He shook his head.
“That does not matter.”
His friend frowned.
“Come on.”
“We didn’t know who she was.”
Mercer glanced at Shannon.
Then back at them.
“That was the problem.”
Nobody had an answer.
Mercer picked up his cap.
His hands trembled.
Shannon began walking toward the exit.
Tap.
Step.
Shift.
The sound followed her through the room.
This time nobody laughed.
Outside, rain had begun to fall.
A thin mist covered the parking lot, gathered on windshields, and transformed streetlights into soft golden blurs.
Shannon stopped under the awning.
For the first time that evening, she allowed herself a full breath.
Pike came outside behind her.
“You okay?”
“No.”
He nodded.
“Me neither.”
A faint smile appeared on her face.
His voice sounded different from the last time she had heard him speak in person.
Still rough.
Still damaged.
But stronger.
“You sound better.”
“So do you.”
She looked at him.
“That was a terrible joke.”
“I’ve been saving it.”
Against her will, she laughed.
It hurt.
She placed a hand against her ribs.
Pike smiled.
For a few seconds, they were not survivors.
Not witnesses.
Not pieces of an investigation.
They were simply two exhausted people standing beneath an awning while rain fell beyond them.
Then Shannon’s expression changed.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the recorder?”
Pike looked toward the parking lot.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Of Hale?”
“Of everybody.”
He swallowed.
“When I woke up, people kept asking what I remembered. Officers. Investigators. Lawyers. Men I had never seen before who somehow knew things only our team should have known.”
Shannon listened.
“I couldn’t speak. Literally. I wrote answers on a board.”
He touched the scar across his throat.
“One day a man walked into my hospital room and asked whether Alvarez had given me anything.”
Shannon’s skin went cold.
“Who?”
“I never got his name.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“Eventually.”
“Eventually?”
Pike looked ashamed.
“He told me that if I started remembering the wrong things, my wife could lose survivor benefits if I died from complications.”
Shannon stared.
“Owen.”
“I know.”
“He threatened your family.”
“Yes.”
“And you stayed quiet.”
“Yes.”
Part of Shannon wanted to be angry.
She was angry.
But she remembered waking in the hospital afraid to fall asleep because every time she closed her eyes, she returned to that ravine.
Fear changed people.
Sometimes into cowards.
Sometimes into survivors.
Most often into both.
“What made you talk?”
Pike looked through the glass doors toward Mercer.
“He did.”
“Mercer?”
Pike nodded.
“Three months ago, he found me.”
Shannon frowned.
“He told me he could not remember what happened before you reached him. He said pieces kept returning.”
“What pieces?”
“Your voice.”
Her expression shifted.
“He remembered hearing you yelling over the radio.”
Pike nodded.
“He said the official report did not match what he remembered.”
Shannon looked back through the doors.
Mercer stood by himself.
“He has been investigating this?”
“In his own messy way.”
“For how long?”
“Months.”
“Then why did he treat me like that tonight?”
Pike hesitated.
“That part I do not understand.”
Shannon looked into the rain.
She did.
Or at least she believed she did.
Human beings were capable of carrying two opposing truths in the same body.
Mercer could suspect Shannon had been wronged and still hate her.
He could realize the report contained lies and still need her to bear some blame.
Because the alternative was harder.
If Shannon did not kill his friends, then someone else had.
And Mercer had helped hide it.
He had signed the statement.
Shannon kept staring through the doors.
“He needed me to be guilty.”
Pike nodded.
“Yes.”
“So he could survive feeling guilty himself.”
Neither spoke for a while.
Then Pike said, “You saved him.”
Shannon watched water run over the edge of the pavement.
“So?”
He looked surprised.
She turned.
“Saving someone does not purchase the right to be loved by them.”
Pike stayed quiet.
“It does not even buy gratitude.”
She shifted her grip on the crutch.
“You save them because they need saving.”
Her eyes went back to Mercer.
“What they choose to become afterward belongs to them.”
Pike smiled faintly.
“There she is.”
“Who?”
“The captain who used to terrify all of us.”
“I still terrify you.”
“Absolutely.”
She laughed again.
The doors behind them opened.
Mercer stepped outside.
When he saw them, he stopped.
Pike looked at Shannon.
“I’ll give you a minute.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
He walked farther down the awning.
Mercer approached cautiously.
For the first time, he did not carry himself as though every space automatically belonged to him.
He stopped several feet away.
“Captain.”
Shannon waited.
“I should probably leave.”
“That is what people usually do after events.”
He almost smiled.
Then the expression vanished.
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