"Mac, are you nuts? Mrs. Luther is sixty-five years old. For God's sake, you can't be all that desperate.
Ellen Luther? She'd probably bite you."
"Why would she do that? What are you talking about?"
"Mac," she said with great patience, "you're horny after two weeks of celibacy. I can understand that.
But Mrs. Luther?"
"I think you've got the wrong idea here, Midge. I don't want Mrs. Luther. I want you in that way, but you're married, so I only think about that in passing, like any other guy would, you know, maybe once every five minutes or so during the day, maybe more the better I feel. No, what I'm dying for, what I want more than anything in the world, is a beer."
"A beer?" She stared at me for the longest time, then she started laughing. That laughter of hers grew until she had to come into the room and close the door so she wouldn't disturb other patients. She was doubled over with laughter, holding her sides. "You want a beer? That's what all this is about? A damned beer? And you'll go real slow?"
I gave her my innocent look.
She paused a moment in the open doorway, shaking her head and still laughing. Said over her shoulder,
"You want a Bud Light?"
"I'd kill for a Bud Light."
The Bud can was so cold I thought my fingers would stick to it. There couldn't be anything better than this, I thought, as the beer slid down my throat. I wondered which nurse was hoarding the Bud in the nurses' refrigerator. I drank half the can in one long slug. Midge was standing beside the bed, just looking down at me. "I hope mixing the beer with your meds doesn't make you puke. Hey, slow down. You promised you'd make it last. Men, you really can't believe them, not when it comes to beer."
"It's been a long time," I said, licking beer foam off my mouth. "I just couldn't help myself. The edge is off now." I heaved a thankful sigh and took a smaller drink, realizing that she wasn't likely to get me another beer. At least the terror of that nightmare was deep below the surface again, not sitting right there on my shoulder, waiting to whisper in my ear again. I had about a quarter of a can left. I rested it on my stomach.
Midge had moved next to me and now she was taking my pulse.
"My neighbor, Mr. Kowalski, waters my plants when I'm out of town or in the hospital, like now. He also keeps things dusted. He's a retired plumber, older than the paint on my great-aunt Silvia's house, and real sharp. James Quinlan-he's an FBI agent-he sings to his African violets. Healthiest critters you've ever seen. His wife wonders when she'll wake up some morning to find some plants cozying up to her in bed.
Oh shit, Midge, I want to go home."
She lightly cupped my face against her palm. "I know, Mac. Soon now. Your pulse is just fine. Now, let me take your blood pressure." She didn't tell me what it was, but she hummed under her breath, something from Verdi, I think, and that meant it was good. "You need to go back to sleep, Mac. Is your stomach happy with the beer? No nausea?"
I took the last pull of beer, kept the burp in my throat, and gave her a big smile. "I'm fine. I owe you, Midge, big time."
"I'll collect sometime, don't you worry. Your plants sound great. Hey, how about I get Mrs. Luther for you?"
I whimpered, and she left me alone, grinning and waving at me from the doorway. In the next instant, Jilly's face slammed back into my mind.
"You've got to face it, Mac," I said very quietly to myself in the still night, looking toward the window that gave onto the nearly empty parking lot. "All right. Let's just say it out loud. Was that a dream or some kind of prophecy? Is Jilly in some sort of trouble?"
No, that was bullshit. I knew bullshit.
I didn't go back to sleep. Truth was I was too scared. I wished I had another beer. Midge dropped by at four A.M., frowned at me, and shoved a sleeping pill down my throat.
At least I didn't dream for the three hours they gave me before the guy with the blood cart came by, shook my bruised shoulder to wake me up, and shoved a needle in my vein. He never paused in his talk-I think it was about the Redskins-slapped down a Band-Aid hard over the hole in my arm, and whistled as he pushed his torture cart out of my room. His name was Ted and he was, I thought, what the shrinks call a situational sadist.
At ten o'clock that morning, I simply couldn't wait any longer. I had to know. I dialed Jilly's number in Edgerton, Oregon. Her husband, Paul, answered the phone on the second ring.
"Jilly," I said, and knew my voice wasn't steady. "Paul, how's Jilly?"
Silence.
"Paul?"
I heard a shuddering breath, then, "She's in a coma, Mac."
I felt an odd settling deep inside me, the slow unwrapping of the package whose contents I already knew. I hadn't wanted this, but it hadn't really surprised me at all. I prayed as I asked, "Will she live?"
I could hear Paul riddling with the phone cord, probably twisting it over and over his hand. Finally he said in a dead voice, "Nobody wants to even take a guess, Mac. The doctors did a CAT scan and an MRI.
They say there's hardly any damage to her brain, just some tiny hemorrhages and some swelling, but nothing to account for the coma. They just don't know. They hope she'll come out of it really soon.
Bottom line, we have to wait and see. First you getting blown up in some godforsaken place, and now Jilly in this ridiculous accident."
"What happened?" But I knew, yeah, I knew.
"Her car went over a cliff on the coast road last night, just after midnight. She was driving the new Porsche that I gave her for Christmas. She'd be dead if a highway patrolman hadn't been passing by. He saw the whole thing, said she just seemed to let the car drift, then speeded up through the railing. He said the Porsche made a perfect nosedive into the water. The water isn't more than fifteen to twenty feet where she went over. The Porsche headlights were still on, thank God, and the driver's side window was open. He got her out on his first try, a pure miracle, he said. No one can believe he managed it, that she's still alive. I'll call you as soon as something changes-either way. I'm sorry, Mac, real sorry. Are you feeling better?"
"Yes, much better," I said. "Thank you, Paul. I'll be in touch." I laid the receiver gently back into its cradle. Paul had evidently been too upset even to wonder why I'd called him specifically about Jilly, at seven o'clock in the morning, West Coast time, the very morning after the accident. I wondered when Paul would think of it, wondered when he'd call me, asking about it.
At that moment, I didn't have a clue what I'd tell him.
Chapter Two
Mac, for God's sake, what are you doing out of bed? No way the doctors said you could leave. Just look at you. You don't look so hot. Your face is as gray as dingy old curtains."
Lacy Savich, known to everyone in the Bureau as "Sherlock," began shoving my chest lightly, pushing me back toward the bed. I'd managed to get my legs into a pair of jeans and had been in the middle of fighting with a long-sleeved shirt when she came in.
"Back into bed, Mac. You're not going anywhere. How'd you get those jeans on?" Sherlock tucked herself under my armpit, trying to turn me around, trying to force me down on that damned bed.
I stopped and she couldn't move me. "Listen, I'm all right, Sherlock. Let me go. I don't want you under my bare arm. I haven't had a shower yet."
"You're not that ripe. I'm not moving until you at least sit down and tell me what's going on."
"Okay, I'll sit," I said, and truth be told, it was a good thing I planned to sit quickly, though not on that bed.
"Oh, all right. If you insist, Sherlock." I smiled down at her. She was a small woman with a head of thick, curly red hair, confined this morning at the back of her neck with a gold clip. She had the whitest skin and the prettiest smile that was warm and sweet unless she was pissed, when she could chew metal if it came right down to it. We'd come into the Bureau at the same time, all of two years ago now.