“Hold still,” Katie said, her voice as tight as a drum. “I’ll get you a chair. Just stand there. Can you stand?”

  Jennifer nodded, but she wasn’t standing so much as sitting on the bed. Katie came in with a wheelchair, with that same look on her face she always had when she was trying to get over on her mother. Jennifer clutched her gown together and dropped in. Katie put the damn brakes on the wheels to stop her from moving until she brought the IV line around. Jennifer seized it in her good hand, gripping the post hard as Katie pushed her along, slowly. Jennifer looked around the hospital ward and realized she had no idea where she was.

  “What is this place?”

  “We’re in Harrisburg. The hospital back home couldn’t handle it.”

  “What happened? How many people?”

  “A lot. Mostly injuries. A few are in critical condition right now. A few didn’t make it,” said Katie. “The guys that were going to break into the school, the SWAT guys, they got it bad. Some of the older teachers were hurt in the explosion, they didn’t get far enough away. Same for some of the kids, they had to push the wheelchair and special ed kids out of the school…” she trailed off. “We’ve lost six so far. Four teachers, two kids.”

  Jennifer’s stomach clenched, and she bit back bitter tears as they pressed at her eyes, and her head drooped.

  “Katie, where is he? Why won’t you tell me?”

  Katie said nothing. She wheeled Jennifer down the hall, and into a room.

  She barely recognized him.

  Jacob looked thinner somehow, drained. He was covered in blankets, and bandages around his chest and back. His left arm was in a sling, thick bandages all around his shoulder.

  “He hasn’t woken up yet,” Katie said, dully. “He has a bunch of broken and bruised ribs and his left lung collapsed. His arm was pretty bad. The doctor said it was touch and go whether they’d have to amputate or not.”

  Jacob just laid there, struggling to breath, his eyes pressed closed. The machines beeped a slow rhythm.

  “I can come get you when he wakes up,” said Katie.

  “No,” said Jennifer.

  “You’re not supposed to be in here,” she said.

  “I do a lot of things I’m not supposed to do.”

  Jennifer wheeled the chair to his side and put her hand in his. Katie stood there for a minute, and Jennifer spotted the first cracks in her neutral mask. She collapsed into a visitor’s chair and began sobbing into her hands, trembling.

  “I can’t do this again,” said Katie shook her head in her hands, “I can’t watch you-“

  “You’re not going to. He’s going to make it.”

  Katie sighed. “I got some of your stuff. Your purse.”

  “Thanks,” said Jennifer.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, taking the purse from Katie to rest on her thighs. Its weight sat heavy on her lap.

  “What about Faisal and Ana and the others?”

  “Faisal is here,” said Katie. “He got shot in the stomach. They had to resection his bowel. It’s bad, but he’s going to make it. His sister is with him.”

  Katie sighed, deeply. “Jennifer, the cops were in Jacob’s house. They took all kinds of stuff from the basement. Cleaned it out. I think you guys are gonna be in trouble.”

  “Probably,” Jennifer said, softly. “I don’t care.”

  Wake up.

  Katie sighed. “The girls are okay. They came with me when I came back to the hospital. I don’t know what’s going to happen to them. I’ve seen some of Jacob’s people, those guys that work for him. They’re doing stuff, I don’t know. They’re around.”

  Jennifer didn’t respond. She held Jacob’s big hand on hers, rubbed the pad of her thumb over his. His hand was cold.

  “He lost a lot of blood,” Katie said, absently.

  They were trying to put it back. There was a bag of it hanging with the other things on the I.V. pole next to him. Jennifer continued to rub his hand.

  “I’ll leave you guys alone,” she said, softly. “I’ll go check on the others.”

  Jennifer nodded absently, without looking at her. Katie left and Jennifer clutched her bag to her stomach. She moved the wheelchair and leaned over and rested her head on the side of the bed, next to his hand, for a while.

