It’s a knock on the side door that wakes me up, a light, unwelcome tapping on the glass. No telling how long whoever it is has been trying to get my attention. At least they haven’t started pounding yet. Reluctantly, I roll over, heavy from a dreamless sleep, and I’m grumpy about wasting the blessing. Maybe they’ll go away.

  But the tapping comes again, and there’s something about it that smacks of the inevitable. No doubt, I should welcome company. That’s probably a good idea, healthier, but I’m not really fit for it.

  Whoever it is doesn’t seem to give a shit because they keep knocking. Fine. With any luck, I’m being carjacked. Homejacked? Motorhomejacked? I can hope, kind of wanting to see the guy who’d try something like that.

  Sitting up takes some effort. I still feel like I’m made of stone, like the very laws of nature are unhappy that I’m able to locomotor.

  Emphasis on the loco.

  After yesterday, I’m not well and I know it. Fuck, I’d be sicker if I did feel well, but damn if that helps any right now.

  When I open the door, it’s Dr. Melanie Linn on the other side with a cardboard drink carrier full of four Styrofoam cups. She’s smiling, easing a lock of unruly blonde hair back behind her ear with her other hand. And she’s dressed for work in a beige suit and blue blouse, on the cute side of beautiful.

  I have to back up or knock her down when she steps up into my home without so much as a hello. My butt hits the sink behind me. I’m about to say something but she beats me to it.

  “I’d have called, but you wouldn’t have answered,” she says. “Am I right?”

  She totally is, but it seems rude to point that out. Seems better saying nothing at all.

  She nods anyway. “Thought so. Please excuse me for barging in like this, but, well, I just had to.” She sets the drinks on the table.

  We stand there looking at them.

  “What?” I say.

  “I had to. You weren’t going to invite me in. You’d have stalled, letting the awkwardness of the situation build, maybe exaggerating your exhaustion, until I felt bad and left you alone. Am I way off base?”

  She’s right about that, too.

  “See?” she says. “Cal told me what happened last night when she brought in the new folks. The people you rescued? Did you forget about them?”

  “No, I—.”

  “Forgot’s the wrong word. You re-prioritized them in your mind.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t know what to get you.” She points to the cup nearest her, and then each of the others in turn. “That’s black coffee. That’s the barista’s favorite iced drink. I don’t remember what she called it. That’s a nice chamomile tea, and that’s a hot chocolate. All of them brilliant to wake up to after a nightmare. It’s six o’clock in the evening.”

  So, I’ve missed most of the day? Good riddance. “I don’t—.”

  “Cal said to make you drink one. Any of them. I’m to punch you in the stomach if you refuse.”

  “What? I—.”

  “She made me promise.” She holds up a closed fist.

  I sit down and choose the iced thing, hoping it sucks. Dr. Linn stands above me, hands curled backwards on her hips, waiting, so I take a sip. It’s sweet, but not too much. Vanilla and caramel.

  Okay, it’s pretty good.

  Dr. Linn sits opposite me and makes her choice. “I made a wish you’d leave me this one. I haven’t had a cup of hot chocolate in a long time. It’s supposed to be excellent there.”

  We’re quiet for a moment as we both sample our drinks.

  “So, Cal sent you?”

  “No.”

  “But—.”

  “I offered, and she felt that was a good idea.”

  “Oh.”

  She smiles. “Besides, it was my turn.”

  I’m confused.

  “To barge in.” Her smile widens and her eyes twinkle. “Though it’d be more fair if you were just in a towel.” She winks. “Oh well.”

  She just winked at me.

  I’d only been in this new world a matter of hours before entering what I thought was my apartment only to find nothing familiar inside, nothing of mine, only Dr. Linn there, standing, in a towel, fresh from the shower, staring in shock.

  I can’t help but laugh, but a pain in my gut follows. Bad idea to be laughing at anything at all today.

  “So, I want to talk to you.” She sets down her drink. “And then I want to show you something, okay?”

  I shrug.

  “When’s your next appointment with Dr. Black?”

  “Next week?”

  “She’ll probably ask to see you before that after… what happened. You could call her and set that up.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re here for?” I sip my drink. “To counsel me?”

