Not a thousand yards away Saint sat in her cruiser in the parking lot, watching the building that housed her only friend.
She wanted to tell him how close she came.
How because of him she’d led them to Eli Aaron in time to save the life of a young woman named Ashlee Miller. A woman who would go on to live her life.
She wanted to tell him how she trawled through swampland, her gun out and ready to shoot, but could not find the man that would lead them to Grace. But she was close. So very close.
At the turn of day to night she found the nearest bar and took a stool and ordered bourbon, her hands resting on the gnarled counter as a couple of guys played pool beneath a sign that flickered red over the green felt.
A television took the top corner above photographs and banners tacked to hardwood paneling yellowed by the touch of cigarette smoke. Saint placed the glass to her chin and breathed in the smell.
She closed her eyes to murmurs of conversation, took the spices deep until she might have been beside her grandmother on their porch.
She opened them only when she heard the news reporter at the Culpepper Zoo, standing before a decent crowd as they marked the opening of the new enclosure. And then the dedication, in memoriam one Jimmy Walters. Saint stared up at his face, at the smile she remembered, the decency she did not.
She launched her glass and it shattered the television screen.
There were shouts.
Saint felt a big hand on her shoulder, and she was gently led out.
“You knew the man on the screen,” Blackjack said.
“He was my…he wasn’t a man. Not a good man.”
He did not ask if she was okay, he did not stay, just went back in to settle her bill and cover the damages.
She gulped air beneath a sky she did not blame or judge or understand.