Harvest

She said nothing, only shook her head sadly.

It seemed to Victor that the last thing he saw, as Nina's eyelids closed again, was a look of quiet defiance. He gazed down at her hand, the one he'd been holding so possessively. And he saw that it was closed, in a fist.

It was nearly midnight when Detective Lundquist dropped off an exhausted Abby at her front door. She saw that Mark's car was not parked in the driveway. When she stepped inside the house, she could feel its emptiness as clearly as one senses a chasm yawning at one's feet. He's had an emergency at the hospital, she thought. It was not unusual for him to leave the house late at night, called into Bayside to tend to a gunshot wound or a stabbing. She tried to visualize him as she had seen him so many times before in the OR, his face masked in blue, his gaze focused downward, but she could not seem to come up with the image. It was as though the memory, the old reality, had been erased.

She went to the answering machine, hoping he'd left a voice memo on the recorder. All she found were two phone messages. Both were from Vivian, and the number she'd left had an out-of-state area code. She was still in Burlington. It was too late now to call her back. She'd try in the morning.

Upstairs, she stripped off her wet clothes, threw them in the

HARVEST

washing machine, and stepped into the shower. She noticed the tiles were dry; Mark hadn't used the shower tonight. Had he even been home?

As the hot water beat down on her shoulders, she stood with her eyes closed, thinking. Dreading what she'd have to say to Mark. This was why she had returned to his house tonight. The time had come to confront him, to demand answers. The uncertainty had become unbearable.

After she got out of the shower, she sat down on the bed and called in a page for Mark. She was startled when the phone rang almost immediately.

'Abby?' It wasn't Mark, but Katzka. 'Just checking to see if you're OK. I called a little while ago and there was no answer.'

'I was in the shower. I'm fine, Katzka. I'm just waiting for Mark to get home.'

A pause. 'You're by yourself?.'

His note of concern brought a faint smile to her lips. Scratch that armour of his, and you'd find a real man under there after all.

'I locked all the doors and windows,' she said. 'Just like you told me.' Over the phone, she could hear a background buzz of voices, along with the squeal of a police radio, and she could picture him standing on that dock, the blue emergency lights flashing on his face. 'What's happening over there?' she asked.

'We're waiting for the divers. The equipment's already in position.' 'You really think the driver's still trapped in the van?'

'I'm afraid so.' He sighed, and it was a sound of such profound weariness, she gave a murmur of concern.

'You should go home, Katzka. You need a hot shower and some chicken soup. That's my prescription.'

He laughed. It was a surprising sound, one she'd never heard from him before. 'Now if I could just find a pharmacy to fill it.' Someone spoke to him. It sounded like another cop, asking about bullet trajectories. Katzka turned to answer the man, then he came back on the line. 'I have to go. You sure you're OK there? You wouldn't rather stay in a hotel?'

'I'll be fine.'

'OK.' Again, she heard Katzka sigh. 'But I want you to call a locksmith in the morning. Have him install deadbolts on all the doors. Especially if you're going to be spending a lot of nights home alone.'

'I'll do that.'

There was a brief silence. He had pressing matters to attend to, yet he seemed reluctant to hang up. At last he said, 'I'll check back with you in the morning.'

'Thanks, Katzka.' She hung up.

Again she paged Mark. Then she lay down on the bed and waited for him to call back. He didn't.

As the hours passed, she tried to calm her growing fears by tallying up all the possible reasons he wasn't answering. He could be asleep in one of the hospital call rooms. His beeper could be broken. He could be scrubbed and unavailable in the OR.

Or he could be dead. Like Aaron Levi. Like Kunstler and Hennessy. She paged him again. And again.

At 3 a.m., the phone finally rang. In an instant she was wide awake and reaching for the receiver.

'Abby, it's me.' Mark's voice crackled on the wire, as though he were calling from across a long distance.

'I've been paging you for hours,' she said. 'Where are you?'

'I'm in the car, heading to the hospital right now.' He paused.

'Abby, we need to talk. Things have… changed.'

She said, softly: 'Between us, you mean.'

'No. No, this has nothing to do with you. It never did. It has to do with me.You just got sucked into it, Abby. I tried to get them to back off, but now they've taken it too far.' ' Who has?'

'The team.'

She was afraid to ask the next question, but she had no choice now. 'All of you?You're all involved?'

'Not any more.' The connection briefly faded, and she heard what sounded like the whoosh of traffic. His voice regained its volume. 'Mohandas and I came to a decision tonight. That's where I've been, at his house. We've been talking, comparing notes. Abby, we're putting our heads on the block. But we decided it's time to end this. We can't do it any longer. We're going to blow this thing wide open, Mohandas and me. And fuck everyone else. Fuck Bayside.' He paused, his voice suddenly breaking. 'I've been a coward. I'm sorry.'

She closed her eyes. 'You knew. All this time you knew.'

'I knew some of it — not all. I had no idea how far Archer was taking it.! didn't want to know. Then you started asking all those questions. And I couldn't hide from the truth any longer…' He released a deep breath and whispered, 'This is going to ruin me, Abby.'

She still had her eyes closed. She could see him in the darkness of his car, one hand on the wheel, the other gripping the cellular phone. Could imagine the misery on his face. And the courage; most of all, the courage.

'I love you,' he whispered.

'Come home, Mark. Please.'

'Not yet. I'm meeting Mohandas at the hospital. We're going to get those donor records.'

'Do you know where they're kept?'

'We have an idea. With just two of us, it could take us a while to search all the files. If you helped us out, we might be able to get through them by morning.'

She sat up in bed. 'I won't be getting much sleep tonight anyway. Where are you meeting Mohandas?'

'Medical records. He has the key.' Mark hesitated. 'Are you sure you want to be in on this, Abby?'

'I want to be wherever you are. We'll do this together. OK?'

'OK,' he said softly. 'See you soon.'

Five minutes later, Abby walked out the front door and climbed into her car.

The streets of West Cambridge were deserted. She turned onto Memorial Drive, skirting the Charles River as she headed southeast, towards the River Street bridge. It was 3.15 a.m., but she could not remember feeling so awake. So alive.

At last we're going to beat them.t she thought. And we're going to do it together. The way we should have done it from the start.

She crossed the bridge and headed onto the ramp for the Turnpike. There were few cars travelling at that hour, and she merged easily with sparse eastbound traffic.

Three and a half miles later, the Turnpike came to an end. She changed lanes, preparing to turn off onto the South Expressway ramp. As she curved onto it, she suddenly became aware of a pair of headlights bearing down on her.

She accelerated, merging onto the southbound expressway. The headlights pulled closer, high beams glaring off her rearview mirror. How long had they been behind her? She had no idea. But they were zooming in