Inside was the sterile tubing used to connect the cannula to the suction machine. He tore the packet with his teeth and tried to tie the clear rubber around his thigh. It was like trying to make a Christmas gift bow alone, though—no matter how hard he worked at it, he couldn’t knot it tight enough. And the pain, it was like no pain he’d ever felt.

The edges of his vision began to go dark, like the borders at the end of one of those old-time silent movies, just before they shrank into a pinpoint of darkness. Louie’s final thought before he passed out was that this was indeed some crazy world, where the waiting period to get an abortion was longer than the waiting period to get a gun.

—

HUGH WAS HALFWAY TO THE front door of the clinic when he crashed into a cop. “Lieutenant?” the officer said. “This is Rachel Greenbaum. She’s the one who called in the shooting.”

He blinked. He had to shake his head a few times to clear it, to let go of Wren’s name, which was caught like a bit between his teeth.

What had he been thinking? Well, obviously, he hadn’t been. Charging inside was a mistake. He couldn’t help Wren if he got himself shot.

“Ms. Greenbaum,” he said, taking a breath. “Why don’t you come with me?”

Slowly, he loosened his death grip on his phone and slipped it into his pocket. He led her in the other direction (away from the clinic; away from Wren and Bex, goddammit) to a spot where two officers were hastily erecting a Tyvek canopy over a card table and a couple of folding chairs. There was also a laptop.

He sat down and offered her a chair as well. The girl—he put her in her twenties, maybe—had cotton-candy pink hair and a hoop in her nose. Her mascara had run, giving her raccoon circles under her eyes. She was wearing a pinny with buttons on it: THINK OUTSIDE MY BOX. MAY THE FETUS YOU SAVE TURN OUT TO BE A GAY ABORTION PROVIDER!

“You work at the Center?” he asked, reaching for a pad and a pen.

She nodded. “I’m a jack-of-all-trades. I do everything from escorting people in from the parking lot to admin to holding the hands of patients during procedures.”

“You were there when the shooter came in?”

Rachel nodded and started to cry.

Hugh leaned forward. “I know how hard this must be for you. But anything you can tell me is going to make the odds much greater that we can help your friends inside.”

She wiped her eyes with her wrist. “I came in late this morning because my car broke down. I had just arrived.”

“Can you describe in detail what you saw?”

“The waiting room was pretty empty,” Rachel said. “That meant the group info session was finished.”

“Group info?”

“We have to do one every day for the next day’s procedures. It’s the law,” she explained. “There were only a couple of patients left, I think.”

Was one a young girl? Hugh thought desperately. Or a woman with eyes the same color as mine? But the cop who had brought Rachel Greenbaum over was an arm’s length away. He could not risk him overhearing.

“Vonita was at the front desk.” Rachel looked up. “Vonita’s the owner of the clinic,” she said, and then she started to cry again. “She … she’s dead.”

“I’m so sorry,” Hugh said evenly, but his heart tripped. Wren had said that Bex had been shot. Was she dead, too?

“She was drinking a diet shake. She hates—hated—diet shakes. We were joking around and then the buzzer rang, and it was him.” Rachel glanced at Hugh. “We’re not like Planned Parenthood, with security guards and metal detectors. I guess we operate on hopes of southern gentility. We have protesters, but they keep to their side of the fence, and the Center door is always locked and there’s an intercom. If you don’t come in with a known escort, all you have to say is that you’re there for an appointment, or that you’re with someone who’s there for an appointment, and then whoever is at the desk will push a button and let you in.”

“Was it unusual to have a man show up?”

She shook her head. “We get boyfriends and husbands coming to pick up patients all the time.”

“Did he say he was there to pick up a patient?”

“No,” Rachel said quietly.

“What did he look like?”

“I don’t know. Ordinary. Shorter than you. Brown hair. Plaid shirt. A jacket.” She could have been describing half the citizens of Mississippi.

“What kind of gun was he carrying?”

“I-I didn’t see one.”

“Handgun, then,” Hugh said. “Not a rifle.”

Rachel wiped her eyes as another police officer approached. “Lieutenant? Dispatch came back with the plate registrations.”

