O’Donnell throws a pen at him. “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, for God’s sake.” They laugh.

I laugh along with them—some things are automatic. Some things come easy. Some things, you don’t think about until after.

My mind is crammed with images from last night. Adrenaline does that. Makes you remember every tiny moment of stress. Particularly the moment—Crack!—when my baton came down, shattering the girl’s shoulder.

A girl. Small as anything. A hundred pounds soaking wet, as they say. Unarmed. In the light of day, I think, she couldn’t have hurt me. There and then, I wasn’t so sure.

It shakes me.

It shakes me, not being sure. You have to be sure. To lash out is a last resort. Always.

Always.

“They can’t keep it up,” O’Donnell says again. “Twenty bucks says it’s all over after tonight.”

A flare-up, we call it. A small dose of civil unrest. It never lasts. Look at the history. The worst offenders get arrested and the crowd loses momentum. Loses interest. When there’s no one to follow, everybody goes home. We crack down hard, to ensure it.

Crack!

I consider the unbridled rage it must take for a girl that small to come at a guy like me, someone armed and in uniform. She had nothing, and still she came at me. I think about how it feels to fight for your life. What it looks like when you have nothing to lose.

It isn’t over. We’ll be right back out there tonight. And the next night. And the next.

“I’ll take that action,” I tell O’Donnell. He raises his brows. I pull two tens out of my wallet, toss them on the desk. “They can keep it up at least a few more days. They don’t see any other choice.”

DEVANTE

“I’m sorry,” I tell Uncle Steve on the drive to the precinct. “You must blame me for dragging Will into this.”

Steve’s hands are on the wheel, but he turns to look at me. “Not at all,” he says. “Not even a little bit.”

I blame me, I guess. I ran. I got out. When the ship was going down, I took the only lifeboat.

They all got arrested. Will. Robb. Even Tyrell, which seems so absurd to me that I don’t even know what to do with it.

But not me. I ran.

It’s not like I thought it through. I didn’t make a choice. It just happened. I saw an opening and I took it. I thought they were all right behind me. Why weren’t they? If I’d known they were getting caught, I would have tried to help. I think. I hope. But, I mean, what could I really have done? Get arrested alongside them? Why should I feel this bad for saving myself?