Free Hide by Lisa Gardner Page B

overactive images. Those six little girls, mummified faces pressed against clear plastic garbage bags. Old photographs of twelve-year-old Catherine, her pale face hollowed out by hunger, her eyes giant black pupils from spending a month alone in the dark.
    And, of course, the other image he was forced to see, would probably be seeing for the rest of his life: the look on Catherine’s husband’s face, Jimmy Gagnon’s face, right before the bullet from Bobby’s rifle shattered his skull.
    Two years later, Bobby still dreamed about the shooting four or five nights a week. He figured someday it would become three times a week. Then twice a week. Then maybe, if he was lucky, he would get down to three or four times a month.
    He’d done counseling, of course. Still met with his old LT, who served as his mentor. Even attended a meeting or two of other officers who’d been involved in critical incidents. But from what he could tell, none of that made much difference. Taking a man’s life changed you, plain and simple.
    You still had to get up each morning and put on your pants one leg at a time like everyone else.
    And some days were good, and some days were bad, and then there were a whole lotta other days in between that really weren’t anything at all. Just existence. Just getting the job done. Maybe D.D. was right. Maybe there were two Bobby Dodges: the one who lived before the shooting and the one who lived after. Maybe, inevitably, that’s how these things worked.
    Bobby ran the shower till the water turned cold. Toweling off, he glanced at his watch. He had a whole minute left for dinner. Microwave chicken, it was.
    He stuck two Tyson chicken breasts into the microwave, then retreated to the steamy bathroom and attacked his face with a razor.
    Now officially five minutes late, he threw on fresh clothes, popped open a Coke, stuck two piping-hot chicken breasts onto a paper plate, and made his first critical mistake: He sat down.
    Three minutes later, he was asleep on his sofa, chicken falling to the floor, paper plate crumpled on his lap. Four hours of sleep in the past fifty-six will do that to a man.
             
    H E JERKED AWAKE, dazed and disoriented, sometime later. His hands lashed out. He was looking for his rifle. Jesus Christ, he needed his rifle! Jimmy Gagnon was coming, clawing at him with skeletal hands.
    Bobby sprang off his sofa before the last of the image swept from his mind. He found himself standing in the middle of his own apartment, pointing a greasy paper plate at his TV as if he were packing heat. His heart thundering in his chest.
    Anxiety dream.
    He counted forward to ten, then slowly back down to one. He repeated the ritual three times until his pulse eased to normal.
    He set down the crumpled plate. Retrieved the two chicken breasts from the floor. His stomach growled. Thirty-second rule, he decided, and ate with his bare hands.
    First time Bobby had met Catherine Gagnon, he’d been a sniper called out to the scene of a domestic barricade—report of an armed husband, holding his wife and child at gunpoint. Bobby had taken up position across from the Gagnon residence, surveying the situation through his rifle scope, when he’d spotted Jimmy, standing at the foot of the bed, waving a handgun, and yelling so forcefully that Bobby could see the tendons roping the man’s neck. Then Catherine came into view, clutching her four-year-old son against her chest. She’d had her hands clasped over Nathan’s ears, his face turned into her, as if trying to shield him from the worst.
    The situation went from bad to worse. Jimmy had grabbed his child from Catherine’s arms. Had pushed the boy across the room, away from what was going to happen next. Then he had leveled the gun at his wife’s head.
    Bobby had read Catherine’s lips in the magnified world of his Leupold scope.
    “What now, Jimmy? What’s left?”
    Jimmy suddenly smiled, and in that smile, Bobby had known exactly what was going