no, that would’ve been too easy, too quick. This way he was facing a future filled with hospitals, doctors’ offices, reduced activities, bland food, loneliness if Shelby went through with the divorce and a life of dependency whether she did or didn’t, and no worthwhile job prospect in either case because who’d hire a man with one foot in the grave? Months, years of suffering, causing suffering, until another attack took him out or he took himself out. Hell, why not just get up and run around in circles naked until his heart quit beating from the strain, put an end to it right here and now?
Stupid thought. Selfish. He was a long way from the suicide stage yet; self-preservation was still too strong in him. More important, he couldn’t do a thing like that to Shelby. Not now, after all she’d done and was out there doing to try to save his sorry ass.
Bitterly he found himself thinking back to the week before Christmas. He’d had the arrhythmia and shortness of breath for a while before they finally alarmed him enough to do what Shelby’s urgings hadn’t—send him to his doctor, who had shuttled him on to the cardiologist, Dr. Prebble. A stress test confirmed the diminished capacity in his heart. So then they’d put him in the hospital overnight—he’d called Shelby and lied to her about an all-night poker game at Ben Coulter’s—and administered a bunch of tests, including an echocardiogram to determine the location of the blockage. There’d been some talk about “cathing” him—inserting a minicam in his veins and running it up into the heart to look for other blockages—but the cardiologist had finally determined that the procedure wasn’t necessary.
Diagnosis: CAD—coronary artery disease. How could a thirty-five-year-old man have CAD? That had been his first reaction. Age was no factor in heart disease, Prebble had told him; people of any age could have it. Usually it was genetic, but not always. His reaction to that had been the typically self-pitying one: Why me? Took a while to get over it and reconcile himself, but he’d managed it. Or thought he had until now.
His CAD required bypass surgery, double, triple, maybe quadruple, they couldn’t be sure until they opened him up and inspected the damage. Prebble’s dry, professional voice telling him this, and then explaining what the surgery entailed: ten-inch-long incision in the middle of his chest, his breastbone separated to create an opening to view the heart and aorta; connection to a heart-lung bypass machine that circulated the blood through his body during surgery; the possible use of the saphenous vein in his leg, or an internal mammary artery, or the radial artery in his wrist to create grafts around the blocked areas; then his breastbone reconnected with wire and the incision sewn up. Five to seven days in the hospital, the first few hours in ICU, and the balance of his recovery at home. Good as new in time … maybe. If he didn’t die on the operating table from traveling blood clots or immediately afterward from infection or some other post-op risk. Or end up having a fatal myocardial infarction despite the bypass.
Merry Christmas, Mr. Macklin. Happy New Year.
Dr. Prebble had wanted him to have the operation right away. He’d balked. Couldn’t it wait until after the holidays? Yes, though it was always best to act quickly in cases like his. Talk it over with your wife, the doctor told him, before you decide definitely to wait. He said he would, but he couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t. Instead he’d lied to Prebble, saying he and Shelby both agreed he should wait until after the first of the year. That way, he figured he could enjoy what might be his last Christmas and his last auld lang syne, accept Ben’s offer to use the cottage in between … stick his head in the sand like an ostrich. The risk in waiting was relatively small as long as he didn’t overexert himself, watched his diet and cut down on his alcohol consumption, got plenty of rest, and faithfully took the little white nitroglycerine tablets Dr. Prebble prescribed. That was what Prebble had told him and what he’d made himself believe.
And they’d both been wrong.
And now he and Shelby were paying the price.
E I G H T E E N
IT WAS FULL DARK now, the night alive with shifting, rain-drenched shadows just outside the reach of the Prius’s headlights. The twin rays seemed to reflect off rather than penetrate the downpour, tingeing the wild scurry of clouds with a faint luminescence. The surface of the lane between the cottage and the Lomax house was heavily puddled and greasy; in Shelby’s haste she nearly lost control on the one slight curve, turned into the skid just in time. Thank God there were no more toppled trees or other obstacles in her path.
She pulled up at an angle in front of the closed gates, so that the headlight shine illuminated them. Left the engine running and the lights on. Thunder made a drumroll riff in the distance; a few seconds later a lightning fork etched jagged yellow patterns on the canopy of darkness above the ocean. The lightning burst lit up the house for an instant, too, gave it a surreal look like something out of a neo-Gothic horror film.
She took hold of the gates, shoved them apart as far as they would go so she could see through to the front of the house. Dark. The flickers of light she’d seen as she drove up were at the rear. The Lomaxes must be in the sunken living room with logs blazing in that massive stone fireplace; ragged streamers of smoke poured from the chimney, faintly visible before the gale tore them apart.
At first she thought there was enough separation between the two gate halves for her to slide her body through, but as soon as she tried it she knew she’d only succeed in getting herself stuck. Up and over, then—no time to waste. The gates were only six feet high and she’d always been adept at climbing.
She got one foot on the chain, both hands on the soaked top bar of one half; pulled herself up, swung her legs over, managed to scramble down inside without hurting herself. The flashlight was in the slash pocket of her raincoat; she dragged it out, switched it on.
The deluge was so intense it was like trying to push her way through something semisolid. A wind surge sent a three-foot-long branch skittering against her legs as she followed the beam across the parking area, nearly tripping her. She braced herself and kicked it away; plowed ahead to the porch.
More than a minute of leaning on the doorbell brought no response. She tried hammering on the door with her fist, thumbing the bell again at the same time. Futile. The storm made too much noise for her to hear anything from inside, but she had the prickly feeling of being watched through the peephole. She lifted her face close to the convex glass eye, mouthed the words, “Help, I need help.”
Nothing. The door stayed shut.
Damn Brian Lomax and his paranoia!
Desperation drove her off the porch, around onto a brick path that paralleled the south side of the house. Thick manzanita shrubs made close borders along the path, their thin, coarse branches scraping at her as she passed. Three windows on that side, all of them shaded, only the farthest one shielding light. She pawed through the shrubbery and tried the latches on all three, knowing they’d be locked tight, doing it anyway.
When she reached the back corner, the flash beam showed her a low, railed deck running the width of the house, steps bisecting it in the center. As she stepped out and around the end of the deck, a sharp burst of bitter- cold wind and rain shoved her off-balance against the planking; she had to hang on to the railing posts to remain upright.
She aimed the torch at the back wall. The drapes were drawn across picture windows and sliding glass door, but behind the door there was a thin gap where the cloth folds didn’t quite meet, letting a strip of light leak out.
Up the steps, her body bent almost double; the squall, like a hand in her back, thrust her forward against the door glass. She darkened the flash and slipped it into her pocket; sleeved her eyes clear and sluiced water off the glass so she could squint through the gap between the drapes.
Brian Lomax was standing statuelike near the fireplace, his big hands flat against his sides—directly in her line of sight. Tucked into the waistband of his trousers was the handgun he’d displayed two nights ago. If Claire was anywhere in the room, Shelby couldn’t see her.
She clung to the door handle with one gloved hand, made a fist of the other and banged it hard on the glass, making the pane rattle in its metal frame. No response. She ground her molars in frustration, peered through the opening again. Lomax still stood in the same spot, in the same posture, his beard-shadowed face like a stone mask.
She had a quick flash of Jay lying sick and alone in the dwindling firelight, and a frenzied wildness took hold of her. She pounded on the glass with all her strength, she didn’t care if she shattered or spiderwebbed it. Kept pounding, pounding. How long could he resist opening the door?
Not much longer. All at once the drapes were swept back and Lomax was there, staring out at her through
