I’d given it away a long time ago.
My name drifted to me from somewhere far away. Urgently. Demanding my attention.
“Emma!”
It was Ben.
I lifted my gaze. Blinked.
Ben.
I slipped the chip into my pocket and fumbled in Nate’s slacks for his keys, finally finding the one I needed.
In medicine, you’re faced with impossible choices every day. Where does the line lie between good and bad, benefit and harm? Radiation and chemotherapy kill healthy cells and damage a patient’s body, but can also save their life. We amputate limbs to save someone’s life from, say, gangrene or flesh-eating bacteria. Under narrowly defined circumstances, assisted dying gives patients a means of dying with dignity.
Saving a patient’s life or, in some cases, terminating it humanely justifies the pain of chemo or the loss of a limb or handing a patient the pills that will help ease their suffering.
I guess what I’m saying is, sometimes we have to harm to heal. To get justice in an unjust world.
I unlocked the handcuffs binding Ben’s wrists. My tears were already cooling on my frozen cheeks; soon they would turn to ice.
“Gabe killed Violeta,” I told Ben. “I saw him do it. He gave her the wrong bag of drugs because he wanted the money in the briefcase, and then he pushed her body into the river to get rid of the evidence. I swore I wouldn’t tell you because I wanted help getting the money to save Josh. I’m so sorry, Ben. I should’ve told you sooner.”
Ben staggered to his feet, blinking hard over and over. He twisted his wrists to get the blood moving. He threw the hat and tie I’d knotted around his head to the ground. His eyes burned with a crazed light. Blood from his mangled ear streaked his jaw and neck.
I picked up the gun and held it out. “I’ll take care of everything.”
Ben grabbed the gun and lurched toward the door.
“Ben!” He glanced over his shoulder. “You weren’t here for this. You and Carlos fought earlier. He shot you. But you weren’t here for this.”
Ben nodded, and a second later he disappeared into the whirling snow.
I turned to study the scene. I let my breathing slow, my mind going blank, my thoughts receding. I didn’t have much time. Trace evidence would show hair, fiber, blood, fingerprints, tissue. Probably even the drugs.
Now more than ever I had to stay calm. Focused.
What I did now would determine my future. Not just mine, though. It would determine Ben’s and Josh’s as well.
I was at another fork in the road: Do the right thing or the necessary thing. Tell the truth or protect those who were left.
Nate was dead.
I couldn’t lose anybody else.
I gathered all the little bottles of oxy, the baggies of fentanyl, the scales, Ben’s backpack of clothes, his little red notebook of customers. Every scrap of evidence I could find. I wiped everything down that I had touched.
The drugs and notebook I buried a little way up the path under a gnarled root growing in an arch from the frozen ground. I used a sharp stick to score a hole under the root, and covered everything with dead leaves and twigs. The snow was falling so hard it would, I hoped, be covered by the time the crime scene techs arrived. I hefted Ben’s backpack and the scales into the swirling water.
I ran back to the warehouse, using the branch of an evergreen to sweep at my footprints in the snow.
Somewhere in the distance, the faint crack of a gunshot ripped through the icy air. A stutter of silence. And then another.
My chest clenched. Ben had done it, then. That was why I’d given him the gun, wasn’t it? To get rid of Gabe? I didn’t feel any regret, though. No, only relief. An eye for an eye.
I hurried inside and knelt over Nate’s body. I touched his cheek where the blood had cooled into little icicles
“I am so, so sorry,” I whispered, closing his eyes with my fingertips. I kissed each eyelid and traced an X over his chest. “I won’t fail you. I won’t fail our son.”
I didn’t have to fake the tears that fell then, the horrible, awful keening that wrenched from my throat when I dialed 911.
CHAPTER 43
I WOKE SLOWLY, emerging into consciousness like a baby deer into a clearing, timid and uneasy.
Early-morning light filtered through partially open blinds, falling in watery sepia stripes on the floor. A numbing fog curled around my head, hovering over me like a mushroom cloud. Rhythmic beeps. The quiet shushing of shoes on linoleum.
