Everything seemed to be going Irwin’s way, for once. In his experience, job hunts were fruitless efforts with a lot of dead-ends, and a person might as well just settle for the first opportunity thrown his way by an employer who could really care less. However, it had only been two days since he started gathering applications, and it looked as if a job might be his in the near future.

Yesterday, he returned to many of the stores to return his application. An older woman at an independent accessory store had him wait around while she looked over his papers. After about 15 minutes, she came out and apologized.

“You’re just not quite right to work here,” she had said. “All that customer service experience is a big plus, but your lack of specialization would require more training than I feel like giving. I hope you can understand.”

“Sure,” he had replied, with some relief. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, but while he’d grabbed an application, he really didn’t want to work here. There were too many stuffy old women, too many squealing little girls. “Whatever you think is best, ma’am. Thanks for your time.”

He turned to go and was surprised when she held out her hand to stop him. “Hold on, Mr. Price.”

It felt strange to be called Mr. Price, as if he was his father, but he turned back and gave her his best, most patient smile. “Yes?”

“Your other qualifications are quite good. Especially considering that you’re willing to work as needed, in addition to regular hours.”

Whether he was willing to do that or not, he saw no harm sprinkling his applications with such sentiments if they could turn the tide in his favor. Either this woman was naïve and new to the hiring game, or else she really believed him in particular for some reason.

“I used to work at the Macy’s up at Portsmouth Boulevard. Do you know of it?”

He was more of a Goodwill kind of guy, versus a Macy’s man, but he nodded anyway.

“I was middle shift manager for a time before I opened up my store here. My old friend, Victoria, still works there. I believe she was recently promoted to co-manager. In any case, they’re looking for help in the men’s departments. They would have more resources available to train you, if you’re willing.”

Irwin hadn’t hesitated in the slightest when he heard that. “Do you think you could have a word with her?”

The old woman smiled. “I already have. Tomorrow, anywhere between 9 and 6, you can go over and catch her. Tell her Tina sent you and she’ll know. Good luck, Mr. Price.”

So now he was here, standing in front of a very large white building with the word “Macy’s” printed on the front in blood-red lettering. There seemed to be something almost ominous about the store, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. After a few minutes, he gave up.

“I’m just nervous,” he muttered to himself.

He knew he shouldn’t really be nervous. He’d had a good word put in for him. If he showed up at all, as he was about to do, he figured he had a pretty good chance at getting hired right away. There was always the question of the drug test, if one was required, but he hadn’t done any pot lately since he couldn’t really afford the extra expense. He was good to go, ready to get on with his life.

So, why, then, did he find himself looking over his shoulder as he walked up to the front entrance? The automatic doors opened up for him and he stepped through. When they closed behind, he finally looked forward just in time to see that he had veered off-course and was about to crash into someone.

“Ah!” he said, without really meaning to. He ducked aside, off-balance.

The man he’d nearly crashed into spun around and grabbed his arm, stopping him from falling over. “Hey, sorry!” he said. He had a bit of an accent that Irwin couldn’t quite place. “I didn’t really see you there.”

“My fault,” Irwin said. “I wasn’t looking.”

The man looking at him had big, earnest brown eyes. However, they also seemed slightly glazed; Irwin figured he’d just come across another pot user. His hair was light brown and his beard had been trimmed recently, although not very well because random curly sprigs poked out from the rest at odd angles. “You okay, then?”

“Yes. Thanks.”

The man nodded, releasing him. Irwin continued on through the next set of doors, rewarded by a big blast of air directly in his face. Something nagged at him and he turned back to look at the man again. The guy was just standing there, tapping his foot with a bored expression on his face.

Do I recognize him?

The guy didn’t exactly have terribly recognizable features, but Irwin still couldn’t shake the notion that he knew the man from somewhere. Maybe he was a frequent customer at the movie theater?

Either way, Irwin just shook his head and moved on. No big deal. The guy must not have recognized him either, so it didn’t really matter.

