Kelly was dying. Neither of them said it directly, but that was what they’d just told him.
This was unreal. This couldn’t be happening. This was just part of the god-awful nightmare he’d been trapped in for the past few days. It had, however, just been ramped up to a new, more terrifying level.
“What happened?” he asked as the doors opened onto a floor marked ICU. “How did she get hurt?”
“Car bomb,” Jazz reported.
“What?” Tom stopped walking, but they kept carrying him forward.
“Cosmo was with her, Tommy,” Stan told him. “He’s injured, too, but not as bad as Kelly. It’s probably best if you get the whole story from him.”
Damn it, this was his own fault. Kelly had been digging around, looking for ways to help prove Tom’s innocence, and it never even occurred to him that she might actually stir up real trouble. A fucking car bomb.
“Was the bomb in her car?” he asked. Dear God, how badly had she been hurt?
“No,” Stan said, but then Tom stopped listening, because there she was.
Kelly.
In the middle of a hospital bed, hooked up to all sorts of machines with wires and tubes and, oh, God …
Her face was scraped and her hair was singed. She still had all her arms and legs. But internal injuries, Jazz had said.
Stan or maybe Jazz pushed a chair up behind him, and he sat, holding on to her hand. It was scraped. She had little nicks and cuts on her wrist and all the way up her arm. Flying glass could do that to you.
“Hey, Kel,” he said to her, even though she was unconscious. Maybe, just maybe, she could hear him. “It’s me. Tom.”
His voice shook, and he stopped, took a deep breath. He didn’t want her to hear his fear. No fear. No doubt. No letting her think there were any options besides getting through this.
“Here’s what we’re going to do, all right?” He leaned close. “I’m going to stay here with you. Every step of the way. You’re not alone. Whatever you do, don’t forget that. And what you’re going to do is stay alive. Keep fighting. Don’t quit on me, okay? Keep breathing. Inhale and then exhale. Remember when I told you about going through BUD/S training? Well, this is just like BUD/S, Kel. So stay in the moment, and stay in the game. One breath, one heartbeat at a time. Don’t think beyond that. Don’t think about how much it hurts or how tired you are. Don’t think. Just breathe. Just stay alive. I’m counting on you to do that.”
“Sir.”
He looked up to find a nurse standing beside him, a clipboard in her hands.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but the surgeon’s ready,” she told him, and hope was in her voice, her eyes, her body language. “If you’ll just sign these forms …”
“Who’s the doctor?” Tom asked.
Jazz was there behind him. “Anne Marie Kenyon’s the head of the trauma team. She’s the best, Tom. I made sure of it.”
The nurse explained the procedure, but the words flew past Tom, only a few standing out. Stop the internal bleeding at the source … force of the blast … multisystem trauma … damaged kidneys and liver … spleen … a risk to operate … Dr. Kenyon’s opinion … Kelly’s only real chance.
Jazz leaned closer. “I spoke to Dr. Kenyon before you arrived, and I made some phone calls and talked to the other doctors about her, too. She knows what she’s doing. Sign the releases, sir.”
Tom let go of Kelly’s hand and signed the forms. “May I walk with her?” he asked the nurse.
She smiled at him. “I’m sure Kelly would like it if you did. But only to the double doors, I’m afraid.”
It was maybe twenty-five feet, but Tom took Kelly’s hand and held it the entire way.
But then he had to let her go. “Don’t forget what I said,” he told her. Please don’t let this be the last time he saw Kelly alive. Please … “I love you,” he called as they wheeled her away, as the doors swung shut behind her.
He sensed more than saw Stan and Jazz beside him.
“Take me to Cosmo,” he ordered them. “Now.”
Recovering alcoholics had privacy issues.
Alyssa had always thought Alcoholics Anonymous meetings were open to the public—places where people stood up and said loudly and proudly, “My name is Joe and I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been sober for three years.”
Apparently that was only a small part of the program. Some meetings were twelve-step meetings, some were women-only meetings, some were meetings that focused on reading from a special book, and most were closed to everyone but recovering alcoholics.
