“Last shot,” he says, staring off and away. “Get what you need.”
I look at the Audi like I’m leaving a dear friend at the airport. I open the trunk, grab my bag, then slam it shut. As we’re halfway to Covington Street, en route to his black government SUV, I say, “Wait!”
I run back to the passenger side of my car, open the glove compartment and pull out the CD case, and take with me the entire library of discs that served as the soundtrack to my finding and protecting Melody, the discs purchased when I followed her through Best Buy, the discs that will allow Melody to speak to me forever.
Sean stays close, watches as I take the case and jam it into the pocket of my overnight bag. I gaze around the perimeter of where we’re standing, where his vehicle is parked, tucked in an angled spot across from the American Visionary Art Museum. Turns out Sean kept his promise: He came alone. No one is around to help him. No one is around to watch him open the back door of his Explorer for me, and no one is around to see him check up and down Covington before he slams my head into the doorframe of the SUV, twice. There is no backup, no other marshals, no one else who took an oath to protect and serve as he punches me three times in the face. No one to see that I let him do it, that I merely curl up in a ball and allow his fists to hammer me. No one to notice that I never ask him to stop.
FOUR
Sean shoves me into the men’s room on the sixth floor of the Garmatz Federal Courthouse, pushes me so hard I go sliding across the floor and bang my head into the pipe under one of the sinks. Just as the door closes, he says, “Clean yourself up.”
I right myself by holding on to the sink. The thing shimmies and shakes, feels like I might rip it right out of the wall as I use it to pull myself up. When I finally see myself in the mirror, the damage doesn’t look as bad as it feels. Sean apparently learned as I did that the best way to bruise someone is behind areas covered by clothing: the blows to my body. I have a large lump across my forehead from where he rammed it into the door of the Explorer, blood crusted around both nostrils, and three cuts along my left cheek from his punches to my face. But the real soreness resides in my chest and sides from where he rained down blow after blow until a tour bus turned the corner near Covington and startled him out of his rage.
I turn on the faucet and let the water run over my hair and face, into my mouth. I spit out a pinkish pool of fluid, wipe myself dry with a handful of paper towels, gently dab some of the dried blood from my skin. I rub my rib cage where the pain is most intense, wince as my fingers brush my left side, wonder if I have a cracked rib.
I walk out to the hall and Sean is standing with his back against the wall, staring at his cell phone. The building is quiet and empty at ten-thirty on this Sunday evening.
Sean ignores me, takes another minute to finish whatever it is he’s doing, then suddenly snaps his cell shut and looks up. “C’mon,” he says, and starts to walk down the hallway.
“Can I get something to drink?”
“Shut up. You’re not in Witness Protection yet. If you think I’m gonna wait on you, you’re out of your mind. You want a drink? Go stick your head in the toilet.”
We make our way to the end of the hall and he opens the last door before the stairwell, flips on a light to display a conference room that could seat fourteen people around one long rectangular table. He flips another switch and the blinds drop across all seven windows and the lights of Baltimore’s skyline slowly disappear. At the farthest end of the room is a one-way mirror wide enough to house an entire Hollywood film crew behind it.
I take a few steps toward the table, rest my hand on the back of one of the plush leather chairs. Sean walks to a computer in the corner