Page 100 of Walking Wounded

“Yeah.” A smile touches the corner of Hal’s mouth. “Will too.”

Luke sees them, sepia ghosts moving across the grass. Little Will with a missing tooth and hair shining beneath the sun, rips in the knees of his pants. Chasing Finn, the two of them laughing, the sound bright and clean in the autumn air.

Hal takes a hand off the wheel and sets it on Luke’s knee, squeezes. “Let’s go in.”

~*~

There are more ghosts inside. Hal produces a key and lets them into a foyer floored in old, foot-polished boards, an iron chandelier hanging overhead. Luke spots the library – larger, better-stocked than the one at the townhouse – to the left, through open French doors, and to the right a parlor with a wood-burning fireplace. Wide baseboards and crown molding, solid wood doors, potentially original wallpaper, a smell of age that isn’t unpleasant – something woodsy and grounding.

“Sandy?” Hal calls.

“Back here!”

She meets them at the doorway of the kitchen – a massive flagstone room with modern appliances, original timbers in the ceiling, and a hearty plank table. She rushes right up to Luke, takes his face gingerly in her hands and turns his head to each side, her gaze half-clinical, half-stricken.

“Luke, sweetie.” Shetsks. “Should you be up and moving around? Why don’t you sit.”

“I’m fine.” But she’s already steering him toward the table, pulling out the bench for him, like he’s an invalid. Which he is, sort of.

“There were bad sightlines at the hospital,” Hal says, voice flexing with work muscle.

Luke shoots him a startled glance once he’s seated. “Sightlines, Rambo?”

Hal, incredibly, scans the room with hooded precision, scoping the place out, looking for threats. “Your face was all over TV. The media’s calling you Will’s biographer, linking you to the family. We can’t be too careful.”

“I’m on the news?” Luke asks, feeling slow and stupid. He wishes he wasn’t full of prescription pain meds.

There’s a remote control on the table, and Sandy picks it up, turns on a small flat-screen TV mounted above the fireplace – because even the damn kitchen in this place has a fireplace, a gorgeous field stone number with cast iron kettles sitting on its hearth.

It’s already on one of the big news networks, and there, staring at him out of the screen, is his own face. An old photo someone must have dug off somebody’s Facebook page; someone’s arm rests around his shoulders, but the rest of the person has been cut out of the picture. Luke sees his black-framed glasses, the bright blue of his eyes behind the lenses, his little impatient smirk because he hadn’t wanted to be in the pic with everyone.

“New York journalist Luke Keller,”the reporter voiceover says, grave and professional,“currently writing a biography of Senator Maddox’s father, William Maddox, infamous for striking a peaceful protestor earlier this month–”

“Peaceful my ass,” Will’s gruff voice says from behind Luke somewhere; he hadn’t heard him come into the room. “Guy was a douche.”

“Hush,” Sandy says.

“Authorities tell us Keller was released from the hospital this morning and left in the company of Breckinridge Security personnel, the same security firm hired by the Maddox family.”

The shot cuts to one in-studio, two reporters sitting polished and perfect at the desk: a woman in a blue dress, and a man in a striped blue tie.“You have to wonder,”the man says,“what someone’s thinking with this level of security in place. I mean, you see Senators with staff following them, pages and assistants, but Maddox has had all this beefed up security from day one. Makes you wonder if he needs it, or if he’s trying to prove some kind of point.”

“Trying to make the American people paranoid, you think?”the woman asks, brows notched.“Or do you think there’s any truth to his allegations that he’s received death threats?”

“I don’t know,”the man says.“But it starts to make you question things.”

“They’re saying he hired someone to detonate the bomb,” Will says.

“Suggesting it,” Sandy corrects, voice tight. “The bomber hasn’t been caught. They’re trying to say that…” Her sentence dissolves in a short huff of breath. “Jesus Christ, I couldstranglesomeone.”

Luke feels blood pounding through his ears as he stares at a collage of photos, put up on the screen one after the next. More pics of himself, obtained without permission; photos of Hal and his friends: the whole Breckinridge crew; photos of Matt smiling and waving at someone in the halls of the Russell building…while another senator behind him scowls at him in obvious distaste.

“Where…” He has to wet his lips. “Where did they find…”

Hal’s hand lands on his shoulder, his squeeze firm and comforting. “That’s just what they do.” His voice ripples with tension. “They hunt people down, and splash their lives all over the nightly news.” Then, more quietly: “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Luke whirls on him. Tries to, anyway; dizziness hits him and he nearly falls out of his chair. All the muscles in his torsograband he bites his cheek to keep from screaming in shock and pain. “How is any of that” – gesture to the TV – “something you should be sorry for?”

Hal ducks his head, breathing hard, nostrils flared. “I was the one who got you down here. Wanted you to do the story. It’s my fault.”

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