Hammered (28 page)

And I haven’t got an answer for that at all. I’m trying to find the argument, in fact, when the tips of my fingers go blank white numb. My left hand clenches on the data slice as I withdraw it from the reader.

The holographic crystal crushes to powder in my hand.

I try to open my mouth to say,
Richard.
No words come out at all.

Bobbi insisted on calling it a suburban assault vehicle, but in reality it was a reasonably standard heavy-duty high-clearance four-wheel-drive. Razorface hadn’t wanted to abandon his limousine and switch to Bobbi’s vehicle, but she did have the first-aid kits and a cache of additional weapons. And chances were that Casey wouldn’t be looking for a dark green Bradford, newer than Maker’s, with roll bars and armor plate.

Whatever
, Mitch thought, parking it beside the sidewalk, guardrail and chain-link fence that separated the edge of the narrow street from a twelve-foot drop into brambles. He turned off the radio in the middle of the weather report—
eighteenth named storm of the Atlantic season menaces the Outer Banks
—and unlocked the doors. “This hill must be a pig to get up in the wintertime, killer.” Razorface just grunted from the passenger seat.

“That’s why I have the four-wheel,” Bobbi answered from where she reclined in the backseat with her hastily bandaged leg propped up. “And I wish to hell that doctor friend of yours had let you know he was running out of town so soon.”

“Yeah,” Mitch answered. “Me, too.”

Razor opened his door and walked around the car to help Bobbi. Pale lines were etched across her forehead, but
she didn’t so much as whimper when he picked her up as easily as lifting a bag of groceries.

“Please get the first-aid kit, Michael.”

Mitch did it and locked the Bradford up. Thin-lipped, Bobbi directed them up a narrow flight of cement stairs to a woodframe house built into the side of the hill.
Classic New England milltown architecture
, he thought with a bitter grin.
Awkward, inaccessible, and picturesque.

“Is this where you live? It’s a little out of the way.” She handed him the pass card and he opened the lock. Razorface held her up so she could disable the security system.

“Just a safehouse,” she answered. “There are MREs in the cabinet. You’re going to have to do my leg, Michael.”

“Yeah. I know. Will that table hold your weight?” It looked sturdy enough.

“It
is
oak. I don’t think it will be a problem.”

There was nothing on it. “Are there sheets?”

“Linen closet in the bathroom. Set me down please, Razorface.”

Mitch marveled at the calmness of her tone.

Bobbi leaned back on her elbows while Mitch cleaned the wound in her calf. The bullet had creased muscle and gone through. If it had struck bone there would have been nothing Mitch could have done for her. She stared at the ceiling, talking through the pain; he barely heard the strain in her voice.

She seemed to be striving for dryness as she said, “You didn’t get a chance to look around the garage bay, did you?”

“No.” The vinyl gloves he was wearing bunched and slid and stuck in clotted blood. He didn’t look up.

“There was a white van parked there. Newer Ford, no windows. Looked like a delivery van.” She grunted as Mitch’s hand slipped.

“Did you get a look inside?”

“No.” No further noises of protest, even as he slathered the wound in antiseptics. “But I took cover under it. The undercarriage is stuck full of mud and grass, Michael.”

“Oh.” He wound the bandage tight before he leaned back and closed his eyes. “I know a cop I can call in West Hartford. Last night might be covered up, but he might be able to make things hot for the corporate offices. Maybe he can even get a warrant and look inside.”

“Do it,” Razorface said. “And tomorrow we’re going to Bridgeport.”

Gabe surged down the white-tiled corridor, his strides only shortening when a plump, shirtsleeved Middle Eastern man stepped in front of him. “Gabriel Castaign?”

Gabe recognized him from the phone conversation. “Doctor Mobarak. What are you doing in Toronto?”

“I had planned to come up to observe Jenny’s surgery. Come with me.”

“How is she?”

The doctor sighed, struggling to keep up with Gabe’s longer strides. “Refusing treatment.”

“Quoi?
You can’t have the hospital do something?”

“You’ll see. She is as stubborn as a cow moose. And I’m not affiliated with Toronto General; the fact that they’re letting me play doctor at all is nothing but a courtesy. Valens went to bat for me once he figured out that Jenny wasn’t speaking to him.”

