Dead Harvest

  I looked at Elizabeth, clad in darkness, rubbing the sleep from her eyes with balled fists. But for the occasional snore from her fellow patients – each separated from one another by curtains that extended outward from the walls – the ward was quiet, and the nurses' station was empty and unlit. The only illumination came from the window at the end of the long shared room: city lights reflected cold and brittle off the walls, the linens, the floors. But even in the dark, her expression wasn't hard to read. Liz was frightened. Frightened and suspicious.

  "I don't know. I – I just had to see you. To make sure you were OK."

  "It must be three in the morning!" she whispered. "People here are trying to sleep!"

  "I know," I said. "I'm sorry." Actually, it was closer to four. I'd been walking the streets of the city since Battery Park, since Dumas, trying to wrap my head around what I'd done, but it was no use. I'd never taken a life before – hadn't thought myself capable – and it was just too much for me to deal with on my own. I didn't know at the time that I was coming here, at least not consciously. But while my thoughts went round and round, my feet had other plans. So here I stood. Broken. Trembling. Wanting nothing more than for her to tell me everything would be OK.

  But Liz was having none of that. She clicked on her bedside lamp, looked me up and down. My eyes were red and swollen, and my cheeks stung from the salt of drying tears. My clothes were peppered with blood. Gunpowder burns had seared the flesh of my right hand, although the damage was hard to see, because try though I might, I couldn't stop my hands from shaking. She said, "Jesus, Sam, what happened to you?"

  "Nothing – it's not important."

  "The hell it's not! I haven't heard from you in days, and now you show up in the dead of night, looking like some kind of crazy person. And what is that all over your shirt? It's blood, isn't it? Oh, God, what kind of work are you doing for that man, anyway?"

  "Believe me, you don't have to worry about Dumas anymore," I said.

  Elizabeth's eyes went wide. She recoiled, her hands to her stomach, retreating to the far end of the bed. "You didn't. Tell me you didn't."

  "You don't understand – this guy was as rotten as they come."

  "Tell me you didn't," she repeated, tears welling in her eyes.

  "I had no choice, Liz."

  "Just please tell me that you didn't," she said, pleading now, tears pouring down her cheeks.

  "I did what I had to do," I said. "I did it for us."