Chương 14
“What did you tell her?” Lorenzo asked.
“That you would understand.”
“I don’t.”
“You understand that one life cannot outweigh everything.”
“My daughter outweighs it.”
“You say that now.”
“I say it too late.”
Dominic’s breathing became rough.
“You were always weak where women were concerned,” he said.
Lorenzo looked at the hand on the trigger.
“You taught me weakness meant caring what happened to someone else,” he replied. “That was useful to you.”
“It kept you alive.”
“It kept me obedient.”
Dominic coughed. The elevator wall rattled behind him.
“Do you remember your father’s kitchen?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You were fourteen. You broke a glass and hid it beneath the trash because you thought he would hit you.”
“He did hit me.”
“For lying.”
“For dropping a glass.”
“He made you careful.”
“He made me afraid of accidents.”
Dominic’s voice softened. “Fear is not always the enemy.”
“No. Sometimes it’s an uncle.”
The old man laughed again, but the laugh turned into a cough.
Lorenzo glanced toward the bomb technician waiting behind a concrete column. The man held up two fingers, then pointed downward. Two devices had been located. There might be more.
“Your hand is bleeding,” Lorenzo said.
“I know.”
“You’re losing pressure on the switch.”
“I know.”
“Give it to me.”
Dominic went silent.
“I’ll take it,” Lorenzo said.
The tactical commander shook his head violently.
Dominic asked, “Why?”
“So you can come out.”
“And spend the rest of my life in a cage?”
“Yes.”
“You think that is mercy?”
“No.”
“Then why offer?”
“Because Lucia will someday ask what happened to her mother. I want there to be testimony she can read, not only stories told by men who loved themselves.”
Dominic’s shoes shifted closer to the gap.
“You would let her know this?”
“She will know enough to choose what my name means to her.”
“Children do not choose blood.”
“Isabella did.”
For the first time, Dominic sounded uncertain.
The bomb technician signaled that a manual brace might hold the switch if the device could be transferred without release. The risk remained high.
Lorenzo extended his hand through the gap.
“Give it to me.”
Dominic lowered the device until Lorenzo could see it clearly.
Then his other hand appeared holding a pistol.
The barrel pointed through the opening at Lorenzo’s face.
Agents raised their weapons.
“Back,” Lorenzo said.
No one moved.
Dominic’s hand trembled.
“You brought them into the family,” he said.
“The family brought them to my daughter.”
“You will die in prison.”
“Maybe.”
“Lucia will grow up without you.”
“Yes.”
The answer seemed to confuse Dominic.
“You accept that?”
“No.”
“But you choose it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Lorenzo thought of Isabella’s last instruction, Emma’s rabbit, Sophia warming bottles in a boarded room, Marco standing in the rain because his brother’s grief had once left him without words.
“Because wanting something doesn’t make it mine to keep.”
Dominic’s pistol lowered half an inch.
A shot cracked from inside the elevator.
For an instant, Lorenzo thought Dominic had fired.
Then the gun fell through the gap and struck the lobby floor.
Dominic collapsed against the doors.
The shot had come from his own weapon, discharged into the elevator ceiling when his wounded arm failed. His thumb remained on the trigger, but his grip was slipping.
The bomb technician moved.
Lorenzo reached through the opening and closed his hand around Dominic’s wrist.
“Hold it,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
Dominic’s blood ran warm across Lorenzo’s fingers.
The technician slid a clamp around the trigger while another agent forced the elevator doors wider. They transferred pressure in careful increments.
Dominic began sobbing.
Not from remorse. Not entirely. He was afraid.
Lorenzo held his wrist until the device was secured.
Agents pulled Dominic through the gap and lowered him onto a stretcher. He looked smaller on the floor than he had ever looked at a dinner table.
As paramedics carried him out, he turned his head toward Lorenzo.
“Your father would be ashamed.”
Lorenzo looked at the blood on his hand.
“He often was.”
The bomb squad disabled three accelerant charges. The final device was found beneath the pediatric room where Lucia had been held.
At seven forty-one, Lorenzo walked out of the medical complex.
The rain had stopped.
Emergency lights painted the street red and blue. Reporters had begun gathering behind barricades, alerted by scanner traffic and the unusual federal presence. Cameras turned when Lorenzo appeared, but agents moved him directly toward the pediatric ambulance.
Donnelly caught his shoulder.
“You have thirty seconds,” she said. “Then we leave.”
Sophia sat inside with her injured arm bandaged against her chest. Her face was pale beneath an oxygen line. Emma was not there; federal agents had kept her at the rectory until the scene was secure.
Lucia lay in a warmed carrier beside Sophia.
She was smaller than Lorenzo remembered.
Her cheeks had thinned. Fine dark hair lay damp against her scalp. A hospital sensor glowed around one foot. She wore a clean white onesie supplied by paramedics, but a strip of yellow blanket remained tucked around her legs.
Lorenzo stopped at the ambulance door.
Sophia looked at him.
“She cried for almost an hour,” she said. “They kept moving her. She missed two feedings.”
Her voice carried blame, exhaustion, and relief in equal measure.
Lorenzo nodded.
“Can I touch her?”
Sophia looked down at Lucia. “Wash your hands.”
A paramedic handed him antiseptic foam.
Lorenzo scrubbed until the blood was gone from his skin and beneath his nails. He dried his hands on a paper towel that tore in the middle.
Then he stepped inside.
Lucia’s eyes were open.
They were dark and unfocused, drifting past his face toward the ambulance lights. Her mouth made a small searching movement.
Lorenzo placed one finger against her palm.
She did not grip him at first.
He waited.
Her fingers closed.
May you like
The sensation was almost nothing. A slight pressure. Reflex, the paramedic might have called it.
Lorenzo bowed his head.
