I was wrong.
Wardell’s right hand dropped to his side, and a heartbeat later I felt a white-hot pain in my thigh. Although I couldn’t see it, I knew I’d been stabbed. Stupid. I should have known he’d always have a backup. I gritted my teeth against the pain and increased the pressure again. The gash in my leg sang out another chorus of agony as I felt the blade twist and draw out. Wardell’s hand swung dazedly outward, and I saw the steel of the blade winking out from under a thick shroud of my own blood. He brought the knife back toward us and I felt a stab in my right side.
This one didn’t feel white-hot, just the opposite: like a perfectly formed sheet of ice had been slid into my abdomen. I felt a sickly numbness and was aware of my own blood soaking into my clothing and running down my leg. My grip on the wrench relaxed just enough, and Wardell was able to squirm out from under.
I fell back, holding my side. A second later I realized with surprise that I’d fallen to the ground. Wardell was still on his feet for now, but he didn’t look like he’d be far behind me. He was staggering in a circle, holding his throat with one hand, the blade in the other. His breath rasped out. It sounded like I’d broken something important in there. I didn’t feel any remorse. He looked down at himself and saw dirt, sweat, blood — his and mine. His face contorted into a mask of revulsion. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if he might save me some trouble and die of fastidiousness.
I struggled to one knee and tried to get up, pressing harder on my side and feeling blood seep between my fingers. Wardell looked at me, then at the blade in his hands. From between his teeth, he issued one word: “Kill.”
“Freeze, FBI.”
The shout from behind Wardell stopped both of us as though we’d been flash frozen.
“Mommy!”
I looked at Annie, then followed her gaze to see Banner edging down the stairway, her gun gripped in both hands and aimed squarely at Wardell.
“Drop it,” she said.
Wardell turned slowly to face her.
“Last warning,” Banner snapped before he’d completed the rotation. “I will shoot you.”
Will you? I wondered. Because I really think you’re going to need to, Banner. Something about Wardell’s movements told me he was thinking the same thing. It didn’t reassure me in the slightest when Wardell appeared to comply, dropping the knife to the floor, where it made a dull clink.
Banner was at the bottom of the stairs now. Wardell was opening his hands in a gesture of surrender. I didn’t buy it for a second.
I tried to say, “Shoot him,” but I couldn’t seem to get it out. My lips were moving, but there didn’t seem to be anything left in me to force the sound out. The room was starting to spin. The neon tubes on the walls were casting out rainbows that I was pretty sure hadn’t been there before.
I knew I couldn’t pass out now, because somehow I had to stop what was going to happen next. I knew what Wardell was going to do because we both knew what Banner was going to do, and in this situation it was entirely the wrong thing to do: follow the rules, follow procedure.
If you carry a badge, you’re trained to observe certain rules of engagement in situations like this. Rules like not discharging your weapon unless you are absolutely certain there is a threat to your life. Like not shooting an unarmed suspect. Like ensuring you give him time to surrender. Those rules were about to get Elaine Banner killed, because despite his injuries, a moment’s uncertainty was all Caleb Wardell would need.
He was going to wait another second or two, because he knew that would only move Banner that much more out of the heat of the moment, and then he was going to rush her. Banner’s gun was a Glock. Three separate safety mechanisms to prevent accidental discharge. She might get an accurate shot off in that split second, but if she didn’t, that would be all she wrote.
Banner was speaking again. Her words sounded echoey, like she was half a mile away at the end of a drainage tunnel. “Get down on the floor, Wardell.”
Wardell was nodding, moving his arms as though he were about to do just that. I opened my mouth again to try to warn her.
Then something confusing happened. Wardell tensed and stepped back. What seemed like a long time later, I heard a shot. And then two more in quick succession. Wardell stepped forward, then pinwheeled, falling hard to the concrete floor and landing crooked. His head was angled back toward me, his sightless blue eyes staring back at me from an inch below a weeping entrance wound in his forehead.
I closed my eyes for a second, but the image stayed there, like a strobe flash. I felt myself being rocked and opened my eyes. Banner was above me, Annie clinging to her side. She was shaking me and saying a word I couldn’t understand over and over again. It took me a second to realize it was my name.
“I’m okay,” I said.
A wave of skepticism crossed Banner’s face, but she did a good job of getting rid of it. “Hang on, Blake. Help’s on the way.”
I looked over at Wardell’s body. I was pleased to see it hadn’t moved. “I thought you were supposed to…” I began, and then had to pause to get my breath. Banner understood anyway.
“Yeah, well,” she said, glancing back at the body. “He shouldn’t have tried to shoot my daughter.”
I started to laugh, but it came out as a coughing fit. The coughing hurt. It seemed like hard work, and yet somehow I couldn’t stop. And then I stopped feeling the pain. I slipped blissfully into a dark, warm pool of something.
TWO WEEKS LATER
83
“You look good, Blake. I mean, better than I’d have expected, anyway.” Edwards’s tone was one of pleasant surprise, artificially so, since he’d received the call alerting him to my visit five minutes before.
“I heal fast,” I said, keeping pleasantry scrupulously absent from my voice. I glanced at Agent Paxon, who’d escorted me up to the tenth floor of the FBI building. She got the message, nodded at Edwards, and stepped back out into the corridor, closing the door behind her.
That damned grin. It was there again, smeared all over his face as he came out from behind the desk to shake my hand, physically grasping it when it wasn’t offered.
“Good to see you, son.”
I winced as the unexpected movement jolted the stitches in my side. Edwards didn’t notice.
“Donaldson’s in Washington,” he said.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I didn’t come here to see Donaldson.”
His face blanked for a moment — though the grin stayed in place, naturally — and then the lightbulb went on. “Of course. I’ve got what you’re looking for right here.” He crossed back to his desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a large manila envelope. “Half on completion, just like we agreed,” he said. “We didn’t have an address to forward it to, so to tell you the truth, I was kind of hoping you’d drop by. And here you are.”
“Keep it,” I said.
“Excuse me?” He waited for a nod or a smile or something from me. I kept him waiting. He shrugged, sat back down, and put the envelope back in the drawer.
“We’re very grateful for your help, you know. Me, Donaldson, Banner, the whole Bureau. Hell, the whole country would be, if they knew what you’d done.”
I sat down in the chair opposite Edwards’s desk. Apparently, this move was unanticipated, because he sat back a little. Clearly, he’d been hoping the act of producing payment would make me disappear like a rabbit in a hat.