Page 20 of 72 Hours

“Where’s the boss?”

There were babbling voices and crying all the time, confusing me, cluttering my hearing.

A small, silent girl slipped her hand into mine.

“The money.” A thin, pale young woman in an ill-fitting, short-skirted dress stood pressed against the wall. “He owes me my money. I have to send it home, you know.”

Others just stared at me as I moved slowly around the room. I couldn’t read their expressions. There was blankness there, and little sense of reality. I wondered who would be able to peel those children’s souls back out into a worthwhile life, because it sure as hell wouldn’t be me.

Well, I did my best. I reassured them and explained we were there to help. I sat with them as they were handed over one by one to social workers and aid helpers, I explained things they said they couldn’t understand. A few of them clutched my hand, or hugged me. I felt I was on top of it, though the room was still full of unpleasant body odors and sobbing kids, and I guess I was still a bit shocked. Whatever the reason, I lost my connection with the ones still left for a few critical moments.

And that was long enough for one of them—one of the older boys—to decide we were another version of the common enemy. He started crying, pushing away the helping hands, swearing and yelling. He refused to follow the social workers out of the building, accusing us of threatening him, bullying him. The cops were sick fuckers, he cried, we were taking him to jail, we were kidnapping them all, we were working for another house, another boss, a worse one. All sorts of stuff. Niall was over the far side of the room, signing some legal release forms. I was conscious of him turning around, looking over at us. The boy was thin, blond, and scrawny, and although he was obviously an older teenager, he didn’t look like he could lift his own body weight, let alone take me on. But he was very distracting, very loud, and very aggressive.

“Get the fuck out!” He was close to me by now, the other kids had parted the way to let him through. “You don’t understand. Leave us here, it’s nothing to do with you. It’s okay here, we’re settled here.”

“What’s your name?” I kept my voice calm, my movements non-threatening. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Niall break away from the aid workers and start over towards me, presumably coming to give support. “Everything’s fine. I’m here to help you.”

“I don’t need your fucking help! All my friends are here. Family too. They care for me. They’ll be along soon, I have to stay here.”

“It’s going to be okay.”

“You think we’re trash, don’t you? You want to use us yourself. Or you want us out of the way, all of us in institutions, locked up.”

“No, I don’t. Of course I don’t.” Niall was over on my left, only a foot away. I hoped he knew to keep his distance, so he didn’t spook the kid any further. I needed just a little more time to talk him down. “I’m Tanner. Tell me your name. Let’s talk about all of this. You say you have family and friends. Tell me about them. Who will be along soon for you?”

“We don’t need you.” His eyes narrowed. For a second he was totally still. Then, “Fuck you,” he spat out at me. “All of you!”

Instinctively, I leaned away. Some of the remaining kids had gathered around me, staring between us both with stark, scared faces. I knew I had to protect them, somehow. Protect my colleagues, as well.

That’s what the Team needed from me.

But I never had the chance to calm things down and explain things better to the hysterical boy. Next minute, he pushed past me with an astonishing strength, a knife suddenly appeared in his hand, and he sliced it upward with all his strength into Niall’s side.

Time stopped, just like they say in the movies.

Niall turned to me as he fell. There was a look of pained shock on his face, as if he’d expected me to know it was about to happen. As if I should have anticipated the kids were under the influence of something more pernicious than distress—that they might be armed, as well. As if I should have been watching out for him.

Which I guess I should have been.

Then he sank to his knees, hand clutched to his side. He coughed, and blood seeped out between his fingers. His face went deathly pale.

I thought I’d lost him.

​​​Chapter 9 – Tuesday 09:00

Niall stood there in the living room of my trailer, clutching the cell phone like an anchor to reality. I knew he was remembering the same things I was. I knew it.

“Tanner.” I hadn’t heard that brittle emotion in his voice for a long time. “Leave it. That was months ago. This is now. And it’s Joe we’re talking about.”

Months ago. Right.

After the stabbing, the kid had been hauled away. Kes, he was called. We were told that he was an orphan, though they were having trouble tracking down his history, but we never found out if he had any other family around, or what the fuck had been going on in his mind. Judging from the drugs in that place, I thought maybe he’d been hallucinating at the time. He was too young for prison, but the authorities considered him too mentally disturbed to face reality alone. He ended up in a secure facility somewhere, just like Niall reminded me earlier, still working the damage through and out of his young, scrambled brain. Far as I knew, he’d had no visits from those friends and family he clung to. Or anyone.

No one said the stabbing had been my fault.

But it was, of course. It was all due to my carelessness. I was complacent, slapdash. I’d done no research on the job before I blundered in, just assumed it was a social issue, that the danger was nothing more than kids’ tears and bruises. I had an affinity with many people, sure, but I’d never come across the naked aggression of a young, addled mind turned to fear and anger. Never thought to check for weapons or for unbalanced psychosis. And that, of course, was no kind of excuse at all.

They rushed Niall into surgery with me following, shocked and furious, but they stopped me at the door of the operating theatre. I wasn’t thinking too straight then. I had to be taken forcibly from the hospital, yelling that I had to be with him, whatever the fuck Judith said! Didn’t help my case much. Judith did me the courtesy of holding back on actual handcuffs, but two sturdy guys she must have borrowed from the Department Thug Pool stepped either side of me and brought me back to base with a grip that well illustrated the phrase “extreme prejudice.” So I never saw Niall when he came out of the long hours in theatre; I never saw him with the tubes and the mask and the bags of blood and plasma slowly dripping into his body.