The store was absolutely massive, yet seemed devoid of workers. In the end, he had to resort to wandering up to the customer service desk in the lingerie department, to ask for Manager Victoria. He explained why he was there, though the bored-looking young woman hardly looked at him.

“Manager Victoria to the lingerie department,” she monotoned over the loudspeaker. “Manager Victoria, please come to the lingerie department.”

After about five minutes, during which Irwin grew increasingly more embarrassed about the fact that he was surrounded by women’s underwear, a woman rounded the corner. She wasn’t a customer, which was obvious to him because of the fact that she smiled at him instead of giving him an odd look. She wore black slacks and a top with white trim, a necklace with a medallion on it, and a name tag that read Victoria.

He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but the woman now shaking his hand looked almost exactly like his grandmother. Slim, a bit hunchbacked, with knobby hands and a doughy face. Her hair was even red, though patchy and thinning in some places.

“Mr. Price, I presume?” she said.

“Yes, I…” He swallowed hard. Her handshake was very firm for an old woman. He wondered if she could tell that he was sweating, that his palm was clammy. “Tina sent me. That is, she, uh, recommended me? To you?” He couldn’t help the nervous laugh that slipped from between his lips, a little too loud and a bit too abrupt.

But Victoria just nodded and smiled. He wondered if she couldn’t hear very well, because she angled one ear towards him when she spoke again. “Of course, of course! Tina is a very good friend of mine. From what she says, you’re a very promising worker. Would you like to come talk with me in my office about a position here at our store?”

“Yes,” he said quickly. “Yes, I would. Very much so.”

Victoria gave another of those ponderous nods, then started off down through the aisles. She moved with alarming speed for someone so old, and he had to actually exert effort to keep up with her.

Soon enough, she led him back through an Employee’s Only door, then gestured him in the direction of her office. “Please, do sit,” she instructed.

The room was surprisingly long and didn’t resemble an office so much as it did a high school computer lab, if a small one. Decorations and posters covered the walls, and he looked them over without actually seeing any of them. After choosing a seat, he watched Victoria while also trying to pretend that he wasn’t watching her. It took all he had to not start tapping his foot or bouncing his leg up and down. Fidgeting seemed unprofessional.

At long last, she finally managed to lock the door and made her way over to one of the chairs nearby. So began the excruciating process of sitting down, during which it seemed like every bone in her body popped and shifted out of place. She grimaced, dropped the last couple of inches, and then sighed.

“There we are! Now…”

The interview commenced and most of it was fairly easy stuff. She asked him all the usual personal information questions, and then moved on to his past work experiences. After that, she said, “Now, I’m going to ask you some questions that contain a hypothetical scenario. Tell me what you would do in the situation described.”

“Okay,” he replied. He’d had to do the same thing when he applied at the theater, though those questions required common sense to answer and not job experience.

“Good!” She seemed pleased. “Now, then. A customer has approached you asking for a particular item. You know that we are out of this item at the moment. However, the customer insists that you go and check anyway and seems to be angered. What would you do, Irwin?”

It’s just more of the same questions, he thought, a little amazed. Was there some sort of book that told people what questions to ask at an interview?

“Well,” he began, “there’s always the chance that I missed the item the first time. So I would…”

An enormous, concussive blast, like a sharp, short burst of thunder, interrupted him. His mind went blank. His mouth fell open. He flinched, looking up at the ceiling as if he could see through it to the sky above. “Was it supposed to rain today?” he asked.

But he knew it wasn’t thunder. It wasn’t rain. There was no denying what it was, as much as he would like to.

Looking at Victoria’s face, she seemed to have reached the same conclusion.

Two more gunshots rang out in rapid succession. It was impossible to tell where the shots were coming from or where they were going, with their position in the office, but there was no mistaking the consequences either way. Someone screamed, and then everyone in the store was screaming.