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  “Nope. We’re friends, I think, aren’t we, Ben?”

  I can’t look at her. It’s the window that holds my attention even though the blinds are pulled. It’s dark in here, with the only light seeping in around the edges of the windows and coming from the cab in front. I should turn on some lights. Or open the blinds. I’m too heavy to do anything. It’s smells a little musty in here. Feels like a dungeon.

  She takes my hand.

  That nearly breaks me.

  “I think we are. I think you could use one right now. Cal… didn’t expect you’d want to see her. Monica’s still being checked over and evaluated. That girl.” Melanie shakes her head in wonder. “She’s as tough as they come.”

  It’s a moment before I can manage, “You should go.”

  “Why? Because something might happen? Will we roll down the hill and foil an armed robbery? A kidnapping? Something new? Didn’t I hear this thing went under water once?”

  “Yes, because something will happen.”

  “Let’s talk about that.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Yes, please.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to counsel me. That we’re friends.”

  “If I wasn’t your friend, I’d be more careful with this. Now shut up.” She leans forward. “Suppose a twelve-year-old boy is at a family reunion.”

  “What?”

  “Humor me, dammit.”

  I hold up my hands in surrender.

  “Young boy at a family reunion. It’s a close family. Nearly everybody he knows and loves is there, including some of his friends who were also invited, okay?”

  I nod.

  “A gang rolls up and decides to rob the place. Things start to go wrong. There’s a scuffle or something and the gang members decide to kill everybody there. They line them up against a wall, only they miss the boy. He’s behind them. During the struggle, a big gun’s been sat down on the table he’s hiding under. What’s he supposed to do?”

  I’m so tired. I just want to go back to sleep. To hell with hypotheticals.

  She’s relentless. “He’s not had any training. If he uses the gun, he might not do any good. He could hurt himself or his mom or dad. It seems unlikely that he could talk his way out of things with the gang. Negotiate.” She looks at me. Her eyes are large and liquid.

  She waits. Then, “If he picks up that weapon, whose fault is it?”

  “I’m the boy in this?”

  “No, Ben. This is just about him. If he uses the gun trying to save his family, is it his fault? Is he to blame? Is he guilty of anything?”

  “I don’t want to play this game.”

  “Neither does this child. Is he evil if he pulls the trigger? Is he bad? Does he deserve what’s about to happen?”

  I’m crying. Sobbing.

  “You don’t want to answer the question, do you?” she says. I didn’t know she could be cruel like this. “Because, yes, you’re the boy. Only things are so much more confusing for you. It’s not a gun. It’s this strange power you have over luck and probability. Whatever. Nobody else has it. Nobody can teach you to use it, or how to control it. You see people in trouble and you try to help, but you didn’t cause the problem. You didn’t pick up the boy’s gun. You had it forced onto you. Inside you. Think of one of the men you shot dead tonight.”

  “What?” A bearded face collapsing in blood, falling away from me.

  “Picture him. What would he have done with your power? What did he do with what he already had as a mere human being? He elected to be a person who abducts others, rapes and beats them, then hands them over to be butchered?” Her hand tightens on mine. “Ben, you can’t tell me that the boy’s to blame because, if you did? If you acknowledge his innocence, you have to admit your own. You can’t do that yet. That’s understandable, but everybody else you know already has.”

  I can’t help it. I reach for her.

  She sweeps the drinks and carrier carefully to the side and welcomes me, reaching across the table. It’s awkward and wonderful and so, so warm. The edge has to be digging into her middle as much as it does mine, but I wouldn’t have let go at gunpoint. It’s like a dam breaking. I know that’s cliché, right? Well, we have those for a reason. Something in me breaks and I’m bawling.

  She comes around the table to sit beside me, all without relaxing her hold on me for an instant, and I scoot over to accommodate her. I feel safe in her arms. Yeah, there’s a minor part of me that’s embarrassed. Some microscopic mote of masculine toxicity that hints that all this is backwards, that I’m supposed to be the comforter instead. Well, a part of me is stupid, same as anybody. Everybody needs a turn to be the little spoon and you don’t understand what people are if you think otherwise.

