Bring Us Home

I reached for Leo and stopped myself before I touched the buckle.

He was strapped in. He needed to stay strapped in.

"I'm here," I said. "Look at my hand, sweetheart. I'm right here."

The van blocked most of the road. Dante turned into the narrow space beside it, metal shrieking against our front fender.

Rico was on the phone.

He gave our location, said we had been deliberately struck, and asked for police and an ambulance to meet us at the fire station ahead.

A gunshot cracked behind us.

The rear side window shattered.

Rico ducked across the front seat. Blood darkened his sleeve.

I stopped breathing.

"Dad!" Leo cried.

"I'm here, buddy," Rico said immediately. "I'm right here."

Dante kept driving. The second vehicle had fallen back at the intersection, caught behind the van. He spoke to its driver through his earpiece, short words I couldn't follow.

I could see blood running down Rico's wrist.

Too much red. A strange certainty rose inside me, a memory without a picture: someone bleeding while I was told to stay quiet.

I pressed my feet against the floor.

This was now. This was my son beside me and my husband in front of me. I could not afford to vanish into something that had already happened.

"Rico, talk to me."

He turned his head.

"It's my arm. I'm staying awake."

"Good. Keep doing that."

He almost smiled.

Leo was crying so hard he couldn't catch his breath.

I took the little dinosaur from his lap and pressed it into his hand.

"Feel his feet. Can you count them with me?"

He shook his head.

"That's okay. I'll count. One. Two."

His fingers tightened around the toy.

I kept my voice low, though it took everything I had.

We pulled into the fire station yard with the horn sounding. Dante shouted through the open front window. People moved toward us, then stopped when he warned them about the car following.

Rico opened his door.

For one terrible second, I thought he was going back out into the road.

Instead he came around to my side and held the door while I unbuckled Leo.

"Inside," he said.

The man pursuing us climbed out of a dark car near the entrance.

Dante shouted a warning. I saw a raised arm, heard another sharp report, and Rico pushed me behind the open door.

A hand caught my coat.

I jerked back, heart hammering.

A firefighter stood beside us, his palm open.

"This way. Bring the little boy."

Rico moved with us. He didn't stop to face the man. He put his body between the road and our son and followed me through the door.

Inside, everything was too bright.

Leo clung to my neck. Someone shut us into an office away from the windows. Another person pressed a thick pad against Rico's arm and told him to sit.

He sat only after I pulled a chair beside mine.

There were voices outside. Running feet. Then sirens.

I counted the sounds because I couldn't count the minutes.

Rico's hand found mine.

"Are you hurt?"

I shook my head.

He looked at Leo. "Hey, buddy. Can you look at me?"

Our son lifted his face from my shoulder.

"You got red."

Rico glanced at his sleeve.

"I got hurt. The people here are helping me."

"Don't go."

"I'll tell you before I go anywhere."

His eyes met mine over Leo's head.

He hadn't promised he couldn't keep.

The police arrived in the office a little later. The men outside were in custody. A weapon had been recovered. There were things they needed to ask us, but first the medics wanted to examine all three of us.

At the hospital, I sat beside Rico while someone cleaned the wound in his upper arm. Leo slept against me, limp with exhaustion.

I watched the dressing go on.

"You could have gone after him," I said.

Rico looked at me.

"The man outside. You wanted to."

His eyes went to Leo.

"Yes."

I waited.

"Then I heard him crying."

I bent my head until my forehead touched his.

For a moment, neither of us moved.

Julia arrived before dark. Dante came behind her with a split lip and our bags. The other driver had been examined and released. He was shaken but not seriously hurt.

I hadn't realized I was waiting for that information until my whole body loosened.

Marcus had supplied his messages with Kincaid, including the instruction to retrieve me. Julia had passed them to the investigators handling our report. The threatening call, the attack, and the financial records were now pieces of the same inquiry.

"Will they arrest him?" I asked.

"They are looking for him," she said. "I'm not going to promise you the end of a case tonight."

I leaned back, exhausted.

"I wasn't sure we'd get a tonight."

Her expression softened.

"You did. Let's get you through it."

We went to a secure temporary residence instead of Dante's property. Leo woke during the drive and cried when he saw a different door.

I carried him inside and showed him the bedroom. Rico checked the windows, then caught himself and sat with us while Dante finished talking to the people downstairs.

"It's a different house," I told Leo. "We didn't expect to sleep here. That was a change, and it was scary."

He rubbed his eyes.

"Your bed?"

I looked at the narrow bed, then at Rico's injured arm.

"For tonight, I think we can all fit."

We couldn't, really. Rico's feet hung off the end. Leo kicked me twice. I lay awake with one hand on each of them, listening to an unfamiliar refrigerator switch on and off.

In the middle of the night, Rico whispered, "Are you awake?"

"No. This is my very convincing sleep voice."

His breath warmed my hair.

"I'm sorry."

I knew he wasn't apologizing for the bed.

"I know."

"I'm going to give them everything I have on Northstar. Names. Accounts. The work I paid for."

I turned enough to see his face.

"That could hurt you."

"Yes."

"You don't get to tell me afterward that you did it because I made you."

He shook his head.

"I'm doing it because our son asked me not to go, and I realized I had spent years making that request harder to answer."

My eyes burned.

Leo snuffled between us and kicked Rico's shin.

"He's making a strong argument," I whispered.

Rico laughed so softly that only I heard it.

Five days later, Kincaid was arrested.

Julia told us in the kitchen of the temporary house. There had been enough to move quickly on the threats and the attack; the financial investigation would take longer. Other people were coming forward. Haven's records were being secured.

I stood with my hand on the kettle until Rico gently moved it away from the hot metal.

There was no tremendous feeling of victory.

I wanted to sit down. I wanted to wash my hair without listening for a car outside.

I wanted my son to have a bad day because he couldn't find a blue crayon.

"Can we go home?" I asked.

Not immediately. There were arrangements to make, statements to finish, people who needed to check that it was safe enough.

This time, the waiting had an end.

When we finally returned, Leo ran to the kitchen and opened the drawer with his spoons in it.

He looked back at us, relieved beyond words.

I knelt beside him.

"Still here," I said.

He nodded, chose a spoon, and carried it upstairs like treasure.