His first order had been to run the plates of every car in the parking lot. There were only a dozen. Now Hugh shuffled through the driver’s license photos, subtracting out the women. “Any of these ring a bell?”

Rachel hesitated at the first one. “This is Dr. Ward,” she said. “He works for us.” Then she turned the page. “That’s him.”

“George Goddard,” Hugh read. “Excuse me a minute.” He picked up his phone and pushed a few buttons. “Dick? Yeah, I know. Listen, I have an active situation I’m working and the hostage taker’s got a car registered in Denmark. Can you do a drive-by?” He glanced down at the screen after he hung up. Wren had not texted again.

“Did he say anything?” Hugh asked.

“I was going to lock up my backpack in Vonita’s office,” Rachel said. “I heard him come in, and come up to the desk, and Vonita asked if she could help him. I expected him to say he was looking for his wife, or picking up his girlfriend or something. But he said, ‘What did you do to my baby?’ and he started shooting.”

“ ‘What did you do to my baby?’ ” Hugh repeated. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Did he say anything else? Did he mention anyone by name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did it seem as if he’d been to the Center before?”

“I-I’m not sure.”

“Did he seem like a local? Have an accent?”

She looked up at him. “Do any of us, here in Mississippi?”

“Then what happened?”

Rachel buried her face in her hands. “He shot Vonita. I ducked under her desk. I heard more shots. I don’t know how many.”

“Did you see anyone else injured?” Did you see my sister?

“No. I tried to take care of Vonita, but she didn’t … she wasn’t …” Rachel swallowed hard. “So I ran.” She started sobbing.

“Rachel, listen,” Hugh said. “You got us onto the scene fast. And thanks to you, now I know that the shooter isn’t in there because he’s on a philosophical crusade. This is personal, which will help me connect with him.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “You’re lucky you got out.”

The tears started falling harder. “I’m not lucky.” She sucked in the truth like she was breathing through a straw. “I saw him, through the one-way glass. And he was wearing a coat. I noticed it, because who wears a coat when it’s eighty-five degrees? But I didn’t stop to think about it. I just buzzed him in.” She folded into herself, an origami of grief. “What if I was the one who could have stopped it from happening?”

“This is not your fault,” Hugh said, but it wasn’t just Rachel he was trying to convince.

—

THEY HAD SHOWN JOY INTO a recovery room after her abortion, where she had changed back into her sweatpants and baggy T-shirt, and sat down to rest. As she reclined in a leather chair, she dozed, dreaming of when she used to babysit for a toddler named Samara, who lived next door to her foster family. Samara had the roundest cheeks and tiny Bantu knots and little white raptor teeth. She would do the hand motions to “Itsy Bitsy Spider” if you sang it to her, and she didn’t like crusts on her sandwiches. Her mama went out twice a week to night school, which was when Joy would come over, feed Samara dinner, and put her to bed.

Samara’s mama, Glorietta, took a half hour to say goodbye to her daughter. She would smother her face with kisses and act like she was going to be gone for a year, not three hours. When she got home, she would go check on Samara and inevitably wake her up with her touches and hugs, even when Joy had worked hard to get her to go down. Sometimes, Glorietta would come home in the middle of her class, saying she missed her baby too much and needed to be with her. She always paid Joy for the full amount of babysitting time, so it was a win-win, but Joy thought it was kind of strange all the same.

One night Joy came home from practice to find six police cars on her street, and an ambulance pulled up in front of Glorietta’s house. Samara was dead. Glorietta had smothered her in her sleep. She told the police it was so that her daughter would stay an angel forever.

You never knew what went on behind closed doors, as any foster kid could tell you. Joy hadn’t thought about Samara in years. But now she wondered: If a child died, in the afterlife, did they keep growing up? Would Samara be there with Joy’s child now? Would she babysit him?

A scream woke Joy up. The sad woman was gone from the waiting room and the playlist had ended. Just then, she heard a crash, the sound of glass shattering. “Hello?” she called, but there was no answer.

She slowly inched to her feet. She felt the pad in her underwear shift as she stood, and the hot rush of blood that came with being upright.

Then came gunshots.