by L. T. Vargus
Duty called.
While she changed in the bathroom, she debated waking Loshak. The chair he’d zonked in couldn’t be comfortable, and it probably only made the snoring worse. Then again, if she woke him up, he’d insist on taking her shift. She knew that for certain.
She’d leave him there, then. A tiny vengeful part of her relished the notion of letting him sleep this time.
There was no line at security when Darger arrived at the Atlanta field office. Not surprising considering the hour. Even though the building was open 24 hours a day, most of the employees still worked a regular 9 to 5.
She greeted the two guards manning the x-ray scanner, and they waved her through. After passing under the arch of the metal detector and collecting her belongings, Darger took an elevator up to their makeshift call center.
Hushed voices emanated from the cubicles inhabited by the tip line operators. Among them, Darger recognized a familiar silhouette, the head adorned with sleek black braids.
Not currently on a call, Agent Dawson removed her headset and joined Darger at the coffee station.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Darger said, then held up a paper cup. “Coffee?”
“Please. I hung around the hospital for a few hours, but the doctors told Ethan’s family it would be a while before they had any news. Once the story hit the five o’clock news, a big rush of tips streamed in. I figured I’d come down and help answer phones.”
“Any updates on Ethan?” Darger asked.
“I got a text from his mother about an hour ago. He made it through the operation OK, but he’s still in critical condition.”
Darger nodded mutely and fiddled with her coffee swizzle stick.
“Have you been partners long?”
“About two years,” Dawson said. “I know he’s very intense sometimes, but he’s so bright. And he wants the job done right. I owe you a debt of gratitude, you know? You saved his life.”
Darger swallowed a knot in her throat, feeling a strange mixture of guilt and helplessness. If he died — she stopped the thought there.
He wasn’t going to die.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you, I saw the story on you. The interview in Vanity Fair.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
Darger never knew what to say when people brought the article up. The attention made her uneasy.
“I was glad to see the Bureau give the spotlight to a female agent for once.”
This too made Darger a bit uncomfortable. She rarely thought about her gender when she was doing her job. Not unless someone else was pointing it out to her.
Dawson stifled a yawn.
“Oh goodness,” she said. “Excuse me for that. I thought the coffee would help, but I think at a certain age your body doesn’t give one iota how much caffeine you’ve had. Tired is tired.”
Looking around the room, Darger could see that only two of the four operators were currently on a call.
“You should go, then. Get some sleep. It sounds like things have calmed down here. Thank you for coming to help.”
Agent Dawson put a hand on Darger’s shoulder.
“I should be the one thanking you. I mean that.”
Darger held the other woman’s gaze for several seconds before she lowered her eyes to stare into her coffee.
Agent Dawson set her cup down and stretched. As she collected her bag and jacket from the cubicle she’d been assigned to, Darger called out to her.
“Agent Dawson?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know what floor Ethan is on?”
“He’s in the Pulmonary wing of Critical Care. Second floor.”
They exchanged goodbyes, and Darger settled in behind her computer. She slid on a pair of headphones and clicked the first logged call highlighted in red to indicate that it had been deemed “High Priority.” By the time she’d reached the third call, the outside world had faded from her awareness.
Darger had only been at it for an hour when her pocket buzzed. She knew it was Loshak before she even glanced at the screen.
“Where are you?” he asked, not even giving her a chance to properly answer the phone.
“And a good evening to you as well, Sleeping Beauty,” she said. “I’m at the call center. It’s my turn.”
“Damn it, Violet. You know I—”
She interrupted.
“I know you would have insisted I stay back at the hotel to drown in my own guilt and self-pity, yes.”
“Well, not exactly that,” he grumbled. “But you could be resting.”
“I don’t need rest. I need work.”
A sigh rustled out of the phone speaker.
“Just… don’t overdo it, OK? I’d rather you not repeat my mistakes.”
She went back to work, sifting through the logged calls. One caller insisted she’d seen a blue Ford pickup truck in the vicinity of the hilltop around the time Ethan was shot. But the very next caller swore she saw a man in a gray hoodie speeding away in a red Geo Metro near the Publix shooting. Yet another message contended that a spaceship was the madman’s method of transportation. She sighed, feeling like they were grasping at straws.
The next time Darger glanced away from her screen, ASAC Fitzgerald was there. It was distraction after distraction tonight.
Darger refocused her attention on the screen, hoping Fitzgerald would be satisfied by quickly poking his beak into the room, seeing they were busy, and leaving them to it. She wasn’t so lucky.
He hovered at the perimeter of her cubicle until she removed her headphones and gave him her full attention.
“Have you made any progress, Agent Darger?” he asked.
“We’ve got a couple vehicle descriptions for the various crime scenes. But most of them conflict with one another, so nothing solid yet.”
He gave a curt nod.
“Keep at it. I want results.”
Results, she thought sourly. Like she could make a solid tip appear out of thin air. Too bad she forgot to bring her magic wand.
