29.

Steve’s recovery has been steady, but slow.

Rehab. Physical therapy.

The two bullets had entered high on his abdomen but missed his heart. They’d done as much damage as possible without actually killing him.

For months, Zack and Emily have felt burdened by guilt. Zack remembers standing by his hospital bed with Emily in those first weeks. “Hey, man.”

“Hey, guys.” A whisper. A struggle to speak. Steve grunting as he turns toward them to see them. To greet them.

Zack thinking: Joey’s victims, who are all dead, me and Emily, who are alive, and Steve, who is somewhere in between.

“How you feeling?”

Steve struggling to even shrug. To smile.

Zack had jumped in to speak for him. “You’re making progress. You seem better than you were last week, for sure.”

Their visits continued, and slowly, slowly, he’s come back.

Physically, anyway.

Shepherding him home in a cab. Helping him up the stairs. Cooking meals for him.

The three of them drawn inevitably closer to each other. Survivors of a catastrophe.

It hasn’t been lost on Zack or Emily that the delay caused by Joey stopping to deal with Steve gave Zack the extra time he needed to put his plan into motion.

It hasn’t been lost on Zack that it was Detective Lopez who actually saved Steve, who figured it out, who got the EMTs there in time. Zack had left the police station but Lopez had followed up. If Zack had said something, if he’d gotten Lopez to believe him right then and there in the police station, then Steve would never have been shot. And Lopez’s subsequent behavior, his curiosity, his following through, showed Zack that Lopez probably would have believed him. And if Lopez hadn’t followed up, of course, Steve would certainly be dead. Because of Zack.

Luckily, as a freelance designer, Steve can work from home so he is soon back to earning a living and paying his rent.

He still gets bleary, confused, a little dazed sometimes, which the doctors say they expect to pass. His brain and his body are still recovering, and full recovery probably takes a year or more. But he’s headed in the right direction, and they all know it.

“I’m still here,” says Steve one day, shaking his head in astonishment. The tears suddenly run down his cheeks. Sheer gratitude at being alive.

A statement like that, out of the blue, reverberates with Zack and Emily, who are there with him, who can’t help themselves, who are glad to shed tears along with him.

Still here.

And now they are at Steve’s apartment. He’s buzzed them up.

There are multiple locks on the door now. Cameras. A little fortress that Steve has made.