Hard Aground

by Brendan DuBois

  “I’m glad.”

  “How’s your sweet woman?”

  “One of the EMTs said she got a wound on her forehead, maybe a ricochet from a shotgun pellet.”

  “You take care of her.”

  “Always.”

  We sat there in silence for a few minutes; Diane’s breathing slowed down, and then there was gentle snoring. She had fallen asleep. What to do?

  Nothing.

  I closed my eyes and joined her.

  I woke up a while later to a voice saying, “You naughty man, you seduced me into staying here.”

  Eyes open, and there Diane was, standing in front of me, gathering her gear. “What can I say,” I said. “We macho men, sometimes our pheromones do their own bidding.”

  “Hah.” She leaned over, gave me a quick and sweet kiss on the lips. “You need help getting upstairs?”

  I stood up, with Felix’s uncle’s sword cane still stuck. “Nope, I’ll be fine.”

  My oldest and dearest friend smiled. “Tell you a secret?”

  “You don’t have natural brown hair?”

  “I’m all natural,” she said. “And intend to remain so. I’m not applying for the deputy chief’s job.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Why good for me?” she asked. “I didn’t even tell you why.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You made the decision, it was the right one. That’s all I need to know.”

  She smiled. “I decided it was more important for me and Kara for me to … remain who I am. What I do. And where I go. We’re getting married in two months. We’ll make it work.”

  “You sure will.”

  “Now,” Diane said. “Upstairs you go, and you make it work, too.”

  Before any more time passed, I called the Exonia Hospital to check in on Paula Quinn’s condition. Because I wasn’t her relative, in any format currently fashionable, all they would tell me was that she was a patient and resting comfortably.

  I hung up and clomped upstairs, wondering what I was going to tell Felix later about the not-so-deadly cane. I know what he would tell me, that in life and in sword canes, you have to practice, practice, practice. In my bathroom I slowly went about emptying the plastic bladders and measuring the output.

  I paused, reading the numbers carefully. Even though I was late, even though it was practically the start of a new day, the output from both tubes had been cut in half.

  It was finally time for the two drains to be removed.

  “How about that,” I said, and I went to bed.

  I woke up to the sensation of someone in bed with me. I moved around, and in the dim light there she was.

  Cissy Manning.

  Smiling as before, her thick red hair over the pillow, lacy straps of something black on her shoulders, sweet white skin and rust-colored freckles.

  I tried to speak but I couldn’t.

  All I could do was stare, and that I did, staring and trying to remember everything I was seeing and even smelling, for her old scent was there, tickling my nose and memories.

  “Let it go,” she whispered.

  And it was dark.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The next morning I did my best to push back the memories of the previous day and night—save for one special dream—and I checked the drain output and it was even less than before. After a quick breakfast in my disturbed kitchen, Felix called and I told him what was going on, including the good news about my drains.

  “What’s the name of your doctor again?” he asked.

  I told him and he said, “Hold on,” and there was that funny click-click as he made another call. I was thinking of telling him not to waste his time, that even now, scheduling something could take a few hours, but then he came back on and said, “Get dressed. I’ll be picking you up in thirty minutes.”

  “But I’ve already eaten.”

  “So have I,” he said, “but you’ve got a doctor’s appointment in an hour.”

  “How the hell did you manage that?”

  “Trade secrets,” he said. “Always trade secrets—just like you.”

  “What?”

  “Man, all of this excitement must be getting to your memory,” Felix said. “You told me you had something for me from the home country, and that I should stop picking on Rudy Gennaro. Or was that your evil twin, Skippy?”

  “Skippy’s out raising hell,” I said. “Come on over.”

  True to his word, an hour later we were on the outskirts of Exonia in an office park dedicated to medical professionals. Felix sat in the waiting room and read Glamour with his precious silver serving set next to him—“This thing isn’t leaving my sight for a while”—while I was brought into a back office and weighed, poked, and prodded. I changed into hospital scrubs and a licensed nurse practitioner named Molly Samuels started her work.

  Her hair was as dark as a raven and her voice had a delightful lilt to it. “Ireland?” I asked her.

  “Northern Ireland,” she said. “County Armagh.”

  “Same here,” I said. “Long time ago. How do you like it here?”

  She laughed. “Not as much rain, which is a delight. All right, Mr. Cole, if you please.”