“Was that…”

Victoria raised one hand to cut him off. Without saying anything, she reached over to pick up a nearby phone and punched in three numbers. A muffled voice on the other end of the line greeted her, the words indistinct to Irwin’s ears. His heart was pounding hard enough to hurt his chest. The desire to get up and run was overwhelming, impossible to manage. One of his legs started to bounce, his anxiety finding a way to express itself.

What the manager said into the phone and what was said back, he didn’t know. Her mouth seemed to be moving but he couldn’t hear her, couldn’t focus on anything that was said. The silence that dragged on in the aftermath of the gunshots was full of nasty potential. Had someone been hit? Was someone dying even as they sat in here, protected by a tangle of walls and little else?

Victoria touched his leg and he flinched, toppling his chair over. Grabbing the desk to keep himself from following, he stared at her.

She spoke calmly, evenly. “The police are on their way. We need to leave. The exit is back the way we came and to the right, directly across from the door. When I unlock the office door, run there. Don’t stop. Do you understand?”

“I…yes.”

“Good.”

Standing, she hurried over to the office door with a speed that belied her age, though it clearly pained her to move in such a manner. How long she stood there, fumbling with the key, shaking from age, from fear, Irwin didn’t know. It could have been seconds or hours. Finally, there was a click and she placed her hand over the doorknob, giving him a meaningful look.

He nodded.

Victoria threw the door open, joints creaking from the effort.

Irwin bolted out through the door, catching it hard on his shoulder as it hit the wall and rebounded. If there was pain, he didn’t notice. His footsteps seemed much too loud in the hallway, echoing endlessly. Though he was sprinting, he didn’t seem to be getting much headway. It was like he was in a dream, some terrible fever dream from which he couldn’t awaken.

After much too long, he finally reached the door which led out to the rest of the store. He turned to the right, already seeing the glowing red Exit sign, but a panicked cry made him look back.

He shouldn’t have looked back. His entire body went rigid and he froze in place, exactly like the woman in that biblical story. He couldn’t move.

The door behind him had only a thin strip of window, restricting the view in and out, but he could see everything. Too much.

A kid crawled into view between aisles. Early teens, by the look of it, but reduced to infancy now in it’s fear and pain. Blood followed the teen in a thin trail, seeping from it’s leg. Even as Irwin stopped, the kid faltered and collapsed.

“Irwin!” Victoria called from behind him. Her voice was a hiss in an effort to somehow shout quietly. “Irwin, go! Please!”

And he went, but not in the direction she wanted. Holding out one hand, he shoved the Employee’s Only door open and sprinted out onto the floor.

The kid didn’t look at him as he approached but as he dropped to his knees and skidded the last foot to them, he saw that it was a girl with very short hair. Her eyes were wild, rimmed with dark makeup that streamed down her face with her tears. Her clothes were equally dark, which meant he couldn’t tell exactly where she was bleeding from. High school Biology class had informed him that there were some damn important arteries in the leg. If she was hit there…

“Don’t worry,” Irwin said. The words came without him knowing that they would, summoned from nowhere. “I’m a punk, too. I’ll get you out of here.”

She didn’t seem to understand, staring at a spot over his shoulder.

Reaching down, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and started to help her sit up. The floor itself seemed to explode, shrapnel hitting his face. Flinching, he pulled the girl closer to his body and turned to see what had caused the floor to self-destruct in such a manner.

But of course he knew, even before he turned to look. There was no avoiding the knowledge, not when his ears were ringing from the effect of the deafening gunshot, not when the girl was praying incoherently under her breath, muttering about maniacs and pain.

Pushing his way between jerseys and wife beaters was a man with his face hidden by a combination of a surgical mask and a baseball cap. His features were in shadow but there was no mistaking the anger in the way he moved. The thin material of the mask was twisted up from beneath as he grinned, a wicked, terrible smile full of tortured confusion.

God, he’s insane.

“Wait,” Irwin said. He leaned over the girl, staring at the approaching gunman. “Wait, man!”

