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25

JOHN SAMPSON AND I left Sean Brundage reluctantly. As we climbed the south embankment, part of me wanted to go back to him and force him to seek help.

The poor bastard was clearly suffering and in a destructive downward spiral. In my experience, the closer people got to the bottom, the more trapped they felt and the fewer options they thought they had, and eventually they reached the final stage of despair: helplessness. For many, this perceived inability to influence the present and future led them to believe there was no purpose to their existence other than suffering, at which point death appeared to be a less painful option than life.

But as much as I wanted to intervene, I knew that the only way for Brundage to heal would be for him to ask for healing. Without the ask, I’d found that addicts and the mentally ill continued to spiral down toward a miserable, predictable end.

The second they asked for help, however, their descent reversed. The ask might not result in a full recovery of mind, body, and spirit, but it was the pivotal point of change in a human being who saw no way out.

Sampson halted his climb, interrupting my train of thought.

He put his right hand on the butt of his service weapon. I did the same, suddenly struck by a premonition of extreme danger. I craned my head around, trying to spot the source of the menace that felt so palpable, it sent an acid taste up the back of my throat.

To our left, a young couple with a baby were sitting on sleeping bags outside a tent. The mom was breastfeeding a fussy infant. The dad was staring a thousand yards or more into the distance, maybe seeking a better fate.

To our right along the tier, three older women were cooking over a camp stove, laughing at some joke and doing their best to ignore us. On the uppermost tier, a girl in her mid-teens appeared. Denim shorts, black T-shirt, and flip-flops. Sandy-blond pigtails. A yellow ball cap. She barely gave Sampson and me a glance as she ducked her head under the steel girders and beams that supported the ramp.

Then I spotted him, the head high troll of the south side of the Bridge to Nowhere.

Hawk was built like an aging action hero with long, jet-black hair tied into a braid and a face that looked like a sculpture made of broken concrete blocks. The man was massive but paunchy. He wore a black tank top advertising a gym in Dubai, but his belly sagged over the waist of his filthy shorts.

His movements were stiff, as if his joints or old wounds pained him. But his posture—knees flexed, balance forward on the balls of his feet, hands never leaving the plane of his hips—and the way his head swiveled about, searching for threats, all screamed warrior.

Hawk had seen us coming. He narrowed his eyes as if he were preparing for battle or maybe doing a Dirty Harry impression.

Sampson was a hell of a warrior himself. He stopped below Hawk, right hand still on his weapon, his left lifting his badge so it could not be missed.

“Detective John Sampson, Metro PD Homicide, Mr. Hawk,” Sampson said. “This is Alex Cross, my partner. We’d like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.”

“I do mind,” Hawk said evenly. “But do what you gotta do.”

“We fine coming up?” Sampson asked.

“You’re good there,” the man replied. “I’ve always had a thing for the high ground.”

“Hawk your real name?”

“Handle,” he said. “Alejandro Rodriguez, age forty-four, address—you’re looking at it.”

“I hear you were Special Forces. What teams?”

“Delta for seven years, JSOC two,” Rodriguez said.

I stepped up beside Sampson. “How’d you end up here?”

“By way of Kandahar, an IED, a traumatic brain injury, rage, violence, a court-martial, a dishonorable discharge, and a general inability to cope with life stateside.”

“And yet you’re in control of your faculties enough that you were chosen to lead this side of the camp.”

Rodriguez laughed caustically. “Who said I was chosen, Detectives?”

26

“WE HEARD IT’S PRETTY dog-eat-dog over here,” said John Sampson.

“Can be.” Alejandro Rodriguez shrugged. “And I’m just a big dog. Being anything else would insult my basic nature. Others can feel my canine sensibilities, and they either listen to me or give me a wide berth, which is smart because things do get to me.”

“PTSD?” I guessed.