Linc could see the shock on his sister’s face at their father’s words.
When Linc drifted off again, he was aware of his father stretched out on the floor next to him, and his sister sitting across the room with her little pot of chamomile tea.
Mattie didn’t expect to see Doyle standing over his hospital bed when he woke up in a haze of painkillers and God knew what else the doctors had pumped into him. He was still on an IV. He tried to sit up. “Abigail? Linc? Are they all right?”
“They’re okay,” Doyle said, gruff as ever. “You got banged up the most. A couple broken ribs. About eight million bruises. You didn’t puncture a lung, though. No internal injuries.”
“I deserved to die.”
“Well, you didn’t. Now you have to figure out what comes next.”
“I can’t drink.”
Doyle nodded. “But you know it’s really about not drinking.” He seemed awkward. “I talked to Katie this morning. We’ll have to see what the prosecutors decide to do with you, but if you’re not in jail, you can have the spare bedroom until you’re back on your feet. One drop of alcohol, and you’re out. And you’re never to be there alone with the boys.”
“Doyle, I don’t deserve-”
“It’s not about what you deserve, Mattie. Katie and I can and want to do this for you. We’re not trying to save you. We know we can’t. Only you can save yourself.”
“When I was in the water,” he whispered. “BeforeAbigail. Chris was there. He kept me going. I had to stay alive to tell people about Ellis. I could hear his voice. I swear, Doyle. He was there, telling me…I had this one last chance…”
If Doyle believed him, he’d never say. “You’ve got a long road ahead of you, Mattie Young. Katie and I can walk some of it with you, but if you stumble-if you screw up-you’re on your own.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Just say thank you.”
“Thank you.”
Sean and Ian Alden squatted in front of a tide pool down on the rocks by Owen’s house. He sat on the deck with Doyle, watching the boys hold periwinkles up to their ears.
“You ever hear a periwinkle sing?” Doyle asked. “Because I never have. Katie says she hears them all the time.”
Owen lifted his feet onto the deck rail. “I can’t say I’ve spent a lot of time listening to periwinkles.”
“You would if you lived out here on this rock year-round.” Doyle grinned, and it was good to see. Forty-eight hours after Ellis Cooper’s death, nothing was back to normal. “Something to be said for it, don’t you think?” His grin broadened. “You’d go out of your damn mind.”
“I’ll be up here regularly once the field academy starts.”
“Rappelling off cliffs. Hauling trainees up and down mountains. Diving off boats. You won’t be listening to periwinkles sing.”
“Sometimes, maybe.”
“Katie’s excited about being director. You should hear her.” Doyle leaned back in his deck chair. “It’s good. I’m happy for her. For us.”
Owen shifted his gaze from the boys up the headland toward Abigail’s house on the rocks. The media had descended in a whir, keeping Doyle’s officers busy. Special Agents Capozza and Steele had kept vigil on Abigail’s house during the worst of it. John March called his daughter from Washington. He’d wait and see her when the frenzy had died down. By last night, most of the media had departed.
Doyle nodded in the direction of her house. “Her cop buddies from Boston are there. Bob O’Reilly and that other one-Scoop Wisdom. Have you seen him? Hell. He looks like he could dig Ellis up and shoot him again just to be sure he’s dead. Abigail says he’s got cats, though.”
“Cats?”
“She thinks anyone who has a cat can’t be all that mean. I told her she should look up all the murder cases involving weird cat people. Of course, she knows there are exceptions-she’s just saying this guy Scoop’s not as big a bad-ass as he looks. I guess not, because he’s helping her and O’Reilly nail up wallboard and paint the place.”
“Doyle,” Owen said. “Are you okay?”
His eyes filled with tears, but his gaze never left his sons. “I keep going back over what I could have done. I was the responding officer after the break-in seven years ago. If I’d realized it was Mattie-if I’d known Chris was on to Ellis…”
“Ellis manipulated Mattie. Seven years ago, and this past week.”
“Mattie’s responsible for his own decisions.”
“But Ellis played on his weaknesses. Chris knew. He didn’t realize Ellis was a marksman. The police had found where Ellis practiced in the woods behind his house here, and at a private shooting range near his home in Washington. He’d kept his skill to himself. Chris guessed that Ellis stood by and watched my sister die, but that’s different from ambushing someone.”
“If he’d asked me to come down here with him-”
“Then you’d both be dead.”
Doyle was silent a moment. “Maybe so.” He pointed at the cloudless sky. “Hey, a heron.”
Owen saw it, a giant blue heron, ungainly looking and yet so graceful as it flew up the rockbound coast toward the cliffs.
“Herons were always one of Chris’s favorites,” Doyle said.
“One of Doe’s, too.” When the bird disappeared, Owen got to his feet. “I have to go. You and the boys are welcome to stay here as long as you like.”
“Where are you off to?”
“Guatemala,” he said. “There’s been a massive mudslide.”
“I thought you were supposed to be resting.”
Owen shrugged. “I’ll rest another time.”
“How’re you getting to Guatemala?”
“I’m flying to Austin and meeting my team there. We’ll head out together.”
Doyle squinted up at him. “Abigail know you fly your own plane?”
“Abigail has thick files on all of us, Doyle.” Owen grinned, clapping a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “She knows more about us than we know about ourselves.”
Bob and Scoop were in her kitchen making dinner-boiling lobsters, which she hated to do-whenAbigail saw Mattie limp up from the spruce trees down by the back porch. He looked thin and colorless, but his hair was clean, pulled back in a neat ponytail, and his bruises, the blossoms of purples and yellows on his arms, were beginning to heal.
“Don’t get up,” he said. “I’m not staying. I just want to leave you this.” He placed a small silver gift bag on her bottom porch step. “I know I can’t make up for what I’ve done to you.”
“I haven’t asked you to.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I’m sorry.”
He started to walk away. Abigail climbed down the steps. “Wait-stay.”
Nervous, eager, he watched her open the bag and take out a white rectangular box. She lifted the lid, and inside, nestled on soft cotton, was her necklace, the chain repaired, the pearls restrung.
“I told the jeweler there was a cameo pendant,” Mattie said.
“I have it.”
“When I grabbed the necklace with the saw, I broke the chain,” Mattie explained. “I got a plastic bag in Doyle’s garage and put all the pearls and the pieces of chain in there. It’s the one okay thing I did, because if they’d been loose in my pocket when Ellis knocked me in the water…” He didn’t finish the thought. “Well, I just wanted to get your necklace back to you.”