  I was up on an examining table, the kind with the endless roll of white thin paper, I flopped around on my side, and I felt her gentle fingers poking and probing. “Ah,” she said. “Here we go, then. You’re gonna feel a slight pinch there, Mr. Cole.”

  I sighed. “Sure. Whatever you say.”

  She stopped. “Why’s that?”

  “Why’s what?”

  “Are you expecting something else?”

  “Sorry, it’s just I know from experience that when a medical professional says ‘a slight pinch,’ my toes usually curl from the pain.”

  “Ah, don’t you worry none,” she said, her hands again moving softly along my back and my shoulder. “We of the Irish blood, we need to stick together, for as my grannie told me once, we sometimes have the power of the fairies with us. Here we go.”

  By God, there was just a slight pinch, and then there was—it was hard to describe. A slippery sensation like a worm or thin snake was rapidly being tugged out. It was an odd feeling, but not entirely unpleasant.

  “There we go, then,” she said, cheerful. “And …”

  This time it went quicker.

  “Hold on just a moment before you go dancing,” she said. I heard things rustling around and felt a cool sensation back there; two bandages were gently placed on, and she helped me off the table.

  “You’re done, then, Mr. Cole.”

  “No follow-up?”

  She shook her head. “No, dearie. I put a couple of butterfly bandages back there. Give yourself a week, and you should heal up pretty well.” Molly went over to the medical terminal and started typing. “You must be one happy man,” she said.

  “Some days, I guess. Why did you say that?”

  “Oh,” she said. “I see here that your biopsy results came back yesterday. Benign.”

  Felix helped me out of the doctor’s office, and when we got back into his Mercedes convertible, I said, “Please indulge me.”

  “Sure.”

  “Take me over to the Exonia Hospital.”

  “What, you didn’t get enough health care today?”

  “No, I want to see Paula Quinn.”

  “You got it.” He started up the car and said, “Oh, how could I forget this? Hold on for a second.”

  Felix reached back and grabbed a Shaw’s plastic shopping bag, plopping it in my lap. I reached inside and took out my recently stolen John Keegan book.

  I flipped it open, saw the inscription, “To Lewis Cole, with all best wishes. John Keegan.”

  I closed the book cover, rubbed it once.

  “Good job,” I said.

  “That’s what we do.”

  Then we left.

  At the hospital the day was sunny and perfect, and just outside the main entrance we stopped in a little oval park with wide granite b
enches. I said to Felix, “Being that I’m still in recovery, I’m going to sit out here and catch some sun. Be a dear boy and go inside and find out what room Paula’s in.”

  “You need to go to the bathroom first, in case your bum needs to be wiped?”

  “Thanks for the offer,” I said. “I’m going to try to hold it in.”

  He helped me over to the bench, his uncle’s cane still in my hand, even with part of it exposed. I already felt lighter and walked better, without the harness back there and the tubes running out of my skin. I sat on the stone bench, stretched my legs, and let the sun warm my face and hands.

  Felix came back about five minutes later. “She’s been discharged,” he said. “About a half hour ago.”

  “Then you’re going to take me to her house,” I said, getting up.

  “That’s not going to work.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s not home. And she’s not at the Chronicle. Looks like she’s … gone.”

  I sat and thought and sat some more, and Felix said, “How about a ride home?”

  “How about,” I said.

  When we got to the parking lot of the Lafayette House, I asked him to stop for a moment, and he found a parking spot that overlooked the ocean. If you leaned forward some and turned your head, you could make out the very top of my old and battered house.

  Old and battered. What a coincidence.

  Felix said, “Over the years, I’ve been in a tight spot or two with a woman friend who had been there either by accident or on purpose. Sometimes they were injured along the way. And when it was over, my friend, I usually never saw them, ever again. Just to let you know.”

  I sat there, the old and now silly-looking cane in my hands. I kept quiet.

  “Not that they necessarily blamed me, you understand. But they couldn’t be with me anymore. No matter my charm, my skills, anything else, when they were with me, the first and only thought that came to their mind was remembering the time they were with me, hurt and terrified. And they never wanted to relive that experience, ever again. And that’s how it would end, and you’d just have to accept it and move on.”

  “You thinking that about Paula?”

  “Hell, no,” he said. “I hardly know anything about her, except that she’s not too fond of me. I was just speaking randomly, to fill up the empty space.”

  “All right,” I said. “Bring me down, will you?”

