Chapter 19: Hero

I was caught in morning traffic coming into Seattle. I’d sat in the café running searches through the night until I finally ran down the batteries of both the tablet and the laptop. I drove back to Seattle with less pressure on the gas pedal. I still didn’t have a great answer. In fact, I didn’t have an acceptable answer. Andi simply was not who she said she was. I’d even run a search designed to find a news story about a death with a smile, a martini, and a pregnant wife. I was amazed at how many of those there were.

And really—what could I say about it anyway? I couldn’t just open a conversation and say, “By the way, now that I’ve told you I love you, who are you?” Occam’s Razor demanded a simple explanation. Most I could think of meant she was on the run from someone who wanted to hurt her—witness protection program, cops, bad domestic situation, mob, you name it. I wasn’t about to blow her cover.

Now it was Thursday morning. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I was walking downtown toward the office with my computer in a backpack, but I hadn’t determined whether or not to go in. I showered and shaved when I got home, dressed in a gray suit, and then got online at EFC from home to see if anyone was missing me. I didn’t care if I got there on time and wasn’t sure if I was going back at all. Still, here I was walking up Third toward the office. There were a lot of people on the street for eleven in the morning. Experience told me most people in the financial district at this hour were in offices. The rigid schedule of the financial community meant everyone would flood out onto the streets at exactly noon and the street would be empty again at one. It was always a curiosity to me as to why no one ever changed their lunch schedule, but maybe today was the day.

I hadn’t slept in thirty hours and the world around me was a kaleidoscope of invading sights and sounds. A woman walked toward me looking like she had just come from Capitol Hill herself. She wore a plaid lumberjack shirt with a knit cap. Her motorcycle boots were pulled up over faded khaki denims. Her nose was pierced with a hoop through it. There were several rings in her ears and a tattoo was visible under her left ear. I didn’t really want to imagine where else she had things stuck through her body.

A couple walking behind me argued about something that sounded trivial to me—the time they were supposed to meet a friend—but what is trivial to one person could be the most important thing in life to another. False identity could be trivial or vital.

Two men in black suits and white shirts walked past me. If I lived in the suburbs, I’d automatically assume they were missionaries wanting to tell me about this religion or that. Two-by-two. Another war waiting. Worlds collide. Maybe that was what I was arguing with myself about. This time I couldn’t see either a right way or a possible way. I’d been set up and I didn’t know who on my team I could trust. I’d started my tenure distrusting everyone, and now I had to find a way to expose the right person while exonerating myself.

I still don’t know what alerted me—a scuffle, a gasp, a shout, a scream. It seemed they all happened at once, directly behind me. I spun in my tracks.

I’ve heard people describe events like this with words like ‘everything went into slow motion,’ and then they describe in great detail everything they saw. I can’t honestly say I saw anything that my brain could process quickly enough to comprehend. But my body seemed to act without me. Even after the fact, all I could put together was that a woman was falling into the street, a bus was coming, and as I grabbed her and spun her out of the path of the bus she screamed, “He pushed me.” Then there was a sharp pain in the back of my head and everything went black.

I was being lifted into an ambulance on a gurney when I opened my eyes. I was strapped down securely and could see a blue uniformed police officer standing over me on one side while a med-tech pulled an oxygen mask off my face. My pack was lying on the seat to my right. The EMT was asking if I could see his fingers while I heard the officer rambling on about my rights. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be held against you in a court of law...”

“Can you raise your finger? Do you feel your toes?”

“You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you...”

“Is there any pain when I press on your stomach?”

“Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?”

I couldn’t speak and I couldn’t move my head. My mouth wagged open and closed a couple of times.

“Is there anyone we should contact for you?”

“Why did you push her?”

It was too much. The overload blacked me out again.

I certainly wasn’t expecting Jen there when they wheeled me into a room after x-rays. I’d been summarily stripped of my clothes—an expensive gray suit cut to shreds—while they examined my body for additional damage. Apparently, the twelve stitches the doctor had put in my scalp and a mild concussion from where the bus mirror hit me in the back of the head were all the damage they could find. I felt like I’d been run over. I looked around for the policeman.

“Jen? What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Arnie and Phil were coming back from a morning coffee just in time to see the commotion. When Arnie recognized you, he caught a cab up to the hospital and Phil alerted the rest of the team. I came down because I knew Arnie had a budget meeting this afternoon. Phil came over with me, but both he and Arnie left as soon as we heard you were going to be okay.”

“Police?”

“Big mix-up. One rode here with you and another came with the gal you rescued. Apparently she’d claimed you pushed her, but when asked to identify you, she screamed that it wasn’t you, it was her boyfriend. A woman across the street said she saw you save the girl. As soon as they realized they got the wrong message, one of them got on his radio and called in an arrest bulletin for the boyfriend.”

“Why did you stay?”

“I thought I might be easier for you to look at when you woke up than police and doctors.” She smiled and I realized she was joking. Still, she was pretty easy to look at. She was dressed in a dark suit with three buttons up the front and apparently no more than a black camisole under it. Under other circumstances I’d have been salivating. Under current conditions, however, she was still a suspect.

And my affections, even though tested by what I’d learned in the past twenty-four hours, lay elsewhere. All through the painful flashes and confusion after the accident, the only thing that kept me in the real world was thinking of Andi and that we’d just begun. I knew for a fact that it would make no difference to me why she had changed her identity. I had fully thrown my lot in with her. I had no reservations.

“I need to call Andi.”

“The girlfriend? You can use my cell phone. I think Darlene already called, though.”