She knew what he was really saying, of course. When tragic things occurred, people had a tendency to short circuit. They wanted an explanation. And so they cast about, searching for someone to hold accountable. Or more often, someone to blame. There had to be a “reason” after all. Bad things couldn’t just happen. The truth was bad things “just happened” every day. Chaos was all around them, all the time.
But the public demanded answers. They looked to the police and the politicians — the men in charge — to tell them why. And one or more of those men was surely breathing down Fitzgerald’s neck at this very moment. That shit trickled down.
Fitzgerald would breathe on Darger, and Darger was supposed to breathe on the operators and analysts, and it all accomplished nothing. Tip lines were all about the random luck of someone calling in with a piece of valid intel. No one had any control over that. No one could push people to call in with better information.
Only after he departed did it occur to her that he hadn’t mentioned what happened with Agent Baxter. Did he even care?
Chapter 24
The ding of the elevator sounded particularly shrill in the quiet of the Critical Care Unit. It was late. Too late for visiting hours. That was what she’d been told by the woman at the information desk downstairs. Violet didn’t care about their rules right now.
She paced the halls until she found the room Ethan Baxter was in. All of the CCU rooms had large sliding glass doors. Easier for the nursing staff to keep an eye on patients that required round-the-clock care, she supposed. Each room also had a curtain that could be closed for privacy or to cut the light from the hallway. Some of the rooms had the curtains thrown wide. Others were pulled closed.
When Violet found Ethan’s room, the curtains were shut. She only wanted to see him for a moment. To see with her own eyes that he was alive. And to promise him that she would find the man who did this.
Her hand reached for the door handle, sliding it to the side with onl
y a vague whooshing sound. The curtain fluttered around her as she stepped through. Her head cleared the billowing fabric first. She blinked, expecting her eyes to need to adjust to the darkness inside. But the blinds over the windows were open, and the lights of the city gave off a yellow glow.
A man stood before the window, a silhouette in the dimness. He turned at the sound of Violet coming into the room, and she stopped. Her breath caught in her throat.
It was him. It was Ethan. He was… standing. On his own. He looked unscathed. Healthy.
“Violet?” he whispered.
She couldn’t answer.
He took a step forward and smiled, and she thought: No. He looked better than healthy. He was more relaxed than she’d ever seen him. There was an ease to his movements now. And his hair was different. Longer, falling in waves over his forehead and ears. The stubble she’d noticed earlier was now cropped into a short beard.
Her eyes flicked to the right, saw the man in the bed. Face swollen almost beyond recognition. Tubes at his mouth and nose. This. This was the Ethan she’d expected to see.
The other Ethan was close enough to touch now. He reached for her hand.
His ghost, she thought. I’m seeing Ethan’s ghost.
She closed her eyes and willed herself to wake up. It was a dream. It had to be.
The fingers that enclosed around hers were warm and dry.
Her eyes snapped open. Ethan’s ghost frowned down at her, still holding her hand.
His lips parted, and she wondered what he might say. What words from beyond would he impart? Wisdom or resentment?
“I’m Owen,” he said. “Ethan’s brother.”
Chapter 25
Owen, who turned out to be not only Ethan’s brother, but his twin brother, insisted on buying her a coffee in the small 24-hour cafe on the ground floor of the hospital.
“You know, we used to pull all kinds of Doublemint shenanigans when we were kids. But we never thought of trying the whole ghost angle. I can’t wait to tell him,” Owen said, chuckling.
Darger pressed the styrofoam cup to her lips and sipped her coffee to stifle a groan. She still wasn’t sure why she’d told him, and she regretted it more every passing second.
“The doctors are optimistic?” she asked.
He folded his arms behind his head and stretched out against the back of the chair.
“Eh, you know what they’re like. They’re still saying it’s too early to tell. But I know my brother. I mean, you’ve worked with him, right?”
“I only met him a few days ago, actually. I don’t know him all that well.”
“Yeah, but I bet you got a taste of Ethan Baxter in only that short amount of time,” he said, then leaned across the table and gave her a sly look. “Kind of a prick, right?”
“I…” Darger struggled to find the words.
“It’s OK, I take no offense. He sure doesn’t. He’s a stubborn son of a bitch. That’s why I know he’ll pull through.”
He flashed her a wicked grin. It was infectious, and she couldn’t help but smile back.
“Uncanny resemblance aside,” she said, “are you sure you’re brothers? You seem nothing like him.”
“I appreciate that.”
When she’d finished her coffee, Violet stood to dispose of her cup.
“Will you come back upstairs before you go?” Owen asked. “Mom was sleeping when you came in before, but I bet she’s awake now. She’ll want to meet you.”
“Why would she want to meet me?”
“Because you’re the one who saved Ethan’s life.”
“But I didn’t do anything,” Violet said, feeling an intense pressure in her chest.
“That’s not what the attending physician in the ER said. And the pulmonary specialist. They said if you hadn’t improvised that dressing, Ethan wouldn’t have made it.”
Violet looked down at a spot of light bouncing off the polished tile floor, not sure what to say. It felt wrong to be lauded as a hero like this when she was at fault.
“Weren’t you afraid he’d shoot you, too?”
