Split Second

by Catherine Coulter

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Lucy said, still crouched beside Billy the Cop, and then she blinked. “Yes, I really wish we could.” She raised her face to the sky. “Do you know a raindrop hit my nose. What more could we ask for?”

  Coop was hovering next to the EMTs. “Take good care of him, we really need him. He’s our spigot.”

  When the EMTs were ready to move Comafield, Coop stepped back, watched then slip a collapsible gurney under him, and lift him on its wheels and into the ambulance.

  “Really, guys, take good care of him,” Coop said to them. “We need that man.”

  Other ambulances had arrived, their EMTs spreading out to care for the other wounded.

  It started raining hard.

  And Savich prayed no one would die as a result of this fiasco. He huddled over Sherlock while they lifted her onto a gurney and put her in an ambulance. They said nothing at all when he jumped in after her.

  CHAPTER 44

  Baltimore General Hospital

  Wednesday night

  Savich stood over his sleeping wife. He hated her pallor, hated that her eyelids looked bruised. He knew intellectually she was going to be all right; the doctors had assured him of that at least three times. But that assurance didn’t seem to matter to that place deep inside him that knew he would curl up and die if something happened to her. A nurse appeared at his elbow, lightly touched his arm. “You look worse than she does, Agent Savich. I swear to you, your wife will be fine. Her throat is going to feel a bit bludgeoned, but that won’t last long, maybe a day or two.”

  He nodded. What had she seen on his face? Fear? All right, Sherlock would be fine, no reason for her not to be. The nurse wouldn’t lie, would she? They’d pumped her stomach, and her blood pressure was back to normal. They said the drugs were short-acting, and their effects were wearing off.

  They’d soon know for sure if Kirsten had used the same drugs on Sherlock as she had on her other victims. The symptoms were right. He wondered if Kirsten had given Sherlock an extra-large dose.

  Ruth walked into the room, handed Savich a cup of hot tea, a cup of coffee in her other hand. Good old hospital cafeteria Lipton, he thought, savoring the hot, bitter taste. He saluted her with his cup. They both looked down at Sherlock, her glorious hair, clips removed, now a wild nimbus around her pale face. He pulled the sheet over the green hospital gown to Sherlock’s shoulders, smoothed it out. “She’ll be okay,” he said, more to himself than to Ruth. Then he said it again. “She’ll be okay, Ruth.”

  Ruth touched her fingers to his forearm. “Yes, she will, Dillon. The nurse told me to repeat that to you myself until you believe it. Sherlock’s a trouper, she’s got a gold-plated engine of a heart. She’ll be okay, so stop worrying.” But Ruth knew he couldn’t help but worry; she was worried herself, impossible not to be, as she looked down at her. Sherlock was always so full of energy; she radiated a kind of life force you could practically reach out and touch. But lying here now, she looked almost insubstantial, like a pale copy of herself.

  Ruth said, “I nabbed a nurse as she came out of the OR. She said Comafield’s intestines are a mess but that his surgeon is the best they’ve got, and that was all she could tell me. She looked worried, Dillon.”

  “He’ll make it,” Coop said from the doorway. “People like him always make it.” He walked to the bed and stared down at Sherlock for a moment, touched her hand, then nodded at both Ruth and Savich and walked back to the surgical waiting room. He looked for Lucy, but she wasn’t in the waiting room; she’d moved away to sit off by herself halfway down the hall where there was another small grouping of chairs. Her head was down. It looked to him like she was staring at her sneakers.

  He went down on his knees in front of her, took her hands in his. Her skin felt clammy. “Hey, Lucy, what’s going on?”

  Her head jerked up, but she wasn’t there, she looked as though she were a million miles away, and where she was, he thought, was a mad and lonely place—and where was this place? He couldn’t stand to see that look, couldn’t stand that she was so far apart from everyone. From him. He’d known her for only six and a half months, not long at all in the scheme of things, but he realized at that moment he didn’t want her to hide herself from him. He realized in that moment that she was perhaps the one human being with whom he wanted to share his life. He rocked back on his heels. How had this happened? It didn’t matter; it had happened, and he accepted it, relished it. He waited, said nothing.

