‘Drop the gun, Lieutenant.’
Harper knew that voice.
Luke stepped out from the sheltering trees to the right of the car. His gun was trained on Smith, steady as steel. He didn’t look at her. His eyes stayed on Smith.
‘I mean it, Lieutenant,’ he said. ‘Drop it. Or I will take you out.’
Smith shifted his gun to point at Luke, who kept himself far enough from Harper to make it impossible to cover both of them.
‘Walker, put that gun away,’ Smith growled. ‘I’ll have your badge.’
Luke’s gun didn’t waver. ‘No, you won’t, sir. I’ll have yours.’
In the distance, Harper heard the faint, shrill cry of sirens. Not one or two of them – but dozens. A chorus of urgency, far away, but growing closer.
She saw Smith’s face change as he heard it, too.
‘They’re coming for you, Lieutenant.’ Luke took another step toward him. ‘Put down your weapon. It’s over.’
Smith had gone white as paper. His desperate eyes skittered from Harper to Luke as the sirens closed in – their mournful wail becoming deafening. Harper could already see faint blue lights through the trees, scattering drops of color across The Watch.
The lieutenant’s hand trembled. In the shadows, the lines on his face seemed deeply carved. Suddenly, he looked old.
He turned to Harper.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I never wanted to hurt you. I didn’t mean …’
His voice trailed off.
A tear streaked down Harper’s face – hot and unexpected.
‘Lieutenant …’ she whispered.
For a moment it looked as if he would do as Luke said – the gun moved shakily down. But then he seemed to change his mind. In one practiced move, his arm swung up again, and he pointed the gun at his own head.
Something inside Harper fractured. She couldn’t lose another one.
Not again.
‘No!’
She heard herself scream, and then she was running towards him, feet sliding on the mud.
‘Harper, stop!’ Luke shouted behind her.
But she was already grabbing Smith’s arm with all her strength. The first police cars were roaring through the trees toward them, sirens shrieking, blue lights blinding.
Smith struggled with her – she could smell his aftershave, the acrid scent of fear sweat.
Then the gun went off with a tremendous, deafening retort that split the night like thunder.
Something burned Harper’s shoulder – a sharp, unbearable flame. Her feet left the ground.
She was suddenly weightless – airborne.
Falling light as a feather through the darkness into nothing.
Chapter Forty-three
Harper lay on her back in the mud staring up at a dark sky, lit by flashes of blue. She felt strange – her mind seemed disjointed. Broken free of its moorings.
What happened?
Luke dropped to his knees next to her, whispering her name, hands searching her body.
‘Are you hit?’ he kept asking, his voice breathless and thin. ‘Harper, are you hit?’
She tried to answer him, but her mouth had gone numb.
When he found the blood, pulsing warm and thick from her shoulder, his breath hissed between his teeth.
‘Oh, fuck, Harper,’ he whispered. And then loudly, over his shoulder, voice cracking, ‘She’s hit. Get an ambulance out here. Now.’
Harper couldn’t breathe.
‘Help …’ she gasped, trying to reach for him with hands suddenly so heavy and uncooperative they wouldn’t leave the ground.
Luke ripped off his shirt, wadding it into a ball and pressing it hard against the wound at the front of her left shoulder. She could see others gathering behind him, dark shadows against the flickering blue.
In the distance, she thought she saw Smith being led away. She wanted to ask if he was OK but the words wouldn’t form.
‘Ambulance is en route,’ someone said.
Luke didn’t look away. His eyes held hers.
‘Stay with me, baby,’ he kept saying, his voice low and pleading. ‘Stay with me.’
It struck Harper that she was shivering with such violence her teeth chattered, and yet she felt oddly warm. The ground was soft and comforting beneath her.
Nothing hurt. Nothing felt real.
‘Where’s that fucking ambulance?’ he shouted.
Someone said something to him, but Harper didn’t hear it.
She was so tired. So very, very tired.
Her eyes felt weighted down. It would be so good to rest.
Her eyes drifted shut.
‘No!’ Luke cried, shaking her. ‘Don’t you close your eyes, Harper McClain. Don’t you dare give up.’
The fear in his voice pierced the fog clouding her mind.
It took everything in her to blink – to see again that flashing blue-and-black world. And Luke’s determined face.
‘That’s it,’ he whispered, pressing hard against the wound. ‘That’s it. You stay awake.’
When the ambulance arrived seconds later, it was Toby who jumped out first, running across to kneel in the mud next to Luke.
Beneath that shock of hair, his face was more serious than she’d ever seen it.
‘Oh crap, Harper,’ he said gently. ‘What have you done to yourself now?’
She tried to smile but nothing was working.
Luke talked fast. ‘It was a nine-millimeter bullet to the shoulder. Point-blank range.’
Toby absorbed this information calmly. ‘Any other wounds?’
Luke shook his head. ‘None that I can find.’
Now that help was here, he seemed more panicked, hands gripping too hard on the fabric shoved against her shoulder.
‘OK, buddy.’ Toby reached for the wadded-up shirt, gently placing his hand on Luke’s. ‘You did good. I’m going to need you to step back now, and let us work.’
