Here it is - the section that had me in tears when I first read it.
Poor Clark! What an impossible choice - an earthquake or a hostage situation? Whichever he chose, he was always going to be in the wrong, wasn't he?
These lines just made me want to weep for him:
She wanted to tell him that he was not to blame for those deaths today. He could not have known that a mad despot would order his army to kill four hundred innocents just to get at three hijackers. Nobody else had guessed that Rwinde had been that far down the path to megalomania and madness, so why should Clark have been expected to know?
She sat down beside him, the inches between them a chasm that she desperately wanted to cross. She wanted to wipe away his tears. She wanted to wrap him in her arms. She wanted to rock him gently, as though she would a child.
It would be the easiest thing in the world to reach out to him because how could she *not* talk to him, when he sat like that, bowed down with misery and a guilt that was not his to bear. He needed someone so desperately. He needed a confidante. He needed comfort.
He needed her. There was nobody else.
This is so incredibly well-written, Chris, and it's already on my Kerth list.
Wendy
