Blair pulled open his office door, hurrying to the meeting. Seven a.m.! Nobody has meetings at seven in the morning. The dean definitely has it in for me.

He collided with someone in the hall. "Oof! Oh, hey, I'm sorry. You okay? Wasn't watching where I was--" He stopped as he caught sight of the man's face.

Only a couple of inches taller than Blair, he was very burly and looked to be in his fifties. His graying brown hair was cut short, and he wore a long rain poncho. He blinked several times, looking, Blair thought, fairly confused.

Probably somebody's dad wandering around in the wrong building. "Are you lost?" Blair asked, smiling. "Place is a maze, isn't it? Do you need directions?"

The man said nothing, just continued to stare at him.

"Directions?" Blair repeated helpfully. "Where are you trying to go?"

There was more silence, and the man frowned. Then the frown vanished and he finally spoke. "Leave."

"I'm sorry--what?"

"Leave."

Before Blair could puzzle out the sense of that, the man tossed back one side of his long poncho.

In his right hand he held a gun.

Blair flinched in surprise. "Wha--"

"Leave." The man advanced a step. "You can leave. Now."

Putting up his hands, Blair backed away. "Hey, what's going on? What're you--" With a thump, he fetched up against his office door.

"Open it."

Blair reached behind himself and opened the door. He backed inside the room.

"That window there--leave."

Blair stared at him in shock, unable to believe what was happening. The sound of the gun being cocked echoed in the early morning silence and Blair said quickly, "Okay, okay. Take it easy."

"I won't say it again."

"I'm...I'm going."

Clutching his jacket in one hand, Blair dropped out of the first-floor window, then crouched down by the building. He heard the man's footsteps move away. Quickly, he pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and punched in the number he knew best.

"They got a final count yet?"

Simon ran a hand tiredly over his face. "Two dead and eight wounded. Awful, but it could've been much worse. If it hadn't been so early, if Sandburg hadn't--my god, Jim, I can't believe what you just told me; face to face with the killer and the guy lets him go!--but if he hadn't gotten people out so quickly, this could've been even more of a nightmare."

Jim felt his heart constrict at the thought of the nightmare that could've been. He looked over at his truck. Blair sat in the cab, Jim's coat draped over his shoulders. Dialing up his eyesight, the detective saw that his partner was immobile, staring blankly at the dash.

Simon glanced that way as well. "How is he?"

"About like you'd expect--shook up, in shock. Blames himself for not taking the shooter out when he first saw him."

"What?! That's bullshit, Jim!"

The detective shrugged. "You know it and I know it. Eventually, he'll know it, too."

"Well...you see that he does. Pronto!" Simon chewed his cigar, taking out his strong feelings on the unlit stogie. "From what the survivors tell us, Sandburg should get a medal."

Jim nodded, his eyes fixed on the figure in the truck. When the detective had first arrived, he'd seen Blair hauling people out the windows of Hargrove Hall. The gunman was at one end of the building, shooting up room after room--most of which, thank god, had been empty. Blair had already gone back into the building at least twice, bringing people out. Jim had grabbed his Kevlar vest and was racing toward the building, ready to go in after the shooter, when the gunfire had suddenly stopped. The gunman had finally turned his weapon on himself.

The scene had quickly become a roiling mass of ambulances, police, frantic family members, and media. Jim made time to get a brief but firm reassurance from Blair that he was unhurt, then both men were embroiled in the madness. When Jim had finally detached himself from his side of it and sought out his friend, he'd found Blair holding the hand of a woman on a gurney. The paramedics wheeled this last victim away, and Blair was left standing alone.

He wasn't alone for long. 

"Chief!" Jim called, relief flooding him again at the sight of his friend whole and uninjured.

Blair's head came around slowly, as though he was too stiff to move properly. "Jim?"

"Hey, buddy, how you doing?"

"I'm okay. I'm, um, cold." He pulled his lightweight jacket closer.

