Page 6 of The Night Of
I wanted to run. I was already running in my mind, already running away from myself, again.
The door to Horsepower opened. The shift supervisor poked his head in. We were like animals huddled in the dark, and we all turned toward the light from the door.
“Avery?” the supervisor barked. “Agent Sean Avery?”
Fuck me. What now? I pushed off the wall, balled up my empty coffee cup, and came forward. “Yeah?”
The supervisor, dressed in his White House finest, looked me up and down. I hadn’t changed out of my blood-soaked tactical pants and my long-sleeved Secret Service pullover. Flakes of dried blood ringed the cotton cuffs. My handwashing had barely made a dent in the gore that covered me.
“Vice President Sharp wants to see you.” His ice-cold glare flicked up. “You’re not talking to him with his best friend’s blood all over you. Change. Now.”
Fuck me.
I had a pair of sweats I slept in when I used to rack out in Horsepower shoved in the bottom of my locker, and I stole Rider’s undershirt from the next locker over. After changing, I looked like a degenerate, but it was better than looking like a murderer.
I was led up to Sharp’s office with an agent on either side of me. My heart pounded. I rubbed my palms against the sides of my thighs. Why did he want to see me? If he wanted to hear what happened, he could talk to Garcia, or Pitt, or White. All three of them had been down in Horsepower with me, crying in the dark. I should be the last fucking person he would want to talk to. The absolute last.
We stopped outside the vice president’s office. Sharp hadn’t moved into the Oval yet. The shift supervisor poked his head inside, announced I was there, and then pushed open the door. He gave me the hairy eyeball as I trudged past him, my eyes down or sliding sideways, looking anywhere but at the man.
At Jonathan.
Three hundred sixty-six days of walling him off inside my mind and inside my soul. The walls came tumbling down, the miles of distance I’d laid between us suddenly no more than the feet that now separated him from me. He was, in an instant, Jonathan again.
At least to my shattered heart, if not in reality.
I heard him, even if I didn’t see him. The leather creaking as he leaned back in his chair. The way he set his pen down, a quiet, cleansnick. I knew he’d placed it precisely parallel to the desk edge. Things like that mattered to him. His exhale, soft and small. I could feel his eyes raking over me, taking in my rumpled, smelly sweats, the borrowed T-shirt that was too small and bunched under my arms.
I’d never thought I’d see him again.
That’s not true. Once, I’d thought I might see him for the last time while I was dressed in an orange jumpsuit with cuffs on my wrists, Jonathan pointing at me, saying, “Him, that’s the one, officer.” But that didn’t happen. I’m still not sure why.
“Thank you for changing.” His voice was rippling thunder, electric as it shot into me. Softer than it had been at the press conference. “I appreciate that consideration. I understand you were the agent in charge on scene last night.”
I nodded. Didn’t say a word. Didn’t look at him.
“Please tell me: what did you see?”
Did he want to hear it, not just read it? Why? Why force himself to picture it, to hear the details in full, vivid glory? I squirmed, shifted. Ran my tongue over my teeth as I stalled.
“I need to know what happened last night. Sean, please. Tell me everything.”
It was my name that did it. Fuck, it had been three hundred and sixty-six days since I’d heard his voice in person, since I’d been close enough to feel his energy. Three hundred and sixty-six days since I’d heard him say my name. The last time he had…
I squeezed my eyes closed.
I blurted it all without looking at him, a closed-eyed recitation of the report I’d written sometime after three in the morning. Walking the trail on patrol. Hearing the gunshot. Racing for Aspen and barging in. What I saw. What we did. How we tried to save him. I looked down at my fingers when I said I started CPR. Baker’s blood was dug into my fingernails, into the cuticles, into the whorls of my fingerprints. When blood gets that deep in you, it doesn’t come out easy.
Jonathan stood halfway through my rambling, coming around his desk to stand in front of me. He spread his legs and crossed his arms like he was still the colonel leading European Command, holding down a staff slot usually filled by a general. I wanted to wither in front of him.
“Tell me about the gun.”
I did, stumbling through how we found it hooked on his dislocated thumb. I’d seen powder burns on his left hand, and Garcia saw them on his right. At the hospital, they’d confirmed the burns along the left and right index fingers and the palms of both hands. He had to have held the gun with both hands wrapped around the barrel and used his thumb. The recoil would have easily hooked him, dislocating his digit.
Silence filled the office as my recitation ended, abruptly stopping when I got to where I had been thrown on a helo and flown back to the White House. My voice cut off like my power had been pulled. I waited for Jonathan to say something. Do something.
I’m not a patient man. “Why are you asking me this?” I asked when the silence overpowered me.
Jonathanisa patient man. He’s a man of a thousand words… ever. I used to go crazy over that, obsess over the enigma of his silences, his looks. I used to hoard the words he gave me, collecting them like each was a diamond.
