rank of captain. He had come through the war fine. Everything always came easy for him. He played third base at U of F and probably could have been drafted as a pro. He had a 3.8 GPA as a history major. He was on the short list for a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, but instead decided to enlist. He was the most capable man she knew.
Raef had to be okay if Rick was saying it.
“I’m on my way,” she said, already heading toward her Prius. “I’ll see you there.”
“You drive safely,” he told her. “I love you, baby.”
“I love you too.”
The drive should have taken close to two hours, but she made it in an hour and a half. A patrol car escorted her, flashing lights and all. When she got to the hospital, she ran through the sliding-glass doors of the emergency entrance, her heart out of control. “My son! He’s being operated on,” she blurted to the attendant at the desk. “Raef Holmes. He’s in the OR…”
“Second floor to the right,” the attendant said. “I’ll call up. You can take the elevator…”
Carrie bolted up the stairs. She pushed through the OR doors, searching frantically for Rick. She didn’t see him anywhere. He must have stepped out for a second to make a call. Instead a nurse introduced her to the surgeon. “My son’s in there.
“Your boy’s had what we call an AVM,” said the surgeon, a young-looking Asian in green scrubs. “An arteriovenous malformation. It’s a tangle of abnormal arteries and veins in the temporal lobe of the brain. We operated on him to relieve some of the pressure. He’s a strong kid, but I’d be lying if I told you anything other than that it’s touch and go right now. We’ve got him sedated in the ICU. We placed him in a coma-”
“To control the swelling. The next forty-eight hours will be key. But, Ms. Holmes…” The surgeon took her by the arm and walked her over to a bench. “I’m afraid there’s more…”
Then she focused back on Rick. Why he wasn’t here. “Where’s my husband
“He collapsed,” the surgeon said, easing her down onto the bench. “In the waiting room. While we were working on your son. It looks like a dissected aorta. He’s in the OR now. We’ve got our top cardiac team working on him now. It could have happened anytime…” He went through a rough explanation. It was lurking and likely been there for years. Probably congenital. “It just blew.”
They let her look in at him. For the next six hours, she had a husband in the OR and her son in the ICU. Both of them fighting for their lives as she raced back and forth, afraid to leave either one for any time. She didn’t know who needed her more.
“I love you mountains and oceans,” she said to Raef as she sat by his bed, squeezing his small, unresponsive hand. She remembered Rick’s vow:
“You’re going to make it, Raef,” she whispered in his ear. “You’re going to be healthy again, and do all the things young boys do. You know that, right? You know how we love you, don’t you?” Her eyes filled with tears. “You know that nothing could happen to you…”
She remembered closing her eyes and praying.
Not long after that, a nurse touched her shoulder. Carrie turned. “Ms. Holmes, they need you down in the OR…”
She looked at the nurse’s face for a sign that it was okay.
Rick died on the table. He had a stroke caused by an aortic rupture, and they couldn’t stem the flow of blood or get oxygen to the brain. It had probably been there from birth, the doctors said. Through college. Through Iraq. Through law school. Maybe it was the stress of what happened to Raef that caused it to finally rupture, the doctors speculated. Trying to be strong for all of them. The doctors did everything they could.
Now every time she looked in her son’s resilient eyes, she saw him.
“So what do I always say to you?” Carrie said, pulling Raef close to her.
“I love you mountains and oceans, right, Mommy?” Her arms nestled around him, tears of joy filling her eyes.
“
And as she held him, the oddest thought wormed into her brain.
What Steadman had said on the phone. As if only to her.
That’s why the words had hit home the way they did. There was a space in her heart that seemed to open for those very words.
Chapter Twenty
I spent that first night in the Lexus in the empty lot of a large office park.
I also did what that bastard told me to do. I stopped in an Office Max and picked up a couple of disposable phones. I texted the number to Hallie’s phone.
Then I waited. I waited until I couldn’t hold my eyes open anymore.
No reply.
Earlier, I’d found a tool set in the car’s emergency kit and drove around a movie complex until I came across a Honda with Tennessee plates and switched the front plate onto mine. With luck, the owners might not even know it was missing for a while, and even if they did, a stolen, out-of-state plate wasn’t exactly the biggest story of the day with everything else going on. And Lexus SUVs were a dime a dozen on the roads.
I hoped this would buy me some time.
I had my first meal of the day from a Wendy’s take-out window, chomping down the double burger in maybe three large bites along with a box of chicken tenders and a Coke. I normally watched what I ate and would rather die than stuff down a meal like that, but the day’s events had left me empty and ravenous, and, showing up at Ruth’s Chris going,
The only plan I had was to assert my innocence and focus on that blue car.
My thoughts drifted back to Hallie and Mike. I tried to think of every possible way he and Martinez might somehow have been connected. Mike was a prominent real estate attorney in town. He would have known police. Then there was the gamecock thing. South Carolina.
