Hosts

As they slammed the rear door a cop hove into view on Jack's right.

"Did you know that woman?" he asked.

Jack nodded, eyes on the ambulance as it began to move off.

"I'll need to ask you a few questions," the cop said. His shoulder patch read DOVER TWP. POLICE.

Jack began walking, following the ambulance. "I'm going to the hospital."

A hand grabbed his shoulder and turned him a quarter way around.

"Sir," the cop said, "I need some answers before—"

He broke off and stepped back. Jack was ready to kill then and maybe the cop saw that in his eyes. Jack forced a breath and held up an open palm: peace.

"I'm going to the hospital. You want answers, you can find me there."

He turned and hurried through the red-flashing night toward the highway and his car. The cop didn't follow. Maybe he had more pressing matters to attend to, like herding the gawkers away from the site to let the fire crews through, or unspooling yellow barrier tape like the other cop Jack passed.

At a trot now, Jack was maybe a dozen feet behind the ambulance when it reached the highway and turned on its siren. Through the glass side he saw the EMTs go into furious motion, one of them leaning over Kate and begi

"No!" he shouted. "NO!"

His heart was a booted foot, kicking at his chest wall as he leaped into his car and took off after the rig. Jack followed it across the median, then south along the highway, across a bridge to the mainland and down a crowded highway, staying close behind and traveling in its wake as cars pulled aside to let it pass.

"Come on! Come on!" he shouted as they raced mile after mile.

Where was this goddamn hospital? Why was it so far?

And all the while he fought a panicked sense of unreality. This shouldn't be happening to Kate, not after all she's just been through. She's one of the good ones, the best of the good ones. This can't be happening to Kate.

Finally the hospital. He trailed the ambulance up to the emergency entrance where he saw a doctor waiting at the curb. Jack was out of his car and standing with hands and face pressed against the rig's side glass in time to see the doctor shake his head and turn off his flashlight after shining it into Kate's eyes.

"No!" Jack's voice was a whisper as he moved around to the rear to catch the doctor as he exited. "There's got to be more you can do!"

"I'm sorry," the doctor said. He was dark ski

Again the sense of unreality washed over him. Feeling lost, dead inside, Jack slumped back against the side of the rig. Gravity seemed to double, triple as he watched them wheel Kate's covered body into the hospital. Somehow he found the strength to follow. Her limp form was transferred to a gurney in one of the ER's curtained-off examination cubicles.

"I want to stay with her awhile," he told a nurse with pocked black skin and graying hair.

"Of course."

When she was gone Jack lifted the sheet and stared at Kate's pale face. She looked so peaceful, almost as if she were sleeping. He felt a pressure building in his throat, readying to explode when he nurse popped back in.

"There's a policeman out here who wants to speak to you."

He wanted to scream at her to leave us alone, goddamn it! But he held back.

"Can I have a few minutes? And a pen and a piece of paper if you can spare them?"

She fished both out of her pocket and laid them on the bedside table.

"I'll tell him you'll be out in a minute."

When she was gone, Jack steadied the paper with a knuckle and wrote Kate Iverson, MD, Trenton, NJ. He pocketed the pen. He peeked through the curtains and saw the cop from the explosion scene sipping coffee and chatting up the ward clerk.

Jack returned to Kate's side and kissed her forehead, then bottled up his emotions. Leaving her here alone seemed like the rankest sort of desertion; he felt like a rat, but he couldn't stay. He checked out the cop again, then slipped out through the far edge of the curtains and walked the other way. Moving on autopilot he followed signs to the lobby and exited through the front. Found his car and got rolling. A parkway entrance ramp was nearby so he took it north. Saw a sign for a rest area and knew he had to stop or explode. Pulled into the lot and turned off the engine.

Kate…

The sense of failure was overwhelming. He'd just got her back and now she was gone. Forever. And it was his fault. If only he hadn't listened to her and gone ahead and done what his gut had told him to do. If only he hadn't saved that damn bomb. If only he'd got home sooner…

Jack rested his forehead against the steering wheel and sobbed.

Kate…

EPILOGUE

Jack watched from the trees until everyone was gone, then he walked down the slope to where two workmen, one white, one black, were readying to fill in the grave.

"Hey, guys, can you give me a few minutes alone here?"

The white guy squinted at him through the obscenely cheery morning sunlight. "Sorry, mister. The ceremony's over and we've got to—"

Jack had two twenties ready. He held them out. "An extra ten-minute coffee break's not go

They looked at each other, shrugged, took the twenties, and walked off to a pickup truck parked fifty yards away.

Jack dropped to one knee and stared at the shiny metallic surface of the coffin nestled deep in its hole.

"Sorry I couldn't be here earlier, Kate. I tried, but they wouldn't let me."

The explosion had been eight days ago. Because it was a medical examiner's case and various criminal investigations were involved, it had taken officialdom a long time to release Kate's body.

Jack had driven down to Trenton with Gia for the wake, but kept going when he reached the funeral home. Not because he dreaded the scene inside, the pain in his father's eyes, the baffled shock and hurt of the niece and nephew he'd never known, but because of the guy with the telefoto camera in the car across the street.

Jack had had an eye out for just such a car.

He'd guessed that even a volunteer fire marshal would realize that no propane tank explosion could demolish a house like that, even if it was only a plywood bungalow. A bomb squad would be called in. Traces of C-4 would be found. Addresses of the victims would be established, and lo and behold, one of them lived on the same New York City block where a C-4 car bomb had killed two men just a few days before. And a second victim had been staying at the same address. An interstate conspiracy? Call BATE

After that it was no stretch to suspect that BATF would want to catalog all the mourners at the Jeanette Vega and Kate Iverson funerals. A photo of Jack could be identified by residents of The Arsley and by the Dover cop at the blast scene, and then the bulletins would be out and the hunt would be on.

This morning he'd seen the car and the camera parked outside the church and again right here in the cemetery.

Bastards.

"Good blood runs in your family."

Jack jumped at the sound of her voice but knew from the accent who he'd see when he turned. The Russian lady and her big white dog stood behind him. He didn't know how they'd come up on him without his hearing them, but at the moment he didn't much care.

"What would you know about it?" he said.

"A brave, brave woman. She saved the world untold misery."

"And she went through untold misery at the end. How the hell did this happen?"

"Is war." She looked around at the sky, the grass, the surrounding pines. "War to destroy all this."

"And I'm a soldier, right?"