“Make that Gavin, ma’am.”
“And you can call me Natalie.”
He sat down beside her, and they ate pumpkin pie and chatted about nothing in particular until the football game came on. Gavin forked down another bite of pie, closed his eyes, and hummed. “Oh, man, that is fine. I hear Emma Hunt made the pie. Emma’s a whiz on the piano and a good cook. I’d say the kid’s got it made.”
They looked over to where Emma sat beside her father, her small white hand on his forearm.
Her two little brothers, Cal and Gage, seriously cute identical twins, sat at the large table, currently hemmed in by three large adults and another little boy, Sean Savich. He would grow up to be as handsome as his dad, Natalie thought, looking from him to his father, Agent Dillon Savich.
“Emma Hunt’s playing with the San Francisco Symphony next Wednesday,” Gavin continued, took another big bite of his pumpkin pie, and shook his head. “Hard to believe. Look at those small hands. What is she, eleven, twelve?”
“She’s eleven, Judge Hunt told me. He’s so proud of her he would pop his own buttons if the hospital gown had any. All he can talk about is being well enough to go to see her perform next Wednesday.”
“He’ll make it,” Hendricks said. “The man’s strong, he’s got an iron will. I’ve gotten to know him. You know, I keep seeing him jumping down from the judge’s bench in his black robes, flattening those yahoos who invaded his courtroom.”
“I remember that. Goodness, everybody does. It was an incredible thing he did,” Natalie said. Her wrist pager beeped. She smiled at Officer Hendricks—Gavin—rose, and thanked the cooks for feeding her an extraordinary dinner.
Natalie paused in the doorway for a moment, and looked back. She marveled at the bonhomie and goodwill they were all managing, even with that woman lurking in everyone’s mind, out there making more plans for murder. Even if the goodwill was paper-thin, it was valuable. She gave a last smile to Gavin.
Natalie took care of the emergency—Mr. Pitt in room 306B was hyperventilating at the news his grandson had happily delivered about his marrying a Las Vegas dancer—and walked back to the nursing desk. She studied the photo they had of Charlene Cartwright again. Soon this woman’s face would be more familiar to people than the governor’s. The woman had once been pretty, Natalie thought, but now she was beyond that, an odd thing to think, but it was true. She touched her fingertip to the smoker’s lines fanning out from her eyes, the deep scored lines about her mouth. There was a message in the woman’s eyes, wide pale green eyes, flat as a stagnant pond. Those eyes scared Natalie to her toes. The message was, quite simply, both the promise of death of anyone she wanted gone and the acceptance of her own death, should it be demanded of her.
She realized she’d seen eyes like Charlene Cartwright’s once before during a six-month stint in a psych ward. She hadn’t wanted to think about what was going on behind those eyes.
—
Ramsey was asleep, finally, an exhausted sleep that worried Nurse Natalie Chase a bit, but then she managed a reassuring smile at all his family hovering around his bed. “Don’t worry. His vital signs are fine. His football team lost, that’s what flattened him.”
They all smiled and eased.
When Dr. Kardak came in a moment later to have the small slice of pumpkin pie he’d been promised, he looked down at the sleeping Ramsey. “I’d say he had too much fun.” He looked over at Sherlock, lifted her hair off the butterfly strips she’d pressed over the sutures, and, thankfully, left them alone. “Still feeling well, I take it, Agent Sherlock?”
“Fit as a fiddle,” she said, then, “I always wondered why a fiddle was fit? I mean, what does health have to do with a musical instrument?” and Dr. Kardak, forking down a bite of pumpkin pie, swallowed and smiled. “Not a clue.” He looked one last time at the sleeping Ramsey, nodded to the rest of them, and left.
Sherlock was tired. She wished she could curl up next to Ramsey and take a nice long winter snooze, but she knew it wasn’t to be.
Savich said, “You look burned out, sweetheart. You ready to go home to bed?”
“Are you offering another bedtime story, Dillon?”
He lightly touched his fingers to her cheek, studied her exhausted face. “I think it’s got to be sleep without dessert for you tonight.” He turned to Eve and Harry, who were studying Charlene’s photo.
Eve said, “A woman, all the time it was a blasted woman. I mean, it was okay for Xu to be Sue for a while, but Charlene Cartwright is giving our sex a bad name. And look at us, Sherlock, you’ve got an aching head, and I’m still nursing the bruises she shot into my Kevlar in the elevator. Do you think she’s nuts?”
Savich slowly nodded. “She is now. Before she married her husband? If I had to venture a guess, I’d say no.
“You’re right to be worried about Charlene. Xu has no more reason to be here that I can see, unless he’s too weak to drive. Either way, he’ll be out of the picture for a while unless we’re lucky enough to find him.
“Charlene’s a different matter. We are her purpose, her focus. She needs this fight or she might as well float off the planet, that or kill herself. But you know, I really don’t think she’ll give it up until we bury her.” He pulled Sherlock close, closed his eyes for a moment.
He said, “All of us know that informants solve most of our cases. Since her photos are everywhere, we’ve got to hope she stays close.”
Charlene looked through the glass into the small motel reception office. Her luck was holding. Only one skinny guy was inside, and from the description Joe had given her, it was the same guy who’d been deep in a computer game when Joe had checked in. He said he remembered the kid’s name because it was so weird. Okay, she’d told him, but Jerol wasn’t as weird as Xu, and she was going to call him Joe. He’d smiled up at her. And she’d started singing Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue.”
She didn’t know where she was taking Joe just yet, but it was too dangerous staying this close to the city any longer, now that his photo was plastered all over the TV. She figured he needed another couple of days before he’d be good for much, not that she needed him to help her, but he was smart, had lots of experience. If he could learn to trust her, maybe they could stay together for some time, like she’d planned to stay with Sonny. She’d be with Sonny now if not for that little kid, Emma. What a snooty name that was. Wasn’t she to blame, too, for Sonny’s being dead? It wasn’t Sonny’s fault he had this problem. The kid shouldn’t have run away from him, selfish little cow, when she knew—Charlene shook her head to get her brain back on track. She was losing herself more often now in her thoughts. She’d think something, and then the thought seemed to grow and change, to branch out in all directions, like a spin-off of a TV show.
She focused on Joe, and her brain seemed to flip a switch. He really knew these FBI agents, he told her, knew how they thought, knew what they’d do in any given situation. He’d stayed one step ahead of them, no problem, just as she had.
He knew that as well as she did, so she didn’t say it out loud. He’d thanked her twice already, and it came easily to him. She found him charming. She’d known Joe for such a short time, and she already liked him a lot better than she’d ever liked her miserable husband, bad memory that he was. Joe said he liked the big diamond on her pinkie finger, and she’d laughed, told him it wasn’t real, told him it was as fake as her vicious long-dead husband who’d given it to her and that’s why she wore it, to remind her of that wonderful day she’d shot his face off. And he’d asked her about the other ring she wore that looked like it belonged to a religious order. She’d fallen silent, fingering the ring, then said, “It belonged to my son, before Ramsey Hunt murdered him.” And that’s when he’d asked her to tell him the whole story.
