Lisa Gardner - Love You More

The darkness behind Hamilton materialized into a man. At my command, he raised his rifle. Just as Hamilton placed the barrel of his Sig Sauer against my left temple.

I concentrated on the feel of my daughter, the weight of her body, the purity of her love. Something to carry with me into the abyss.

“You should’ve done what I said,” Hamilton hissed above me.

While in the next heartbeat, Bobby Dodge pulled the trigger.

By the time D.D. made it to the top of the property, Hamilton was down and Bobby stood over the lieutenant colonel’s body. He looked up at her approach and shook his head once.

Then she heard crying.

Sophie Leoni. It took D.D. a second to spot the child’s small, pink-clad form. She was on the ground, covering another dark-clad figure, skinny arms tangled around her mother’s neck as the girl sobbed wildly.

Bobby dropped to one knee beside the pair as D.D. approached. He placed his hand on Sophie’s shoulder.

“Sophie,” he said quietly. “Sophie, I need you to look at me. I’m a state policeman, like your mother. I’m here to help her. Please look at me.”

Sophie finally raised her tearstained face. She spotted D.D. and opened her mouth as if to scream. D.D. shook her head.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. My name is D.D. I’m a friend of your mom’s, too. Your mom led us here, to help you.”

“Mommy’s boss took me away,” Sophie said clearly. “Mommy’s boss gave me to the bad woman. I said no. I said I wanted to go home! I said I wanted Mommy!”

Her face dissolved again. She started to cry, soundlessly this time, still pressed against her mother’s unmoving body.

“We know,” D.D. said, crouching down beside them, placing a tentative hand on the girl’s back. “But your mother’s boss and the bad woman can’t hurt you anymore, okay, Sophie? We’re here, and you’re safe.”

To judge by the look on Sophie’s face, she didn’t believe them. D.D. couldn’t blame her.

“Are you hurt?” Bobby asked.

The girl shook her head.

“What about your mommy?” D.D. asked. “Can we check her, make sure she is okay?”

Sophie moved slightly to one side, enough so D.D. could see the dark stain on the left side of Tessa’s dark flannel shirt, the red blood in the snow. Sophie saw it, too. The girl’s lower lip started to tremble. She didn’t say another word. She simply lay down in the snow beside her unconscious mother and held her hand.

“Come back, Mommy,” the girl said mournfully. “Love you. Come back.”

Bobby scrambled down the slope for the EMTs.

While D.D. peeled off her own coat and used it to cover both mother and child.

Tessa regained consciousness as the EMTs went to load her. Her eyes popped open, she gasped sharply, then reached out frantically. The EMTs tried to hold her down. So D.D. did the sensible thing, grabbing Sophie and lifting the child onto the edge of the gurney.

Tessa clutched her daughter’s arm, squeezed hard. D.D. thought Tessa might be crying, or maybe it was the tears in her own eyes. She couldn’t be sure.

“I love you,” Tessa whispered to her daughter.

“Love you more, Mommy. Love you more.”

The EMTs wouldn’t let Sophie remain on the gurney. Tessa required immediate medical attention and the child would only be in the way. After thirty seconds of negotiation, it was determined that Sophie would ride in the front of the ambulance, while her mother was tended in the back. The EMTs, moving quickly, started to hustle the girl to the front.

She twisted around them long enough to race back to her mother, and tuck something beside her, then ran for the passenger’s seat.

When D.D. looked again, Sophie’s one-eyed doll was tucked beside Tessa’s unmoving form. The EMTs loaded her up.

The ambulance whisked them away.

D.D. stood in the middle of the snowy dawn, hand on her own stomach. She smelled smoke. She tasted tears.

She looked up to the woods, where a fire was now burning down to ash. Hamilton’s last bid attempt to cover his tracks, which had cost both him and his female companion their lives.

D.D. wanted to feel triumphant. They’d saved the girl, they’d vanquished the evil foe. Now, except for a few days of excruciating paperwork, they should be riding off in the sunset.

It wasn’t enough.

For the first time in a dozen years, D. D. Warren had reached the successful conclusion of a case, and it wasn’t enough. She didn’t feel like reporting the good news to her superiors, or supplying self-gratifying answers to the press, or even grabbing a couple of beers to wind down with her taskforce.

She wanted to go home. She wanted to curl up with Alex and inhale the scent of his aftershave, and feel the familiar comfort of his arms around her. And she wanted, heaven help her, to still be at his side the first time the baby moved, and be looking into his eyes when the first contraction hit, and be holding his hand when their baby slid into the world.

She wanted a little girl or a little boy who would love her as much as Sophie Leoni obviously loved her mother. And she wanted to return that love tenfold, to feel it grow bigger and bigger every single year, just as Tessa had said.

D.D. wanted a family.

She had to wait ten hours. Bobby couldn’t work-having used deadly force, he was forced to sit on the sidelines and await the arrival of the firearms discharge investigation team, which would formally investigate the incident. Meaning D.D. was on her own as she notified her boss of the latest developments, then secured the scene and began processing the outer fringes, while waiting for the last embers of the fire to cool. More officers and evidence techs arrived. More questions to answer, more bodies to manage.

She worked through breakfast. Bobby brought her yogurt and a peanut butter sandwich for lunch. She worked. She smelled of smoke and sweat, of blood and ash.

Dinner came and went. Sun set again. The life of a homicide detective.

She did what she had to do. She tended what needed tending.

And then, finally, she was done.

Scene was secured, Tessa had been airlifted to a Boston hospital, and Sophie remained safely at her mother’s side.

D.D. got in her car and headed back to the Mass Pike.

She phoned Alex just as she reached Springfield. He was cooking chicken parm and delighted to hear she was finally coming home.

She asked if he could change the chicken parm to an eggplant parm.

He wanted to know why.

Which made her laugh, then made her cry, and she couldn’t get the words out. So she told him she missed him and he promised her all the eggplant parm in the world, and that, D.D. thought, was love. His love. Her love. Their love.

“Alex,” she finally managed to gasp. “Hey, Alex. Forget dinner. I’ve got something I need to tell you…”

I was in the hospital for nearly two weeks. I got lucky. Hamilton’s shot was a through and through that missed most major organs. Hit man Purcell, however, had been a pro to the bitter end. He’d shattered my rotator cuff, resulting in numerous surgeries and endless months of PT. I’m told I’ll never regain full range of movement in my right shoulder, but I should get finger function back once the swelling goes down .

I guess we’ll find out .

Sophie stayed with me in the hospital. She wasn’t supposed to. Hospital policy said children should only be there during visiting hours. Within hours of my arrival, Mrs. Ennis had received word and shown up to assist. But she couldn’t peel Sophie off me, and after another ten minutes, the head nurse waved her off .

Sophie needed her mother. I needed Sophie .

So they let us be, two girls in our private room, an unbelievable luxury. We slept together, ate together, and watched SpongeBob Squarepants together. Our own little form of therapy .