The gunman stopped only about five feet away. He lifted the gun in his hand, some sort of tiny pistol. It seemed impossible that such a terribly loud sound could come from such a diminutive instrument, but Irwin wasn’t about to question it. Desperately judging the distance between himself and the gunman, though he knew he would never make it if he tried to attack, he opened his mouth to speak again, to plead, to beg.

The man pulled the trigger.

The girl screamed, but her voice abruptly choked off. Her eyes widened.

The gun hadn’t fired. What followed after the trigger was pulled was only a desolate click.

No more bullets!

Again and again, the gunman pulled the trigger but he was rewarded only with the same dry, staccato clicking.

From somewhere outside the store, a siren wailed.

The gunman turned to look in the direction of the sound, then shook his head. Fury pulled across his features and he threw the gun at the ground, where it clattered uselessly. “Goddammit,” he snarled.

That voice…

Everything inside Irwin went cold. He knew that voice, that husky accent. And now he saw things which he hadn’t seen before, having had wool pulled over his eyes by fear. Even in the shadows beneath the brim of his hat, his eyes were big and brown. And emerging from the sides of that mask were tufts of curly brown beard hair.

He had bumped into this man, quite literally. He had had a nice conversation with a shooter.

If the man recognized Irwin, he gave no indication of it. As the sirens grew louder outside and new, powerful shouts descended on the chaos—the voices of police officers—he swore again, then turned and ran.

Irwin could only tremble for a few seconds afterwards. This brush with death…he couldn’t even begin to describe how it made him feel. He wasn’t even quite sure that he was feeling anything at all. There was just too much.

The soft groans of the girl drew him back to reality. Though she looked to have always been pale, now her face was as white as death. She, too, was shaking.

“It’s okay,” he whispered to her. He touched her cheek, which was incredibly cold. “The police are here. We’re alive. Can I look at your leg?”

She stared at him, just not understanding. He didn’t think he had the time to spare, to wait for her to get the gist of things. Reaching out, he grabbed the nearest article of clothing that he could reach and bunched it up, shoving it beneath her head as he lay her back down. Inside, he was panicked, freaking out. His senses were overloaded with sounds and the reek of blood. Yet, on the outside, none of this seemed to be showing. His focus had narrowed down. All that was important was survival. Not his own, but this child’s.

Moving down, he tried to undo her jeans, to slide them off, but she swatted at his face until he stopped. Even at a time like this, her need for common decency ruled out all else.

I don’t understand women, he thought. At the same time, he was also relieved because doing that made him feel like a creep.

He settled for summoning his wolf claws, using them to saw down the leg of her jeans while making sure she couldn’t see them. Most wolves had dull claws that were more like nails, but he sharpened his like a cat might, a habit he’d picked up one day out of boredom and never looked back from.

Gripping the flaps of black denim on either side of her leg, he pulled them open. Almost immediately, he encountered resistance: blood-soaked fabric stuck to the wound on her thigh. She whimpered and he moved slower, peeling the fabric away to reveal the gaping hole in her flesh. He had no idea how such a small weapon caused so much damage but here it was. The blood didn’t flow in sheets as he thought it might. Instead, it kept surging up in pulses.

Is this her artery? Oh fuck, why didn’t I pay more attention in school?

“It’s okay,” he said. His voice shook. He was lying. Was it okay? Would it ever be okay for her again?

Reaching out, he grabbed another piece of clothing from the nearby rack. He’d seen this kind of shit in movies and had no idea if it worked in real life, but he didn’t know what else to do. Wrapping the shirt around her thigh, above the wound, he tied it as tight as he could. If the flow of blood lessened, if this helped in any way at all, he couldn’t tell.

Grabbing another shirt, he bunched it up and shoved it against the bullet wound. The girl shrieked with pain, and he winced. His entire body seemed to wince, curling in on itself. “Sorry!” he said. “Sorry!” Even as he apologized, he didn’t let up, leaning his whole weight against her leg. The shirt grew sodden beneath his fingers.

