He watched her scramble out of the confines of the safety net, shake off the firemen. She ran toward him, and he saw the shock in her face, the blindness in her eyes, but he couldn’t think of anything to say to her. Then there was simply nothing. He collapsed where he stood. The last thing he heard before the blackness closed over him was the huge roar of the collapsing roof and Becca’s voice, saying his name over and over.
31
He was buried in pain, so deep he wondered if he’d ever climb out, but he knew he could deal with it, even appreciate it, because it meant he was still alive. Finally, after what seemed like beyond forever, he managed to gain a bit of control and forced his eyes to open. He looked up at Becca’s smiling face. Ah, but the worry in her eyes, her pallor, it scared him. Was he going to die after all? He felt her fingers lightly touch the line of his eyebrow, his cheek, his chin. Then she leaned down and kissed where her fingers had touched him. Her breath was sweet and warm. His own mouth felt like he’d dived mouth-first into a box of dried manure.
“Hello, Adam. You’ll be just fine. I’ll bet you’re really thirsty, the nurse said you would be. Here’s some water to drink. Take it slow, that’s it.”
He drank. It was the best water he’d ever tasted in his life. He managed to say, “Thomas?”
“He’ll live. He told me so himself when he came out of surgery. The doctors say it looks good. He’s in great shape, so that’s a big help.”
“Your arm?”
“My arm is okay. Just a bit of a burn, nothing serious. We all survived. Except for Mikhail Krimakov. He’s very dead. He’ll never terrorize anyone again or kill another person. I know you’re in bad pain, the bullet went through your back, broke a rib. The other bullet went right through your arm. You’ll be okay, thank God.”
He closed his eyes and said, “It nearly killed me watching you on the roof with him. The flames kept getting closer and closer, the wind whipping your nightgown around your legs, whipping the flames higher. I wanted to do something, but I just stood there yelling at you and I nearly lost what sanity I had left.”
“I’m sorry, but I had to go after him, Adam. That’s how he got into Thomas’s house, from the end of a very long oak branch; then he jumped onto the roof and managed to get the trapdoor open and made it into the attic. When I saw him going down to the end of the hall where those pull-down steps to the attic are, I knew he would escape. I just couldn’t let him do it. He got in that way, the chances were he’d get out. I had to stop him.” She paused a moment, looking inward. “Then he wanted to die. And he wanted me to die with him. But I didn’t. We won.” She kissed him again, and this time he managed to smile just a bit through the god-awful pain.
“Now, no more about it. I’ve done nothing but answer question after question for the FBI. Mr. Woodhouse keeps coming back again and again, but it’s mainly to see Dad, not for any more questions. Do you know what Savich is doing? He’s sitting in the waiting room, checking out churches on MAX to find one for us to get married in. He said he did that for another FBI agent who’d been shot, and sure enough, the other agent got married on the date and in the church that Savich picked. He said it was a special calling of his.”
“My folks?” Adam said. The pain was getting worse, that damned broken rib was digging into him like a sword, dragging him under, and he wanted to howl with it. The novelty of having himself distracted was losing its touch and wearing thin. But he knew he had to hold on, just a bit longer. He wanted to look at Becca, just look at her, hear her voice, perhaps have her kiss him again. He wanted her to kiss him all over, that would be very nice. He tried to smile up at her but it was a pathetic effort. Thank God she was safe. He wanted to lie very quietly and keep knowing that she was safe and she was here and that was her hand on his face.
“But Becca, I have to ask you to marry me before Savich can find a church. What if you say no?”
“You already sort of asked me when we were at your house. But I want the real words now. Ask me, Adam, and see what I say.”
“I hurt real bad but will you marry me? I love you, you know.”
“Yes, of course I will. I love you, too, more than even I can imagine. Now, Savich has already spoken to both your mother and your father. In fact, the last time I checked in, they were sitting on either side of him. Ah, I like them, Adam, very much. There are brothers and sisters and all sorts of second and third cousins coming in and out. They seem to be on some sort of rotation schedule. Oh yes, everyone is sticking his oar in about church locations and dates. I didn’t know you had such a large family.”