Clutched in my hand was my father’s lucky poker chip.
I blinked and turned my head slowly to one side, seeing an IV stand, its thin tubing snaking under white sheets. And then I remembered.
The IV was in Josh’s arm.
Nate was dead.
Gabe was dead.
Ben was missing.
My heart blistered in my chest, turning into charred black ash. I curled my knuckles to my face and wept with horror and rage and regret, burying my head in the pillow and wishing the darkness would block out the guilt.
So much guilt.
It sat like a thorn in my throat, piercing my defenses and leaving a scar that would never heal.
A gentle knock came, and Jodie Finch, my family liaison officer, entered. Jodie was a doe-eyed young woman with a sober manner and shapeless beige clothes. Her mouse-brown hair was scraped into a tight bun, her thin lips pale and bloodless.
She’d been assigned immediately after Nate was killed, and had been a shadow stuck to my side ever since. Noting my tear-stained face, she wordlessly handed me a tissue, then moved the giant Santa-dressed teddy bear—a Christmas gift from Dr. Palmer—out of the way and sat down. Josh had woken only sporadically the last week. He didn’t realize Christmas had passed or that his father had died.
I wiped my tears and pulled myself to a sitting position on the couch the nurses had set up for me in Josh’s room. He’d been moved out of intensive care yesterday, a week after he’d collapsed. A week since my entire world had imploded.
“How are you today?” Jodie said, her voice soft and husky. Her voice was her best quality, warm but gentle. Soothing. Maybe I didn’t want her to leave. I couldn’t bear the thought of being alone.
I rubbed the skin between my eyebrows. “I’m okay.”
“And Josh?”
“He isn’t out of the woods yet, but the doctors are optimistic.” Every day Josh was getting a little bit stronger.
Last week after the immunotherapy, Josh’s temperature had spiked to 107°F and he’d collapsed, having seizure after seizure. He was diagnosed with cytokine release syndrome. He’d been on oxygen therapy and antihypotensive agents for low blood pressure, but so far the doctors had been able to avoid any antibiotics, which could negate the effect of immunotherapy.
“The funeral procession starts at one p.m.,” Jodie reminded me. As if I could forget.
I glanced at Josh to make sure he hadn’t woken and heard her. The last thing I wanted was to harm any chance he had of recovering by telling him about Nate’s death.
There would be time for that later.
“Can I get you anything?” Jodie asked gently. “A coffee? Or I can go to your house and get you something to wear.”
“No, I’ll do it,” I said quickly. I didn’t want her in my home. “I need to see my dog, anyway.”
Moira had been a complete rock, checking on Charlie every day, organizing Nate’s funeral, coordinating the funeral procession with the police department. By contrast, I had done nothing but sit by Josh’s side the last week, silently begging him not to leave me too.
Another knock came at the door, and Kia peeked in.
“Emma? Do you have a minute?”
“I’ll stay with Josh,” Jodie said.
I followed Kia down the corridor. “Julia was released yesterday,” she said. “She’s asking for you.”
“I’m so glad to hear that. I’ll stop and see her when I can.”
She pushed open
the door to one of the hospital’s family rooms and waited for me to enter. The rectangular room had soft gray carpeting and ivy-green accent walls. Four leather chairs faced inward around a small glass table.
A man and a woman, both in black suits, stood when I entered. The woman had sharp, angled features and thin lips; the man was tall, with a military-style buzz cut, his suit beautifully tailored.
“This is Special Agent Lisa Hamilton and Special Agent Phil Greene,” Kia said. She smoothed a hand over her unruly dark hair. Her fingernails were bitten-down, her eyes red from too many sleepless nights. “They’re with the Seattle division of the DEA.”
I shook their hands, my heart doing acrobatics inside my chest.
“Here, sit.” Agent Hamilton gestured at the chair across from her.
“We want to extend our deepest condolences,” she began. “I assure you, we will investigate your husband’s death to the full extent of the law.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not sure if you were aware, but Nate was working on a case with us.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“Nate was looking for Ben Hardman. Your brother. We had reason to believe he was involved in an opioid drug ring, and Nate was looking into it.”