  Eventually she sat up, turned the chair around and backed it so she could put her head against the wall, and closed her eyes in a fitful attempt at drugged half-sleep, so drowsy the world floated along without her and she was somehow awake and tired as hell even as she slept. She woke to the soft sound of footsteps and a shadow falling across the room from the corridor. Her head shot up.

  “Katie?”

  “No, not Katie.”

  He walked into the room with his hands in the pockets of an oversized hooded sweatshirt, pulled one out and swept the hood back. Elliot looked like death warmed over, pale as a sheet, a haunted look in his eyes. Jennifer clutched her purse, and felt the heavy weight inside. Of course it was heavy. She left her father’s gun in it.

  “What do you want?”

  “Do you know what they did?” he said, softly.

  Jennifer said nothing.

  “They let me go. After the boat. I told them who I was the lawyers came and got me out and I went home. My father has been arrested,” he snarled, his voice cracking. “Arrested, do you understand? Senator Katzenberg has been arrested. My father has been arrested, you goddamned whore. The lawyers say I’m next. I’m supposed to meet with them and turn myself in.”

  He slipped his other hand free from his pocket. The nickel plating on the gun caught the moonlight, turning it pale white as it trembled in his hand.

  “It’s all your fault,” Elliot snapped, “You two. If you’d stayed with me like you were supposed to, none of this would have happened,” his voice rose. “It’s all his fault!”

  He aimed the pistol at Jacob. Jennifer heard a scream outside, shouting from the hallway.

  Calmly, Jennifer slipped the revolver out of her purse.

  “Elliot,” she said, “Put the gun down.”

  “Fuck you, whore,” he snarled, “You’re next.”

  “It doesn’t have to be like this, Elliot. We’d all be dead on that ship if it weren’t for you. Don’t make me hurt you.”

  The look on his face was almost inhuman. He moved closer.

  “Wake up, asshole. I know you can hear me. “

  Jacob’s hand twitched.

  “Yeah, asshole,” Elliot barked. “I’m gonna fucking kill her. You hear me? Kill her?”

  Then, Jennifer shot him.

  The grip bucked against her hand. The gun jumped. The sound was loud, piercing. It made her ears ring. Elliot grabbed his stomach where the bullet hit and stumbled back, slumped against the trail and left a hot red trail down the white paint as he slid to sit on the floor, eyes wide with dull surprise, as if the concept that Jennifer might actually shoot him never occurred to him until proven. His hand fell open, and the gun started to slip out of his fingers.

  His face hardened. He clutched his pistol, raised it. Jennifer fired twice more, and he collapsed to the side, his head thumping against the guest chair, his face slack, still not understanding. Jennifer calmly lowered the weapon to her lap, and waited, staring. Katie came in, screaming. Then security guards. Then police. To Jennifer it was like a time lapse film, everything flitting by at triple speed, the world a blur of light and overexposure.

  Jacob’s hand lifted from the bed and came to rest on her shoulder. Jennifer leaned over and rubbed her cheek against his knuckles, waiting for them to take her away from him. They took her out first, as the police took pictures. They took her gun. She gave it freely, not speaking. Katie yelled at them as they wheeled her out, back to her room. A policeman stood outside, maybe so she couldn’t run away.

  Some time later, six nurses and a doctor came, with Jacob. They wheeled him into her room, pulled back the curtain. Katie came a while later and pushed the beds together. There were still safety rails between them, but she could hold his hand now, or at least rest her bandaged limb on his palm. They gave her more drugs. Jennifer fell asleep again, with Katie sitting at the foot of the beds, keeping watch over them.

  Jennifer floated in and out. Ana came in, talked to Katie, leaned over Jennifer and talked to her, but what she said faded away, leaving only warm tones. Jennifer turned to face Jacob and slept, waking to find him there again.

  The next time she woke up, really woke up, she sat bolt upright. Jacob had the back of his bed propped up and he was eating lime Jell-O. He looked over at her.

  “I was wondering how long you were going to sleep,” he rasped.

  Jennifer sidled to the side of her bed and grabbed his hand.