For a second, Harper thought Luke would refuse – every muscle in his body tensed. Then, with visible effort, he lifted his hand. And stepped away.
Instantly, two other paramedics swooped in where he’d been.
Something cool and metal sliced her shirt away from her skin. Low voices gave orders. Someone – Toby? – rolled up her sleeve. Harper felt a sting, and flinched.
‘It’s an IV, Harper,’ Toby reassured her, taping the needle into place.
‘Don’t you let her die, Toby,’ she heard Luke say from somewhere. His voice was thick.
‘Don’t worry.’ Toby leaned in, blue-gloved hands strapping an oxygen mask over her face. Sweet, fresh air filled her lungs. ‘Harper isn’t going to die today.’
He sounded so certain.
It was the last thing she remembered.
Chapter Forty-four
The trial of Lieutenant Robert Smith lasted fifteen days. It would have taken longer, but he refused to defend himself.
Without his cooperation, his lawyer struggled, and the process was brief and merciless.
The case was followed in breathless detail by the Daily News courthouse reporter, Ed Lasterson, who did, everyone agreed, a pretty good job, given the newspaper’s own involvement in the story.
On the stand, Smith looked smaller and grayer – as if jail were diminishing him day by day.
His wife, Pat, gaunt and tight-lipped, was in the courtroom on the first day with Kyle. They sat on the front row. Pat wept quietly. Kyle did not. He sat straight, his shoulders square and stiff, braced to take the punch as prosecutors accused his father of the worst crimes.
After that they never came back again. So they weren’t there when Harper took the stand, one arm and shoulder still encased in a stiff medical sling.
She was glad of that, at least.
When she told the court how she’d unraveled the case – deciding it had to be a detective, and eventually stumbling across that photo – she remained controlled.
The only time her voice broke was when she described what
she remembered from The Watch.
‘I don’t think he meant to shoot me,’ she said, looking at Smith. ‘I think he meant to shoot himself.’
Sitting with his lawyers, Smith kept his gaze lowered throughout her testimony, but in that one moment their eyes met, and she saw only emptiness there.
The video Miles made was played during the trial, although the audio was found inadmissible by the judge. So the jury watched a silent film of Harper and Smith – turned an otherworldly green by the night-vision lens – arguing. They saw Smith point a gun at her. Watched her stand up to him. And saw Luke appear from the trees like a vengeful hero from a western, gun already in his hand.
The camera was behind Smith when he raised his gun to his head, so his expression couldn’t be seen as Harper flew across the mud to knock the weapon from his hand.
Only when she watched that video did Harper see the sheer terror on Luke’s face when she ran to Smith. And only then did she know that he was running right behind her the whole way.
She watched herself grab Smith’s arm. Saw his hand jerk back from the force of the gun’s recoil.
Saw her own body twist and fall backward to the ground.
She watched as Luke punched Smith so hard the lieutenant spun sideways, the gun flying from his fingers.
Luke was handcuffing him as the first uniformed officers ran into view.
That was when the film ended.
But Harper knew what happened next.
The ambulance rushed her to the hospital and straight into surgery.
When she woke from the anesthesia, Luke was asleep on the chair next to her bed, clad in incongruously bright turquoise scrubs he must have borrowed to replace his blood-soaked clothing.
Even in sleep his face was creased and tense.
Groggy from drugs, she lay still, watching him for a long time, waiting for him to wake so she could thank him. At some point, she drifted off.
When she woke up that afternoon, the chair next to her bed was empty.
She moved to sit up, to look around for him – but every motion sent burning pain slicing through the left side of her body.
Sweating, she lay still again.
That was when the surgeon appeared in her doorway, along with a cluster of medical students who stared at her with worrying interest.
‘Oh good,’ the surgeon said, grabbing her chart. ‘You’re up. How are you feeling?’
‘Like someone shot me in the shoulder.’ Harper’s voice was hoarse.
‘Well, it turns out that’s exactly what happened,’ the surgeon agreed jovially.
He checked the dressing on her wound, studied the numbers on the heart monitor with interest, while keeping up a solid line of patter for the students. When he’d finished, he set the chart down.
‘You know, Miss McClain, you didn’t make it easy for me. The bullet missed your heart by three inches.’ He glanced at the students with a modest smile. ‘Luckily that’s plenty of room.’
When they were gone, Harper located her phone on the bedside table. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she reached over to pick it up.
When she called Luke, though, the call went straight to voicemail.
The same thing happened that night. And the next day.
After a while, she stopped calling.
She thought she knew why he didn’t want to talk. The fact that he’d saved her life didn’t make their problems disappear. He believed she’d betrayed him by breaking into the records room over his objections. He’d asked her not to take that chance and she did it anyway.
The trust between them was still damaged.
She would always have her job, and he would always have his. And their jobs were designed to conflict. He was making a decision for both of them.
Still, she had to fix this. Somehow. She would make this better.
Because in her mind she still heard his voice, that night out at The Watch.
Don’t you dare give up.
