stabilize Gold. When the moment was right, he would try to heighten the tension and create chaos in the room. At that point, he and Patty would have only seconds for some sort of coordinated, unscripted attack before one or both of them were dead. He inserted two undamaged fingers into the bullet hole in Gold’s trousers and, with difficulty, ripped the leg off. Gold, still awake though definitely slowed, moaned in pain at even the slightest movement.
“Careful, Will,” Susan warned. “You and I both know you’re not that clumsy.”
“That’s when my fractured cheekbone isn’t throbbing and I have all my fingernails.” Will showed her the bandages.
Gold’s leg looked bad-very bad. There was a massive amount of swelling in the thigh beneath the wound-a unit of blood, Will guessed, possibly even two. Almost certainly the femur had been shattered, and the femoral artery had probably been severed, as well.
“Use his belt. Put a tourniquet on.”
“Rather than jostle him any more than necessary, I’ll use mine. . So, it was you and Gold all the time. And here I thought you were just a mild-mannered surgeon.”
Susan laughed.
“Compared to the life I’ve led, surgery has been a big yawn. Over the last six years this man has taught me things and taken me places surgery never could.”
“You’re the one who sabotaged my shoes.”
“I had to. Otherwise you would have operated on that Davis woman, and we just couldn’t have that.”
“Because I would have discovered that she didn’t have any breast cancer at all. I get it now.”
“We had a bit of a problem because we had developed you so carefully as our public spokesman, but something had to be done quickly to get you out of the OR. Killing you would have been so messy and so final, and would have started people wondering if they were wrong about you and the Society and the managed-care killer all being on the same side.”
“So, after you crucified me and took the Davis case back, you threatened Jim Katz to try and get me reinstated at work.”
“As long as the attention was diverted from Excelsius, you were serving your purpose. Your pal the Law Doctor actually helped us out by planting those shoes in that ER closet.”
“He planted them?”
“Of course. What kind of a dummy do you take me for? I would never have just left your Chuck Taylors lying around the hospital. The lawyer made a calculated guess about how we got the fentanyl into you, and he guessed right. I’m sure the insoles of those shoes will turn out to be loaded with fentanyl. It’s not that hard to get.”
Will couldn’t help but smile. Augie realized that the only one who could prove he had hidden a pair of counterfeit, fentanyl-soaked sneakers in the ER was the person who had actually framed Will. The man had rolled the dice for him with both his law and medicine careers at stake, and he had won.
“So, how many women got treated for breast cancer they didn’t have?”
“Enough to force Steadfast Health into selling out to us. They were paying over a hundred thousand a case. With more and more women getting breast cancer these days, it wasn’t hard. Besides, we had a one hundred percent cure rate.”
“But Halliday couldn’t do that with every other company he wanted to take over.”
“No. It was a brilliant idea that worked, but we needed to develop a more. .
“Jesus. Listen, Susan, this belt isn’t tightening enough. He’s still bleeding. I suspect his femoral artery’s torn. If so, this leg’s in trouble.
“Watkins, get up and help us,” Susan ordered. “My medical bag is in the trunk of my car. Get the bag and also some rope. And I need something like a tire iron to tighten the tourniquet.”
“Look at me, Dr. Hollister. I’m handcuffed. He’s got the key in his pocket.”
“Will, unlock his cuffs. . Now!”
Susan swung her machine gun toward him, and Will saw Patty instantly change her stance so that one leg was beneath her now, ready to shove off. It was time to raise the ante. Without thinking twice about it, he pulled the key from his pocket and swallowed it.
“I told him I was going to do that,” Will said lightly, hoping to lessen Susan’s anger and the tension in her index finger.
“God damn you!” she shrieked, her cheeks crimson.
From the corner of his eye, Will saw Patty shift again.
“Don’t worry, Dr. Hollister,” Watkins said. “I’ve got another key in my room, in the drawer right by the bed. I can get it.”
The giant began struggling awkwardly to his feet, lost his balance, and tumbled heavily onto his side. Another distraction. It had to be now. As Watkins was righting himself, Will kneed Gold’s thigh at exactly the fracture point. The killer bellowed with pain and took an ineffectual, floppy swing at Will. Reflexively, Susan turned toward them. In that instant, Patty sprang forward, viciously swinging her bare foot upward in a punting motion against Susan’s wrist. The machine gun flew out of Susan’s hands and landed at the base of the wall, a dozen feet away. Will, who was on one knee, was trying to stand when Watkins slammed into him like a semi, driving him back against the wall. Powered by adrenaline, Will hammered at the man with his fists and feet and managed to pull himself upright.
Patty followed her kick by trying to dive over Susan toward the gun, but the surgeon moved with the quickness of a gymnast, striking her with a backhand fist flush against her skull flap, while in the same motion spinning and lunging toward her weapon. Patty cried out from the blow and dropped to her side. Dazed, she remained composed enough to grab on to one of Susan’s legs. Absorbing kicks to her face and chest, she hung on for a few precious seconds, but there was no way she could beat the woman to where the machine gun lay.
“Run, Will!” she shouted, losing her hold and rolling over and over toward the open door. “Run!”
Will grabbed her by the arm as he raced past and dragged her to her feet and through the doorway. They were sprinting down a long corridor toward what seemed to be the back of the house when they heard a burst of gunfire from behind them. Will risked a glance over his shoulder. Susan had fired wildly from inside the room and hadn’t yet reached the hallway.
“Straight ahead,” Patty gasped, pointing to a windowed doorway that led outside.
They charged past a richly appointed conference room and a vast, gleaming, brilliantly lit kitchen. Neither held any hope of protection or concealment. Getting outside was their only chance. Will dropped back a step to allow Patty to reach the door first. If only one of them was going to make it, he wanted it to be her.
Patty had already considered the possibility. With her left hand, she slid the dead-bolt lock aside and simultaneously pulled open the door with her right. The aluminum storm door, with a full pane of glass, was also locked. Without hesitation, she drove her knee and forearm into the pane, shattering it outward onto a small unlit porch.
“Stay low!” she screamed.
Without hesitating, she stepped onto the shards of glass with her bare right foot, then leapt over three stairs and onto the lawn, finishing with a perfectly executed roll. It was an incredibly athletic move, and not one Will had any chance of duplicating. Instead, he pulled the inside door nearly closed behind him and was carefully stepping through the storm-door frame when a staccato of bullets snapped into the wood. One of them ripped into the muscle overlying his right hip. He fought through the intensely burning pain and drove ahead. Susan had to be wondering whether she could chance leaving her lover to go after them, or whether any risk was worth taking to keep them from getting off the farm alive. The longer they could keep moving, the more they could increase her indecision, the less effective she was going to be.
By the time he reached Patty, she was braced against a tree, pulling a two-inch-long stiletto of glass from the sole of her foot. He moved to help, but she waved him off, then raced with him toward the barn. The night was black and raw, the grass unpleasantly cold and slick, and she was barefoot and battered. Still she ran. It was as if by example she was willing him not to be hesitant or afraid.
Ignoring the searing in his hip, he hobbled along beside her until they had rounded the small corral and