From somewhere nearby, a commanding voice snapped out an order. It sounded something like, “Secure the area!” Irwin had no idea if that’s what was actually said or if he only hallucinated it, again falling back on stuff that he had seen in movies.

“We’re over here!” he yelled, startling himself. “Over here! This girl was shot! Over here!”

“To the right,” said a voice from his left.

Leaning his body still, pushing with all the force he could summon against the bullet hole, Irwin turned his head. A man in a blue uniform was approaching, gun drawn. The man shoved his gun back into its holster after looking around in all directions. If he noticed the empty pistol lying nearby, he said nothing.

“Let me take over, son,” the cop said. It was phrased as a request but sounded like a command.

Irwin backed off, crawling a few feet away before collapsing on his ass to watch. He noticed with something like idle curiosity that he’d left a trail of bloody handprints on his way here.

The cop spoke softly to the girl, then lifted the shirt from her leg to examine the wound. His expression tightened but his eyes somehow remained friendly. “You’re going to be okay, miss,” he said. Grabbing another shirt, he pushed it over the wound, then grabbed at the radio on his belt. Pushing it to his mouth, he said, “I’ve got a casualty over here. Young girl. Looks about 15. Shot in the leg from behind. Seems to have nicked the femoral artery.” He paused, listening. “Good. And I got another one over here. Guy who looks about 20. No visible injuries. Seems to be in shock.”

Wouldn’t you be? Irwin wanted to ask. The words wouldn’t come. All he could do was sit in one spot and watch as the cop attempted to save the life of the girl, though she seemed to be fading fast. By the time more police arrived, less than a minute later, she seemed to be barely breathing. Soon enough, Irwin couldn’t even see her through the throng of people gathered around. Cops swarmed everywhere, clearly doing their best, making note of what must have happened, bagging evidence, marking the position of the pistol, but all their efforts were in vain. They seemed to not know this, but Irwin did and watching them run around like chickens with their heads cut off was more than he could stand.

He spoke up. “He went back through that door.”

No one paid him any attention, making him wonder if he’d even spoken at all. Clearing his throat, he tried again, pointing this time in the direction of the Employee’s Only door and the exit beyond that. “The shooter went that way.”

Someone seemed to notice this time. A female police officer looked in his direction, narrowing her eyes. With the way everyone was moving around him, not seeming to notice that he was there at all, her attention was suddenly jarring.

She moved away from her position at the end of the aisle and dropped down to her knees in front of him. Her eyes were very large and brown, reminding him distinctly of Dagwood’s sweet caramel gaze.

Quite suddenly, he missed the other man.

“What did you say, sir?” she asked. “Try to speak up a little.”

“The shooter,” he managed. He thought he’d been speaking quite clearly, but now that she had told him to speak up, he was aware that he was doing little more than whisper. Nothing seemed quite right in the world at the moment, least of all him.

“What about the shooter?” she asked. “You said you knew where he went? Did you see this happen?”

He nodded, then kept nodding while waiting for his voice to start working. Eventually, he managed. “I was leaving, but then I saw this kid and…the guy was walking up to us. I recognized him. He tried to shoot, but he was out of bullets so he dropped the gun and ran. That way. Through the exit.” He spoke faster and faster, rising in volume, unable to stop. Other cops were taking notice of what he said, and a few of them headed off in the direction he’d mentioned.

“You said you recognized him?” she asked.

“I ran into him when I came into the store. I don’t know…who he was.”

Her eyes were no longer soft. They were sharp with interest, almost cutting. “What did he look like? Can you tell me? Are you hurt?” He couldn’t answer that last question because he had no idea. He didn’t think he was hurt, assuming he was merely in shock like the first cop had said, but the world no longer seemed so certain. He had no idea about anything anymore.

“Brown. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Um…sorry, but…”

Sudden nausea rose up in his throat, and he turned away from her to throw up on the floor. Even after he was done heaving, his body kept shaking. Warmth settled on his shoulder but the touch seemed incredibly far away. All he wanted to do was sleep, to forget that this had ever happened.

