"They went through hell," I said, leveling a look at him. "You better be treating them with respect."
He lifted his hands. "The utmost. King's got one of his men sitting in on every DOJ interview. Nobody's alone in a room."
I let out a slow breath and turned to the food. Spaghetti. The smell of garlic toast reached me and for a single, absurd moment I almost laughed.
I didn't eat. I sat down on the metal chair and I thought about Anna in that room, and I stayed there long enough for the food to go cold.
The door opened again. This time it was a different officer, older, moving with the unhurried efficiency of someone who'd done this job for thirty years.
"Got some news for you," he said without preamble.
I stood.
"Raids on all seven of the ring's installations are complete. Thirty-two men brought in tonight." He said it the way men like him said everything. Flat, factual, no ceremony. "It's done."
Thirty-two.
I stood there and let that number land. Let it fill the room. All seven installations. Thirty-two men in custody. The operation that had been running through our towns, through our state, through the lives of every woman they'd taken, all of it wrapped up tonight while I paced a processing room and ate cold spaghetti.
I sat back down. Put my elbows on my knees and pressed my hands over my face and just breathed.
The Watcher had been wrong.
It was done.
After an amountof time I'd long since stopped counting, the older officer came back.
"All right, Mr. Lancaster. Ready to get out of there?"
"Yes," I growled.
He walked me down the hallway, and I heard the others getting released ahead of me. Cap's voice. Ranger's. Ghost's quiet footsteps somewhere behind. The hallway opened up into a wider corridor near the front of the building, and that was where I stopped walking.
Anna was standing at the end of it.
Her hair was still wild. She had on a robe tied haphazardly around her waist, crooked on her shoulders, like she'd grabbed the first thing she could find and hadn't bothered to fix it since. Her feet were wrapped. Her eyes were red and swollen and fixed on me like I was the only thing in the building worth looking at.
She didn't run. She just stood there, and so did I, for the space of one breath.
Then I crossed the hallway and she came off the wall and I had her in my arms before either of us said a word.
She whimpered when I crushed her to me, picking her up off her feet, and she wrapped herself around me and shook with the kind of silent sobs that are so much worse than the loud ones. No sound. Just her whole body telling me everything she couldn't say yet.
"I'm here, Anna-mine," I whispered as I walked down the hallway with her. "I'm here and I'm not going anywhere. I'm so sorry."
"My poor house," she said through her tears.
"I'll fix it. I'll fix all of it, don't you worry about a thing. I'll put the windows back in. Ranger's a spitfire with plaster, he'll get the holes the doors made?—"
"Shut up," she whimpered, and sobbed harder against my shoulder.
I barely made it out into the corridor before I sank to my knees.
The sound of her crying shattered something inside of me. I held her as tightly as I thought I could without hurting her and she wrapped around me like she was never letting go, and I just thanked every star I'd ever looked at that it was over.
If I was lucky, she'd let me spend the rest of my life making it up to her. Anything to stay at her side so I could worship her the way she deserved.
27