I kept my face cool and expressionless, but I hadn’t expected that.
“Have you heard from Ben?” she asked.
“Not since the night I brought him to the hospital when he’d overdosed.”
“And you didn’t see him at the warehouse before Gabriel Wilson shot your husband?”
I shook my head. “No.”
Agent Hamilton looked at some notes she had on her lap. “Can you refresh my memory? Why did you go to the warehouse again?”
I sat back in my chair. The male agent had his arms crossed and was looking at me beneath half-lowered lids.
I glanced at the door. “I need to get back to my son.”
“Sure. Let’s make this quick then.” Hamilton smiled. Her teeth were very small.
“Nate called me and said Ben had disappeared from the hospital. He thought Ben was going to the warehouse, so I headed there too.”
“Did Nate say he needed you there?” she asked.
“No, but Ben’s my brother. I wanted to make sure he was okay.”
“And was he at the warehouse when you arrived?”
“No.”
“I appreciate this is very painful, but can you tell me again what you saw when you arrived?”
Tears welled in my eyes. Kia handed me a tissue.
I took a deep breath. “I heard a gunshot when I was parking.”
“One gunshot?”
“It was two. Bam. Bam. I ran in and found Nate standing over a body. Carlos Martinez, I learned. I thought Nate had shot him. But then I saw Gabe. He had a gun too.”
“So Ben wasn’t at the scene?”
“No.”
“We found spots of Ben’s blood on the floor.”
I shrugged. “Maybe he was there at some point, but not when I was.”
She glanced down at her notes, conceding the point. “You know we found Ben?”
I straightened. “Where is he?”
“He’s in a rehab center over near Seattle. We questioned him yesterday. He says he left the hospital around noon that day. He went to buy pills from Carlos Martinez at the warehouse. They argued, and Carlos shot Ben.”
My hand flew to my mouth. “Is he okay?”
Agent Hamilton looked at me closely. “He’s fine. He’s lost most of his left ear, but he’s fine. According to Ben, at that point he realized he had a problem and decided to check himself into rehab.”
I stared at her, wondering how much Ben had paid to get someone to change the time he was admitted to rehab.
“Were you able to ascertain why Gabriel Wilson was with Carlos Martinez?”
“From what I could gather, they were involved in an opioid ring. Nate said they’d been arguing about one of their partners, someone called Violeta Williams. Gabe…” I swallowed hard. “He grabbed me and put the gun to my head. We struggled. I managed to get out of his grasp and he tried to shoot me, but Nate jumped in front of me. That’s when he…” The tears spilled over. I sobbed into the tissue for a minute.
“I’m so sorry for your loss, Dr. Sweeney,” Agent Hamilton said softly. “I’m sure we can trust you to give us a call if you think of anything else?”
“Yes. Of course.”
Hamilton and Greene stood. After a brief handshake they left, leaving Kia and me alone in the family room. A long silence stretched between us.
Kia stared at me, her dark gaze malicious. “We found a scarf with Violeta Williams’s DNA on it in Gabriel Wilson’s jacket.”
“Did he kill her?”
“That’s the working theory. You’re sure you didn’t see your brother at the warehouse?”
“Yes.” My voice tipped over into irritation before I could stop it. “Why do you keep asking me that?”
Kia’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t believe me, but she had no evidence to back up whatever theories she was constructing. Ben’s blood and fingerprints had been found in the warehouse, but she couldn’t prove when they’d gotten there. I was the only witness. A doctor. The wife of a murdered police officer. My credentials were unimpeachable.
As far as they knew, Carlos and Gabe had run the drug lab. Their fingerprints were all over too.
“After Gabriel Wilson shot Nate and ran away, you said you heard a shot?”
“Yes. He must’ve… killed himself out of guilt.”
“Was it just one shot you heard?”
I hesitated, trying to remember what I’d said before. “I think so.” I looked down at my hands tearing the tissue into little pieces. “It’s hard to remember now.”
“The thing is, Gabriel Wilson was found with two bullet wounds. Most people trying to kill themselves don’t shoot twice.”