“Valens is here?”

“She threw him out of the room. He was recommending immediate nanosurgery. Apparently, she collapsed in seizures at the public library.”

Que faisait elle à la bibliothèque?
Gabe didn’t think now was the time to ask stupid questions. “What did she say?”

“No surgery. She needs it, Gabe. She won’t make her birthday without it.”

“She told me five years. Maybe ten.”

Mobarak paused, his hand on the steel doorknob. Gabe, heart in the pit of his stomach, read the younger man’s eyes with a helpless sensation he knew all too well.

“That was then,” the doctor said. “This is now. The myelin breakdown in her motor cortex is becoming acute. I don’t know what triggered it. It could be exposure to the drugs Valens was providing for her.” Mobarak’s voice dripped disgust. “It could also be the stimulation from the VR exercises.”

“What does that mean?”

Mobarak’s shoulders rose on an indrawn breath, and he slowly shook his head. Then he opened the door.

Gabe, braced for the worst, swore out loud when he saw Jenny sitting upright in a chair beside the examining table, buttoning the cuff of her right sleeve with frowning care. Pain burst so bright in his chest that for a moment he thought his heart had stopped, and he looked up at the wall, calling fury back up over the relief that threatened to smother it.
Oh, no.

He didn’t dare think about what that relief meant.

I’m about to put my boots on and stand up when Simon comes back into the room. This time, Gabe is at his heels. Valens has already delivered his prognosis and I imagine, knowing Valens, is trying to arrange for me to be moved to NDMC and for an operating theater to have been set up five minutes ago. Even after I told him no.
It’s enough. It’s enough to put Valens in jail, and Barb with him. And maybe Mitch will manage to prove she shot his girlfriend. That’s still a death penalty in Connecticut. I’ll take the court-martial for refusing orders and go to jail. Maybe they’ll give me Peacock’s old cell.

And then all three of Jeanne-Marie Casey’s little girls will be dead.

Maman.

“Oh, hell.” I don’t realize I’ve said it out loud until Gabe stops in front of me, Simon flanking him right. I stand up. Not many people are all that much taller than I am, but I find myself staring at the dimple in Gabe’s chin. “What bullshit story did Doctor Frankenstein here feed you, Gabe?”

The look he gives me makes me shut my mouth. He sees right through me. He always has, and I never even noticed. “He says you’re refusing treatment.”

“I told you I was going to.” I turn away from him, looking for my boots. “I’ve accomplished what I came to Toronto for, Gabe. I don’t want any more surgery. I want to go home
and die in my own bed, and will you and the girls take care of my cat for me when I’m gone? He’s kind of ugly, but he means a lot to me.” I won’t look at Simon. I can’t look at Simon. I can’t—won’t—tolerate that kind of a betrayal.

“Jenny.” His blue eyes are soft. He lays a hand on my shoulder and I shiver. “Remember what I told you this morning?”

“I’m not going to do it, Gabe.”

“Then you’ll die.”

And that’s the brutality of it. Because I don’t want to die. I want to live. I want him to kiss me again, and not stop this time.

I just can’t bear to be whole.

“Gabe.”

“Vas te faire enculé, Jenny. Tu me fais chier. Think about somebody else for once in your life. How long are you going to run away? How many people who love you are you going to turn your back on, woman?” He should be shouting, but his voice is low, uneven, as if squeezing through wire mesh just to get the words out.

Fuck you.
And I deserve it, too. He’s right, every bit of it. How do I explain the cold terror that is all I can taste, the darkness pressing at the edge of my vision? I could tell him about the little Latina girl getting into the dark-windowed sedan, and I could tell him how gun oil tastes when the barrel is shoved into your mouth, and I could tell him what your lover’s eyes look like when you turn your back and leave him to his fate. He might even understand.

“Gabe, even for you I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”

His hand slides down my shoulder and drops. Simon has melted away as if by magic. I’m not even sure if he’s in the room anymore. Behind the curtain? “I’m not asking for me.”

“I can’t do it for myself, either.”