Jim was carrying his own coat over one arm--the midday sun seemed quite warm to him. As he draped it around the younger man's shoulders, he could feel Blair shaking. "Here. This'll help."

"How many...how many people were hurt? Did I ask that already?"

Jim looked closely at his friend. Confusion blurred those familiar blue eyes. Confusion and a world of shock and pain. "Let's go sit down, Chief. Come on. The truck's just over there."

Blair resisted the pull of Jim's hand on his arm. "He told me to leave," he murmured, and then began to shudder violently.

Jim wrapped an arm around his shoulders and walked him to the truck. Once he got Blair seated on the passenger side, he said, "Let me crank the engine and get the heater going."

Blair's hand on his arm kept him where he was. "No. It's okay. I'm...better. You didn't say...did you?...how many people were hurt?"

"I don't know yet. But bad as it is, it would've been much worse without you. You're a hero."

The lines of pain on Blair's pale face deepened. "Hero? Oh my god, Jim. I should've stopped him. I should--"

"You should what? He was armed to the teeth--high-powered rifle, two handguns, extra ammo. There was nothing anybody here could've done against all that. But you saved people, Blair. You kept your head and you got people out of the building."

His friend wouldn't be comforted. "You don't understand. I was right there! I was three feet away from him before he started shooting. Jesus Christ, Jim, I talked to him!"

"Y-you what?"

"I was coming out of my office, late for my meeting with the dean--he set it really early just to piss me off--and I ran into a man in the hall. He was standing there looking kind of lost, so I said...oh, god, Jim! I asked if he needed directions! I smiled at the son of a bitch! He looked like a parent--"

"He was a parent, Chief. Apparently, his son applied to the university, didn't get in, and killed himself." Blair closed his eyes, swaying slightly. "We don't know if the kid's suicide was connected to the rejection. But his father obviously thought it was. Come on, tell me the rest of it." Impulsively, Jim put a hand to Blair's pinched face. "You thought he was lost and....?"

Blair tilted his head slightly, letting it rest for just an instant against the comforting warmth of Jim's hand. Then he opened his eyes and stiffened his back.

"Yeah, I thought he was lost. He looked at me, blinked a few times, then told me to leave. I was trying to figure out what the hell he meant when he pushed back the rain poncho he was wearing and I saw he had a gun on me! He told me again to leave. Told me to go out my office window. He cocked the gun, and told me he...he wouldn't say it again." Blair looked down at his hands, clenched in his lap. "So...so...shit, Jim, I ran!" He looked up again, and added angrily, "I went out the damn window and left him in there!"

Jim was silent for several seconds, trying to take in what he'd heard. The gun had been cocked and pointed at Blair? The same gun that would be used to kill just seconds later? His friend had come that close to dying?

Saved by some bizarre twist of fate. Some bizarre twist in the mind of a killer.

And suddenly he was furious, not at his partner, but at the gunman. For what he'd done here today and for what he could so easily have done. Except for a twist of fate.

"Well, Sandburg, what the hell else were you supposed to do?" Jim demanded. "You're not Superman! You're not even a cop, and even if you were, what the hell would you have done differently? You were unarmed, for chrissake! It's amazing you managed to keep your head enough to take the cell phone with you. That you called me right away, knowing I'd probably still be close after dropping you off. That you went back in the building to get people out. Went back twice! Jesus Christ, do I have to spell it out for you? You're a hero, you idiot!"

Blair was silent for so long that Jim began to wonder what it was going to take to reach him. Finally he spoke, softly enough that Jim had to bend closer to catch the words.

"Hero...and idiot."

A wave of relief brought a grin to Jim's face. He pulled Blair in for a rough embrace then pushed him back onto the truck seat. "Stay here, idiot. I have to see Simon, then we'll leave. Okay?"

Blair nodded.

As Jim started to go, Blair stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Jim. Thanks."

"For what?"

"For, uh...." His shoulders twitched in a shrug. "Pretty much for being you."

"I told him getting out was the right thing to do, the only thing he could do."

