finally he balled up the tissue and held her tightly, and it didn’t take more than a few seconds before his shoulders started to shake and he wept. Shana patted his back and murmured things and they rocked together for half a minute longer.
When he pulled away, he came toward me, his hand extended. “Sandy says you’ve been looking for me.”
“Yes. Jonah Geller.” We shook.
“Hired by my parents.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“We got here Thursday.”
“You’re very good then. I commend you.”
He was on the small side, about five-eight and 145 pounds, and his eyes looked red and rheumy. But when he smiled, like he was doing now, he really did seem lit from within. Not an athlete’s glow, and not a saint’s either. Here was a man who had known what he wanted to do from a very young age and had pursued it ardently with every ounce of his considerable gifts. There was a contentment about him I knew I could never achieve, no matter what I did in the future, because of what I’d done in the past. That he had commended my work mattered because I so admired his.
“Have you been sick the whole time?” Shana asked.
“No, just the last few days,” he said. “It gets damp in the house at night. I can’t seem to find enough blankets. I didn’t want any wood smoke so I never lit the fire. I just used the camp stove, like you said.”
“You poor thing,” she said.
He looked at me and said, “So. My parents hired a private investigator.”
“They needed to know what happened.”
“I feel terrible that I haven’t called them. I just couldn’t. I was afraid it would put them in danger. If they didn’t know where I was, Daggett would have no reason to hurt them. I take it you know about Daggett?”
“Yes.”
“After the first few days here, I kind of lost track of time a little. It became easier not to do anything at all, other than subsist and think. There were a few interesting books I could read during daylight hours. Thoughts I jotted down about HOOD and other matters. I mostly tried to sleep and stay warm and ration my supplies.”
“David, there’s more to the case now than you know. Carol-Ann is dead.”
“Carol-Ann Meacham? From-how?”
“I think Daggett murdered her. Or paid someone else to do it.”
“My God.”
“There’s more. Yesterday, Daggett took my partner hostage and threatened to kill her if I didn’t find you.”
“I see,” he said. His eyes shared the colour of the sea behind him. He stooped and picked up the blanket, shook it free of sand and wrapped it around him. Like he would have done with his tallis had he not been forced to leave it behind. “And now you have.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not planning to swap you. But he gave me a deadline of Monday. Why?”
David looked out across the dunes. “It was his next scheduled procedure.”
“On Mrs. McConnell.”
“You’re very well informed.”
“And Daggett wanted you to assist again?”
“Yes. Dr. Reimer’s wrist hadn’t healed yet and Daggett told Stayner not to bring another party in. The fewer people who knew about his enterprise, he said, the better.”
“Why did he send those goons after you? What happened?”
He looked down at the sand and swept a pattern back and forth with the toe of his shoe. “Mr. Patel’s death was so unnecessary. Malignant hyperthermia. A standard exam would have discovered his allergy. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The others had been doing this a while-maybe they were more inured to the possibility something could go wrong. At first I thought I could keep quiet. Dr. Stayner begged me to because Daggett had threatened his son. Then he called me in and told me I had to do it again, and I refused. And I guess I made some comments about going to the police.”
“To Stayner.”
“Yes.”
“How long between your talk with Stayner and the night they tried to grab you?”
“Two days.”
“He sold you out.”
“I know. But don’t think badly of him,” David said.
Shana said, “What? How can you say that?”
“Because I can imagine doing the same in his position.”
I said, “David, if you can come back down among us mortals a minute, I need you to help me find Jenn.”
“If you want mortal, I can tell you how afraid I am personally of Sean Daggett. Even if he needs me to perform that surgery Monday, he’ll kill me after.”
“I won’t let him.”
“You think you can protect me from him?”
“I can do a better job than you can. And I have help.”
“What do you need from me?”
“Tell me what you know about Halladay’s Funeral Home.”
“You think he’s holding your friend there?”
“He threatened to harvest her organs if I didn’t come through.”
“Then that’s where he’d have her. Or have to bring her by Monday evening. Okay. Let’s go back in the house and I’ll fill you in.”
As I was turning to go back across the sand, a flash of movement caught my eye: I whirled back to see David lunge at Shana and shove her roughly to the ground. Then he turned toward me and the top of his head came off in a bloody burst. The crack of a shot came a split second later. As he staggered clumsily back his throat blew open and the second shot and Shana’s scream together split the roar of the ocean’s rage. He fell back on the sand and didn’t stir.
I dove on top of Shana and pinned her beneath me as she screamed again. A bullet whined past us and I pressed harder against her, trying to shield every part of her. I reached out and grabbed David’s belt and pulled his body closer to us and turned him onto one side. He was dead, nothing more could hurt him. Another round smacked the meat of his body and Shana cried, “No!” I reached across my waist to the stiff new holster on my hip, unsnapped it and drew the Beretta. Thumbed off the safety.
The gunman had been firing single rounds at us so far. As soon as the next one came, passing over us, hitting nothing, I jumped up and ran forward screaming, firing at where the shots had come from. I kept my finger on the trigger and the rounds kept blasting out. As I ran, my eyes scanned everything in front of me and I finally saw him standing with a long gun with a scope on it, caught deciding whether to run or shoulder the weapon for another shot at me. He saw me spot him and ran for it, the gun at port arms. I fired a few more rounds but I wasn’t a good enough shot to hit a moving target while running. I stopped and dropped to the ground and fired three more as he disappeared around the side of the house. I lay there, panting, waiting, in case he was planning a sneaky buttonhook move. No one came. A minute later I heard an engine rev, and a car bolted down the road beyond the Coopers’ gate.
He was gone. Him and David both.
Shana was still face down when I got back, sobbing into her arms. I knelt beside her and put my hand on her shoulders, felt the knot of tension at the base of her neck. When she sat up, tears mixed with sand in dark muddy lines down her cheeks. “You used him as a shield, you bastard. You used him to protect us.”
“He was already dead.”
“How could you be sure?”
“There was nothing left after the first shot, never mind the second.”
“That is so fucking cold.”
