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“I shouldn’t have left you in Zurich. I should have come after you sooner in Paris. I…” He faltered, fell silent. “I really, really care about you. And…” The tears started to trickle down his cheeks and he drew a ragged breath, felt sick to his stomach. He bent down and kissed her hand. As soon as he did, he felt her fingers tighten slightly around his hand. He looked at her face. She was still unconscious, but she had squeezed his hand.
He saw the nurse staring at him from the doorway.
“Good-bye, Katie,” he said, finally letting her go.
CHAPTER
102
SURE YOU don’t want me to drive?” Frank said. He’d just climbed in the passenger seat of their rental.
“Yeah, I’m sure.” Shaw drove faster than he should have to the airport.
Frank looked over nervously from time to time, but seemed loath to break the silence. Finally, he said, “We found the rest of Kuchin’s boys, all dead, all except for this Pascal guy. He was nowhere to be found.”
“Good for him.” Shaw’s gaze never veered from the road ahead.
“You sure you don’t want to stay around here? I can get you the time off. You can be there when Katie leaves the hospital.”
“The only thing I’m going to do is get as far away from her as I possibly can.”
“But Shaw—”
Shaw slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a rubber-burning stop as horns blared all around them and cars whizzed past on either side.
“What the hell are you doing?” exclaimed a stunned Frank.
Shaw’s face was red; his big body shook like he was suffering from meth withdrawal. “She almost died because of me. And it wasn’t the first time. So I am never going near her because this is never going to happen again, Frank. Do you understand me?”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” Frank had seen Shaw under virtually every situation imaginable, but he had never seen him like this.
Later that night Shaw and Frank boarded a British Airways 777 at Boston’s Logan Airport that would take them to London by the next morning. During the flight Frank watched a movie, had some drinks and dinner, did some work and napped.
Shaw spent the entire six-hour-and-twenty-minute flight staring out the window. When they landed the men cleared customs at Heathrow and walked toward the exits.
“Shaw, I’ve got a car. You want a lift
into town?”
“Just get me another assignment, the sooner the better.” Shaw kept walking, head down, bag swinging at his side.
Frank stared at him for a bit, then found his ride and was driven off.
Shaw got into London an hour later on a bus. He didn’t go to the Savoy. He wasn’t working. He couldn’t afford the place on his own dime. He checked into a far more modestly priced room in a far less desirable part of town. He had just thrown his bag down in a chair when his phone rang.
He didn’t even bother to look at the caller ID. He wasn’t talking to anyone right now. He went out, bought some beer, came back, popped one, drank it down and then another, crumpling the empty cans in one hand and throwing them into the trash.
The phone rang again. He had another beer, went to the window, gazed out on the street, and saw a bunch of people pass by who had never personally known Katie James and might not even know how close she had come to dying.
“She’s a terrific person,” Shaw said to the window. “I don’t deserve her. And she sure as hell doesn’t deserve me.” He held up his beer can, tapped it against the glass, thinking of her hand squeezing his. It had felt wonderful and yet he knew he would never feel it again.
At midnight his phone stopped ringing even as he finished off the last beer, which was now warm. He couldn’t sleep and rose in the middle of the night to throw up all that he had drunk into the toilet. He showered, shaved, dressed in fresh clothes, and headed out to find some breakfast at 4 a.m. This being London, he was successful after only a two-block search. He sat in the back of the mostly empty café and ordered the biggest platter they had. When it came he just stared at the food and instead drank down two cups of black coffee before dropping a pile of British notes on the checkered tablecloth and leaving.
He walked along the Thames and found the spot where he and Katie had stood when a shot had rung out and a man had fallen dead into the river. Then he ventured to another street where if he’d been a second later Katie would have been murdered by a man wielding a syringe. He passed a shop where they had had dinner together. And finally the hotel where he had thrown her breakfast cart against a wall and she’d responded by calmly pouring him a cup of coffee. This memory drew a smile from him that quickly collapsed into a sob. At that same encounter she’d shown him the bullet wound on her upper arm. And shared with him the story of the Afghan boy who had died, she said, as a result of Katie’s reaching too far, too hard for a story.
She’d flown across the Atlantic on a moment’s notice to be with Shaw when he needed her. She had always been there when he’d needed her. And now she was lying in a hospital with a hole in her chest because of him. Shaw staggered into an alleyway, leaned against a dirty brick building, and wept so hard he finally got the dry heaves.
Later, at Trafalgar Square, he sat red-eyed with the pigeons, staring up at Lord Nelson until his neck hurt because he didn’t know where else to look. London was coming to life now, the pace of feet and vehicles picking up. As the sun rose, the air warmed. After all that had happened, it was hard to believe that it was still summer. Gordes, even Canada, seemed an eternity ago to him.