Walking in and flashing a picture and asking if anyone knew Mary Lou Starrett was not getting the response she’d hoped for.
It wasn’t getting any kind of response at all. Except for being asked to leave by two very large men wearing motorcycle leather.
But Sam spoke their language. He pulled them aside and in very short order had them looking at the picture of Mary Lou and Haley that Jules had sent to Alyssa, thanks to the Internet and a brief stop at Kinko’s.
But they both shook their heads no.
And then Sam was walking back toward her, shaking his head, too.
He’d taken off his suit jacket because of the heat. He’d actually sewn the sleeve back on with neat, tiny stitches as they drove down from Gainesville, using a needle and thread they’d picked up at a convenience store during a stop for gas and coffee and peanut M&M’s.
His pants were a little dusty—he’d never managed to brush them off completely after wrestling with her in the back hallway of the Wal-Mart. His sleeves were rolled up, but one was higher than the other, and his tie was loosened to the point of ridiculousness.
Aside from the dust and disarray, his clothes weren’t that different from those of men who worked in offices all over this city. But were he and a businessman to stand side by side, Alyssa would have had no problem identifying the Navy SEAL.
It was evident in the way Sam stood, the way he moved, the way he breathed.
“Hank and Roy have been running this particular meeting for the past four years,” he told her now. “They don’t remember seeing her. And they would have. They’re protective of the women in their group. They keep an eye out for thirteen-Steppers.” At her blank look, he explained. “Men who pretend to be part of the program but are really just trolling for vulnerable women.”
“Wow, that’s a shitty thing to do.”
“No kidding.” He led the way out of the building, back toward the car. “I don’t know if we’re on the right track here. It’s possible Mary Lou stopped attending meetings after she moved in with her sister. It’s possible she was already lying low back then. I mean, think about it. She left California the day after the Coronado attack. She must’ve known her prints were on that weapon.” He shook his head. “I just hope wherever she is, she’s not drinking again.”
Alyssa suspected Mary Lou wasn’t—because dead people couldn’t drink. But she kept that to herself as she unlocked the car and they got in.
Sam glanced briefly at the map, finding their next location, before he started the car. “So you want to hear what’s been bugging me about the Ihbraham Rahman thing?”
“Okay.”
He shot her a look. “You think this is a waste of time, don’t you?”
“Sam, I said okay.”
“You think they’re dead,” he accused her.
“I’m trying to be supportive, but …” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m … Look, just tell me.”
“Two things,” Sam said. “First is that I don’t believe Mary Lou would get involved with a man who wasn’t white. So whatever her connection to Rahman was, it wasn’t romantic or sexual. I’m virtually certain of that. She had strong opinions about racial separation.” He laughed in disgust. “I don’t know why I just don’t say it. She was racist, all right? I didn’t find out until a couple of months after we were married.”
Alyssa laughed softly as she looked at him in the light from the dashboard. “Oh, Sam. That mu
st’ve hurt, huh?”
“It made her completely unattractive to me,” he admitted. “I couldn’t get past it. I tried talking to her about it, tried to widen her narrow-minded view—it just came from ignorance—but she just never wanted to talk to me about anything.” He sighed. “That was when our marriage ended. I swear, I should’ve filed for divorce right then and there, but I was too stupid to realize it. Instead, I just stopped trying. It wasn’t conscious. I didn’t even know I gave up. I was so freaking depressed and … I thought I was still trying, but I was just kidding myself. Like I’m really going to be able to make a relationship with this woman work?”
“That would have been a hard one for me, too,” Alyssa told him. “I mean, flip flop it around a little. I’ve dated black men who are really vocal about how much they dislike interracial relationships. They start in on how their little sister better never date a white man, and I’m thinking, Hello. My mother was someone’s little sister, and she married a white man, and if she hadn’t, she never would have had me.” She shook her head. “Needless to say, there’s usually no second date.” She shot him a look. “See how smart it is to have a policy about never having sex with strangers? You never wind up married to someone you don’t want to talk to, let alone live with.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t need any policies like that anymore,” he said. “Because until I have the operation to remove my testicles from my sinuses, I won’t be able to have sex again. Which really isn’t that big a deal since it’s been so long since I’ve had sex, I’ve forgotten what it’s like.”
