“It’s a hell of a lot easier when they don’t overlap. I have to get my report together and contact the commander. And for God’s sake, get that boomer out of the house. I don’t care if it is diffused.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Alone, she sat down to organize her notes into a cohesive report. She glanced over when the cat padded in, with Summerset behind him.
“Working,” she said briefly, then frowned when he set a plate with an enormous chocolate chip cookie on her desk. “What’s this?”
“A cookie, as any fool could see. It’ll spoil your dinner, but . . .” He shrugged, started out. He paused at the door without turning around. “He was a hero at a time when the world desperately needed them. He would be dead before the night was over if you’d taken him in. I want you to know that. To know you saved a life today.”
She sat back, staring at the empty doorway, when he’d left her. Then she scanned her notes, the report on screen, the photographs of the dead. They were the lost, weren’t they? All those lives taken. Maybe, in a way that nudged up against that line between right and wrong, she was standing for the lost.
She had to hope so.
Breaking off a hunk of cookie, she got back to work.