  He was right about the place Lucy was. Nothing around her could take her mind away from the ring for very long. But she hadn’t even thought of the ring during the shoot-out at the Texas Range Bar & Grill, only afterward. Would she have used it to stop Comafield and Kirsten? Was it her duty as an FBI agent to do whatever she could to stop people from getting hurt, getting shot?

  What is past is done; it can’t be changed. That was so much a part of her experience, it rarely even needed to be said. How did a person make peace with the power to change the past, even only a few seconds of it?

  Should she try to become some kind of hero, undoing every tragedy and accident she came across, giving back a suddenly orphaned child his parents again? If so, how should she live? Out patrolling all the time so she’d have a better chance of using the eight seconds to make things right? Or would she come to use the ring on a whim, playing with people like marionettes to get her way, or simply for sport, for the fun of it?

  Wasn’t life about accepting what came down the pike, both the joys and the sorrows, being responsible for what we did ourselves, facing it, making the best of it?

  Like facing what had happened tonight?

  She thought again of her grandfather, what her grandfather had written about her grandmother’s unhealthy obsession with the ring. Lucy couldn’t remember a single time she’d been with her grandmother and wondered if something was wrong with her. Had her father seen the obsession in his mother? Had he understood it? He’d known about the ring, but had he known what it did? She didn’t think so, but it didn’t matter now; they were all dead, there would be no answers for her.

  Twenty-two years her father had protected his mother, and he’d protected her, too.

  Twenty-two years he’d known his father’s body was buried in the attic, waiting for the day it no longer mattered.

  The strange thing was, it still mattered. She thought it might matter forever. And she wondered again, had the stress of all of that killed him too young?

  Her grandfather had believed her father wouldn’t have wanted her to have the ring. But her father hadn’t known the ring could have saved Claudine.

  Coop snapped his fingers in her face. “Lucy? Are you with me?”

  She looked blank, then quickly focused. “I was thinking about all the chaos—the local cops crowding around us to see for themselves what a mess the feds had made. Everybody knew she was long gone before they cordoned the area.”

  That isn’t what you were thinking at all. She’d lied to him, nice and clean, but he decided not to call her on it. He grinned at her. “Yeah, we sure got to enjoy a lot of their jokes. The worst one I heard was from that young rookie—he looked about eighteen?” Coop mimicked him: “‘But I thought you guys were the best in the whole world!’”

  Lucy said, “Yeah, well, we’re supposed to be. Serves us right, I guess.”

  She hoped she’d never see anything like tonight’s fiasco again. The ring. They’d been so lucky no one was killed. The two civilians Comafield had shot had suffered only minor wounds, thank God.

  She said, “This was a learning lesson, and my father always told me learning lessons had to be painful to be worth anything. I’m afraid the price of this one is going to be too high.

  “Where does Kirsten go from here, Coop? On a rampage? You know she’s unstable, and now she’s got to be enraged—at us, and at Sherlock in particular. Don’t forget Savich gut-shot her boyfriend. What is she going to do now?”

  Coop laid his hand on her shoulder. He
could feel the bones. She’d lost more weight. Well, her father had died, and she’d remembered her own father and grandmother dumping her grandfather into a trunk. And now there was the blasted ring.

  The bloody ring—he shook his head. He wanted to ask her, but more, he wanted to press her face against his shoulder and comfort her, maybe tell her a joke, but he didn’t do either of these things.

  He sighed, stepped back. “You’re probably right. Look, we’ll figure it out and we’ll catch Kirsten Bolger.” He paused a moment. She looked exhausted, from the inside out. It was worth a shot, and so he said, “Lucy, you were sitting here alone, your head down. What were you thinking about? Not about tonight, so please don’t lie to me again. Were you thinking about that ring?”

  She looked at him, saw the worry in his eyes. He was a good man, she knew that now, and he was a good agent, she thought; he could probably pry sardines out of the can without opening it. He saw to the heart of things, but even that didn’t matter. She wasn’t about to tell him anything about the ring; it wouldn’t be fair to involve him, surely not yet, if ever. She touched her fingers to her shirt, felt the ring lying against her throat, warm and pulsing.