  “I thought you were going to leave me.”

  “Never.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Who is it?” Jacob called.

  “My name is Carl Denton. I need to speak with both of you.”

  “Come in,” Jennifer sighed.

  He was Official. Jennifer knew by his gait, his suit, his haircut. She’d known plenty of cops in her life. She knew new things now, though. She immediately picked out the shoulder holster under his right armpit. He was left handed but carried a pad in his left hand to conceal it. He had a slight limp from an injury to his knee and his nose had been broken but healed fairly well. There was a faint scar on the top of his head, running under his hairline. Jennifer watched him saunter into the room. She realized she was sizing up him for a fight, and her lips twitched.

  He fished a wallet from his coat pocket and flashed it. Big blue letters against a white background and a badge. FBI.

  “I need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Can’t this wait?” said Jennifer.

  He shrugged. “Mind if I sit down?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Miss Katzenberg,” he said, “You shot a United States Senator’s son and killed him, you do realize that?”

  “Yes,” Jennifer said, calmly.

  The FBI man nodded, sagely. Jennifer shook her head, tried to relax.

  “We have the gun with his prints, and camera footage from the nurse’s station outside showing him brandishing it, both times you fired,” he said, “and his father has been indicted on, well, everything. Every blogger in the world is screaming to the heavens about James Katzenberg’s corruption. It’s a hell of a story. The media is running with it.”

  “I see,” said Jennifer. She wanted to demand he get to the point, but held her tongue.

  He stood up. “Took a lot of work for us to clean up after you two. We had to take out a lot of trash. Hell of a mess in the kitchen.”

  “Sorry,” said Jacob.

  “You’ve brushed up against something bigger than you realize. The Fangs... Well, where there’s fangs there’s a jaw, and where there’s a jaw a head and a a head a body. You feel me?”

  “What do you really want?” said Jennifer.

  “This is a job offer. You two have impressed the, ah, people I work for.”

  “The FBI?”

  He smirked. “No. Not the FBI.”

  “We’re not interested,” Jacob said.

  “Don’t worry about it for now. You two need your rest. It’s a beautiful day out there. The birds are singing,” he looked at her, and fixed his gaze on Jacob.

  “The sun is shining,” he said, and stepped out.

  14.

  Jennifer looked at her hand. Her left hand. There was no ring. She could still barely move her fingers, and her palm was a mass of ugly, puckered scar tissue. She was going to the wound care ward at the local hospital once a week to have it debrided, a horrific process that amounted to a doctor scraping the wound bed with a little fork to keep it bleeding so it would eventually seal over.

  Jacob finished changing the bandage for her and held her hand in his. She had lost most of the feeling in her two smallest fingers, but not her thumb and forefinger, though she could barely move them. The doctors had her flexing her hand constantly despite the pain to keep the damage from freezing her whole hand into a useless claw.

  “You don’t have to do this,” said Jacob. “Howard said we can stay home and he’ll call with the decision.”

  “I’m not going to just let it go by without saying anything,” said Jennifer.

  Jacob sighed, stepped out of the car and walked around to open her door. He was driving a more modest car now, a new Toyota. It suited him. Jennifer thought it was cute, but when she said that he scowled at her. She smiled and called it cute whenever she saw it from then on.

  He hadn’t lost any weight, so far as she knew, but he looked thinner nonetheless, drawn. In the hospital, he cut his hair. It made him look more professional, less wild. Jennifer liked to take her good hand and scrub her fingers through it. She thought that he did it in sympathy with her. With Katie’s help she managed to shape her sawn off hair into a kind of pageboy until it grew longer. It was past her chin, now, and soon would be long enough to tie back, but she wasn’t sure she was going to grow it out waist length this time.

