Page 93 of Slack Tide Kill

"And I get drafted. My brother and sister both." He sat back, relaxing a little more. "You see some gnarly things on the job. When two kids have been projectile vomiting from their bunk beds, though?" he shuddered. "That's real horror."

Sally smiled. The ambulance rumbled on. It felt good to talk about normal things. But Gemmell's hands writhed slowly in his lap, like there was something more, something eating at him.

She waited.

"We're not supposed to talk about it," he said at last. "But the DCI's got up a head of steam about how you did this. The crash, the shotgun, all of that." He paused, looking in her eyes. "But from what I've seen, it's all justifiable. And it worked. You and O'Connell? We'd be nowhere without you, and the DCI knows it too."

Sally let herself sag back on the gurney. She felt suddenly very tired, and closed her eyes. Nancy Cagen's face came back to her. Those bright eyes. That stubborn energy. The way she'd been on the beach just hours ago, the most alive thing on Dungeness.

The ambulance jolted and Sally woke.

"We're here," said DI Gemmell.

Sally sat up. Her blankets slipped and Gemmell looked away swiftly. "Sorry. I'll get you something to wear."

"Thank you, Stephen. And call me Sally."

He smiled as he closed the doors. "I'll try."

She slumped back, feeling dizzy. There was hunger, too, piercing the exhaustion, which had to be a good sign. She looked at the ceiling of the ambulance, thinking through the pattern again: ears at the Listening Ears. That was obvious. But why eyes on Dungeness?

Was it simply the beach itself, the view of the horizon? Was it the reactor, something to do with uranium atoms ripping around? About power, energy, beams of light?

She sat up again. Beams of light.

The doors opened and the female paramedic returned, holding a spare uniform. "Sorry, there's no underwear, but…"

She trailed away as Sally slid off the gurney and snatched up her marsh-soaked clothing, fingers digging past clots of rotting reed and black mud.

"You'll probably be OK without underwear," the woman said weakly. "I don't think you want those."

Sally got her fingers into the jacket pocket and pulled out her phone. It was smeared with marsh dirt but the screen woke at her touch. She brought up maps, scrolled until she had Dungeness at the center then zoomed in.

There.

She remembered her first approach to the reactors. The giant blocks encased in scaffold. The tall, thin chimney venting steam. And right there on the corner just before the main entrance, the new Dungeness lighthouse.

Sleek, tall, black, modern. A replacement for the one she'd climbed near the Crab Shack. On a direct line of sight through the reactors to where Jason Harrow was laid, his neck craned back, staring right this way.

"The lighthouse," she whispered.

"Uh," the paramedic said. "What?"

Sally snapped back to the moment. The paramedic held the folded uniform across her chest. Sally tossed the blankets away, took the clothes and yanked them on, her weariness fading as she lurched from the ambulance. She pushed through the thinned ranks of press and into the station, all the way to the bull pen.

The desks were half full, officers and civilian assistants brought in from other stations to handle the sudden influx of paperwork of two murders and counting. Sally glimpsed one of the Rook brothers being escorted along a long corridor toward processing. She saw DI Gemmell, looking back at her with concern, but no sign of Mayhew.

She caught a glimpse of herself in a flatscreen TV and almost laughed. She was dressed in a new, clean uniform, but she was anything but clean. Every inch of her had been splashed by the foul sewer water. It was on her face, her neck, in her hair. Her eyes were red, her skin pallid and feverish.

"Where's the DCI?" she asked, her voice coming out so rough that those nearest to her flinched.

"She's in OR1," Gemmell said, pointing.

Sally headed toward it, past Interview Room 1 where Gabriel Rook was in another interview. Trying to nail down just how many crimes to charge him with, probably. Mayhew was in the observation room watching the interview, but turned as Sally entered.

"Officer Rogers?" she hissed. "What the hell are you doing?" She took Sally's arm and pushed her back out of the room.

"You need to hear this, DCI," Sally insisted, letting herself be led away. "I think–"