Shooting Starr. Kathleen Creighton

the only person who uses it is my sister, Lucy.” His mouth tilted in a half smile. “Only my students call me Mr. Brown.”

      “You’re a teacher?” said C.J., feeling dimwitted.

      “Used to be. I’m a vice principal now.”

      C.J. tried a smile and he, too, only managed half of one. “Guess that explains why I feel like I’m sitting in the principal’s office.”

      Wood Brown’s smile was replaced by a look of dismay, then of compassion. He leaned forward, his pose almost a mirror image of C.J.’s. “Son—I know you feel responsible for what’s happened to my daughter and that other woman, but you’re not. Chris—Caitlyn’s mother—and I sure don’t blame you, and I don’t think Caty does, either. She put you in an impossible position, and you did what you believed was the right thing under the circumstances. That’s all any man can do.”

      “If what I did was so right,” C.J. said, looking at the floor and forcing words through clenched teeth, “then how come I feel so damn—excuse me—darn bad?”

      Wood sat back with a sigh and ran a hand over his thick, iron-gray hair. His rugged features were somber. “It’s not always a matter of a choice between a right and a wrong. Sometimes it’s a matter of choosing the lesser of a whole bunch of wrongs. When that happens, you just do the best you can.”

      He sat silent for a moment, looking at nothing, then shook his head. “I have—had—this great-aunt. She lived to be well over a hundred, but she’s gone now, bless her soul. Aunt Gwen always believed if you wait long enough it usually turns out things happen the way they’re supposed to. Providence, she called it.” He smiled in a remembering way. “Take me, for example. I met my wife after I broke both my legs in a truck accident in Bosnia. At the time I thought it was the end of the world—the end of sports, my career, all the things I liked to do—but if it hadn’t been for that accident I wouldn’t have met my wife. And I wouldn’t have been there when she needed me to save her life.”

      C.J. gave a snort of surprise, and Wood smiled. “A long story and one for another time. I guess what I’m saying is, it’s too soon to tell, yet, how this is all supposed to play out. Could be you were where you needed to be just so Caty could pick you to hijack.” His smile slipped sideways, and he gave a one-shoulder shrug. “You never know…”

      Since C.J. couldn’t think of a thing to say that wasn’t going to sound rude, he kept his mouth shut. Thinking about it, though, it occurred to him that whether he believed in all that Providence stuff or not, it was a remarkable attitude for a man whose only child was lying in a hospital bed with a bullet crease in her skull and blinded maybe for life. He felt humble and grateful and undeserving, which brought him back to what he’d wanted to say to Caitlyn’s father in the first place.