As the paramedic dressed Rachel's wound, she told Dusek, "I need your cell phone."

"What?" he said.

"And a shotgun," she told him. "Or, like, an incendiary device? Something that burns hot and contained."

"Do I look like Santa Claus?" Dusek asked.

"Only around the eyebrows."

He snorted, then brought her a cellphone and said, "It's disposable. Knock yourself out."

"Thanks." She dialed the number she'd memorized, and when Jason answered, she said, "Umlaut."

“Rachel! Are you okay?” he asked. “I’m following the scanners and--“

“Focus, Jason. I need some gear.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means guns and men who know how to use them. I'm Nancy Drew, Girl Detective, over here. The minute my luck runs out, I'm dead.”

Jason exhaled. “I write policy proposals--I’m a legislative aid.”

“I need a combat shotgun, a flamethrower … I need backup.”

“Senator’s working on that.”

“Hold a second.” Rachel looked to Dusek. “Do you have access to flamethrowers?”

“I ran your ID three times and they keep claiming you’re legit,” he said. “I don’t understand it. Have you ever fired a combat shotgun on full automatic?”

“Once.”

“Were you any good?”

“No.”

He eyed her. “Since when is DHS hurting for assault teams?”

“Long story.”

"You're just a kid."

"You keep saying that," she told him. "Like it changes something."

"You need backup? What you need is five years to grow up."

"Yeah, and a flamethrower."

“Why do I even care?” he asked, then sighed. “Don’t go anywhere.” And he slammed into his car and spoke on the radio.

"Anything new on Boone?" she asked Jason.

"He's disappeared from the databases," he told her. "Like someone’s cleaning up after him. Other than the Dynamic Resources address, I’ve got nothing."

"How about PJ?"

"No."

"Is hammock girl okay?"

"Still in the hospital stairwell."

"Did, um--" she glanced at the paramedic. "Anyone else check in?"

Meaning me, after I’d disappeared with Maddie.

"Only the senator. She says we’re running out of time."

"If she's got complains she’s welcome to join me. Maybe she knows how to use a flamethrower." Rachel nodded her thanks to the paramedic when he finished with the bandage, then told Umlaut: "How about you get me a gallon of lighter fluid--or jet fuel. Do you know how to make a Molotov cocktail?"

"What? No."

"Google it," she said, then told him to follow the investigation on the van and the injured shooters, to keep digging for an ID on the helicopter and the boat in Mayne, and to get her everything about the ARIES affiliate in New Park, Dynamic Resources Group.

"No shotgun for you," Dusek said, ambling closer. "“Interagency cooperation doesn’t extend to lending weaponry. These are yours, though." He gave her the keys, then noticed the hesitation when she took them. "What?"

"I'm a little rusty," she admitted. "With driving."

"So you can use the practice," he told her.

He reminded her of soldiers she'd known at the compound. Not the macho meatheads, which were admittedly the overwhelming majority, but the few who were so tough they didn't have anything to prove. They'd treated her like a tagalong little sister, teasing and teaching and challenging her.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

She liked him. She wanted to ask him to stay with her, to work with her--to keep her safe. Instead, she got in the car pulled away from the curb and rolled through Red Hook. Driving came back pretty quickly, which didn't really surprise her; her father's lessons didn't fade that easily. Sometimes she thought she'd spend the rest of her life trying to unlearn them.

She reached the hospital forty minutes later, found the stairwell, and started climbing. Three flights from the top, she showed her ID to an orderly sprawled in a plastic chair.

"Homeland Security," he said. "What’d you want with a crazy girl?"

"We’re recruiting," she told him.

She ducked under the police tape, and found Shandra a flight up, in a hammock slung across the landing. Bundled in brand-new quilts, with a tray of untouched food and a call button beside her. Rocking slowly, her face turned to the dingy wall.

"Shandra," Rachel said.

The rocking stopped, Shandra turned. Her eyes were glassy, her lips swollen and her hands wrapped in gauze.

"Touch me," she whispered. "I need to know."

"We’ll talk," Rachel said. "We’ll talk first."

"Did you find him?"

"Dewitt? Yeah."

The rocking started again. "PJ killed him?"

"I’m sorry."

"Is Lark--?"

"He’s fine. He ran off with Maddie."

Shandra whimpered.

"I need to know more about PJ," Rachel said. "That office you saw, I need details."

"Maddie doesn’t love Lark. She never did."

Rachel gave her a minute. "You saw a penthouse office? Decorated fancy and French?"

"Yes."

"What else?"

Shandra’s gaze dropped. "Nothing."

"Outside the window? The sky? Clouds? Other buildings?"

"I don’t know."

"Letterhead on the desk?"

"No."

"Art on the walls? What looked French?"

"I don’t know, I don’t know. Stop asking me."

