1. Raven #2
I photograph forty pages in eighty seconds, which is not enough but it’s all I'm going to get. I'm sliding the last drawer home when I hear it— the creak of a floorboard. Behind me, out in the corridor. Light, and small — not the sound a full grown man makes.
Carefully I move back across the office, and look around the doorframe with my weapon half raised up and there he is, a child standing in the hallway rubbing his green eyes sleepily.
Ten, maybe. Ruffled brown hair disturbed by a sleepless night, wearing pajamas with bears printed on them.
Bare feet on the carpet and a glass of water in one hand.
Everything in me goes very quiet, and I glance at my watch to see how much time we have left. One- hundred-twenty seconds.
I take my hand off the grip and let the weapon hang at my side, then step into the hallway with a finger to my mouth. The child gasps at the sight of me, frozen in place, and I go down onto one knee so I'm looking up at him instead of down.
"Hi honey." My voice comes out low and quiet. His chest starts to rise and fall noticeably faster. "Okay, its ok. I’m not going to hurt you. I need you to breathe for me."
He doesn't. His chest is going but nothing's getting in — that shallow flutter high in the throat, the shoulders climbing toward the ears. I've seen it in interview rooms. I've done it, once, in a stairwell in Baltimore where nobody could see me. A panic attack building beneath the surface.
"My name's Raven."
I’m well aware that revealing my name is a violation of about six things, but at the moment I do not care.
"Nobody is going to hurt you. Not me, not anybody with me. We're leaving in one minute and you're not going to see us again. Ok?"
The glass in his hand is shaking. Water going over his knuckles onto the carpet.
"Why don’t you put that down? It's okay. Just set it on the floor."
He sets it on the floor. It's the first action he's made since I startled him and it steadies him about ten percent, which is how it works — you don't just tell them to calm down, you give them something small they can actually do.
"Good. Now look at my hands." I hold them up, empty, palms out. "Two hands. Nothing in them. Count them for me."
"...Two." It's barely anything.
"There you go. Now you're breathing." I keep my eyes on his and my voice easy, unrushed, like we've got all night. "Nod if you're okay."
He nods.
He nods, and something in my chest unclenches, that’s the exact moment the door at the other end of the hall opens and one of my own men steps through it with his weapon already raised and ready.
I don't think. There is no thought anywhere in that moment of pure instinct and adrenaline. In the flash of a second I've got a fistful of the kid's collar and I'm hauling him down and sideways toward the floor as the shot goes off, the boy screams, the sound ricocheting through the corridor.
We're both on the floor in an instant, I’ve got him tucked under me but as I look down there's blood on my glove.
Analytically I run my hand down his arm looking for the hole, finding instead a furrow — a long shallow tear through the meat of his upper arm, two inches across the top, ugly, but not deep.
Four inches to the left and I'd be lying on a body.
I come off the floor and cross the corridor qucik, I can’t tell which of my guys it is but I swing on him without remorse. My fist connected with his face as hard as I have ever hit anything in my life.
I feel bone give. Something in his cheekbone, and then the bridge of his nose goes under my knuckles with a low sound I feel in my elbow more than hear. He drops against the wall and slides to the side, hands flying to his face, gun forgotten.
"He's a child." I don't recognize my own voice through the venom. "He is a child, you imbecile."
I barely finish the sentence and when alarms come up.
Not a bell, not a siren — a low industrial pulse from somewhere within the house. I don’t have to be outside to know the constellation along the eaves blazing back on all at once, and every window on the ground floor going white.
"THAT'S THE WINDOW," Perry is shouting on the comm, "THAT'S IT, GET OUT—"
The man in front of me scrambles up and past me. Heading for the stairs. I let him go, he doesn’t look at the boy on the ground, he doesn’t look at me. He just goes.
On the floor the boy is now in a full blown panic attack. Both hands locked into fists against his chest, mouth open gasping for air, tears streaming down his face. Lips already going the wrong colour at the edges, eyes distant.
"All units, extract. Get to the vans and go." I order over the comm as I get down on my knees beside him. "Go now, do not wait, go—"
I pick him up, pulling him tight against my chest, and slowly start to rock him. Shushing him as I do so. Trying to soothe him.
"Whats your position?" Foster's voice rings hard and fast in my ear. "West. What’s your position?"
The boy's heels are drumming on the carpet. He's got a fistful of my sleeve, clinging to me, and I don't even think he knows he's doing it.
"West," Foster says again. When I don’t answer he pushes harder. "Raven."
I tuck the boy's head under my chin so he can feel the rise and fall of my chest, letting his little body syncronize to the methodical beat of my own heartbeat.
Breathing steadily I make mine slow, and I start counting out loud into his hair while headlights come up the driveway and turn the whole hallway gold.
For another second I evaluate my options, I look at the stairs. I look at the door at the end of the hall and the black of the night beyond the window.
Through the floor I can hear movement. Not one. Several, moving fast — there is only a number of seconds between here and there and I can do that math as well as anybody else.
Two minutes to the tree line if I run now. Maybe less. I’ll never make it.
“Go without me.” I say into the comm, then I pull my earpiece out, my eyes dropping to the tiny human curled hard against my body on the carpet.
"I’m here. It’s okay," I tell the child. "I've got you. I’m not leaving."