Byrne held his daughter. Someone had mercifully cut the rope from her hands and feet and put a suit coat over her shoulders. She shivered in his arms. Byrne thought of the time she had defied him when they had gone to Atlantic City one unseasonably warm April. She had been about six or seven. He had told her that, just because the air temperature was seventy-five, it didn't mean the water was warm. She had run into the ocean anyway.
When she'd come out, just a few minutes later, she had been a pastel blue. She had quivered and quaked in his embrace for almost an hour, teeth chattering, signing I'm sorry, Dad, over and over again. He had held her then. He vowed to never stop.
Jessica knelt down next to them.
Colleen and Jessica had become close after Byrne had been shot that spring. They had spent many an afternoon waiting out his coma. Colleen had taught Jessica a number of handshapes, including the basic alphabet.
Byrne looked between them, and sensed their secret.
Jessica raised her hands, spelled the words in three clumsy hand- shapes:
He's behindyou.
With tears in his eyes, Byrne thought about Gracie Devlin. He thought about her life force. He thought about her breath still inside him. He glanced at the body of the man who had brought this latest evil to his city. He glimpsed his own future.
Kevin Byrne knew he was ready.
He exhaled.
He drew his daughter even closer. And it was in this way they comforted each other, and would for a long time to come.
In silence.
Like the language of film.