"A hundred people are dead, and this is just starting. There’s going to be another bombing--and another and another. I'm not asking you, Shandra. This isn't optional. Tell me what you know."

"I don’t know anything!"

"You do know," Rachel snapped. "There’s something you’re not saying."

Shandra beckoned with a bandaged hand, then grabbed the strap of Rachel’s bag and yanked her into the hammock, sending blankets cascading to the floor. She clutched Rachel’s waist, her breath ragged and her pupils constricting to pinpoints.

Rachel fought the urge to strike back. She stayed there, bent over the hammock, and Shandra clung to her like a shipwrecked woman clutching a raft.

"I’m sorry," Shandra sobbed. "I never do that, I never try to steal someone's memories, I never--"

Rachel disengaged. "Shut up. Shut up and tell me where I can find PJ."

"You don't even know where to find Lark." Shandra took a hiccupping breath. "Where is he? With her?"

"I need you to concentrate," Rachel said. "If you want to help Lark, help me."

"There’s a … a man in an office. In a skyscraper, I think. Wearing a suit. He’s a businessman, I guess in his sixties, sort of short and portly."

"Yes?"

"He’s got an axe. He’s got an axe and a bomb."

Rachel spent twenty minutes grilling Shandra, and learned nothing else. She didn’t know more about the building or about the man. She’d seen ten thousand things, and none of them helped.

When Rachel finished, Shandra said, "Promise you’ll keep Lark safe."

Rachel didn't say anything.

"I know you can't," Shandra told her. "I know you, Rachel. I know you don't make promises you can't keep. Just tell me anyway."

"I'll keep him safe," she said, and went downstairs.

She needed to visit Dynamic Resources. She knew it was a dead end, because otherwise Boone would have hidden it. Still, she had to try everything. Lives were at stake, and her father was responsible. Which meant she was responsible. She'd tried to stop Boone, and she'd failed. The blood was on her hands.

----------------------------------------

Thirty minutes later, Rachel drove past Dynamic Resources Group, in a big square building with an underwear franchise on street level.

She pulled around the corner to the curb and rubbed her eyes.

She'd shot Boone to protect her sister. She'd fired on those guys at Maddie's art studio building, and she'd hit PJ in the face with a metal rod when he'd tried to keep her from freeing her father's prisoners. She still felt all of that like an open wound. She couldn't do this alone. She needed somebody at her side when the hammer dropped.

She didn't have anyone, though. She was alone. Always alone. And sitting in a parked car feeling bad about it, like a useless child. So she got a grip and left the car and headed along the sidewalk.

Twenty feet from the corner, four guys closed around her--on a sidewalk in the middle of the day, boxing her between a granite wall and a black SUV.

Two of them looked Slavic and two looked Asian, maybe Taiwanese or Indonesian, and all of them were pockmarked: deep pits scarred their faces and necks, like from acne or childhood smallpox. Every one of them. The Asians wore jeans and windbreakers and the Slavs wore beige slacks and dress shirts without neckties.

The taller Slav held a little .22, for target shooting and confident killers. Gripped in his right hand, stabilized with his left forearm and pointing nowhere in particular while other three guys screened Rachel toward the open door of the SUV. A wave of shock and fear washed over her like frigid water, stealing her breath and raising the hair on the back of her neck.

"Get in the car," the Slav told her, his accent thick.

His words blew away her shock. The men had appeared so suddenly that she hadn’t known what to think, but telling her to get in the car?

Bad move.

Because if you’re a girl, you never get in the car. That was one of her father's lessons that she'd actually passed along to Audrey: if you’re a guy, she’d said, don’t get in the car. But if you’re a girl, do not get in the goddamn car. Make him stab you on the street, shoot you on the street, shout for help while you’re still on the street, because once that door closes, you’re all alone at the end of the world.

Do not get in the car.

The words tripped a switch in her mind and she screamed, "Help! Help!" and launched herself sideways.

One of the Asians clotheslined her. Pain burst in her chest and slammed onto the sidewalk. A granite palm slapped her face. Her neck whiplashed and a fist slammed her breathless. She groped to gouge the man’s eyes and he caught her wrist.

She drove her heel into the smaller Slav’s abdomen. The blow jarred her leg, like kicking a brick wall. These guys were inhumanly solid.

They dragged her toward the SUV and she wrapped herself around a parking sign and clung. She drew breath to scream again and the Asian with the winsome face stepped on her throat.

He stood on her windpipe until the panic came.

Rachel flailed on the sidewalk. She keened and choked on her own fear, and released the street sign. Maybe ten seconds since the first blow. Distantly, she heard shouting. People running toward them. Someone calling for help, calling for the cops.

The tall Slav reached for Rachel, forced open her right eye between his forefinger and thumb.

"From now on--" He spat in her right eye. "--we watch you."

Then he slammed her temple with his hand and the orange sun exploded into a thousand shards and glinted on a thousand windows.