  He backed his Mercedes out and with some careful driving, maneuvering, and one muttered Italian oath, he got me down the driveway and to my house without once bottoming out. “I’ll check in with you later,” he said.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said. “And for getting my book back.”

  “Thanks for the silver. I think I’m going to hold on to it for a while.”

  “Good idea.”

  I got out and he moved up and around, and when I went up to the steps, the door opened, and there was Paula Quinn, waiting for me.

  I just stood there, looking up at her. Her face was pale but smiling, and there was a little square bandage on the side of her forehead. She looked comfortable, and wonderful, in tight jeans and a black pullover sweater with the sleeves rolled up.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Pretty good,” she said, briefly touching the bandage. “It looks like when I took a tumble to the floor, I scraped it on a bookcase.”

  “I’m glad it wasn’t worse.”

  “Me, too,” she said. “And … I have a couple of bruised ribs, too. From some gallant man who covered me with his body to protect me.”

  “Gallant’s my middle name.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she said. “Where have you been?”

  “The doctor’s office,” I said. “Getting my tubes out. I’m no longer carrying plastic bladders back there, filled with blood and fluid.”

  “Good news,” she said. “I hear chicks dig the non-bladder look for spring.”

  “I also hear they dig the non-malignant look as well.”

  It was like a flash of light flickered in her eyes, and she brought her hand to her face for a moment. Then she took something out of her jeans pocket. “Recognize this?”

  “Sure,” I said. “My cell phone.”

  She wiggled it in her hand. “In this interconnected world of ours, it’s customary to carry it around so people can contact you.”

  “But I did try to call you,” I said.

  “No you didn’t.”

  “But—oh. It was Felix making the calls.”

  Paula nodded. “And you think I’d want to talk to him for any particular reason when I saw his name come up on the screen?”

  “You know, this is fun and all, but I’d really like to come in. After all, it is my house.”

  She took my hand and so several pleasant minutes passed.

  We were on the rear deck, a light breeze blowing, and she said, “All right, sport. I promised to take some time off and take care of you here, and so the fun will start. You okay with that?”

  I thought and said, “No.”

  “What?”

  I squeezed her hand. “No. I want to spend time with you, it will be my greatest pleasure. But not here, not in my house.”

  “But you love this place!”

  I squeezed her hand again. “I do. And I’ll want to come back. But right now, there’s too much history, too much past … And there’s some repair work that’ll need to be done from Marjorie Hudson’s shotgun play. I don’t want to be around for that. I want to go away with you. So pick the place, pick the duration.”

  She smiled, leaned over, and kissed me. “I’ll give that some serious thought. How about we head out tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow’s fine,” I said.

  “Good. Because my stuff is upstairs in the bedroom, and I really don’t want to repack it. I even changed the sheets and made your bed—but don’t think that’s going to be a habit.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I’m glad, because you still need to come up with an explanation for this,” she said, carefully digging into a side pocket.

  “This” turned out to be a folded piece of white tissue paper. She unfolded it, and unfolded it, and then picked up something in triumph. “Have you been cheating on me, Mr. Cole?”

  I took it from her fingers.

  It was a long strand of hair.

  Red hair.

  “No,” I said. “I’ve not been cheating on you.”

  She laughed. “Care to explain it, then?”

  I held the length of red hair up to the sunlight, let it twist and dangle.

  Then I let my fingers go and the passing breeze took it away.

  “Not today, Paula,” I said. “Not today.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Once again, the entire publishing team at Pegasus Books—Claiborne Hancock, Jessica Case, Iris Blasi, and Bowen Dunnan (the new and talented kid on the block)—were a joy to deal with.

  I’d also like to thank my very patient first readers, my wife Mona Pinette and my brother Michael DuBois, who are always the first to learn of Lewis Cole’s new outings, and who are dedicated to seeking out my errors.

  Finally, my thanks to Elaine Rogers for keeping me legal, and my deep thanks and appreciation to the one and only James Patterson.

  HARD AGROUND

  Pegasus Books Ltd.

  148 W 37th Street, 13th Floor

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by Brendan DuBois

  First Pegasus Books cloth edition April 2018

  Interior design by Maria Fernandez

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permissio
n from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN: 978-1-68177-652-1

  ISBN: 978-1-68177-726-9 (e-book)

  Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company

  www.pegasusbooks.us