  Lucy drew in a slow breath as she looked up at him. He looked tired, all the mad adrenaline drained out of him now, and he looked afraid. For her? She had to touch him. She laid her hand over his. “Don’t be worried for me, Coop. All the excitement’s over, and all of us survived tonight. We were lucky.”

  Coop took her hand between his. “Lucy, I want you to know, whatever you’re going through, whatever is eating at you, I don’t want you to think you’re alone. Listen, I’d really like to be there for you. Actually—I want to be with you.” There, he’d said it, for the first time in his life, he’d said those words to a woman, to Special Agent Lucy Carlyle. Who knew?

  She looked at him for a long moment and seemed to consider what he’d said. She pulled her hand away, giving a slight shake of her head as she rose. He watched her fill a paper cup with water from a water cooler and raise it in a toast. He watched her give him a bright smile. “Hey, here’s to Mr. Spicer and his handy bat. Who knows, without the bat, maybe we wouldn’t have Comafield. Excuse me, I’ve got to hit the bathroom.” And she was gone in under two seconds.

  He stared after her.

  CHAPTER 45

  Savich said to Ruth as he slipped another hospital pillow under Sherlock’s head, “When Mr. Maitland got off the phone with Director Mueller tonight, he said the director wasn’t pleased, and that’s a whopper of an understatement. He can’t figure out how it all got so screwed up. I told Mr. Maitland I was having a hard time figuring that out, too, except then a huge herd of drunk people stampeding around flashed clear in my mind. Luckily, Mr. Maitland said he wouldn’t let the director reassign the case.”

  His heart nearly stopped when Sherlock said clearly, “I should have taken her down in the bar.”

  Not in this lifetime. Savich smiled, leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Next time I’m thinking knockout gas for the whole bar, everyone down and out, including Kirsten and Comafield. How do you feel, sweetheart?”

  She thought about it. “Like my throat is on fire and someone hollowed out my stomach with a big scoop. What’d they do to me?”

  “A little bit of this, a little bit of that,” he said. “Go back to sleep, okay? You’ll feel fine in the morning.” To his surprise and relief, she did. She whispered something, but he couldn’t make out the words. He’d wanted to ask her how she could drink that beer, knowing it was drugged, but that could wait.

  Savich left Ruth to keep watch over Sherlock and walked to the waiting room to talk to the agents sitting there, drinking coffee and looking flat-out depressed. He said, “Look, guys, there’s no reason for you to hang around any longer. It’s after two in the morning. Go home and get some sleep. I’ll see everyone tomorrow at the office. Don’t forget to make all your bedtime prayers for Comafield’s continued existence on this planet. He’s our one precious lead. We’ll discuss the operation tomorrow.”

  Jack Crowne said, “The plan was fine, except for that mob of people, most of them so drunk they barely realized they could have been shot dead.”

  “We couldn’t have worked it any worse,” Ollie Hamish said.

  Jack’s cell blasted out toe-tapping salsa. It was his fiancée, Rachel. He was smiling a little as he said hello to her and walked out of the waiting room.

  No one left. They spent the next hour going over every detail of what happened, what they could have done differently, until all of them were so tired they couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say.

  At three a.m. Dr. Oliver Pendergrass, his green scrubs dotted with blood, strode into the waiting room. In a surprising British accent, he said immediately, “He made it through surgery.”

  There was a collective sigh of relief.

  Dr. Pendergrass continued: “It amazes me what damage a single small bullet can do to the human body. That scrap of metal caused a great deal of injured bowel, I’m afraid, and I had to remove a good length of it. We’ll see how he does. The major risk now is overwhelming infection, in his belly and in his blood. The next few days will tell.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Savich said. “You and your staff should be aware there will be police at his door and in the hospital during his stay.”

  Dr. Pendergrass said, “Yes, I thought as much. By the way, the anesthesiologist said Mr. Comafield was involved with this woman I’ve seen plastered all over the TV—Ted Bundy’s daughter?”

