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Ben felt his gut tighten. Machetes reminded him of the time he’d spent on a special mission in Somalia. He focused on the kids in the alley to keep his mind from forming images he didn’t want to remember.
Suddenly, Waverly cried, “One of them’s waving a knife!”
Ben put the SUV in Park and was out the door before he had time to think what he was doing. “Call for backup,” he yelled over his shoulder. He heard Waverly shouting agreement behind him, but he didn’t pause, just pulled his Glock and headed toward the alley on the run.
As he raced forward he shouted, “Police! Put down the knife! Put it down!”
The boy in danger of being stabbed backed away, trying to escape. And Ben realized who it was.
He saw the look of terror in Epifanio’s eyes and felt his gut tighten in fear, which turned to horror as he watched the knife tear into the boy’s white T-shirt.
Most of the kids had fled, leaving only the perpetrator and the victim. Ben watched as a boy sporting an MS gang tatt—the number 13 tattooed in black ink on his cheek—eyed him, then reached around and purposely cut Epifanio’s throat.
Rich red blood spurted from Epifanio’s jugular.
Ben saw the shock in the boy’s brown eyes as he collapsed on the asphalt. And then watched the kid with the knife flee down the alley.
Ben felt his throat constrict with emotion, but he didn’t stop to offer comfort to the dying boy. As a combat veteran, he knew a good-as-dead man when he saw one. Waverly would do what was necessary till help arrived. There was no saving the kid. But he could catch the killer.
He darted after the boy with the knife, stumbling over debris the kid threw back into his path as he ran along the uneven brick pavement. “Stop, or I’ll shoot!”
The youth gave a hoot of hysterical laughter and ran faster.
Ben took a shooting stance and aimed for the kid’s leg. But to his surprise, his hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t get a good aim. “Damn!”
He shot once into the side brick wall above the boy’s head, to see if he could scare the kid into stopping. When the killer kept running, Ben realized he should have known better. These kids had grown up with violence. They heard gunshots every Saturday night and had seen their friends die early deaths. He took his finger off the trigger and raced after the boy.
As the curly-headed, café-au-lait-colored kid ran, he kept pulling up his jeans, which he’d been wearing down around his hips. The shoelaces on his Air Jordans were untied, causing him to trip and lose his balance.
Which was how Ben caught up to him. It was a great open-field tackle against a zigzagging opponent. The kid howled like a banshee, and Ben nearly broke the boy’s wrist getting him to drop the bloodstained knife. His knee in the small of the boy’s back, he wrestled the kid’s hands behind him and slapped on the metal cuffs he kept in a case on the back of his belt.
His chest was heaving, and his heart felt like it might pound out of his chest. He resisted the urge to shake the kid within an inch of his life. Or smash the smirk off his face. Or pick him up and throw him back down and stomp on him. All natural responses when an enemy had killed a friend. All impulses that he’d learned to control in battle.
Ben swore every foul oath he knew. He should have called the cops whether Epifanio wanted him to or not. He should have done something, anything, to make the kid understand the danger of asking questions that might put him at risk. He should have been there the moment school let out.
His mistakes had cost the kid his life.
Ben could feel the shakes coming on, his body’s response to seeing a boy he’d grown to care for killed in front of his eyes. His heart squeezed when he realized he was going to have to tell Epifanio’s abuela that her grandson had met the fate she’d always feared, the fate Ben had been trying so hard to save him from. Ben didn’t know if he could bear watching those ancient brown eyes fill with tears of sorrow.
He heard sirens in the distance and realized help was on the way. He huffed out a breath and hauled the killer to his feet. “Your ass is busted.”
“Epifanio ain’t goin’ to say nothin’ to nobody now,” the kid shot back.
Ben didn’t say another word as he frog-marched the boy back down the alley. He was met halfway to the corner by MPD cops with their guns out, backup he presumed Waverly had called in. He held up his ICE badge and handed over his prisoner.
“How’s the kid who was stabbed?” he asked.
“Paramedics are with him now,” one of the cops replied.
Ben started running again. Maybe he could get to Epifanio before the boy died. Maybe he could find out what the kid knew that was so important it had gotten him killed.
A moment later he was on one knee in the blood that had pooled around the dying youth. He looked into the eyes of the paramedic kneeling on the other side of the boy, but the woman shook her head.
“Epifanio,” Ben said, his voice harsh, his throat aching.
The thirteen-year-old’s eyes fluttered open. He reached weakly toward Ben, who grasped his hand.
“Why did he want you dead?” Ben asked. “What is it you know?”
The boy looked at him with anguished eyes. He opened his mouth, but his larynx had been severed, along with his jugular.
