He turned her over tenderly, smoothed back the tangled hair from her forehead, tried to wipe some of the dirt and bubbles of red from her lips.
An FBIT man rushed toward them with a microphone. With one terrible look, Jacques sent him scurrying back.
"Ann ... Ann ..." he cried. "What have I done?"
Her glazing, pain-filled eyes cleared for a moment, and drew him closer. In them, for all the pain, there was peace at last. No reproach, no disappointment. Only peace. And he knew then, what he should always have known: That when a man lived as one with Death, he could not give less to any person, nor expect more.
Ann's fingers crawled through the dust and touched the toe of his boot. Her quivering lips twisted in a final grimace of ecstacy. And out of the lonely void of the dying came the words he had always hoped to hear, and would never hear again:
"Good night," she whispered. "You—were wonderful—my lover—my husband."