Simon nodded. "Well, tell him for me that he did good." The gruff captain glared at Jim. "Hear that, Ellison? Tell him he did good."

A small smile. "Roger, Captain. I'll pass along the message. Do we have any idea....I mean, do we know why this guy let Blair leave? He seems to have been shooting up the place indiscriminately--men, women, professors, students, anybody he came across. Why'd he let Sandburg go?"

A flicker of pain, quickly gone, moved across the captain's dark face. "Who knows what goes on in the mind of a guy like that? He was barely alive when we got to him. Babbling. Didn't make any sense at all."

The captain's tone, his expression, told Jim that that wasn't the whole story. "Simon, what is it? Exactly what did the guy say?"

The captain glanced over at the truck. It was much too far away for Blair to hear them, but he lowered his voice anyway. "Jim, don't tell Sandburg, okay? Having this happen, coming face-to-face with the guy--he's got enough to deal with. You just let him know that he did great. The people who were here, they're all saying it."

"I know it, Simon. I've told him that. And I'll make him see that it's the truth. But tell me. What did the gunman say?"

With a resigned sigh, the captain explained. "When we reached him--I was with the paramedics--he was just barely hanging on. There was really nothing to be done. But he was talking--well, whispering, mumbling is more like it. Crazy stuff. Said something like, 'Not too good for Mark'--that was his son--'not any more.' Then he said something else, and I didn't think I'd heard right because it didn't make sense, not until you told me what Sandburg said about bumping into the guy. About trying to be helpful. About, uh, smiling at him."

Jim waited, but the captain said nothing more. "Smiling at him?" the detective repeated. Then the significance of the words registered, and Jim felt his jaw go slack. "Jesus Christ, Simon, that poor, crazy bastard let Sandburg live because he smiled at him?"

"Keep your voice down!" They both glanced at the truck. Blair gave no sign of noticing anything. The captain added, "Just before he died, he said, 'Smile...just like Mark.' He must've meant Sandburg."

Both men were silent for a long minute, Simon shaking his head and Jim stunned. Blair owed his life to a smile? If he'd collided with the guy and reacted the way most people--the way Jim himself--probably would have, by being rude or brushing past him, Blair might be dead now. Instead, he'd apologized, he'd offered to help.

He had smiled.

Suddenly, the sentinel's head swiveled toward the truck and tilted in a listening pose.

Simon glanced that way as well, confused for only a instant before realizing that Sandburg must've spoken. The captain grimaced. Even after all this time, he still found demonstrations of Jim's hypersenses unnerving. Especially when they happened right in front of him. The detective was frozen in place like a statue, listening to voices in his head.

Well, to one voice anyway.

Jim waved at the truck in acknowledgment of whatever Blair had said, then turned back to Simon. "I'm taking him home, Captain. Okay?"

"Yeah, fine. But remember what I said. You tell the kid he did good. And...don't mention that other thing."

"Right."

Jim left his captain and walked quickly toward the truck. His own life had been saved by various tricks of fate over the years--a crook with a gun that jammed, his own luck at finding a fortuitous piece of cover or having quicker reflexes in a fight, and of course his hypersenses--but he'd never owed his survival to something as innocuous-seeming as a smile.

It was unbelievable.

It was terrifying.

Jim saw that Blair was leaning against the passenger side window, his head tilted down. Though his long hair covered most of his face, Jim had no trouble recognizing the agony written in his posture, in the shivers that once again wracked his body. So the sentinel called softly, reassuringly, to his guide.

"Hey, idiot."

Blair lifted his head.

And smiled.

*~End~*

Endnote--This was inspired by a Sept. 1999 news story on the anniversary of the 1966 UT-Austin shootings. A 17-year-old girl and her date met the shooter as he was entering the observation tower. She said hello. He said hello back and went up the tower to begin a shooting spree that lasted 90+ hours. Authorities called her the luckiest person in the state of Texas that day.

I don't mean to make light of this incident; the news story really haunted me. 

Webmaster: PJ Browning