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into the air. To take a breath of it. "I'm sorry I brought home something that tainted the evening."

"Don't think of it like that." He draped an arm around her shoulders as they walked down to his car. "Hard for you."

"It was awful." She indulged herself a moment, turning into him, holding on. "I don't know that I'll ever get it all the way out of my head. Maybe I shouldn't. I don't know how it could've happened. Some people are already saying it was us who did it. We're saying we suspect it was one of the members of the rival gang. We found the gun. AK-47. It wasn't one of ours. They riddled that boy. In seconds. One of the hostages inside was hit. He'll be okay, b u't... " She sucked in a breath, drew back. "That's not for here."

"It's for wherever you need it to be."

"I need to keep as much as I can away from here." She glanced back toward the house. "Whenever I can. So... about Saturday."

"I'll pick you and Carly up about ten. How's that?"

"It's nice of you to offer her such a treat. I don't want you to feel obliged to-"

"Don't." He tapped a finger to her lips. "Don't do that. And the fact is, you might as well know, if things don't work out with you and me, and Essie turns me down, I figure I can wait about, what, fifteen years, for the kid."

"Twenty. Minimum."

"Hard-ass." He tipped her face back. "Still, that oughta be some motivation for you, seeing I've got multiple choices here." He kissed her, long, very long, very soft.

"I'll see you Saturday."

"Saturday. I'll pack a few gallons of sunscreen for us redheads." She waved him off, stood there a while. And after a while walked over and sat on the front steps. She needed to go in, of course, needed to go tuck Carly into bed, keep an eye on Mama, just in case. But she sat awhile longer.

Carter came out. Saying nothing, he sat beside her, took her hand. Together, they sat awhile longer yet.

Chapter 18

Phoebe wasn't wrong about the media storm. It raged across the television screens, the newspaper headlines, the Internet. In death, Charlie Johnson became a symbol of gang violence, racism, police corruption and incompetence-depending on which side you were on at any given time.

She fielded dozens of calls from reporters, and for the first time in her career received death threats.

And she once again found herself interviewed by IAB.

"How you holding up?" Dave studied her as she drew lines down the condensation of her glass of iced tea. He'd pulled her out for a quick lunch.

"I keep seeing him coming out, hands up. Just that one second when

I thought: Good job, Phoebe. High five. Then the sound of the gun, the way his body jerked like a puppet. Just one more second, really, for it all to go to hell."

"You did a good job." He shook his head at her expression. "You did. Let's just get that on the table."

"Crisis negotiators are part of a team, Dave. Who taught me that? The team failed that boy, and the hostages. It failed everyone."

"Something broke down; we're still not sure what. Your end of it didn't. Regardless," he continued, "a boy died, a hostage was injured.

No member of the tactical team fired their weapon. The weapon fired and discovered wasn't ours. And regardless," he repeated, "the failure's on us. Someone got through, or was overlooked, during the evac of the area."

"There was more violence on both the east and west sides last night," she pointed out. "More shootings. They're using that boy to justify killing. The media and the mouthpieces are using him, whittling it down or blowing it up-I'm not sure which applies-to race.

To white against black. And I don't know that you can say race has nothing to do with it, because it's certainly one of the elements that play into gangs. But I don't believe Charles Johnson was shot because of his skin color. And I don't believe he deserves to have his death pushed into that."

She said nothing while the sandwiches they'd ordered were served. "Franklin Johnson died this morning."

"I know."

"Opal Johnson's lost both her sons. Her children are dead. The first, that's not on us, at least not on the surface. We found and arrested the man who killed him. Would we have done so as quickly, even at all, if Charlie hadn't gone into that liquor store