She looked at me for a long time then. “The bullets that killed Gabe matched the bullet that killed Nate. The same weapon killed them both.”
I didn’t say anything, so she continued.
“We never found the gun used to kill Nate. Do you know where it might’ve gone?”
“Presumably it was with Gabe.”
“Did you kill Gabriel Wilson?”
I drew back, repelled by her words. “Are you seriously asking me that?” I hissed. “How dare you. My son is gravely ill. My husband has been murdered.”
“All the more motive.”
“I’m not a murderer!”
She sat back in the chair. “There were partial footprints along the path near the water. Someone followed him.”
I stood, furious, and walked to the door. “I’ll speak to Lieutenant Dyson about this.”
She stood and faced me. “Please do. In the meantime, I’ll continue doing my job. And trust me”—she narrowed her eyes—“I’ll find out what really happened to Nate.”
She brushed past me, striding down the hall with angry, purposeful steps. But then she stopped and returned, withdrawing something from an inner pocket. It was small and square, wrapped in red and green paper. She handed the box to me.
“We found this in his desk.”
I turned the box over. My name was written in Nate’s familiar slanted scrawl on the gift tag attached.
“If you know anything,” Kia said, her eyes hard, “anything at all, you owe it to Nate to speak up.”
“I know exactly what I owe my husband, Detective Sharpe.”
After she’d left, I unwrapped the box slowly, imagining Nate’s face the day we were married, the way he’d watched me as I turned the corner at city hall. We hadn’t had the money for a fancy wedding or honeymoon, and anyway, I was pregnant. I’d arrived after a busy shift and he’d been waiting for me, patient and handsome in his black suit and striped tie.
“Mo chuisle,” he’d whispered into my hair as he pulled me into his arms. His eyes were soft and warm, like moonlight on my face. “Are you read
y?”
And I was.
I opened the box and pulled a delicate necklace from its nest of white silk. All the oxygen left my lungs and tears rushed to my eyes, my knees threatening to give out as I realized exactly what it was.
The pendant tying the delicate sterling silver chain together was a jagged line, up and down, up and down, mimicking the EKG wave of a heartbeat.
Mo chuisle.
My heartbeat.
And I knew. No matter what I had done, Nate had loved me. Eternally.
CHAPTER 44
BACK IN JOSH’S ROOM, I asked Jodie to grab me a coffee. After she’d gone, I sat next to Josh and watched him sleep. I traced his face with my eyes. He was so thin now, I could see the sharp ridges of his cheekbones, the point of his chin. His skin was milk pale, translucent, the tiny veins stark just beneath. His eyes moved under hairless eyelids and he stirred, bringing a hand to his shoulder before relaxing into sleep again.
I pulled my father’s poker chip out of my pocket and rolled it over my knuckles, the way Dr. Palmer had taught me when I was a teenager.
“Use your thumb to push the coin across the back of your finger, then raise your middle finger and push the side of the coin down so it flips onto the back of your middle finger,” he’d said.
Sometimes when he visited, I couldn’t understand why he bothered. I was a morose girl, lonely and insecure. And yet he continued visiting, every two weeks, like clockwork.
I’d asked him once why he kept coming. “There’s a Chinese proverb that says, if you save a life, you’re responsible for that life. I found you, Emma. A piece of you is in me now. I’m responsible for you.”
That’s when he’d pulled the coin from his pocket and showed me how to roll it over my fingers. “I taught this to my daughter when she was about your age,” he’d said.
A sharp rap came at the door, and Dr. Palmer peeked in.
Speak of the devil, I thought wryly, slipping the poker chip into my pocket.
“How’s our boy?” he asked softly.
“You tell me.”
He crossed to the monitors attached to Josh’s small body and read one of the printouts.
“He’s looking really good, Emma.” Dr. Palmer pressed his stethoscope to Josh’s chest, so smoothly that Josh didn’t even wake up. “Our ultimate goal was to avoid any organ toxicity, and the systemic corticosteroid use has worked really well to do that and to reverse the symptoms of the cytokine release syndrome without compromising his immunotherapy.”
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