On her last day in the hospital she received a text from Sterling Robinson. All it said was:
You have rare gumption. I insist you survive. S
When she was taken down to the bill payment department later that day, the woman at the counter told her, ‘Someone’s covered all your medical costs. In cash.’
She knew it was him.
Smith’s lawyers fought valiantly, trying to get him off on grounds of mental incompetence. Pleading guilty to murder, it seemed, made you crazy.
But Smith undermined this at every turn.
He insisted on testifying against himself. After a legal struggle, he took the stand and told the court he had indeed been Marie Whitney’s lover.
They’d met after she was mugged – that earlier crime report Harper had glimpsed in the police files. Within weeks, they were sleeping together.
He’d given her money and expensive gifts until she became too demanding. Then things went sour between them. When he broke it off, she blackmailed him. She had photos of the two of them in compromising positions, proof of everything he’d given her. She threatened to present this evidence to the chief of police and Smith’s wife.
Afraid of what the news would do to his family and his career, Smith had continued to pay her for months, until his retirement account was drained. Even then, he said, Whitney wouldn’t back down. Her demands grew increasingly strident.
Losing control of the situation, and desperate to protect himself, Smith stole money from the police department – redirecting payments of public funds to give to her, until someone in his office started wondering what was going on.
When Whitney renewed her threats of exposure if she didn’t get more money, he’d panicked.
‘I think I had a complete breakdown,’ he’d told the jury, head bowed, shoulders hunched, ‘I cannot otherwise explain how I allowed myself to do what I did.’ He’d stared down at his hands, knotted together on the polished wood of the witness stand. ‘I can almost not remember that day at all. I don’t want to remember.’
From then on, the outcome of the trial was preordained. It was purely a matter of going through the legal paces.
When the jury went out to deliberate their decision, Harper offered Ed twenty dollars to call her the second they returned. He refused the cash.
After four hours of silence, he called her at six o’clock that night.
‘They’re coming back.’
She was there, sitting in the last row, her good hand gripping the wooden seatback in front of her, when Smith was found guilty of the murder of Marie Whitney, and sentenced to life in prison.
Only when he was handcuffed and led from the courtroom did Harper finally let herself cry. Sitting on the wooden pew, her face buried in her hands.
She cried for Camille Whitney. For both their mothers. And for herself.
Chapter Forty-five
After his conviction, Smith was processed and transferred to the state prison outside Reidsville, a nowhere town an hour’s drive from Savannah.
He wasn’t allowed visitors for the first month, in order – the prison spokesperson told Harper – that he’d have a chance to settle.
On his first visitors’ day, Harper was there, sitting in a cheap plastic chair in the bunker-like visitors’ room, having left her phone, keys and scanner in a numbered plastic tub in reception.
She’d been to jails before for interviews, but never like this – never for someone she cared about. Someone who had betrayed her trust.
The prison was a vast, intimidating high-security building hidden away behind a twenty-foot steel fence topped with barbed wire. As she pulled up to the gate, she saw sharpshooters with binoculars and rifles positioned atop towers at every corner.
The guard checked her driver’s license against a list on a clipboard, and then waved her through.
‘Have a nice day,’ he told her.
Inside was a concrete hell of echoing voices, crying babies, repeated cold-blooded announcements about drugs, guns and threats of arres
t. It smelled of disinfectant, sweat and a bitter residue of fear.
Harper sat stiffly in her chair, conscious of every single person around her, eyes on the door through which the prisoners appeared, one at a time. When Smith finally walked through, her heart twisted.
His hands were cuffed to a chain connected to his ankles. Like all the other convicts, he wore a plain white jumpsuit with a number on the back. He looked thinner and much older, but there was some color in his cheeks.
He shuffled behind the guard, his eyes sweeping the room anxiously. When his eyes met Harper’s, his shoulders sagged.
Slowly, he made his way toward her, his chains jangling with each step. When he neared, a guard bristling with weaponry appeared next to him to unlock the handcuffs.
The guard recited the words he’d already said dozens of times today.
‘No touching. No exchanging of belongings. Hands on the table. Don’t make me yell at you. Enjoy your visit.’
With that, he walked away. Leaving the two of them alone.
Rubbing his wrists, Smith lowered himself into the seat, swinging his chained ankles under the table, with effort.
Harper had waited a long time for this moment. Now that it had arrived, all the words she’d planned to say disappeared from her mind.
She hadn’t told anyone she was coming here today. Not even Bonnie. No one would understand. But there were things she had to know. Things only Smith could tell her.
She’d told herself it would be hard, but she could get through it. She was prepared to cry, to scream.
Now that she was here, though, she felt curiously empty. As if her real emotions were far away.
Smith eyed her cautiously. When she said nothing, he gave a long sigh.
‘Dammit, McClain,’ he growled. ‘Don’t you ever give up?’
‘No, sir,’ she said. ‘I do not.’
She rested her hands on the scarred table. She didn’t know where to start – or what to say.
‘You look thin,’ she told him. ‘Don’t they feed you here?’
‘They do. But the food is terrible.’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I guess losing weight is good for you.’
‘That is what they say.’ He glanced at her shoulder, clad in a loose, dark top. ‘You got that cast off.’
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