  “That’s right,” Savich said. “I know it’s tough to get your brain around that one.”

  Dr. Pendergrass said, “Involved how? Is he related to her in some way?”

  Ruth said, “Not related but involved, I guess is the best word, and that’s why it’s so important he live—we’re hoping he can tell us where to find her.”

  Savich asked, “When do you think he’ll be able to talk to us, Dr. Pendergrass?”

  Dr. Pendergrass turned to him. “Sorry, Agent Savich, but he’s been in recovery only five minutes.” He looked down at his oversized watch. “I’d say he might be fully conscious soon, but I doubt he will have his brain together enough to answer your questions. Why don’t you get some sleep and come back here maybe six hours from now?”

  Savich wasn’t about to leave Sherlock, but he ordered the rest of the agents home. He had no worries about Sean, who was sleeping at Simon and Lily’s house.

  One by one, they rose and shrugged into their coats. “Go home. I want you guys fresh tomorrow, your brains in gear. Don’t come back here, go on into the office about noon. I’ll be there when I can. Coop, you and Lucy meet me here at nine, but call me first to make sure Comafield is still breathing.”

  Savich walked back to Sherlock’s room, listened to her even breathing for a while, then eyed the big chair beside her bed. No reason he couldn’t snooze for a while.

  He fell asleep immediately, her hand lying limply in his.

  CHAPTER 46

  Thursday morning

  Sherlock’s voice was raw. “I’d planned to pour the drugged beer on the floor beside my bar stool. There were so many people weaving around, dancing, singing, I thought I could pull it off. But then I saw Comafield staring at me, not only that, but Kirsten moved closer to me, no more than six inches away. I couldn’t toss it. If I’d tried to lip it, she’d have seen, so I had to drink it, no choice, but I didn’t drink very much.”

  Savich wanted to tell her she should have called the whole thing off, simply left, but he kept his mouth shut. She’d made a judgment call. If they’d all done what they were supposed to do, her decision would have led to catching Bundy’s daughter.

  Sherlock continued, “I was feeling pretty bad by the time we got outside. I don’t know if you saw me, but I hit her as hard as I could, pathetic though that was. At least I caught her by surprise, knocked her down, pulled my gun, and then everything went south. Where does that expression come from, Dillon? The
n I remember being on the sidewalk, throwing up and wanting to die. I realize now that only a few seconds passed, but I’ll tell you, it seemed like hours. What really happened?”

  Coop and Lucy stood on the opposite side of the bed, not looking too bad, considering they’d had maybe four hours of sleep. Coop gave her a running commentary on the havoc and the mayhem, until he got to where Sherlock had refused to drop her gun, even with Billy the Cop hanging all over her and feeling like she was going to die. He paused, wiggled his eyebrows at Sherlock.

  “Spit it out, Coop, or I’ll deck you, maybe tomorrow. What happened then?” She rubbed her throat. She sounded like a frog, but the soreness was down and the hospital tapioca had settled nicely in her empty stomach. A nurse had told her cheerfully that she’d had her stomach pumped. So stomach lavage was “the little bit of this, little bit of that” her husband had told her about. She suddenly wasn’t so sure about the tapioca.

  Coop told her about the gunshots after Comafield blew out of the alleyway, protected from return fire by the crowd, and how Savich had managed to put the bullet in his belly while on the run.

  Sherlock felt her body creak with effort to push the stupid button that raised the bed so she could look at everyone straight on. When Savich would have helped her, she shook her head. She could do this. Once she was sitting up, she said, “What happened to Billy the Cop? I remember he was yelling at me, waving a Beretta around.”

  Lucy said, “Full name’s William Benedict, and he’s a longtime homicide detective with the Baltimore Police Department. The Texas Range Bar and Grill is his neighborhood bar, been going there for years. He went after you, Sherlock, because you had a gun on Kirsten, but then, thank goodness, he realized what was happening. He took a bullet instead, but he’ll be fine. I heard him laughing this morning as I walked down the hall, talking about Gator and his freaking bat. What a story he has to tell his buds.”