“Too large. They refuse to mind their own business. Always underfoot.” He coughed and it hurt his rib so badly he thought he’d expire on the spot. He couldn’t control it any longer. The pain in his rib and in his arm was slicing right through him, pulling him down and down. He was going to sink under and never come up. Then he heard the nurse say, “I’m going to give him some morphine. He’ll be okay in just a moment. I guess he forgot it was there. Then he needs to rest.” He hadn’t forgotten, he just knew he wouldn’t have been able even to push down the button because he was just too bloody weak. His arms were limp at his sides. He hated needles and there were two of them sticking out of his arms. Jesus, he was a mess but he’d be okay. Becca loved him. He said, his voice slurred, “I’m glad you love me. That makes two of us now.”
He thought he heard her laugh. He knew he felt her palm against his cheek.
And then he drifted away, the pain pulling back, like a monster’s fangs pulling out of his flesh, and it felt blessedly wonderful. Then he was asleep again, deeply asleep, and it was black and dreamless and there was nothing there to hurt him and that was a very good thing.
Becca slowly straightened over him.
The nurse smiled at her from the other side of his bed. “He’s doing great. Please don’t worry, we’re taking really good care of him. I hope he’ll sleep now. He should, since the pain has lightened up. You need to get some rest, too, Ms. Matlock.”
Becca gave Adam one last long look, a last kiss on his mouth, then walked out of his room, down the corridor to the small sitting room with two windows looking onto the parking lot, pale yellow walls dotted with Impressionist prints. That small room was filled with the latest batch of relatives. There was Adam’s mom, Georgia, playing with Sean, while Sherlock and Savich were laughing, taking turns announcing yet another church and yet another possible date for Becca and Adam’s wedding, only to have a boo from one relative who had to go salmon fishing in Alaska, or another who had to go to Italy on business, or yet another who had an appointment with her lawyer to cut her husband out of her will. On and on it went.
Becca said from the doorway, “I’m happy to announce that Adam asked me to marry him and I accepted. However, he was hurting a lot. Maybe he won’t remember when he wakes up. If he doesn’t, why, I’ll just have to ask him.”
“My boy will remember,” his father said, a man Adam resembled closely. He grinned at her. “One of the first things Adam told us when he could talk was that he is going to have that second bathroom on the top floor of his house redone so you wouldn’t turn him down due to ugly green tile on the counters.”
“Well, that certainly shows commitment,” she said. “Tell you what, I’ll pick out the new tile and then we’ll see how fast I can get him to the altar.”
She left them laughing, a very nice sound, and now they could do it more easily since their son would be all right. They seemed to like her, which was a relief. His mom was something else. She owned a Volvo dealership in Alexandria and was an auctioneer on the side. His father, she’d been told by one of Adam’s older brothers, owned and operated a stud farm in Virginia.
Well, her father was alive, but that was all he needed to be, thank you very much. Actually, she wasn’t at all certain what he did for a living, but who cared? She thought briefly of his house, where her mother had spent time. Now it was gone, just a shell left. It didn’t matter. Her father was alive.
/>
She took the elevator up to the sixth floor, to the ICU. She could make that trip in her sleep, she’d gone back and forth so many times now.
Thank God the hospital administration had managed to keep the media away from this area. The doctors and nurses nodded to her. She walked into the huge room with its hissing machines, its ever-present mixture of smells that was overlaid with a sharp antiseptic odor that reminded her of the dentist’s office, and the occasional groan from a patient.
An FBI agent sat by her father’s cubicle.
“Hello, Agent Austin. Everything all right?”
“No problem,” he said and a grin kicked in that was positively evil. “You’ll like this. One enterprising reporter managed to get this far, and then I nabbed him. I decked him, stripped him naked, and the nurses and doctors tossed him in a laundry cart and wheeled him down to the emergency room, where they left him, his hands and feet tied with surgical tape, his mouth gagged. Ah, since then, no one else has tried it.”