  She holds me for a good long time before she speaks again. “I know you know about the Shelter. What me and Stacy are doing?”

  I nod into her shoulder.

  The Wild Specters motorcycle gang we took down last year had almost as much data on the competing local human trafficking network as David Fonteneau, pastor of the now defunct Good Friends of Our Savior Church. Ever since I’d recovered enough from that fight to be somewhat mobile, the FBI’s PAU, including Amir and I, had been at work, taking them all down. Most were small, two to three-man operations. The Sidorovs were only the latest, but the biggest. Anyway, it wasn’t fair to their victims to just shove them back out into the world after what they’d been through. Cal got the FBI to fund a shelter where the people rescued can be brought, counseled, and, when they were prepared, transitioned home ready to live their lives. Kids and young adults are much more likely to fall prey of this kind of thing. That’s as true here as it was in my old universe, and one Dr. Melanie Linn runs the place. Stacy, being a middle school teacher, volunteered to be her partner.

  “These… people do these things and I put them back together. We have so many that Nina’s chipping in, but I’ve raised a call for more. We need more professionals because you’ve saved so many, Ben.”

  Nina is Dr. Black. My therapist. I had no idea.

  “It wasn’t just me. I had help. A lot of it.”

  “I know. But consider tonight. As awful as it was, the running firefight, the car chases, all those cars and bullets flying. Do you know how many innocents got hurt? How many have ever been hurt around you?”

  No, I don’t want to know. No, no. Please don’t tell me.

  “None. Not a one.”

  “What?”

  “Never.” She shakes her head. “I checked. Yes, you killed the Sidorovs. But you didn’t mean to, just like that boy at the reunion wouldn’t if one of his bullets went off and hit someone passing by. You stopped them and nobody’s upset about that, even if the FBI has to pretend to be since they didn’t get anybody to question. It’d be like crying over dead Nazis or something.”

  “Even Nazis are people.”

  Melanie cocks her head again. “I’m not so sure. There’s something fundamental you have to give up in order to be a Sidorov or a Nazi. Something that precludes you from complete peoplehood, I think. Maybe not their humanity, exactly? Arguably? Yes, whether or not they’re monsters is up for debate, certainly, but whether or not they need to be stopped is not. No. Fuck those guys.”

  I snort.

  She smiles up at me. “You’re feeling better.”

  It’s true. Somehow. I scratch my head. “Um, yeah. Thanks, Mel. You sure you don’t want to be my therapist?”

  Her face changes. Her smile deepens and softens. She still has my hand. She looks down at it. She pulls on it and we’re closer. I can smell her shampoo and her hair is tickling my nose. She kisses me.

  It’s chaste. Her lips are full, inviting. An electric tingle runs down through the core of my body, and my heart’s hammering. I couldn’t have been more surprised if Cal had kissed me. Or Monica.

  She ends it, putting a hand on my cheek. “No, thank you. I like this instead.” Her voice is husky, lower, resonating deeper in her chest. She catches her bottom lip between her teeth and her eyes are full of so much light. I know I’ve either got to run away or kiss her again.

  Feeling a coward, I stand my ground and lean back into her. I don’t merely want to feel her lips on mine. That’s not close enough. Not intimate enough. I open my mouth and lick out tentatively, and the electric pull of her intensifies as I’m welcomed inside. Now there are all these frustrating barriers, and it’s not just our clothes, but our skin, our bones. The limits imposed on us by physics are the only thing that keeps me from sinking into her, mingling our atoms. I want to be so close to her that the word ‘close’ can’t apply.

  That’s a bit far to go for a first kiss, yeah, but it’s been a while, and she’s hot, awesome, and dammit, this is a bad idea.

  I feel her hand touch my hip.

  Fine. Cool. Mine’s on hers. The one that she isn’t holding to her heart. Between her breasts.

  She reaches higher on my leg and I flinch.

  She giggles and holds up my car keys, breathing as heavily as I am.

  I bark a laugh.

  “What?” she says. “I told you I wanted to show you something.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  She rolls her eyes. “I’m driving.”