“Don’t worry,” Ben said in a husky voice. “I’ll take care of your abuela. I’ll make sure she’s okay. You just rest now.”
The boy’s eyes had fallen closed, but his bloody hand tightened weakly on Ben’s. A dying breath soughed out of his mouth, along with a bubble of blood.
Ben eased his hand free and stumbled to his feet, wiping Epifanio’s blood on his jeans. He recognized the familiar meaty smell. The stickiness of it.
Senseless. Stupid. His gaze searched the area. What a waste! He wasn’t sure what he sought until he saw Waverly standing near the cop car that now held the killer.
His friend saw him coming and met him halfway.
“I’ve had enough,” Ben said. “I quit.”
Waverly looked from the kid in the cop car to the dead kid on the ground and said, “You can’t quit.”
“I sure as hell can,” Ben said. “I don’t need the hassle. I don’t need the—”
“Pain?” Waverly interjected. “I know you don’t need the money. But you can’t quit, Ben.”
“Why the hell not?” he said, stalking toward his SUV.
Waverly kept pace with him. “You’re doing good work here. You understand these kids. You understand the violence that threatens them. You want peace in these neighborhoods as much as I do. As we all do.”
“There’s no such thing as peace. Just intervals without war.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Ben I know.”
“You don’t know shit about me,” Ben retorted. “I’ve changed in the years since we were kids playing cops and robbers.”
“You’re forgetting that I watched you stop squabbles between your parents both before and after their divorce. You learned to negotiate peace between warring factions when you were still in short pants.
“Besides,” Waverly said, eyeing Ben. “Only cowards quit.”
Ben’s face turned chalk white. “I’m not a—”
“No, you’re not a coward. You’re a man who needs purpose in his life,” Waverly continued relentlessly. “Which you’ve found among these kids. Kids who need someone like you to help them find their way back to the straight and narrow.”
Ben said nothing. His throat had swollen closed.
8
“Damn it, Benedict! Did you have to shoot at the kid?” Tony Pellicano, the special agent in charge of the D.C. ICE office, gripped the top of the swivel chair behind his cluttered desk with white-knuckled hands and glared at Ben. “That was the mayor on the phone. He’s not happy. I had to explain to him why one of my agents was firing bullets at a fourteen-year-old. What were you thinking?”
Ben stared at his boss with disbelief. “I watched that kid cut another kid’s throat. And I shot once—over his head. Sir.”
Ben’s boss smacked his black leather chair as though it was the back of Ben’s head, then stalked back and forth behind his desk, waving his hands and ranting. Ben followed his tall, rail-thin boss’s constant, agitated movement with his eyes, while his hands gripped the arms of the maroon leather studded chair in which he sat.
“This isn’t a war zone,” Tony ranted. “We don’t shoot first and ask questions later.”
Ben felt his heart thudding in his chest, licked at the sweat beaded above his lip, and said, “You don’t have to tell me this isn’t—”
“You returning vets have the wrong—”
Ben came out of his chair as though he’d been catapulted from it. “The last thing on earth I want to do is kill some kid. I shot over his head to slow him down. I wanted to catch a killer. What’s wrong with that?”
Tony stared at him stony-faced and said, “I want you to see a doctor, a psychiatrist who specializes in cases like this.”
Ben stood stunned. “What?” If Tony only knew how hard it had been for him to fire his weapon at all, he would realize Ben wasn’t going to be a threat to the peace and harmony of D.C. streets. “There’s nothing wrong with me, sir,” Ben managed to say.
“You shoot, you talk. Those are my rules,” Tony said implacably.
“I’m not talking to any shrink.”
“Then pass me your credentials and your weapon,” Tony said, holding out his hand. “Your choice.”
Ben’s stomach rolled. He swallowed down bile. If there was one thing he didn’t want to do, it was talk to some doctor about killing kids. Especially after what had happened in Afghanistan. But his boss wasn’t giving him any choice. He lowered his gaze and said, “Who do I have to see?”
“We’ve got a psych trauma team on the payroll,” Tony said.
“I’ll make an appointment.”
“I had them called when I heard you’d fired your weapon. They sent over a therapist—Dr. Schuster. She’s waiting for you in the conference room.”
“Waverly’s wedding rehearsal is tonight, and I have paperwork to finish. I don’t have time—”
“You don’t leave this office until you talk with a doctor. That’s an order.”
“Fine,” Ben said between tight jaws. “Are we done here?”
Tony sighed. “Until today, I’ve been happy with the way you’ve been doing your job, Ben. The gang kids like you. You write great reports. You can type. Even better, you can spell. You’re responsible. You’re respectful. You’re reliable. I just can’t have a gunslinger working for me.”
