"I'm not looking to grab a quickie while you do. You look exhausted."

"It was a bad day. Very bad. I can't talk about it yet. I only want to talk about it once."

"I'm just going to be here, you don't have to talk."

In her room, she pulled out a pair of cotton pants. She stripped off the blood-smeared trousers, tossed them in the hamper. "Mama will likely perform some miracle of science and get that poor boy's blood out of those." She pressed her hand between her eyes as the grief swamped her. But before Duncan could take her into his arms, she stepped back, shook her head.

"No, no comforting hugs just yet. And no tears. If I have to cry, it'll wait until later. My mother's worried. She'll stay worried until I get back down."

"Let's go back, then."

He went down with her. Ava had already set a plate on a tray, had a glass of wine waiting.

"It'll be on the news," she began. "Probably has been. There was a situation over on Hitch Street. Gang-related. Hostages. The boy was sixteen. Just sixteen, grieving, so angry, so misguided. It took time to talk him down, but I did, I talked him down, and told him it would be all right. So he came out, just the way I told him. Unarmed, hands up high. And someone shot him. They shot him while he stood with his hands up, when he was surrendering. His mother was there, close enough I think she must have seen it happen."

"Is he going to be all right?" Carly asked.

"No, honey. He died." Before I got to him, Phoebe thought. "But why did they shoot him?"

"I don't know." She stroked Carly's hair, then bent down to kiss it.

"I just don't. We don't know why or who. Not yet. There'll be talk, on the TV about it. I wanted you-all of you-to know what happened."

"I wish it hadn't happened."

"Oh, baby, so do I."

Carly snuggled up. "You'll feel better if you eat. That's what you say."

"It is what I say." Deliberately she speared something on her plate.

It didn't matter what, she couldn't taste it. But she ate it with a little flourish. "And as usual, I'm right. Now, everybody should stop worrying and tell me what you did for fun tonight."

"Uncle Carter and Duncan played a duelette."

"A duelette?"

"That's what Uncle Carter called it. On the piano. That was fun. And Aunt Josie told the joke about the chicken."

"Not that again."

"I liked it." Duncan worked up a smile. He saw what she was doing, needed to do. Get everyone back to normal.

"And Duncan said you and me could go on his sailboat on Saturday if you said we could. So can we? Please? I've never been on a sailboat before. Ever."

"You're obviously a neglected and abused child. I suppose we probably could do that."

"Yes!"

"But right now it seems to be somewhat past someone's bedtime."

"But we have company."

"And a polite, self-sacrificing child, too. How'd I get so lucky? Now, say good night, and I'll be up in a couple minutes."

Carly dragged her feet all around the room, stalled, looked beseechingly toward the other adults for intervention. She circled her way around to Duncan, sighed heavily. "I wish I didn't have to go to bed, but thank you for coming to dinner."

"Thank you for having me. We've got a date on Saturday, right?" The sulks flew away. "Okay. 'Night."

The minute she was gone, Phoebe set down her fork. "I'd better get on." Duncan rose.

There were polite protests, mutual thanks, cheek kisses and handshakes. "I'll walk you out."

It felt so good to step outside, into the air. To take a breath of it. "I'm sorry I brought home something that tainted the evening."

"Don't think of it like that." He draped an arm around her shoulders as they walked down to his car. "Hard for you."

"It was awful." She indulged herself a moment, turning into him, holding on. "I don't know that I'll ever get it all the way out of my head. Maybe I shouldn't. I don't know how it could've happened. Some people are already saying it was us who did it. We're saying we suspect it was one of the members of the rival gang. We found the gun. AK-47. It wasn't one of ours. They riddled that boy. In seconds. One of the hostages inside was hit. He'll be okay, b u't… " She sucked in a breath, drew back. "That's not for here."

"It's for wherever you need it to be."

"I need to keep as much as I can away from here." She glanced back toward the house. "Whenever I can. So… about Saturday."

"I'll pick you and Carly up about ten. How's that?"

"It's nice of you to offer her such a treat. I don't want you to feel obliged to-"

"Don't." He tapped a finger to her lips. "Don't do that. And the fact is, you might as well know, if things don't work out with you and me, and Essie turns me down, I figure I can wait about, what, fifteen years, for the kid."

"Twenty. Minimum."

"Hard-ass." He tipped her face back. "Still, that oughta be some motivation for you, seeing I've got multiple choices here." He kissed her, long, very long, very soft.

"I'll see you Saturday."

"Saturday. I'll pack a few gallons of sunscreen for us redheads." She waved him off, stood there a while. And after a while walked over and sat on the front steps. She needed to go in, of course, needed to go tuck Carly into bed, keep an eye on Mama, just in case. But she sat awhile longer.

Carter came out. Saying nothing, he sat beside her, took her hand. Together, they sat awhile longer yet.

Chapter 18

Phoebe wasn't wrong about the media storm. It raged across the television screens, the newspaper headlines, the Internet. In death, Charlie Johnson became a symbol of gang violence, racism, police corruption and incompetence-depending on which side you were on at any given time.

She fielded dozens of calls from reporters, and for the first time in her career received death threats.

And she once again found herself interviewed by IAB.

"How you holding up?" Dave studied her as she drew lines down the condensation of her glass of iced tea. He'd pulled her out for a quick lunch.

"I keep seeing him coming out, hands up. Just that one second when

I thought: Good job, Phoebe. High five. Then the sound of the gun, the way his body jerked like a puppet. Just one more second, really, for it all to go to hell."

"You did a good job." He shook his head at her expression. "You did. Let's just get that on the table."

"Crisis negotiators are part of a team, Dave. Who taught me that? The team failed that boy, and the hostages. It failed everyone."

"Something broke down; we're still not sure what. Your end of it didn't. Regardless," he continued, "a boy died, a hostage was injured.

No member of the tactical team fired their weapon. The weapon fired and discovered wasn't ours. And regardless," he repeated, "the failure's on us. Someone got through, or was overlooked, during the evac of the area."

"There was more violence on both the east and west sides last night," she pointed out. "More shootings. They're using that boy to justify killing. The media and the mouthpieces are using him, whittling it down or blowing it up-I'm not sure which applies-to race.

To white against black. And I don't know that you can say race has nothing to do with it, because it's certainly one of the elements that play into gangs. But I don't believe Charles Johnson was shot because of his skin color. And I don't believe he deserves to have his death pushed into that."

She said nothing while the sandwiches they'd ordered were served. "Franklin Johnson died this morning."

"I know."

"Opal Johnson's lost both her sons. Her children are dead. The first, that's not on us, at least not on the surface. We found and arrested the man who killed him. Would we have done so as quickly, even at all, if Charlie hadn't gone into that liquor store yesterday? I don't know the answer. That troubles me."