What followed was blurry, and he didn’t quite know the sequence of it, couldn’t recall later on what had happened first or last. More people came, dressed in baggy teal uniforms with the words PARAMEDIC stitched onto the back. The number of police officers thinned out as the first responders took over, tending to the girl, lifting her up onto a stretcher and carrying her away.

At one point, Irwin found himself being helped to stand by a burly man with thinning hair. “Come with me please, honey.”

Then he was outside, the sun warming his skin but not his soul. Several ambulances were being loaded up with the wounded, of which there seemed to be an inordinate amount for the number of shots fired. Irwin puzzled over this while being led to yet another ambulance, which had been parked quite a ways from the others. Here there were even more people, sitting on the ground, or standing up, swaying unsteadily on their feet. Two paramedics wove their way through this ramshackle group, performing tasks that Irwin couldn’t quite figure out.

“Got another one here for you,” the burly paramedic said.

One of the two broke away from the crowd and came over. She couldn’t have been that much older than Irwin, but she nevertheless had a matronly feel about her, and he felt safe right away. “Just shock?” she asked.

“Seems like it. Talks fine. No bleeding that I can see. He seems otherwise coherent.”

The matronly paramedic nodded, then reached out and placed her hand on Irwin’s shoulder. “We’ll take care of him.” To Irwin, she said, “Sweetie? You’re safe with us.”

He believed it, too.

At one point he was given a shot, though he couldn’t recall if this happened on-scene or if it was later, in the hospital. He did know when he was given a blanket, which was very shortly after being handed over to the two paramedics. He clutched at it, shivering despite the warmth of the day. Everything was too sharp around the edges, yet also too dull at the same time.

Gentle hands assisted him in climbing up into the back of the ambulance, where he was instructed to sit down on one of two benches. He sat, and the others like him piled in around him. Though they were all strangers to him and he couldn’t really focus on their faces, he found their presence reassuring. They seemed to feel the same way. Somehow, he found himself holding hands with them, clutching at them as they clutched at him.

What had they seen? Their eyes were so haunted. Did he look the same way?

As soon as everyone was in the back of the ambulance, or at least as many as could fit, the paramedics hopped in. The vehicle headed off, moving at a speed which seemed much too fast for comfort. If there hadn’t been so many people packed inside, like sardines in a can, Irwin would have probably been bouncing off the walls.

Then he was outside again, looking up at the sky, thinking of Dagwood. Though he hardly knew the man and was more annoyed by him than anything, annoyed by the distractions he brought, the hard truths he carried, all he wanted now was to hear that deep voice again, to see those calm eyes boring into his.

The sunlight fell away at some point, and he was herded into a room with several other people. Everything was too white, the walls, the decorations, their faces. Nurses came and left, taking temperatures, blood pressure, listening to heartbeats. Irwin could remember none of them in particular later on. In fact, if pressed, he might have said they were all the same person.

Occasionally a nurse would come in and ask questions, seeming to want to gauge how their patients were doing. Occasionally they asked for personal information, or took requests for cups of water or snacks from the vending machine. Irwin answered the questions posed to him, and he somehow found himself with a bag of Lays potato chips and a cup of sweet coffee, though he didn’t remember asking for these things. He wanted a smoke, or a piece of nicotine gum.

After a certain amount of time, the other patients started disappearing. Irwin wasn’t aware of this happening until the amount of people in the room with him was down by half. This might have been happening all the time or it might have only been a recent development. He didn’t know.

A nurse came over to retrieve his empty bag of chips. He reached for her sleeve.

“Yes, dear?” she asked, even though he missed.

There were so many questions he wanted to ask, so many things he needed answered, but in the end all he could manage was, “Where did all the people go?”

“Well, their families came to get them. They went home.”

Home. Did he want to go home too, or would the emptiness only drive him crazy?

