Blindside

“I want a lawyer,” Troy Ward whispered and pulled his legs into his chest.

Dane Carver hauled Troy Ward to his feet, read him his rights, and cuffed him. They left Ms. Aquine Barton with a fine story to tell the press and her students.

42

K atie was sore, but she wasn’t about to lie in bed and have the kids wonder if there was something else going on other than a brief bout with the flu. She showed up at the breakfast table, trying to stand straight and not limp. “Okay, I’m making waffles this morning. Miles, do you have twenty minutes?”

He really didn’t, but he leaned over and kissed her. “Sure. I’ve never had your waffles, Katie.”

“It’s the best thing Mama makes,” Keely said. “You’re lucky. She doesn’t make them often.”

Miles grabbed Keely and tossed her into the air. She was his daughter, he thought, an amazing thing. She was laughing, and Sam joined in, hoping he was next. Miles, not about to let him down, swung him up and around, too, nearly crashing into the kitchen table.

“Did I hear waffles?”

“Aunt Cracker! That was a neat movie yesterday. And the pizza was yummy.”

“Sure was,” she said, reaching out and ruffling Sam’s hair, then touching Keely’s hair. “See kids, Katie is just fine today. It wasn’t the full-blown flu, was it, Katie? Something not quite so bad, thank God, maybe just something you ate that didn’t agree with you.”

“Could be,” Katie said. “Thank goodness it was nothing much, whatever it was.”

Katie made the largest batch of waffles ever, Miles fried up bacon, and Cracker made the coffee. The kids laughed and argued and ate until Katie thought they’d both be sick.

Forty-five minutes later, Katie dropped Keely and Sam off at the Hendricks Elementary School, with its attached preschool, only four blocks from their home. The last thing she wanted to do was go back to the house and pace and worry and wonder and make herself nuts. So she started driving. Even though she rarely saw them, she knew her two bodyguards were following her, two FBI agents assigned to protect her after the shooting in the park on Saturday, whenever she left the house.

Fu

It was very cold, well below freezing, the sky an iron gray, the wind stiff. Snow was predicted by evening, the weather prediction of the first winter storm only a day late. It would stick and the kids would have a blast.

She turned the heater up a bit, and kept driving. She drove past Arlington National Cemetery, a place she’d first seen when she’d been not more than five years old. All those thousands upon thousands of grave markers had touched her deeply as a child, though she hadn’t completely understood what they meant. Now, as an adult, all her own worries disappeared in the moments she stared over those fields of white crosses. So many men, she thought, so many.

She drove around Lady Bird Johnson Park, then headed across the Arlington Memorial Bridge that spa

She shivered. It was getting colder. She turned up the heater again. The sky looked like it would snow much earlier than this evening.

She parked her Silverado in the empty parking lot at the memorial, and looked around. There was no one here, no killers, no tourists, no workers, just her. She decided to walk through the memorial once again.

One started at the begi

Her mind flashed to her father lifting Keely in his arms, pointing to Fala, telling her a story about how he’d performed tricks on demand. How he’d wished he’d been old enough back then to go to Washington to see him in person. Oh Lord, she missed her father, wished he’d gone to a doctor earlier, but he hadn’t, just like a damned stubborn man, her mom had told her, and burst into tears. Not that it would have made much difference.

There were memories, she thought, that touched you throughout your life. She had to keep hoping that all of Sam’s terrible memories would be tempered with the laughter and joy of experiences that were sweet and good.

She looked at the statue of Roosevelt and said, “If you had lived any longer, would you have a

She half-expected an answer, and smiled at herself when the crashing water was the only thing she heard. Then there was something else, footsteps coming up behind her. She didn’t turn. She thought it was one of her bodyguards, come to check on her, and that was comforting. She stood there, wishing something made sense, wishing she was back in Jessborough, with Miles and Sam and Keely, all of them, in her house that had been magically rebuilt, her mother smiling as she came from the kitchen, carrying a tray of ci

She nearly jumped straight into the air when a voice behind her said, “There you are, the little princess.”

Katie froze.

“That’s right, just stay right where you are. Don’t move a muscle.”

Katie didn’t even consider a twitch.

“All right. Turn around and face me.”

Katie slowly turned.

“Surprised to see me, Katie?”

“Yes. Everyone believes you’re dead.”

Elsbeth McCamy shook her head. “They won’t for much longer. I hear they’ve nearly dug all the way through the ruins of my beautiful house. They’ll soon find just one burned body, not two. Poor Reverend McCamy, not even buried yet, left under all that rubble, all that rain pouring down on him. No! Don’t you move, Katie Benedict!”

Katie held utterly still.

“I know I shot you on Saturday, but here you are, walking around this ridiculous memorial. I just couldn’t believe it when I saw you leave that big fancy house of yours this morning, looking all chipper, herding those children off to school like any good little mother.”