simple, and yet I still expected it to be easy. No, easy isn’t the right word. I expected it to be straightforward. Challenging, yes, and sometimes painful, but unwavering. It never occurred to me that I might come to question the good I do.
It’s never been a mystery that the system is flawed. My third set of fosters included a skeevy man and his near-adult son who liked to watch the girls when they showered. I learned to skip lunch and shower at school, and the older girls followed suit. The younger ones didn’t have showers or gyms, but we could move them through the bathroom at the house pretty quickly with one or two of us standing guard while the men were gone.
But I was also lucky. Most of the homes were safe, and if not all of them were warm, they provided necessities without stripping too much dignity from us in return. My last fosters, the mothers, they were different. Rare, and I think I knew that even then.
How many kids do we rescue who aren’t that lucky? How many, who don’t have a safe family to go back to, end up even worse than where they started?
How many Caras are out there, one trigger away from snapping and killing others in the course of their spiral of self-destruction?
How many have I helped create?
“You’re hurting my brain,” mumbles Sterling. “Stop it.”
“Trying.”
“No, you’re not.” She reaches up, arm heavy with fatigue, and clumsily pats at my face. “’S’okay. Bad day.”
“What do you do to get through an impossible day?”
“Let you and Eddison spend most of it pouring me full of booze.”
Okay, there’s that.
“Vic is here,” she continues after a minute, “because he has the same fears as most of those parents. Eddison is here because he doesn’t want any other family to have the weight and pain of always wondering. I’m here because I know how hard these crimes are on family a
nd friends, and want to ease that burden where I can. Of course we’re here for the kids. Of course we are. But we also have all those other reasons. You are the only one of us who is here totally and completely for the kids. You’re here for them. To rescue them. To help them. You’ll help everyone else as much as you can because you’re a good person, but the kids are your priority. So of course it’s going to be hardest on you.”
She shifts in her seat, digging her chin into my collarbone for leverage, and resettles with her forehead burrowed into the side of my neck. “I think it makes you a better agent to question the impacts of your actions on others, because it keeps you conscientious. But you belong here, Mercedes. Never doubt that.”
“Okay, hermana.”
A few hours later, long after Vic returned with a vending machine breakfast for the three of us, the surgeon comes into the waiting room and gives us a broad smile. A knot loosens in my chest. “Agent Eddison is going to be just fine,” she tells us, sinking into a chair facing us. “He’s in the recovery room, still coming off the anesthesia. Once he’s a bit more aware we’ll give him all the instructions he’s likely to ignore.”
“Huh. You really do know his type.”
“I operate on Marines; they’re all his type. He’ll be here for a few days at least, and that number may go up depending on these first days of healing. Mostly it’ll be based on how much he behaves himself. Here’s where I’ll need all of you riding him: We didn’t have to put any hardware in, but that doesn’t mean someone won’t have to back in and do it if he screws this up. That means abiding by limits, managing his pain, not pushing himself harder than his physical therapist tells him to. He’s going to need you to kick his ass.”
“Oh, we’re good at that,” chuckles Vic.
“Normally I’d say you can go one at a time back to the recovery room.”
“But?” Sterling asks, pushing herself upright.
“But the first words out of his mouth after surgery were your names, so I think he’d rest better if you were in there with him. Just remember that he needs to rest.”
The Summer Children (The Collector Series Book 3) Page 25