Shadow Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

hope. Dr. Hillstead had ended the session with one dictate: Go and see your team.
    “This wasn’t just a job for you, Smoky. It was something that defined your life. Something that was a part of who you are. What you are. Would you agree?”
    “Yeah. That’s true.”
    S H A D O W M A N
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    “And the people you work with—some of them are friends?”
    I shrugged. “Two of them are my best friends. They’ve tried to reach out to me, but . . .”
    He raised his eyebrows at me, a query he already knew the answer to.
    “But you haven’t seen them since you were in the hospital.”
    They’d come to visit me while I was wrapped in gauze like a mummy, while I wondered why I was still alive, and wished I wasn’t. They’d tried to stay, but I’d asked them to leave. Lots of phone calls had followed, all of which I let go to voice mail and didn’t return.
    “I didn’t want to see anybody then. And after . . .” I let the words trail off.
    “After, what?” he prodded.
    I sighed. I gestured toward my face. “I didn’t want them to see me like this. I don’t think I could stand it if I saw pity on their faces. It would hurt too much.”
    We’d talked about it a little further, and he’d told me that the first step toward being able to pick up my gun again was to go face my friends. So here I am.
    I clench my teeth, call on that Irish stubbornness, and push through the doors.
    They close in slow silence behind me, and I’m trapped for a minute between the marble floor and the high ceiling above. I feel exposed, a rabbit caught in an open field.
    I move through the metal detectors of security and present my badge. The guard on duty is alert, with hard, roaming eyes. They flicker a little when he sees the scars.
    “Going to say hi to the guys in Death Central and the Assistant Director,” I tell him, feeling (for some reason) like I have to tell him something. He gives me a polite smile that says he really doesn’t care. I feel even more foolish and exposed and head to the elevator lobby, cursing myself under my breath. I end up in an elevator with someone I don’t know, who manages to make me feel even more uncomfortable (if that were possible) by doing a bad job of hiding his sideways glances at my face. I do my best to ignore it, and when we get to my floor, I leave the elevator perhaps a little faster than normal. My heart is pounding.
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    C O D Y M C F A D Y E N
    “Get a grip on yourself, Barrett,” I growl. “What do you expect, looking like the hunchback of Notre Dame? Get it together.”
    Talking to myself works most of the time, and this is no exception. I feel better. I head down the hallway and now I’m in front of the door to what used to be my office. Fear rises again, replacing the nonchalance I had mustered. There are parallels here, I think. I’ve gone through that door without thinking about it more times than I can count. More times than I’ve picked up my gun. But I feel a similar fear here, in a more minor key.
    The life I have left, I realize, is beyond that door. The people who make up that life. Will they accept me? Or are they going to see a broken piece in a monster mask, glad-hand me, and send me on my way? Am I going to feel eyes full of pity burning holes in my back? I can picture this scenario with a clarity that appalls me. I feel panicked. I shoot a nervous glance down the hall. The elevator door is still open. All I have to do is turn on my heel and run. Run and just keep running. Run and run and run and run and run. Fill those flats with sweat and buy a pack of Marlboros and go home and smoke and cackle in the dark. Weep for no reason, stare at my scars, and wonder about the kindness of strangers. This appeals to me with a strength that makes me shiver. I want a cigarette. I want the security of my loneliness and my pain. I want to be left alone so I can just keep losing my mind and—
    —and then I hear Matt.
    He’s laughing.
    It’s that soft laugh I always loved, a