“Can you do it for Leah and Genie? Because Leah deserves to make it to adulthood without losing somebody else.”

My mouth drops open in the silence that follows.

“And,” he continues, cold and inexorable as a glacier, “if anything happens to me, you’re the only one I’ve got who can take care of them, Jenny. You’re Leah’s godmother. If I die, the girls are yours.”

Yes, and when I signed the paperwork that Geniveve and Gabe put in front of me, powers of attorney and conditional custody and Christ knows what else, it had seemed like a joke. Because Gabe and Geniveve were both going to outlive me.

And Leah is around the same age I was when Maman died. A little bit younger than Nell was, when
she
died.

And Gabe—Gabe knows it, too, and he’s fighting dirty for what he wants, and I’ve known that he’s a ruthless son of a bitch since the day I met him. It’s hard to miss that aspect of somebody who’s willing to sever a limb to save your life.

There’s a stain on the wall shaped a little like Prince Edward Island. I can’t even draw breath to damn him for ten long seconds. “Mon ange. How can you ask me to do something that would put me in a hospital bed for thirty fucking years? Breathing on a machine?”

“It might not.”

“You won’t let Leah do something a hell of a lot safer.”

“Leah—” I’ve scored, and I feel like shit about it, too. He grabs my shoulder and forces me to face him, lifting my chin so I have to look him in the eye. There are still scars on his hands from the skin grafts, all those years ago. Faded, but there. I haven’t noticed them in years. “I’ll let her go through with the surgery if you do this. If you take this chance. And if it cripples you …”

“You’ll come and visit me in the hospital every week? That’ll get old pretty fast, mon ami.”

His voice a low growl, sharp in my ear. His touch almost
bruising. “Bloody hell, vieille bique. If you ask me. Jenny. I’ll kill you myself.”

I jerk away.
You got slugs in that thing?
He would, damn him, and pay whatever price he had to. It isn’t an idle promise: Gabe’s hands aren’t any cleaner than mine, in the final analysis. He knows what he’s offering.

The girl has already lost her mother. At least she’s got a dad who cares about her. Genie … it’s funny. Genie and I get along well enough. Leah and I
connect
, and we have since she was barely old enough to grab my finger and stare deeply into my eyes. There’s something about her that reminds me of Nell, come to think of it. Wide-eyed wonder and a whim of carbon steel.

There isn’t, in the essence of it, anything I wouldn’t do for this man. For his daughters. Valens was right, and I am weak.

I breathe in, tasting antiseptic hospital air. “Vas te faire foutre, Gabriel.”

I can’t even hear him breathe.

I look up, look him level in the eyes, and let it all come out on a word.
“Dammit.
Dammit! Yes.”
For Leah. Yes. Because for her, I would crawl through fire.

“I’ll tell Valens.” Soft. Even. “Do you want Simon to stay?”

Damned if I trust him, but I trust him more than Valens. I nod, and Gabe leaves the examining room. I can hear Simon in the washroom. He’s left the door open a crack, and the water is running. I cross and peer in past the door. “I want you in scrubs for this thing, Simon.”

He comes into my field of vision, drying his hands. “I’m not a surgeon, Jenny. And I’m not nanotech certified, anyway.”

“No, but you’re not an idiot, either.”
And you’re not Frederick Valens.
I look up and meet his brown eyes,
earnest and soft and weak. “Valens needs me. Needs me cooperative.”
I can have Richard get in touch with Mitch. If anybody can prove what Barb did in Hartford, above and beyond the poisonings …
“And you owe me, Simon.”

“Yes. And I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t cut it in my world. Pay me back, or get the hell out of my life.”

The careful smoothness at the corners of his eyes gives him away before he speaks. “Whatever you say, Jenny.”

“How simple is it?” Alberta leaned against angled oneway glass, left arm raised over her head. Expensive blue-gold shoes lay on the steel-gray carpet, one upright and one sprawled on its side, where she had stepped out of them. Behind the mirrored wall, six young men in loose clothing variously curled or slumped in recliners. Wires linked them to the headrests of the chairs, and their eyes fluttered ceaselessly behind closed lids.