“Oh Jesus,” I said. The device must have been tiny, hidden in the steering column. None of her fingers were totally gone, but she’d lost most of one and half of her thumb and a chunk out of the side of her palm.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I’m okay.”
With a kind of eerie calm, she reached under the seat and pulled out a T-shirt. She wrapped it tightly around her hand, blinking fast but steadily.
“It’s all fine,” she said, but I don’t think she was talking to me. She was breathing in a slow, controlled manner, as if counting the seconds between each.
She turned awkwardly in her seat, and I helped her down out of the truck onto the street.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll get you to a hospital.”
She shook her head. “I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not. You’re going to the hospital.”
“How? Do not call the cops.”
“My car,” I said. “It’s back on Lido. Come on.”
I took her by the arm and started trying to pull her across the street. Cars kept driving around us, looking for somewhere to park, the drivers’ minds on their first cocktail or breaded shrimp or their chances of getting laid once the kids were asleep. Jane was hard to move.
“Seriously,” I said, trying to stay calm, or at least sound it. I looked up, trying to gauge a gap in the traffic to pull her through. “Let’s . . .”
Then I saw him. On the sidewalk, watching us. Hunter. He was standing with his hands loosely down by his sides, a point of stasis, a rock in jeans and a casual jacket. He looked like he could have been there forever, from before the Circle was built.
I tugged Jane harder, and finally she started moving, her feet stuttering into motion like a toddler being dragged toward something she’d already said that she didn’t want to do. A big white Ford honked hard but stopped to let us through.
“Was this you?” I shouted at Hunter as we approached. “Did you do this?”
“It’s my present to you,” he said. “As a fellow sufferer. One of the modified.”
“What? Why would you do that?”
“I listened to what you told me,” he said. “Ask yourself—who was the first person to arrive when you woke up this morning? Who came banging on your door? Did she look surprised that your lady friend was gone? What did she do then? She got you running before you could get your bearings. Got you in that truck and drove away as if there was someone hot on your tail. But did you actually see anyone? Did you?”
I opened my mouth, but he’d already dismissed us from his mind.
“I’m just saying,” he said, and walked away. From the direction of his feet and where he was looking it was obvious where he was headed.
“He followed you here,” Jane said, between teeth that were clenched tight. “He’s going after Tony and Marie.”
She was right. Hunter trotted calmly across the road and headed straight for the side stairway of Jonny Bo’s.
“That’s fine by me,” I said.
It took five minutes to hurry Jane down the road and over the short bridge onto Lido, and another five to follow Ben Franklin Drive around to the condo complex where Hunter had taken me. My car was still there. Jane said nothing on the way. Her face had become pale, and the T-shirt wrapped around her hand was soaked with blood. Even the blue of her eyes seemed to have become muted, washed-out. She was tough, though. At first I was supporting her, but by the end she’d started to jog along under her own steam, her sneakers padding evenly along the road surface, and her eyes had started to look clear again.
I opened the passenger side of the car and helped her in, then ran around the other side.
“We’re not going to the hospital,” she said.
“Jane—”
“My name’s Emily. Sometimes Em for short, if that helps,” she said, with something between a wince and a smile. “Can see I’ve thrown you a little there.”
“You . . . just don’t seem like an Emily.”
“I guess my mother didn’t know what I’d grow up to be like.”
“Emily, Em, Jane, whatever. We’re going to the . . .” I stopped, remembering what my plan had been before the ignition in this woman’s truck had blown apart, and what I might want to do after getting to the hospital, and who with. “How bad is it?”
She gingerly started to unwrap the T-shirt.
“Is that a good idea?”
“Don’t know,” she said. “We’ll find out, I guess.”
We could see blood and torn, raw meat. She turned the hand over, and I realized that though I’d thought she’d lost the whole of the tip of the thumb, actually it was just the fleshy part—the bone seemed to be in place. “Fuck,” I said, nonetheless.
“Yep,” she muttered. “Still, I’ve seen worse.”
“The hell you have.”
“You don’t always listen so good, do you? I told you I was in the army. I was in Iraq Two. I’d show you a nice big scar I’ve got up my side, but we never got properly introduced. That was a disconcerting sight right after it happened, I’ll admit. Looked like a slab of spareribs before the sauce goes on. Which I have never been able to eat since, as a matter of fact.”
“How come you’re not in the army anymore?”
“Long story, and not a happy one,” she said, as she started to rewrap her hand. “I’m not welcome there, bottom line. Not welcome many places, which is how come I ended up on this gig. Brian found himself a no-questions-asked job that sounded interesting. He knew I was low on funds and likely to get myself in trouble, so he pulled me in on it, too. Three weeks later I turned up for work at Jonny Bo’s. I wondered how they’d squared that away, but evidently the Thompsons have pull there.”
“They own it,” I said quietly, realizing. “They must. Them and Peter Grant, maybe.”
“You want to light a cigarette? I feel I deserve one.”
I lit two, put hers into her left hand. “Who actually hired you? Tony? Peter?”
“No. It was mainly done by e-mail and phone, though I had one face-to-face with Warner. He is one creepy guy.” She shrugged. “Whatever. I have now resigned. Let’s go.”
“You are going to the hospital,” I said. “But I’m going home first.”
“We’ll discuss it later,” she said, leaning back in the seat, taking a long pull on the cigarette, momentarily closing her eyes. “Let’s just go somewhere.”
“One second.”
After getting out of the car and checking all around it, and then looking extremely closely at the ignition, and praying, I got back in and turned the key.
It started. We did not explode.
“You’re learning fast,” she said.
As soon as we got close to St. Armands Circle, we heard shouting, and as I drove into it we saw people running down the stairs out of Jonny Bo’s. Couples. Families. Wait staff. All very afraid.
I got out my phone. When Hallam answered he sounded as though he had his mind on other things.
“You didn’t come,” I said.
“Mr. Moore, I’ve got a serious situation up here.”
“It’s a big day for serious situations. I know who killed Hazel Wilkins. And I can tell you what’s happening in Jonny Bo’s right this minute.”
“You know for sure Mrs. Wilkins is dead? And what do you mean, what’s happening at Bo’s?”
“I’m watching people run screaming out of it.”
“What the hell—”
“I have to go home. Meet me there and I’ll tell you everything I know. Otherwise, in an hour, I’m gone.”
“Mr. Moore, I can’t just—”
“It’s up to you,” I said, and ended the call.
A woman came stumbling down the steps from Bo’s, screaming. Halfway down she lost her footing and fell, landing on her face at the bottom. The people behind just ran straight over her. Sadly, the woman was not Janine.