“He tried. I figured once he missed he’d give up, knowing I’d call for help. But mostly I was in panic mode.”
One of Owen’s dark eyebrows arched into a quizzical expression.
“Doesn’t sound like you panicked to me. Not at all. Sounds more like you kept your cool, despite everything that was happening.”
She swallowed against the lump in her throat. She started to protest, but Owen was already pulling her into the elevator.
“I figure you came down here to see him, right?”
“I was told that visiting hours don’t start until morning,” she said, suddenly wishing she hadn’t come. She’d only wanted to look in on Ethan for a moment. Quietly. Having all this unearned gratitude heaped on her from his family was too much.
Owen squinted at her, amused.
“Yeah, you seemed very concerned about visiting hours when you poked your head into the room a few minutes ago,” he said.
The doors of the elevator clattered open, and he beckoned her to follow. With a sigh, Violet gave in.
She paused again at the threshold. Owen placed a hand on the small of her back and propelled her into Ethan’s room.
Constance Baxter was short and full-figured, with round cheeks and big Southern hair. Despite her small stature, there was a brightness in her eyes that told Violet where Agent Baxter got his determination from.
“I’m sorry to intrude so late,” Violet said after Owen had made introductions.
“Don’t you dare apologize,” Mrs. Baxter said. “You are welcome to visit anytime, day or night.”
Mrs. Baxter nudged her closer to the bed. These Baxters were an insistent bunch. And more hands-on than Violet was used to.
“We’ll give you a little privacy. Go ahead and talk to him. It helps,” she said. “I know it does.”
The curtains over the door swished as Owen and his mother passed through them. Violet took a step closer to the bed.
Ethan was almost unrecognizable. Darger counted six separate IV pumps leading to the PICC line below Ethan’s collarbone. His face was swollen from the amount of fluids he’d been given. The features that had always seemed so hard before looked soft and puffy. There was a feeding tube in his nose, and a ventilator tube running into his mouth. On the side opposite her, she could see where the doctors had inserted a drainage tube for his chest wound.
Violet took his hand in hers, his fingers limp and fleshy.
“It was my fault,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have—”
The words caught in her throat as fresh tears burned her eyes. She gripped the side of the bed, feeling like the floor might drop out from under her feet at any moment.
Why had she asked him to take her up there? Why hadn’t she considered the risk they might be in?
She couldn’t have known, that’s what everyone kept saying. But the truth was, she could have. The DC snipers said they wanted to shoot a cop and then plant bombs at the funeral. Maybe that had been the ultimate goal here as well. And she should have seen it coming.
If that had been the plan, the shooter had failed, at least. Ethan was alive. There could be no funeral to booby trap.
She wondered if he’d try again but thought not. Not the same way, anyhow. The crime scenes were more securely locked down after today, and they would be closely watched going forward.
One of the monitors blipped, interrupting her thoughts. She took in all of the machines and bags and tubes currently keeping Ethan alive and had trouble catching her breath for a moment.
Breathe, she thought to herself, not wanting his family to see her so emotional.
She inhaled, counted to three, and then let the air out in one big sigh.
“I’m going to get the son of a bitch that did this, Baxter. I promise you that.”
She gave his fingers one last gentle squeeze before she stepped away from the bed and passed through the curtains to the hallw
ay beyond.
Chapter 26
When Darger awoke the next morning, she felt surprisingly refreshed. Then she remembered the events of the previous afternoon, and her mood tanked. She tugged at the rough motel sheets and wished she were home where she could stay in bed and mope. She did not want to hike her butt down to the call center where she’d spend eight hours sifting through nutjob phone calls. She wanted greasy pizza and ice cream straight from the carton and something mindless to binge-watch on TV.
Her eyes flicked over to the screen on the dresser. The only mindless TV she’d find today would be more coverage of the shootings. At least the busy work would take her mind off of… well, everything.
Remembering Loshak’s pearl of wisdom about keeping their team motivated, Darger called in another Dunkin Donuts order. The boxes of coffee and assorted lumps of fried and glazed dough were ready at the counter when she went in.
Like a bloodhound scenting a fox, Loshak spied her as soon as she stepped through the door. He spun out of his chair and strode over. She suspected it was the donuts and coffee that drew him more than her person.
Loshak lifted a dough ball from the box and popped it in his mouth before she’d even set everything down.
“I stopped over at the hospital after I left here last night.”
He gave her a disapproving look, not needing to say a word. She knew what he was thinking and was glad his mouth was full.
“It was a short visit,” she insisted, waving a hand around her face. “Note the distinct lack of bags under my eyes. The fresh, rejuvenated appearance of my skin. Surely all of this evidence attests to the fact that I got a solid stretch of sleep.”
“You see Baxter?” he asked through a mouthful of donut crumbs.
“Two of him,” Darger said, then explained about meeting his twin brother. “He said the doctors weren’t ready to make any predictions about Ethan’s recovery, but Owen was optimistic.”
Violet left out the part about thinking she was seeing Ethan’s ghost. She wouldn’t want Loshak to die laughing, a Dunkin Munchkin lodged in his throat.