Hostage Zero

Jonathan gathered her into his arms. She felt strong yet fragile in his embrace. She smelled of soft soap and fragrant shampoo. She was gentle and kind and tough as nails. Sometimes he thought he loved her. He’d come close to telling her so, but had never wanted to screw things up that way. God knew he loved their time together.

“I’m not shutting you out of anyplace where I haven’t shut out myself,” he whispered. “Those doors are locked on purpose.” He released her and kissed her. From inches away, he said, “Care for me enough not to push too hard.”

With that, he turned and started back toward the firehouse. “Good night,” he said.

As JoeDog walked beside him, a breeze off the river lifted his hair from his forehead and brought the smell of sea salt and fish. It was the aroma of home, the fragrance of a town that had always been a place of contentment. Never his own, of course, but others’. He’d long ago accepted that for some men, contentment would forever be elusive. Some men were born to do the dirty work that allowed society to live with a sense of peace that itself had probably never been more than an illusion.

Such was Jonathan’s lot, and he’d always found solace in the fact that he was very good at what he did. Sometimes bad people got in the way of a righteous mission and they had to be killed. That was the way of his world.

But this mission had been different. Was it possible that saving one child’s life wasn’t worth so high a cost? Could the happy ending be worth so much suffering?

“It doesn’t matter,” he said aloud, drawing a curious look from the dog. What’s done was done. The mission was successful, goddammit. If mistakes were made, he’d make an effort not to repeat them in the future, but stewing over them now made no sense at all. It accomplished nothing. At the end of the day, the losses were many for the bad guys and none for the good guys.

That, sports fans, was the only fact that meant anything in the long run. A crime family would soon be broken, and a murderer had been removed from the president’s cabinet, all because of Jonathan and his team. Not a bad day’s work.

When he arrived at the firehouse, he unlocked the door and let JoeDog rocket past him to assume her seat on the leather sofa in the living room while he wandered to his library, poured a finger of Lagavulin, and settled in to catch up on unread newspapers.

Ten minutes later, he heard the back door open, and Dom’s voice shouted, “It’s me!” Dom always announced himself when he entered, no doubt as a hedge against being shot as an intruder.

“Library!” Jonathan shouted back. When the priest arrived in the doorway, Jonathan toasted him and pointed to the bottle with his forehead. “Help yourself.”

Dom did just that, and then settled into the man-eating sofa along the adjacent wall. “Gail called,” he said.

Jonathan growled.

“What’s wrong, Dig?”

Jonathan gave an impatient scowl.

“Oh, please,” Dom scoffed. “I’m your oldest friend, I’m a psychologist, and I have a direct pipeline to God. I can read you like a book.”

Jonathan stared, wondering whether such a friend was a boon or a curse. Something about Dom erased all Jonathan’s barriers. He held the keys to every fence, vault, and firewall that Jonathan had built to contain his demons. As a priest, Dom knew it all and absolved every sin. As a psychologist he helped Jonathan cope with the burden. But he did his best work as a friend, just being there.

“I enjoyed the killing this time,” Jonathan said, surrendering to the truth. “Worse than that, I enjoyed inflicting the pain.”

“You think that’s unusual among the population of people who mete justice to child abusers?”

“I can’t speak for them. I just know that in my heart I wanted all of them to die, and that that’s exactly what happened in the end.” He paused and took a huge breath. “A lot of them were teenagers. Not that much older than the children we rescued.”

“The age of soldiers everywhere,” Dom said. “They made their choices.”

“From a damned short list. Slave, overseer, or death.”

A moment passed. The two men respected each other enough not to deal in platitudes. “What could you have done differently?” Dom asked, finally.

It was the question Jonathan had asked himself a thousand times, and the answer continued to elude him. “Become an insurance salesman out of college?”

Dom chuckled politely, but didn’t respond. He let the question-and all that it represented-hang in the air.

Jonathan drained his scotch and looked up at the ceiling. “I’m not an assassin, Dom. I don’t want to become one.”

Dom settled more deeply into the sofa and crossed his legs. “Let’s talk about that,” he said.

The conversation went on for hours.