marble monuments and concrete vaults, and then in and around the equipment.
Eric had that one flashlight, which might be why he caught up with me first, but he was tired from his previous battles, and I was able to land a hard kick on his knee before he had a good grip on me. He let loose and gave a howl of pain as he stumbled to the ground. Before he could get up again, I was set upon by Ian, who handed me a little payback before hauling me to my feet and over to Mitch. Eric slowly limped after us.
Ian left me next to Ethan. Mitch Yeager looked between us. “You know, until just now, I thought the love story was just one more lie.” Ethan put an arm around my shoulders. He was shaking. Or I was.
“Separate them. Stand her up by the grave,” Mitch commanded, indicating the one I had pushed him into earlier.
When they had done so, Mitch said, “Thanks to you, I have had a trying evening, Ms. Kelly.” He paused, then smiled. “Do you hear that sound?”
It was faint, but distinct. A helicopter.
“I’m going to leave, and take the smart boy with me, because something tells me his sense of self- preservation is stronger than yours. He has guts, but he’s not so caught up in sacrifice as you are, is he? His generation is ultimately more pragmatic. They don’t see the sense in struggling. If there is an easy way, they take it.”
“That’s bullshit,” I said.
“Oh no. I’ll offer him an easy way out of this mess you’ve obviously lured him into, and he’ll take it.” He paused again, listening to the helicopter coming closer. “I wonder if you have the locket at all?”
“Your gamble,” I said.
“Your loss,” he said. “Shoot her.”
I saw what Ethan was going to do just a moment before he moved.
“No!” I shouted, but he stepped in front of me.
I waited for the sound of gunfire. Instead, I heard, “Which one of us do you want to do it?”
The helicopter was roaring closer now. In the distance, I thought I heard sirens.
Too late. Too late.
“God damn it,” Mitch said, and raised the gun he held.
I bent slightly to the side to hook my ankle around Ethan’s, to try to move him out of harm’s way, but like the sirens, I was too late. Mitch fired.
I felt the jolt of Ethan’s reaction as he was hit. He pitched backward, and I was helpless to stop my own backward fall into the grave as his weight came against me.
I landed hard, splashing foul water everywhere. Ethan landed on top of me. The double impact knocked the wind out of me. For a moment, I could not breathe or seem to catch my breath.
Beneath my back, I felt ooze. My hands, still painfully trapped behind me, and something hard-the tape recorder?-digging into my back.
Ethan’s blood, wet and warm, began to soak from his back onto my chest. Mitch Yeager looked down on us and raised his pistol again.
I heard someone shout in panic, “Uncle Mitch!”
A sudden great noise and light filled the grave from overhead. A wind that stirred dirt and water into a spray that forced me to close my eyes.
There was noise, and more noise, a clamor that only increased and made no sense from my world of the grave.
Ethan was dying.
I didn’t even care that Mitch was escaping.
I don’t know how long it was, exactly, before I realized that Mitch’s helicopter was shouting orders at the Yeagers. And claiming to be the police.
69
E THAN HAD ALREADY BEEN AIRLIFTED TO ST. ANNE’S, THE TRAUMA CENTER nearest the cemetery, by the time my hands were cut free of duct tape and I had been helped up onto the grass. I had been taken to St. Anne’s, too, but mostly just to get cleaned up a bit and loaded up with antibiotics. Something about soaking cuts and scrapes in bacteria-filled water that smelled of decomposition tended to alarm medical people. I had my face stitched from the encounter with the bit of angel wing. I was bruised.
That was nothing. The real ache wasn’t physical.
Frank’s presence eased some of that. He hadn’t let me out of his sight from the moment I had been hauled up out of the grave. Since I reeked of blood and dead bodies at that point, that was brave of him. Lydia had brought a change of clothes for me and I had showered, but I could swear I still smelled the cemetery. I tried not to take that as an omen.
The police had questions. They had to wait a little while to get answers. I saw Zeke Brennan for the second time in twenty-four hours, but this time, he was working for Ethan and me. Zeke didn’t prevent me from being fully cooperative. My patience nearly did-I couldn’t concentrate well, given my anxiety over Ethan. As a favor to Frank, one of the officers who had accompanied us to the hospital continually checked on Ethan’s progress and let us know when there was any news. There wasn’t much other than, “Still in surgery.”
Mitch and his nephews had been taken to Las Piernas General. I suppose someone was afraid that the entire staff of the Express, which seemed to be at St. Anne’s, might attack them if they were brought to the same facility.
Frank told me that Max Ducane was waiting to see me, to verify for himself that I was all right. He told me that Max had called him earlier that evening-officially yesterday evening, now-to tell him that the people who had been tailing Eric and Ian for him had lost them. “I was already worried about you, and had just tried your cell phone. Max said the Yeagers had parked on Maple, gone into a building, and never come back to their car. After a while, they realized the Yeagers had ditched them by walking through an alley to Chestnut or Polson.”
When he heard that they were near where I was, Frank had found Ethan’s address in the phone book and called to ask for a unit to go by the apartment. They found the door unlatched and my purse still in the living room. “So we had the Jeep’s LoJack traced, and brought out the cavalry.”
“Thank you isn’t enough, but-thank you.”
“As long as you’re okay, and Ethan’s okay, we’re good.”
Frank had warned me that the waiting room was crowded. I keep forgetting that he has a master’s degree in understatement.
I halted in the hospital hallway. Frank stopped beside me. “Too much for you right now?” he asked.
“No, I won’t be able to sleep if we go home. But it bothers me a little, because-”
“Because you can’t help but wonder if they’re here out of guilt. Who cares? They’re here. They could be feeling just as guilty in comfort at home.”
“You’re right,” I said.
Max spotted me. He was with Helen and my aunt Mary. I caught a glimpse of Barbara and Kenny just before the newspaper staff noticed my presence. There was a near riot while I was surrounded by them. I was alive, I could talk. They asked if I was all right. They winced at the sight of the bandages and bruises. They asked if I knew anything about Ethan’s condition.
But then the crowd moved a little, and my sister was saying that there was someone here who was anxious to see me, and on a night I had lain in a grave, I suddenly saw a ghost.
O’Connor. O’Connor was here. I must have called his name aloud.
When he turned toward me and smiled, I felt faint. Frank put an arm around me, and whether anyone else was aware of it or not, that was all that kept me on my feet.
The ghost spoke. “Yes, I’m O’Connor-and you must be Irene,” he said, in O’Connor’s voice, but sweetened with a gorgeous Irish accent. “Conn was forever talking of you to me. I’m his brother Dermot.”
He extended a hand. I took it in mine and promptly burst into tears.
