Guilt Read Free

later, Annie had him turned around, his arm twisted and locked in place behind. The table erupted in whistles and applause.
    â€œYou change ya mind about eating?” asked the woman behind the counter.
    Peter turned back. She had an eyebrow arched, and seemed unimpressed by his “doctor’s clothes”—the navy blue blazer and gray slacks he wore as a uniform whether he was managing the Neuropsychiatric Unit at the Pearce Psychiatric Institute or testifying in court as an expert witness.
    Peter ordered a couple of sandwiches, and took their drinks to a table near the window. Annie joined him.
    â€œThey were asking about my self-defense class,” Annie said. She opened the bottle of water, brushed back a strand of hair, and took a drink. “I was showing them—” The fire truck that screamed past toward Harvard Square distracted her. “Actually, they were giving me a hard time, so what could I do? I had to demonstrate.”
    Annie strained forward as another siren approached. This time it was a ladder truck, followed by the fire chief’s red SUV. Their radios buzzing, all the cops rapidly packed up leftovers and headed out.
    â€œI wonder what happened,” Annie said.
    The woman at the counter called their number and Peter got up. When he returned, Annie was out on the sidewalk watching a pair of ambulances whoop-whoop ing up Mass Ave, weaving around traffic. She tilted after them, as if drawn by a force field.
    Peter had a lot in common with Annie, but this was one thing they most emphatically did not share. If fire trucks and ambulances were going one way, he’d be headed the other. Let the pros handle it.
    Peter went outside and joined her. He put his arm around her waist and squeezed. “Hungry?” he whispered into her ear.
    â€œMmm,” she said, but it wasn’t the kind of mmm he’d hoped to elicit from her. It had a decidedly distracted edge. Annie tipped her head back a notch and sniffed the air. “A fire maybe? A big one?” She gazed at the horizon in the direction of the Square. “Or maybe not. I don’t see a lot of smoke.”
    These days, a fire seemed relatively mundane as catastrophes went. A world of awful had been opened up to include all kinds of unthinkable acts by terrorists, zealots convinced of their cause and willing to die in a blaze of glory as long as they took a few infidels with them, all in the name of a god, someone’s God.
    They went back inside. Peter ate. Annie mostly nibbled, looking up as a pair of police cruisers flew by, blue and white lights flashing, then two more. Next time he managed to inveigle Annie into a shared lunch, Peter promised himself he’d pick a place that wasn’t frequented by cops and with no windows on a main street.
    Now traffic headed into the Square was at a standstill. Typical Boston drivers, the ones not making U-turns were honking. A man in a big black SUV got out of his car. He scratched his head as he stood on the yellow line looking up Mass Ave.
    Pedestrians had stopped and were looking up the street like a pack of hunting dogs. A man in a T-shirt and jeans ran past toward the Square. A tall, lanky woman wearing a scarf plodded in the opposite direction, the only one oblivious. Her face was smeared with soot, and the knee of her pants was torn and bloody. She cradled one arm in the other.
    She stumbled. Peter jumped to his feet.
    â€œJackie!” Annie cried.
    They raced outside. The woman didn’t stop until she ran into Annie. Then she stood there blinking and rubbing her head as if she’d hit an unexpected wall. Annie put her hands on the woman’s shoulders.
    â€œWhat happened?”
    The woman looked into Annie’s face, her mouth open, recognition dawning in her eyes. Her knees gave way. Peter helped Annie prop her up. They half-carried her inside and sat her down.
    Annie put her arm around the woman while Peter got a cup and poured some of