“I just heard about that,” she said, rolling her eyes. “One of the doctors told me he’d never before been surrounded with such laughter in the emergency room. Well done, Agent. Remind me to stay on your good side.”
He was still chuckling when she eased around the light curtain surrounding her father’s bed and sat down in the single chair. He was asleep, not unexpected, and it didn’t matter. He was on powerful medications and even when he was awake, his mind couldn’t focus. “Hello,” she said, watching him breathe slowly, in and out through the oxygen tubes in his nostrils. “You’re looking wonderful, very handsome. I might have to give your hair a trim though, maybe in a couple of days. Adam will be all right as well, but maybe he’s not quite as good-looking as you are. He’s sleeping right now. Oh yes, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that we’re going to get married. But you won’t be surprised, will you?” White bandages covered his chest. Tubes stuck out of him, and like Adam, he seemed to have a score of needles in his arms. He lay perfectly still, but he was breathing evenly, steady and deep.
“Now, let me tell you again what happened. Mikhail shot you in the chest. You have a collapsed lung. They did what’s called a thoracotomy. They cracked open your chest to stop the bleeding and put a chest tube in between your ribs. It’s hooked up to suction. That thing’s called a pleuravac and you’ll hear bubbles in the background. Now, when you wake up the tube will hurt a bit. There are two IVs in place and you’ll have this oxygen tube in your nose for a while longer. Other than that, you’re just fine.”
He was breathing slowly, smoothly. The bubbles sounded in the background. “The house is gone and I’m very sorry about that,” she said. “They couldn’t save anything. I’m sorry, Dad, but we’re alive, and that’s what’s really important. I just realized that not everything is gone, though. After Mom died, I put all of her things in a storage facility in the Bronx. There are photos there, and a lot of her things. Maybe there are even letters. I don’t know, because I couldn’t take the time to go through her papers. We’ll have those. It’s a start.”
Did his breathing quicken a bit?
She wasn’t sure.
What was important was that he was alive. He would get well.
She laid her cheek against his shoulder. She stayed there for a very long time, listening to the steady sound of his heart beating against her face.
She got the call at the hospital at eight o’clock that evening. She’d just left her father and was going back downstairs to be with Adam when a nurse called out, “Ms. Matlock, telephone for you.”
She was surprised. It was the first call she’d gotten, or rather, it was the first call they had put through to her.
It was Tyler and he was talking even before she could say hello. “You’re all right. Thank God it’s all over, Becca. Jesus, I’ve been frantic. They had footage of your father’s burning house, for God’s sake, with this huge safety net in the front yard. They said you’d nearly died, up there on that roof with that maniac, that you shot him finally. Are you truly all right?”
“I’m fine, Tyler. Don’t worry. I’m spending all my time at the hospital. Both my father and Adam Carruthers were shot, but they’ll both survive. The media is outside, waiting, but it will be a long wait. Sherlock is bringing me clothes and stuff so I don’t have to try to sneak out of here and take the chance the media might nab me. How’s Sam doing?”
There was a bit of silence, then, “He misses you dreadfully. He’s really quiet now, won’t say a word. I’m worried, Becca, really worried. I keep trying to get him to talk about the man who kidnapped him, to tell me a little bit about him and what he said, but Sam just shakes his head. He won’t say a word. The TV said that man was dead, that he set himself on fire and hurled himself at you. Is that true?”
“Very true. I think you should take Sam to a child psychiatrist, Tyler.”
“Those flimflam bloodsuckers? They’ll start psychoanalyzing me, claiming I’m not a fit father, tell me I need to lie on a couch for at least six years and pay them big bucks. They’ll say it’s about me, not Sam. No way, Becca. No, he just wants to see you.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t leave here for another week, at least.”
Then she heard a little boy’s wail, “Becca!”
It was Sam and he sounded like he was dying. She didn’t know what to do. It was her fault that Sam was having problems, all her fault. “Put Sam on the phone, Tyler. Let me try to talk to him.”
He did, but there was only silence. Sam wouldn’t say a word.
