I hadn’t been allowed into the emergency room. Hours ago a nurse had told me Justine was being taken for emergency abdominal surgery. Since then I’d tried to distract myself with my phone, my hands shaking with fear for her. My heart thudded with anger at the thought of the monster who’d done this, my body flushing hot and cold as I replayed the attack in my mind over and over again. It didn’t matter which websites I visited, which news reports I watched, I couldn’t shut out the memories of my own failings. I chastised myself for my stupid mistakes. If I’d done things differently, if I’d been better and faster and stronger, Justine would have been at my side now instead of fighting for her life in an operating theater.
“Jack!” a familiar voice called across the crowded room.
Eighteen people had been wounded and four killed in the attack, and most had been brought to Cedars-Sinai, so the place was packed with the victims’ family and friends.
I turned to see Maureen Roth, Private’s technology guru, entering the room. Known to everyone at Private as “Mo-bot,” she was a computer geek extraordinaire. At fifty-something, she was a salutary lesson in the unexpected. Her tattoos and spiky hair suggested a cold, hard rebel, but she had the warmest heart and was thought of by many at Private as their second mom, someone they could go to with their problems. The only thing about her that hinted at a softer side, and spoke to her age, were the bifocals, which I always said looked like they belonged to a Boca Raton grandmother. She managed a team of six tech specialists in the LA office and oversaw dozens of others in Private’s international units. She was followed into the waiting room by Seymour “Sci” Kloppenberg, Private’s world-renowned forensics expert. A slight, bookish man, he dressed like a Hells Angel biker, which was where his heart probably lay because he was always restoring old muscle bikes. These two were among my oldest friends and most trusted colleagues and it was comforting to see them.
“How is she?” Sci asked.
“She caught two in the stomach,” I replied, scarcely able to believe what I was saying. “She’s in surgery still.”
“I’m so sorry, Jack,” Mo-bot said, and gave me a reassuring hug.
“She’s going to be okay,” Sci remarked. “Justine’s a fighter.”
I nodded, but my experiences of losing people in the field told me it didn’t matter how strong or determined a person was, a bullet could be the ultimate arbiter of life or death.
“What happened?” Mo-bot asked. “I’ve seen the news, but how did the guy get in?”
“Looks like he shot door security and then came in and started blasting,” I replied.
“Media are saying he was disarmed by a guest. You?” Sci asked.
I nodded. “If I’d been quicker...” I trailed off.
“I bet you were as fast as anyone could have been,” Sci told me. “You did good, Jack.”
I nodded again, but his words rang hollow. It was hard to view my response as anything other than an abject failure when the woman I loved was currently fighting for her life in an operating theater.
“Cops spoken to you yet?” Mo-bot asked.
I shook my head. “I’ve been told to expect a detective, but I think they’re giving me space while I deal with this.” I nodded in the direction of the double doors that led to the surgical area. “I don’t have much to tell them. The shooter was masked, so I didn’t get a look at him. He was about six-one, well built, strong and fast.”
“They’re calling him the Ecokiller,” Sci remarked.
“He yelled a bunch of stuff about the planet as he escaped,” I replied. “I want us to find him.”
Mo-bot put her hand on my shoulder. “You did well, Jack. If you hadn’t been there, who knows how many more might have died. But this isn’t on you. Focus on Justine. Let the cops handle this. Sci and I will help.”
I looked at Mo-bot and her reassuring smile wilted under the severity of my stare. I wasn’t angry with her, but my anger at the man who had put us here shone through. “I can’t do that, Mo,” I told her. “I need to find this guy and make sure he answers for what he’s done.”
Chapter 3
That night, I dreamed of flames and the screams of those I couldn’t save when my Marine Corps CH-46 Sea Knight had been shot down in Afghanistan. I’d been a chopper pilot for the Corps before taking over Private from my old man, and since then had turned his ramshackle outfit into the world’s largest private detective agency. I’d faced danger and death more times than I cared to remember. However, the loss of those men, the jarheads I’d served with, hurt most of all. Even though the NCIS investigation had concluded there had been no way to avoid the crash, I’d still felt responsible. It didn’t matter what the investigators said, or how many people told me I’d done my best. All that mattered was the blood and honor of the field, and I carried my failure with me. It tormented me still when I was low or troubled. To this day, memories of that crash and the ghosts of those men were guaranteed to make me feel as low as humanly possible, but now my failure to protect Justine had become a new nadir, a low from which I could only recover if she did. In my dream, I fled the scorching heat of the fire, abandoning the bodies burning in the wreckage, but when I turned, I saw Justine kneeling on the rocky ground, clutching the gunshot wounds in her belly, blood spreading across the front of her red dress.
“Mr. Morgan,” a voice cut in, and I felt a hand on my shoulder.
I woke with a start to see Dr. Gurdasani, a woman in her mid-thirties, smiling at me gently.
“Mr. Morgan,” she repeated, “Ms. Smith is out of surgery and just surfacing from the anesthetic. It’s early, but we think she’s going to pull through.”
“Can I see her?” I asked.
“In a little while,” Dr. Gurdasani replied. “Once we’ve got her comfortable.”
A “little while” proved to be ninety of the slowest minutes I’ve ever experienced. I’d sent Mo-bot and Sci home shortly after 3 a.m. so I messaged them while I was waiting to let them know Justine was out of surgery and recovering. They both wished her well and asked me to send them updates. With nothing more to do and my desire to see her filling me with impatience, I tried distracting myself by pacing the now quiet waiting room and checking my phone for updates on the shooting. There wasn’t much more to go on, and the sensational stories about the Ecokiller focused mostly on newly released details about the gunman’s victims. The four dead were two security guards who’d been on the door, a server who’d been working shifts to help put herself through UCLA, and a junior studio executive who was being hailed as a hero for shielding his colleagues as they escaped through a fire exit. Social media photos accompanied the news pieces, and I felt nothing but sympathy for their loved ones. I tried not to imagine the suffering of such loss, but it was difficult to push past the dark imaginings that had tormented me in that hospital, a place where the line between life and death was at its thinnest.
Finally, when my patience was ragged and frayed, Dr. Gurdasani beckoned me from beyond the ward doors.
“You can see her now,” she said, and I didn’t bother trying to play it cool but snapped to the medic’s side like a faithful dog.
We walked to the recovery ward in silence, passing rooms containing surgery patients wired to monitors and connected to drips. Despite this display of frailty, I wasn’t prepared for what greeted me when Dr. Gurdasani led me into Justine’s room. Her dark hair was lank and had been tied back from the face that had been so bright and alive only a few hours ago, now pale and clammy. She lay in a bed, a light blanket supported on a frame draped over her bandaged abdomen. I saw she was connected to two drips and guessed one was fluid and the other antibiotics or some sort of medication. A monitor tracked her heart function and a catheter led to a bag hooked to the side of her bed. Her eyes opened as we entered. They were bloodshot and sunken into shadow, and her pupils looked faded. A CPAP oxygen mask covered her nose and mouth, and there was a gentle rush of air with each breath.