“We called the number you gave us,” she said. “But no one answered. We left a message. Is there anyone else you’d like us to call, hon?”

Irwin didn’t remember giving her a number. He didn’t even know anyone he could have called for this. There was no one he was close enough to bother them like that. Even if he could reach out to his pack for help, he didn’t know a specific member of the pack that he trusted the most. He was alone in this.

“Can’t I go home on my own?”

“Well, yes, but we’d prefer you leave with someone else.”

She continued speaking, perhaps explaining why, but now he was thinking about Dagwood. He wished he’d gotten the man’s number, or paid attention to what hotel he said he was staying at. Had he even said that? He couldn’t remember.

In any case, it didn’t matter. The amount of other people in the room continued to dwindle until only he and another man were left. The door to the room opened again and he thought that would be it, he was alone, he’d sit here in this room until some doctor finally remembered he existed and sent him home.

But the person who entered didn’t go to the other man. Instead, they walked over and stood before him.

Irwin looked up and found himself blinking into the brown eyes of the cop from before, the one who had finally listened to him when he was trying to say where the shooter had gone.

“I can see that you remember me,” she said. Her smile was forced, faked. He didn’t blame her one bit.

“Yeah,” Irwin said.

“We didn’t exactly have the time to be introduced properly. My name is Officer Janis.”

“Okay,” he replied, cautiously. “Hi.”

“Can I know your name?”

“You came in this room looking for me specifically, so I can only assume that you already know it.”

Her smile warmed slightly, for some reason. “You’re as feisty as your hair. How about this? Can you confirm your name for me? For the record?”

“Irwin Price.”

“Thank you. Irwin, I’d like to ask you some questions about what you saw. I was wondering if you might like to come down to the station with me in order to do that.”

He hesitated. “Am I in trouble?”

“Of course not. You don’t have to. It’s not legal for us to force you into giving out information. However, you are obligated to help us, and we hope that you will understand our need for your assistance.”

All of his doubts about the police were coming back. The way she phrased things made it sound as if he didn’t actually have a choice. And if he was given a choice, he’d rather just forget that this ever happened. He would rather get on with his life and put this horrific event behind him.

“But you won’t let me leave until I agree, right?” he ventured.

Much to his surprise, Janis shook her head. “We can’t hold you like that, as much as we would like to. It’s your choice. If you need some time to think about it, I can step outside.”

He was about to tell her not to bother, to just leave him alone, when he remembered the girl’s bleach-white face, the fear in her eyes.

“Wait,” Irwin said.

Janis paused and turned to look at him. “Yes, Irwin?”

“What about the kid? The girl? The one who got shot?”

Something in her eyes flickered, and he wasn’t sure if he should be afraid of that or not. “What about her?”

“Is she going to be okay?”

“She was flown to Norfolk by emergency helicopter. Their trauma center is better equipped to deal with such things than ours is.”

That doesn’t sound good. His heart sank.

“Her name is Emma Farrell. And you saved her life.”

He looked up at Janis. “What?”

“If you hadn’t gone to her and done what you did, she would most likely have died halfway through that helicopter ride. What you did, making a tourniquet and applying pressure to her wound, bought her just enough time. At the moment, she’s in critical condition but her prognosis is believed to be positive. Irwin, you’re a hero.”

A hero?

He’d never been anything important before. He’d been a below-average student, an okay worker, a decent friend. He was just Irwin, that annoying ginger guy with the loud laugh and the sticky fingers. Hell, he’d never been a boyfriend to anyone, never been anyone’s best friend.

Then in the past week, Dagwood came to him and told him that he had seen Irwin in a vision. Now, he was a hero. He had saved a life at the cost of his own safety.

Whether or not he liked it, he had become more than just himself in a short span of time.

This cop was right. He had an obligation to tell them everything he knew, to sit there and relive this trauma. As much as he didn’t want to, as much as he would have liked to go home and pretend it never happened, he couldn’t. There was more than just him at stake here.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Let’s go.”