“I’m not a—”
“Go see Dr. Schuster,” Tony interrupted brusquely. “Do it now.”
9
Dr. Annagreit Schuster recognized the ICE agent standing in the doorway. He’d yelled at her yesterday morning at the vet’s office. He’d ignored her at the urgent care clinic. He’d fallen apart in her arms last night, then walked out of her apartment leaving her unsatisfied.
She noted the wary look in his cold blue eyes as he leaned against the doorway to the conference room. She saw the tension in his bunched shoulders and the anger in his tight jaws and balled fists. She looked for a bandage on his left forearm, but he was wearing a long-sleeved Georgetown University T-shirt that covered it.
He spoke without saying a word: I don’t want to be here. There’s nothing you can say or do to help me. I’m fine.
“Have a seat, Agent Benedict,” Anna said, gesturing to one of the comfortable swivel chairs across from her at the center of the oval-shaped, highly polished conference table.
Anna had read in Ben’s personnel file that his job was to make friends of the kids in local gangs, in conjunction with similar MPD efforts, in order to direct them away from unlawful activities. He was also tasked with locating and arresting gang members with a possible terrorist agenda—and, of course, deporting illegal aliens who infiltrated the gangs.
It was work with an indisputable humanitarian goal. And numerous possibilities for violence.
“How long is this going to take?” he demanded from the doorway.
“As long as it takes,” she replied in an even voice. As with all Federal government clients involved in a shooting, she needed to evaluate how the subject was coping with the traumatic incident and to make a judgment whether he needed immediate or follow-up counseling. Sometimes that took five minutes, sometimes it took much longer.
Anna had firsthand information about this man that didn’t come out of his file. She’d seen what she believed was evidence of post-traumatic stress last night. But she wasn’t sure she could—or should—use that information against him in this evaluation.
For the first time since he’d left her townhome, Anna was glad their encounter had ended so abruptly. If their relationship had become physical, she could not ethically have treated him. Perhaps it was shaving hairs to say she was emotionally uninvolved, but she very much wanted to help this man.
Anna didn’t repeat her request for Benedict to sit. She waited, letting him approach on his own. She shouldn’t have been surprised by his caution, considering what she’d learned about Benjamin Preston Benedict from the personnel file she’d been presented with when she’d arrived at the ICE office a half hour ago.
She’d taken one look at Ben Benedict’s picture and actually felt a little thrill at the thought of seeing him again. Which she’d immediately quelled. If she wanted to treat Agent Benedict, their relationship had to remain professional.
According to his file, Ben Benedict was a former army major, the veteran of several military campaigns. He’d been trained as a sniper, and he’d employed those skills in Afghanistan and Iraq. He’d apparently been a good soldier. Heroic, in fact. He’d been decorated for his valor with the Distinguished Service Cross, two silver stars and a Purple Heart.
She had her own evidence of his good character. Not many men would have tried to approach an injured rottweiler, let alone succeed in rescuing it. He was obviously a man who’d learned how to survive in life-threatening situations. Part of which was reconnoitering the terrain before venturing into hazardous territory.
Anna observed Ben Benedict, looking for signs of trauma. He hadn’t shaved this morning, and his darkly stubbled jawline made his cheekbones even more prominent. She’d known he was tall. His record said he was 6’3”. The sweatshirt emphasized his broad shoulders but hid his impressive biceps.
His body was coiled, like a cornered animal facing a threatening foe. But after that first, revealingly apprehensive glance, his blue eyes had become shuttered. As the door slid silently closed behind him, Agent Benedict snagged a chair directly across from her and slumped into it. “You don’t look like a doctor.”
“No?”
“You look like a model.”
Anna managed not to sigh with frustration. She had, in fact, modeled as a young woman. And yes, she was blond and blue-eyed, long-legged, and reputed to be beautiful, if the European magazine covers she’d graced as a teen were any measure. But at twenty-nine, she’d long since put all that behind her.
When she’d first started her practice, she’d briefly explained her modeling past to each inquiring patient. She’d also revealed, to those who’d asked, the nature of the life-altering event that had taken her from modeling to trauma therapy.
But Anna had since learned not to reveal even that much about herself to patients. So she merely said, “Tell me about the shooting.”
“I already told my boss. I didn’t shoot at the kid. I shot over his head.”
“Why was that?”
“What?”
“Why didn’t you shoot him?” Anna watched the frown of confusion form on Agent Benedict’s very attractive face.
“Why didn’t I kill him, you mean?”
