He starts running harder.

I’m sobbing, yelling, and I feel like I’m going to lose control of my bladder and bowels as I approach the still form of my little girl.

Oh, Denise.

I drop to my knees, scraping them hard, and my girl’s head is blackened and there’s blood, and I can’t see anymore, I’m crying so very, very hard.

Denise!

I reach down and touch my little girl.

And—

“Mommy?”

I break out in one more loud sob.

She’s sitting up, rubbing at the side of her face.

“Mommy…my ear hurts. It hurts a lot.”

I grab her and squeeze her hard, and if I could, I wouldn’t move for the rest of the week.

She says, “Oh, Mommy, you’re squeezing me too hard!”

I ignore her, refuse to let her go.

CHAPTER 88

IT HURTS too much to do anything, including keeping her eyes open, and then there’s a dim voice above her.

“Special Agent Vasquez? Can you hear me?”

Rosaria manages to get her right eye open. It sort of focuses in, and there’s a woman looking down at her, wearing a skimpy bathing suit.

“Yeah, I can hear you,” she says. “Who…Captain Cornwall, is that you?”

“Yes, yes,” and now the captain is holding her left hand.

“Damn, girl, why are you in a bathing suit?”

Her hand is squeezed. “A long story, Vasquez.”

“Then save it for later.”

I’m holding Special Agent Vasquez’s left hand, and my other arm is tight around my brave little girl, Denise, who isn’t sobbing but who’s running a hand over and over her scorched hair, near where the muzzle blast of that man’s pistol had passed through.

Sirens are in the distance, and there’s a circle of people watching us, lots using their cell phones to record this horrible scene.

Tom races up, clothes bloody, and he kneels down next to me, starts squeezing Denise as well.

We’re finally together.

“Vasquez,” I say. “Why did you do it? Why did you come here?”

Her right eye is the only one open. Even with the bullet wounds in her chest and her soaking-wet T-shirt from her spilling blood, the haircut makes her look ten years younger and oh so vulnerable.

“I told you that, back at the library…I wanted to help…you and your family…”

“You could have done that by staying away or going back to Quantico.”

Her eye flutters shut, opens up again.

She manages a smile. Her lower lip is frothy red with blood.

“That would be running away…and I wasn’t going to do that…I have no family…I thought for a long time the Army was my family…I was so wrong…They kicked me to the curb like a piece of trash…”

Tom has an arm around me.

The sirens are getting louder.

I squeeze her hand again. “Hang on, Vasquez. The EMTs are coming. Hang on.”

She says, “Captain…I need to warn you…need to tell you something…”

A long, drawn-out wheeze.

Tom says, “Isn’t there anything we can do?”