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The late afternoon sun baked the city and tortured pedestrians as they scurried to their destinations. Washington was in the middle of a heat wave, the hottest the city had seen in years, and beads of sweat ran down Shane’s temples and into his eyes—the salt stinging and the sun glaring.
The Federal Reserve Building on Constitution Avenue was full of people just after lunch—tour groups, employees, and government officials. He was positioned on top of the Roosevelt Building across the street. Black tar from the roof stuck to his clothes and his rifle was set on a tripod stand aimed at the building. He had a perfect view to the inside of the building through his scope.
The gunman had gathered all of the hostages and made them sit in the center of the room, legs crossed and hands flat on the floor. It had only taken a glance through the scope to see the people were terrified—children from a tour group sat huddled in fear and the men and women around them tried to offer comfort and dry their tears.
His wife stood out like a beacon. An authority figure who was in complete control, though he could tell by the way she rubbed her hands on her black skirt that she was nervous. But she didn’t show her captor fear. Her posture was straight and defiant and her expression angry as she followed the gunman’s every movement.
A negotiator was called in to speak with the gunman, but the standard tactics weren’t working. The gunman was becoming more agitated with every call. He paced back and forth across the marble tile like a caged animal, the people at his feet forgotten and his demands growing stronger. Minutes turned into hours and the heat intensified as the sun crept higher.
A car alarm blared from down the block and a chopper circled overhead. The smell of hot tar and exhaust made the inside of his nose raw as he looked through the scope of his rifle. The streets were cordoned off around the building. The gunman had asked for an armored truck to load gold bars into, and it sat big and black and shiny in front of the Federal Reserve Building. The gunman picked hostages to load the truck and then had them return to the bank and sit back down on the floor.
The gunman grabbed a woman from the floor and used her as a shield as he began to leave the building. From all appearances, it looked like he was going to let the other hostages go.
“Fire when ready,” Director Hudson ordered Shane. “I don’t want the bastard to step foot outside of that building. We don’t need any more of a media circus than we’ve already got.”
“What about the hostage?” Shane asked, his voice hollow.
“Take the shot, Quincy,” Director Hudson ordered again, and Shane knew the life of the woman wasn’t as important as the bigger picture to a man like Hudson.
But Shane followed orders. His finger was steady on the trigger as he slowly pulled it back. The rifle jerked in his arms and the bullet cut through the waves of heat pouring up from the pavement as if it were in slow motion. The gunman was unsuspecting, his focus on the struggling woman and getting them both to the truck.
The other hostages were restless and beginning to stand, relieved the ordeal was over. The crack of the rifle firing was delayed, the bullet faster than the speed of sound, and Shane watched as it sliced through the glass doors of the Federal Reserve and into the gunman’s heart, missing the woman by only a fraction of an inch. But in the end it hadn’t mattered. She’d died anyway.
Real time whooshed back in an instant as the man fell to his knees. The city was still, a void in space, and then all hell broke loose. The explosion rocketed through the front of the building, engulfing it in black smoke and flame. Debris rained from the sky and large chunks of concrete catapulted into the street, damaging cars and breaking the windows of the surrounding buildings. The lives of so many people had meant less than the 400-ounce rectangles of precious metal.
Shane’s life as he’d known it had ended in an instant.
* * *
He woke gasping for air and his skin slicked with sweat. He was disoriented and cold and his muscles cramped. And when a soft hand touched him on the shoulder he had to fight to keep from jumping out of the bed like a coward.
“Shane?” Rachel asked.
He didn’t answer her. Couldn’t answer her. The soft hand began rubbing slow circles over his back until his breathing slowed. Rain pounded against the window and thunder cracked loudly, shaking the glass.
“Shane? Are you okay?” she asked again.
“Yeah, just give me a minute.” The dream was always the same. He’d killed his wife. Killed all of those people. The children. Despite the higher-ups who had given him the order to fire, it had been only his finger on the trigger. Not theirs.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Shane laughed sardonically and rubbed his hands across his face. “Hell, no. I lived it. Why would I want to talk about it? You sound like one of the FBI shrinks.”
He was churned up, feeling mean and nasty, and he desperately wanted a bottle of Jim Beam. But he’d given up the hard stuff and taken up running instead. And now he was stuck in a motel room with a woman who made him crazy and neither of his vices were available.
Shane lay back down and turned onto his side, facing away from Rachel. The sweat on his skin was drying, leaving him clammy and cold. Rachel’s fingers were driving him to distraction. He’d never considered sex as a way to chase away the bad dreams, but he was beginning to think it might not be a bad idea to take up a third vice just in case he was ever in a situation like this one again.
He hadn’t touched a woman in two years, and the need rose up in him swiftly. His senses were heightened—the smell of her skin and the way her breath feathered across his cheek. She snuggled up close behind him, her hand continuously soothing, while his body coiled with tension. Would she continue to soothe him if he decided to use her body to rid himself of his frustrations? He couldn’t do that to her. Couldn’t do it to anyone. No one deserved to be treated that way. Which led him back to running or Jim Beam. He choked on a laugh, but it was a sob that caught in his throat.
“I always hear you leave your apartment in the middle of the night,” she said, breaking the silence. “Where do you go?”
“Running through the city. It’s beautiful at night,” he said, trying to think of anything but the touch of her hand or her softness pressed against him. “I tried drowning myself in alcohol for a few months, but I didn’t like that version of me when I looked in the mirror any more than the version I see now. So I poured the bottles down the drain and stopped looking at myself in the mirror altogether. I didn’t realize my sleep habits kept you awake.”
“I’d try to stay awake until you came back, just so I could listen to you play the piano for a while. Such sad music comes out of you, Shane. Sometimes it would make me cry.”
“Well, the blues aren’t meant to be happy.”
“No, I suppose not, but I enjoyed hearing you all the same. You have strong hands,” she said, running her fingers down the length of his arm to the tips of his fingers.
