The Accident by Chris Pavone Page A

the right decisions about what to do with her career, how to live her life. That certainty was a great comfort, lulling her to sleep quickly every night, getting her out of bed energized every morning.
    Then the husband and children introduced doubt, levels of qualms that waxed and waned over the years. Sometimes she has been deep under the doubt, drowning in it, unable to see daylight up above; sometimes floating on top of it, a gentle backstroke to stay afloat. But it has always been there, always threatening.
    Should she have a safe comfortable desk job instead of this dangerous operational fieldwork? Should she be home more? Home all the time? She wasn’t terribly satisfied with that life, for the couple of years that she experimented with the stay-at-home-parent lifestyle in Luxembourg and Paris. She was bored, and resentful, and unfulfilled. Not to mention constantly worried that when the kids had finally left the nest, she’d havespent a dozen years without a job, and for all intents and purposes she’d be unemployable. At least, unemployable in any capacity that would appeal to her. She’d be career-less, one of those at-sea middle-aged women grasping at a second act, a docent at a third-rate cultural institution, or teaching English to foreigners.
    On the other hand, it was indisputable that no one lies on her deathbed lamenting that she spent too much time with her children, and not enough time working. No one sane, that is. She’d like to think of herself as sane.
    Plus of course “working” doesn’t often mean—shouldn’t mean—getting shot in the head in a Danish apartment by Turkish drug dealers. If that’s what these guys are.
    She watches one of them take another step into the room, and another. His gun is trained steadily at Hayden’s head, above the shoulder of the hostage that Hayden is holding in front of him. She suspects that these Turks don’t have any particular interest in keeping Grundtvig alive, so perhaps “hostage” isn’t the operative concept for the poor student’s function in front of Hayden. The Dutch kid is merely a physical shield, a nice thick mound of bullet-absorbing flesh.
    This situation is very, very bad. Exactly the type of scenario that Kate envisages when she’s awake in the middle of the night, away from her family, pondering the question, What’s the worst that could happen?
    This. This is the worst.
    And this particular situation is probably not going to improve over time. Every second is working against her. She needs to make something happen, to change the course of this action.
    She mouths the number five at Hayden, and he nods infinitesimally, confirming his understanding of the tactic. He begins another countdown in his head.
    Four, he mouths, setting the pace.
    The first Turk is now just ten feet in front of Hayden, and continuing to move forward.
    Three.
    Kate inhales deeply, her shoulders rising with the effort, moving the barrel of the gun slightly off her skin, a half-centimeter.
    Two.
    Hayden blinks on the beat of the final second.
    One.
    Kate’s right hand shoots up across her face, to her left temple, and grabs the barrel of the weapon that’s resting on her skin, changing the angle just as an explosion rings in her ear, while at the same time throwing her left elbow backward, sinking deep into the paunch of the Turk behind her.
    Bits of the ceiling fall on her head, her shoulders, from the bullet’s damage. She spins around, still holding the barrel of the weapon pointed at the ceiling with her right hand. With the heel of her left hand she hammers this guy in the face, an upward thrust, but she misses somewhat and hits his lip, his front teeth gouging her, but she doesn’t pause, doesn’t give him time to recover, and strikes again, this time to the trachea, and he crumples.
    She seizes the weapon, just as she hears the other Turk’s gun fire twice, and every muscle in her body tenses, preparing to have been shot, to be about to die here,