Tyler said, “It’s bad, Becca, really bad.”
“Please take him to a child shrink, Tyler. You need help.”
“Come back, Becca. You must.”
“I will as soon as I can,” she said finally, and hung up the phone.
“Problem?” a nurse asked, a thick black brow arched.
“Nothing but,” Becca said, and lightly touched her fingers to her right arm. The burns were healing and were itching a bit now.
“Problems are like that,” the nurse said. “It rains problems, and then, all of a sudden, it’s a sunny day, and the problems have just evaporated away.”
“I hope you’re right,” Becca said.
The next day, Adam was much improved, even managed to joke with his nurse, who patted his butt, and her father came down with pneumonia and nearly died.
“It’s nuts,” Becca said to Agent Austin. “He survives a bullet to the heart and gets pneumonia.”
“There’s got to be some irony in that,” Agent Austin said, shaking his head, “but no matter, it still sucks.”
“He’ll pull through,” the doctor said over and over again to Becca, taking her hands in his. Maybe the doctor didn’t like the irony, either, Becca thought, lightly touching her father’s shoulder. It was odd, when she touched him—settled her hand on his arm, laid her hand over his, lightly touched his shoulder—his breathing calmed, his whole body seemed to relax, to ease.
And when he was finally awake, his mind alert, and she touched him, he smiled at her, and she saw the pleasure in his eyes, deep and abiding. And when she whispered, “I love you, Dad,” he closed his eyes briefly, and she knew she didn’t want to see his tears. “I love you,” she said again, for good measure, and kissed his cheek. “We’re together now. I know you love Adam like a son, but I’m very pleased that he isn’t your son. If he were, then I couldn’t marry him. Now you’ll get him anyway.”
“If he ever makes you cry, I’ll kill him,” said her father.
“Nah, I’ll do it.”
“Becca, thank you for telling me about all your mother’s things safely in storage in New York.”
He’d heard her, actually heard her speaking to him. And since he’d heard her speaking to him, just maybe her mother had heard her as well, maybe she did have a final connection with her. “You’re welcome. As I said then, it’s a start.”
“Yes,” Thomas said, smiling up at his daughter. “It’s a very good start.”
&nb
sp; Adam was now walking up and down the corridor, ill-tempered, his back throbbing, his arm throbbing, feeling useless, wanting to hit someone because he felt so damned helpless. At least the damned catheter was out.
He was carping and carrying on when Becca laughed and said, “All right, you’ve finally driven me away. My father is doing fine, the pneumonia is kicked, and I’m going to Riptide to see Sam.”
“No,” he said, leaning against the hospital corridor wall, utterly appalled. He wanted to grab her and tuck her under his arm. “I don’t want you going there alone. I don’t trust McBride. I don’t want you out of my sight. I’d really like it if you would sleep in my bed with me and I could hold on to you all night.”
She realized she’d rather like that as well, but she said, “There’s no danger, Adam. How could there be? I’m not going to see Tyler. I’m going to see what’s going on with Sam. Don’t forget, Adam, it’s my fault that Krimakov even took him, my fault that Sam got traumatized. I’ve got to fix it. Tyler has nothing to do with it.”
“Dammit, it was Krimakov’s fault. Give it another couple of days, Becca, and I’ll go with you.”
“Adam, you can barely get to the bathroom by yourself now. You’ll stay here and just concentrate on getting well. Spend time with my father. And maybe you could work on all those church dates as well. None of your family can come to an agreement.”
“Well, are you still going to marry me?”
“Is that your final offer?”
He looked both pissed and chagrined. Suddenly he laughed. “I swear I’ll change that green tile. Do you mind moving from New York, living down here? We’re really close to your dad. Is he going to rebuild?”
“We haven’t discussed it yet. Yes, Adam, I’ll marry you, particularly if you change that bathroom tile. Consider it a done deal. I have no real ties to Albany. Goodness, there are so many folk around here who need good speechwriters. I’ll make a fortune. Now, you can’t flirt with any of the hospital staff anymore, you got that? I’m considering that we’re now officially engaged.