I wrestled down a few bites of the casserole, but my jaw was excruciating. Nathan didn’t ask questions. I drank a glass of milk through a straw, and ten minutes at the table slowly undid a little of the damage of the last three days.
“Now,” he said. “It seems you’re exhausted. I wonder what you’ve been through! But I think we need to make plans.”
The “we” was as energizing as the food. I’d had so many guards up, and it was such a relief to let some of them down.
“I was sure it was Fred,” I said.
“Yes, we’ll get to that. But no matter who it was, it was still someone.” He shook his head. “I can help you, Jason. But I’m afraid I don’t know much about these things. I’m not sure what to do. You need medical attention, and you need food and rest. Maybe my own physician could come here.”
“No. It’s too risky.”
He nodded. “Whatever you say. But I’m sure you can stay here safely for a few days. I’ll tell Mrs. Hammond not to come for the rest of the week.” He set his jaw into a grim smile. “We’ll work out what to do. You’re safe now. We’ll get through this fight.”
Now I was beginning to crumple. Again I wondered if it even mattered to me. Maybe it wasn’t Fred. I’d used everything I had and far more to get here. “I can’t fight anymore.”
“You need to rest. After you’ve eaten and slept, you’ll be ready to keep going.”
Keep going… wasn’t just getting to this house all I’d been trying to do? “But why?”
“We need to find this murderer, Jason. That’s the important thing.”
It was hard to just keep talking. “I’ve given up on that. There’s only one thing left I want. Just tell me why.”
“Why you should keep going?” He was confused.
“Why is all of this happening?” Was that the question? “Why shouldn’t I give up?” It was so hard to even think. “Why am I here? That’s why I came to you.”
We were in hard kitchen chairs, not beside the cozy fire I’d imagined. But this was why I’d come. It wasn’t about Katie’s or Melvin’s deaths-it was about my life.
He took time to answer, and I was fading. But in his eyes there was such deep thought, and I stared back and kept myself awake.
“Life is precious,” he said. “Look at yourself, Jason. I don’t know what you went through to come here, but I can see in you that it has been terrible. If you don’t know why you want to keep living, you still know that you do.”
“But I have to know why!”
“Of course. Certainly. Everyone needs a purpose, something they can serve. You need a purpose outside of yourself. You’ve only had yourself as your life, and through these terrible struggles you’ve finally seen how unworthy that is, how without value. Now, and only now, you can start to look for something else.”
What was he saying? This was what I’d wanted my whole life, to hear this. The answers. From someone who knew. This was so important.
“Eric said I had the gun,” I said.
He was bewildered for a moment. “He… what?” He didn’t know what I was talking about.
“You called Fred, and he told you he still had the gun.” Suddenly, inside my head a vortex had opened, spinning, pulling in every thought. “But Eric said I had the gun in my hand when I left Fred’s office.”
He’d changed to the new subject, but he hadn’t caught up with me yet. “Well… he must have been mistaken. It must have been very confused at that moment.”
“Because that means I’d have brought it up to my office, where you were.” Now the whirlwind was throwing the thoughts back out, strange thoughts, in strange patterns. “That afternoon, before I met Clinton Grainger at the hotel. I told you I was meeting him.”
The intimate, confessional mood between us was far gone. “Jason. .. what are you saying?”
I didn’t know. The words were hardly mine. I was too tired to think. I could only watch the thoughts whirling by too fast to see what they really were.
“Was there something in Melvin’s notes about the foundation?” It couldn’t be true. Nathan was the only one who had withstood the corrosion of the money and the power. I had to believe it was possible for a man to do that; I had to believe he had answers. “Angela found something in them. Grainger had seen it, too, when he raided Melvin’s office. All that I’d left there were those files on the foundation, and Grainger got copies of them. That’s what he meant that night, his ‘surprise.’ He knew something about the foundation, and he was going to use it against me. And he met someone else afterward.”
“What are you talking about?” Now there was anger in his eyes. It was mirroring my own.
“You knew Melvin was going to change his will. If he’d had his accident a couple hours sooner…”
He forced calm back into his eyes and breathing. “Jason. Do you know what you’re saying?”
Could it be? How many times had I already been wrong? “I don’t know.”
“I was in Washington when Angela was killed.”
Of course. I slumped back in the chair. “I’m sorry, Nathan.” How could I have accused him?
“Come with me,” he said, very gently. “I’ll show you my notes. They’re in the study. That will be proof.”
I could picture them, neat lines filling sheets of white paper. As ordered and right as everything about him. He turned on the study light, and I stood by the wall of binders as he stopped at his desk.
“I’ll need my glasses.” He was looking through a drawer. “I’m sorry I was angry. You’re not yourself.”
I’d been so close to hearing his words. How could we get back? I glanced at the shelves, my back to him. I couldn’t work out how they were ordered. It must have been by subject because the dates weren’t in order. It suddenly bothered me, or something did. I turned abruptly to ask him.
The bullet hit my shoulder-it would have been my back if I hadn’t moved.
I dropped. It was reflex, or pain, or the force of the impact. My arm was on fire. I tried to scramble behind a chair, but then I saw his face, set in nervous determination, and the gun at arm’s length pointed right at my head.
His hand was only trembling a little.
I was frozen. Panic pressure in my head ripped my thoughts apart. My heart was exploding in my chest. The terror was like iron chains holding me. I heard myself telling Fred, “If a man has a gun and he’s trying to kill you…”
I stared at Nathan, beyond thought, and at the round black hole of the gun. I couldn’t move.
“You can either dodge bullets or…”
He looked away.
He’d been startled. The gun moved away. It wasn’t just blood pounding in my ears; there was some other sound. He looked back to me and straightened his aim, but the sound was louder.
Someone was knocking on the front door and ringing the bell.
I shoved the chair aside to get behind it. He fired again but was distracted. I felt the chair shudder. I was still pushing and clawing to get behind it.
There was a crash and Nathan turned and started toward the door to the hall, the gun still in his hand. At the doorway he stopped, his face white and confused. He pointed once more, wildly, and fired. The wall above my head splintered.
I was close to the door to his conservatory. I lunged toward it. It wasn’t latched and I fell through into the pots and branches.
Someone was shouting, and I heard Nathan saying, “In here! He’s in here!” I got myself upright and threw my side into the sunroom glass wall. It shattered and I fell through bushes and hit the ground.
There were roots, and once I was up I tripped on them and fell. It was too hard to stand again. I crawled through the stiff branches and out onto the grass.
“Out there!” Nathan’s voice followed me. “There he is!”
The yard was dark. I pulled myself upright and ran and limped toward the street. A light-colored car was at the curb, and I got around it and crouched by the driver’s door.
The front door of the house flew open. I could see two silhouettes in the light of the hall.
“He’s out there. I saw him.”