  For a school board, meeting, there was quite a crowd here. The parking lot was full and the front lawn of No. 1, now the only standing high school in Paradise Falls, was also covered in cars and the street was lined with them, too. Jacob and Jennifer almost had to press through the mass of people to get inside and into the auditorium. The board meetings were usually held in one of the classrooms, but tonight it was standing room only. No. 2 had the bigger auditorium of the two schools, before. Often, when there was a big assembly or presentation, the kids from No. 1 would take the bus over and it would be combined into one event. Jennifer walked with Jacob through the throng outside the auditorium, and down the aisles. They had to thread between people.

  The seats were already full, in the lower gallery and the second floor. Standing room only. Jacob and Jennifer went to sit at the table facing the stage, next to the union rep, Howard, and a few others. Jennifer edged her chair closer to Jacob.

  Mark Miller, the head of the school board, walked out on the stage, holding a microphone, in front of the board proper.

  “Can I have everybody quiet down, please?”

  The hushed speech in the room died down to a low murmur. Miller spoke more softly into the microphone.

  “Usually we don’t have this level of attendance for a school board meeting, so I hope you’ll bear with us as-“

  “Get to the point!” someone in the back shouted, and there was louder murmur of approval.

  Miller scowled.

  “First up on the agenda tonight is disciplinary action against two of our teachers in response to a complaint filed earlier this year. Under the current contract, teachers are bound by a morality clause that specifically forbids unmarried cohabitation. It was brought to the boards attention that Jennifer Katzenberg and Jacob Kane had been living together-“

  He was cut off by a different voice.

  “So fucking what?” somebody shouted.

  “Now,” Miller stuttered, “We have to follow procedure here-“

  A riotous chorus of boos thundered through the auditorium. Jacob glanced over at her and shrugged. Jennifer sat there with her arms folded, and did not hide her irritation. Finally she turned around and looked at the crowd, and slowly the booing died out.

  Miller swallowed, and the microphone picked up the sound and carried it as a wet smack through the open space.

  “The board is thus obligated to conduct a review of the named employee’s behavior and make a determination.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “As the employees have chosen to appear…” he sighed again. “Miss Katzenberg, is it true that the two of you have been living together?”

  “Yes,” said Jennifer, loud enough for her voice to carry.

  “Mister Kane, is it-“

  Jacob launched to his feet and pulled Jennifer up, giving her time only to squeak in protest. He spun her around, pulled her to him and kissed her right there in front of the god damn town.

  In his arms, she forgot about that entirely. The auditorium went insane, shaking the rafters. She opened her eyes and saw her classes on their feet, cheering. Jacob lowered her into her chair and sat down, leaving her breathless, and somehow his voice cut through all the other sound.

  “Does that answer your question to your satisfaction?”

  “Y-yes,” Miller said, but the speakers couldn’t keep up.

  He had to wait a good five minutes, and only spoke again when the din died down to mere wolf whistles and laughter.

  “Okay then, there’s not much else to add,” said Miller. “Ordinarily we would simply make a determination, but the union has requested an open vote. I’ll turn to the board members. The clerk will record a vote by show of hands. Members of the board, raise your hand if you wish to press disciplinary action and terminate the employees. Keep them down if you vote against termination.”

  Jennifer froze.

  There were not many times in her life when she’d thought I could hear a pin drop, but this was one of those times. Eight members of the school board, nine with Miller, kept their hands at their sides for a good minute.

  “Well,” he said, “I guess that settles that then.”

  The thunderous applause made Jennifer jerk in her seat. Jacob steadied her with a hand on his shoulder.

  “You two,” Miller bellowed into the microphone, “will be needed here on Monday morning as we reorganize the classes.”

  There was movement behind her.

  “Now, wait,” said Miller. We’re not done…”

  More movement.

  Jennifer stood up, turned around, and looked at the assembly.

  “Sit down,” she bellowed.

  There was a quiet shuffle as the crowd returned to their seats, or turned where they were standing.

  “It’s a little early,” said Miller, “and it’s against our usual practice to award the honor twice, but the board has previously voted in secret to name Miss Katzenberg and Mister Kane our teachers of the year.”

  Jennifer’s mouth fell open. Before the applause could start, Miller raised his hand to cut it off.