Alyssa snorted. “If you’re looking for sympathy, Starrett, you’re looking in the wrong place.”
“I’m not,” he said. “I’m just trying to be funny and failing. But there was nothing funny about my marriage. I mean, shit, the whole thing was a tragedy from the start. I didn’t love her, but I honestly did try to like her. But after finding out that …”
Sam stopped at a red light and turned to look at her. “She said something about Jazz, about how hard it must be for me to take orders from him, and I’m telling you, I didn’t get it at first,” he told her. “I honestly thought she had a problem with him because his demeanor is so, you know, grim and serious. I thought she was talking about the fact that it seems like he never smiles, but when I realized that it was because he’s black, I was blown away.”
The car in front of him was moving, but much too slowly. Sam signaled to move into the left lane so he could pass.
He glanced at Alyssa after that. “I didn’t mean to go off on a rant. I just wanted you to know why I’m having such trouble with her alleged connection to Rahman.”
“Don DaCosta did call him Mary Lou’s friend,” Alyssa pointed out. “And he was obviously looking for her.”
“Well, I don’t think she’d be unfriendly to him,” Sam said. “She wasn’t like my father.”
He was silent for a moment as he drove. But then he said, “You know, I’ve been thinking about the fact that Rahman was nearly killed in Coronado. That he got jumped by people in the crowd who were afraid he was armed. There were plenty of other people of Middle Eastern descent who got tackled during that attack. But they were sat on. They weren’t beaten nearly to death.”
“It happens sometimes in a crowd,” Alyssa said. “People lose control. Mob mentality, you know?”
“Yeah, okay, maybe,” Sam said. “But what if it wasn’t an accident that he was the one to get beaten nearly to death? One possibility is that he really was involved with the attack, and the FBI just hasn’t found the connection yet. But maybe someone set him up to be killed there, in Coronado. Because what if Rahman can ID the real terrorists—just like Donny and Mary Lou? Maybe Rahman knows this light-haired guy Donny mentioned—this alien that Don saw all the time in my driveway. You know, the same guy he saw following Rahman yesterday. Jesus, I don’t—” He stopped. Cleared his throat. Kept his eyes on the road. “Donny never hurt anyone. He was—” He stopped again. “He was a good guy. God, his family must be devastated.”
Alyssa didn’t dare touch him. “We don’t have to talk about this right now.”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “We do. Because I want to catch this fucker and watch him fry.” He was holding tightly to the steering wheel. “Lys, what if Rahman’s not the tango? What if it’s Donny’s alien, the blond man—a white guy, right, so Mary Lou’s okay with sleeping with him—who brought that weapon onto the base in Mary Lou’s car?
“Maybe Rahman’s not AWOL,” Sam continued. “Maybe he’s dead. Maybe he’s in the trunk of some car somewhere, with a bullet in his head.”
Alyssa already had her phone out and open and was speed-dialing Jules.
She needed Max to hear Sam’s latest theory about Ihbraham Rahman, but she was still too angry to call him herself.
FORT WORTH, TEXAS
1987
“We’ll still have Sundays to fly,” Noah pointed out as Ringo followed him up the stairs and onto the front porch.
“I don’t think Coach MacGreggor is going to want me to try out,” Ringo said. They went through the screen door, closing it behind them with a bang.
“Why not?”
“Well, to start, he hates my freaking guts.”
The baseball coach also taught history, and Noah knew that he and Ringo had clashed many times over what Ringo insisted were simplified, rich white men’s propagandistic versions of the past.
Noah set his backpack down by the stairs. “He’s not going to bring that with him onto the baseball field.”
“Want to bet?” Ringo muttered.
