Blindside

An hour later, Katie was walking slowly out of the hospital, supported by Miles.

“You’re going to be okay,” he said, more for himself than for her, Katie thought, as he very carefully fastened her seat belt. “The doctor said you were lucky. Now, don’t move.”

“I won’t.”

When he was driving out of the parking lot, Katie said, “Thank you, Miles. I know this was a pain in your butt as well as mine, but, well, thank you.”

“You’re my damned wife. You think I’d dab some iodine on your hip and go to sleep?”

He was angry again. If she hadn’t felt so dopey, her brain cotton, she would have laughed. “Where are we going?”

He turned to face her for a moment. “To the all-night pharmacy to get the Vicodin prescription filled. You’re to take a couple every four hours for a day or so.”

“I really feel fine.”

“That’s the morphine talking.”

“I understand how you would get really upset what with all that dried blood on my hip.”

“Don’t even start with me, Katie. I am so pissed at you-”

“That’s all right, just so long as we keep this from the children.”

Miles sucked in a deep breath. “Tomorrow, after I’m sure you’re up to it, we’re going to discuss who might have shot at us. I’ll bet that’s what Detective Raven is wondering. Count on him coming by tomorrow, along with half the FBI.”

“Bring them on, Miles.” She closed her eyes and drifted off. She wasn’t aware that he’d stopped at the all-night pharmacy. She hadn’t awakened when he’d undressed her and tucked her into bed.

She wasn’t aware that he held her hand until he woke her up at two o’clock and fed her two Vicodin. He held her hand the rest of that long night.

The next morning, the lovely morphine was a hazy memory, the pain in her hip all too present. When Miles held out two big pills to her, she took them without a fuss.

“Oh, no,” she said, “where are the kids?”

“I’ll take care of the kids. It’s still early. When they’re up, I’ll tell them that you’ve got a bit of a stomach bug and to leave you alone until you decide to appear. Okay?”

“I can tell you’re a parent. You’re good. Thank you, Miles.”

He paced the room in front of her, then turned back to face her. “Katie, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this. I think you did the right thing. We don’t know how Sam and Keely are going to be this morning, how yesterday’s trauma will affect them, but I do know that if they knew you’d been shot, it would be much worse. So thank you. Now see that you heal while I think about how I’m going to keep the police away from you as long as possible.”

“I’ll be just fine. Say early afternoon?”

She fell asleep ten minutes later with just a pinch of pain in her hip.

Miles stood a moment in the doorway, then looked down at his watch. It was only six-thirty in the morning. The kids would be up any time now. He hated lying to them, but not this time. He hoped they could carry it off. He didn’t want to see any more blank pain in Sam’s eyes for as long as he lived.

39

A t eight o’clock that evening, only three hours after leaving Detective Raven down at Metro Headquarters in the Daley building, Savich came to stand in the kitchen doorway, watching Sherlock wipe spaghetti sauce off Sean’s mouth. Sean quickly replaced it with the next spoonful. What with all the excitement, they’d gotten home very late, and Sean was hungry, tired, and really hyped up. As for Sean’s parents, they both hoped some of Savich’s spaghetti would put him out. Savich said to Sherlock, not taking his eyes off his boy, “Are you ready for something you’re not going to believe?”

Sherlock straightened midswipe. “I heard you talking on the phone to Miles. What’s going on?”

“The shooter today. It seems he wasn’t after me. He was after Katie.”

“After Katie? What do you mean?”

Savich didn’t say anything for a moment as Sean clattered his spoon to his plate, climbed down from his chair, and made a beeline for his orange plastic ball in the corner. They both, for a moment, listened to him tell the ball that he was going to bounce it, good.

When she looked up at him, Savich said, “He shot Katie.”

“What? How? But that isn’t possible! She never said a word, she never acted wounded, she-”

Savich leaned his head back against one of the cabinets, closed his eyes. “He shot her in the hip and she managed to hide it from all of us. The bullet went in and through. She’ll be okay. Miles called from the emergency room while the nurse was getting Katie into a robe. Turns out she didn’t say a word about it until after they’d gotten home and put the kids to bed. Then she tells him. He’s still so shaken up he could barely speak straight.”

“She’s really okay?”

“Yes, soon to be out with a smile on her face from the morphine. Just a couple days rest, and she’ll be fine.”

Sherlock picked up a hot pad and hurled it across the kitchen. It calmed her and didn’t make any noise to frighten Sean. “I don’t believe this, Dillon. It’s ridiculous, just plain dumb. She’s wounded and doesn’t even let on? No, that can’t be right, it can’t.”

“She didn’t say anything because she didn’t want the kids any more frightened than they were. If you think about it, you can see Katie’s point. It was an adult decision, hers to make, I guess.”

Sherlock’s heart was still pumping wildly. She threw another hot pad at the wall, calmed herself down. “It was brave of her.” She drew in a deep breath. “I hope I would have the presence of mind to do that. But wait, Dillon, if the shooter hit her-”

“That means I wasn’t the target. Or, I really was the target, and he could have shot at her first, for the fun of it.”

Savich straightened, shrugged. “Maybe he, whoever he is, just wanted to scare us. At this point, any guess is as good as any other. Who knows, it might have been a random shooting.” Neither of them believed that for an instant.

Savich picked up Sean, who was tightly clutching his orange ball, and walked to the front window in the living room. He stared out into the calm dark night. A storm was expected to hit Monday, winter coming with a grand a

It was so ridiculous that for a moment Sherlock actually laughed and kissed her son’s sleepy face.

She saw the strain on Dillon’s face, saw the restless movement of his hands, saw the scars on his hands and fingers from his whittling. She knew he’d been caught off guard by the same devastating feelings she had felt when that bullet had come so close to him and to Sean. It made her want to scream and cry at the same time. He said finally, as if he’d been holding the words inside but they now had to come out, “This was too close, Sherlock, far too close. Sean could have been killed.”

Of course she agreed. The corrosive fear, the sense of absolute impotence-she nodded but didn’t say anything, just moved closer.

Sean’s head now lay on his father’s shoulder. Savich lightly smoothed his back, cupped his head. She saw a spasm of fear cross his face. He said quietly, “I’ve been giving a lot of thought today to what I’ve been doing nearly all my adult life-being a cop. What if… what if, because of me, some crazy kills my son? It would be my fault, Sherlock, no one else’s, just mine, and it would all be because of what I choose to do for a living. I couldn’t live with that, I just couldn’t.”

“No,” she said slowly, her eyes still on his face, “neither of us could.”

He plowed forward, the words forcing themselves out of his mouth. “Maybe, just maybe, I should think about another line of work.” There, he’d said the unimaginable, and the earth hadn’t opened up and swallowed him. It was out in the open now, those words between them, and he didn’t say anything else, just let the unthinkable settle around him, and he waited. Sean suddenly lurched up against his palm, and smiled at his father. He patted his father’s face again with wet fingers.