“You’re just paranoid.” Noah raised his voice. “Hey, we’re home!” He turned back. “Or scared.” He did a quick shuffle to get well out of Ringo’s reach. “You’re a girly man,” he said, imitating Hans and Franz from Saturday Night Live. “Too scared to try out for the high school baseball team, girly man?”
Roger cracked up. “Shut up, fuckhead!”
“Grandma!” Noah pretended to shout, knowing full well that Dot wasn’t wearing her hated hearing aid. “Ringo called me a fuckhead!” Laughing, he escaped Ringo’s skull duster by dashing down the hall to the kitchen.
“Don’t gallop in the house, young sir.” Ringo mimicked Walt’s deep voice as he followed.
“Seriously, Ringo,” Noah started to say, but then he stopped short, just in the doorway to the kitchen.
What the …?
“Seriously, Nos.” Ringo was behind him and didn’t see it. “If you honestly want to, I’ll go to the tryouts with you. God help us both, though.”
“Grampa?” Nos shouted, pushing past Ringo and bolting back toward the stairs.
“Holy fuck,” Ringo said as he saw it—an entire pot of bloodred tomato sauce spilled on the kitchen floor. Walt’s stool was overturned, as well as one of the kitchen chairs.
Noah took the stairs three at a time, heading for the upstairs bathroom, praying that Grandpa had burned himself cooking and that Grandma was with him in the bathroom, searching the medicine cabinet and cussing because she couldn’t find the aloe vera gel.
He could hear Ringo running through the first floor of the big house, shouting for Walt and Dot.
The bathroom was empty. All the bedrooms were, too.
Noah didn’t think of them as old, but they were. They were old, and old people died. Johnny Radford’s father had just had a fatal heart attack. And he had been younger than Walt.
Panic made his chest tight, but he forced it away as he clattered back down the stairs and pushed his way out the screen door.
Walt’s blue station wagon was still parked in the driveway.
Ringo was thinking along the same lines as Noah, and he’d already hopped the fence into the Leonards’ yard—an impressive feat that usually brought Mrs. L out of her house to chase them with her broom. She said she was tired of big boot prints in her flower bed, but that wasn’t Ringo’s fault, that was all Noah. It had been months since Ringo had failed to clear the garden.
; As Noah took the long way around, Mrs. L met Ringo on the porch, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
“Please, ma’am, do you know where Walt and Dot went?” he asked.
“You missed the excitement by just half an hour,” she said, as Noah got to the gate. “Two ambulances, a firetruck, and three police cars.”
No.
“What happened?” Ringo asked. “Where are they?”
“Harris Methodist Hospital,” she told him. “I’m not really sure of the details. I think Mrs. Gaines fell or collapsed or something, and I guess Mr. Gaines called 911. I don’t know if it was a heart attack or what. But they got her out of here pretty fast. He went with her in the ambulance.”
Grandma. Don’t let her be dead.
“Please, ma’am,” Noah called to Mrs. Leonard from the gate, “I know we’re not your favorite people in the world, but we really need to get to that hospital right away. Please, will you drive us?”
“I would if I could,” she said, “but Sherman has the car. He’ll be back around five-thirty. If you still need a ride then, just give me a shout.” She narrowed her eyes at Ringo. “But from now on use the gate.”
Noah looked at his watch. Five-thirty. It was barely even three.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Ringo said. “But I think we’ll try to find another ride.”
He headed for Noah and the gate at a dead run, and vaulted clear over the damn thing.
“Use the gate!” Mrs. L shouted after him. “Unlatch it. Walk through it. Like a human!”
“Let’s call the hospital,” Ringo said as they ran back to the house. “Find out what the hell’s going on.” He was trying to be reassuring, but Noah knew he was scared, too. “It’s probably nothing big. You know how sometimes old people fall and break a wrist or a hip? I’m sure she’s all right.”
“Breaking a hip is pretty big.” Noah grabbed the phone book from the shelf.
“Well, I don’t know that’s what happened.” Ringo picked up the phone. “What’s the number?”
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