“This man is alive,” the doctor said. She pulled herself out of the car, stood, and shouted over the roof at a couple of paramedics who appeared to be, at least for several seconds, idle.
“I got a live one here!”
They ran toward the car, one pulling a gurney behind them. They maneuvered Gill out of the car and onto it while David and Marla watched, barely breathing.
“Oh my God,” Marla said under her breath. “Oh my God, oh my God. You’re going to be okay! They’re going to fix you up, Dad!”
She started to trot along after them, following them into the building, but Dr. Moorehouse turned and said sharply, “Wait.” Gill was whisked away down a hallway that was already jammed with patients on gurneys.
David caught up to her. “Come on, Marla. Come on. Let’s go outside.”
As they exited the building someone yelled, “David!”
It was his mother, Arlene. She was running up the driveway. David raised his palms, trying to get her to slow down. The last thing he needed was for her to fall down and break her wrist. He ran ahead to meet her.
“I had your father drop me off down the street,” she said, huffing. “There’s so much traffic he didn’t think he could get any closer. Ethan’s with him.”
“Great.”
“How’s Gill?”
David filled her in, walking slowly to force her to do the same. When Arlene reached Marla, she gave her niece a hug and kissed Matthew on the cheek.
A paramedic said, “That your car?”
David whirled around, admitted that the Mazda was his.
“Get it the hell out of here.”
David said to his mother, “Can you hang in here with Marla now?”
“Of course,” she said.
“I have to go.”
Arlene nodded. “Go.”
David got behind the wheel and carefully steered his way back to the street. Once he was clear of the hospital, he pulled over, got out his phone again, and tried Samantha Worthington’s cell.
Still no answer.
He felt physically ill. He feared the worst-that Sam and her son, Carl, were both already dead.
He had to get there. David put the phone back into his pocket, took his foot off the brake pedal, and floored it.
He raced through the streets of Promise Falls to reach Sam’s place, a narrow row house sandwiched in between several others. The Mazda screeched to a halt out front of her house. David got out so quickly he didn’t bother to close the driver’s door.
He leapt up the stairs to the front door, rang the bell, and pounded on the door at the same time.
He put his mouth close to the crack where door met jamb. “Sam!” he shouted. “Sam! It’s David!”
No one came to the door. He couldn’t hear or sense any movement on the other side.
There was no point in calling the police to enter the premises and see if they were okay. The cops were too busy. He was going to have to do it himself. At least he wasn’t worried that he’d be looking down the barrel of a shotgun, like he was the first time he’d knocked on this door.
David turned the doorknob and pushed, but the door did not budge. The house was locked up.
“Shit.”
He’d have to break it down. He took two steps back, turned sideways, then ran into the door with his shoulder.
“Son of a bitch!” he said. His shoulder felt as though it had dislocated, and for all his effort, the door was still locked.
He rotated his shoulder to make sure he hadn’t done any serious damage, then set his eye on the closest window, which was low enough that he could crawl into the house if he could open it. He stepped between some shrubs and the foundation to get in front of it, tried to raise the glass, but it was no good.
David slipped off his jacket, wrapped it around his lower right arm, then rammed his elbow into the glass. Better luck here than with the door. The glass shattered. He cleared more of it away with his protected arm, then reached in, found the lock, slid it open, then raised the glass.
No alarms rang. Sam did not have a security system. That’s what the shotgun was for.
He brushed away the glass fragments, then hoisted himself up onto the sill and tumbled into the house, headfirst.
He rolled into the living room.
“Sam!” he shouted.
He went to the kitchen first. No dishes out, nothing in the sink. No pot of coffee on the go.
The two bedrooms were upstairs.
David bounded up the steps two at a time, went into Carl’s bedroom first. No Carl, and the bed was made.
Same story in Sam’s room. Everything looked in order, pillows in place.
The good news was, he hadn’t found Sam and Carl in the house dead. But the bad news was, he hadn’t found Sam and Carl in the house.
Where the hell were they?
It hit him then that he didn’t remember seeing Sam’s car out front. He went to the bedroom window, which looked out onto the street.
Sam’s car was not there.
He did recall, from an earlier visit, seeing the edge of a suitcase under Sam’s bed. He dropped to his knees and lifted the bed skirt.
The suitcase was gone.
He came back downstairs and thought to look for one last thing. Something Sam always kept in the closet by the front door.
He opened it, pushed aside some coats hanging in the way.
This was where Sam kept her shotgun, and it was not there.
As he closed the closet door, he began to feel light-headed. He turned and rested his back against the door, and as the events of the morning overwhelmed him, he put his face in his hands and began to sob.
FOURTEEN
“LET’S go, let’s go, come on, people, let’s go! Move it, move it!”
Finley was standing on the loading docks at Finley Springs Water, acting as a traffic cop as forklifts delivered pallets of bottled water from deep inside the plant to the open doors of the panel vans. There were vans backed up to each of the three doors, and others waiting to take their place once a space was created.
Shortly after his first phone call with David, he’d gotten on to his foreman to start rounding up every one of the company’s twenty-two employees. Those who’d gone out of town for the weekend, if they could be reached on their cell phones, were ordered to get their asses back as fast as possible.
Four employees couldn’t be raised on their cells or home phones.
“They might be sick, at the hospital,” the foreman said.
Finley had to agree that was possible. But getting in as many as they did allowed Finley to put the plant into full production, and get every truck on the road.
Trevor Duckworth was one of the first to arrive, and Finley had greeted him warmly.
“Good to see you,” he said, clapping his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “I was just helping your dad get a handle on what’s been happening.”
“Uh-huh,” Trevor said.
“I was giving him some info on the water plant, what might have gone wrong.”
“Great.” Trevor cocked his head. “How do you know your own water supply isn’t going to make everyone sick?”
Finley’s head recoiled, as though he’d been struck. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Where does the town water come from? Doesn’t it come from springs and stuff in the hills around Promise Falls, just like your water? If the problem’s at the source, wouldn’t all this stuff be bad, too?”
Trevor waved a hand at the hundreds of cases of water.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Finley said. “That’s just nuts.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. My water is one hundred percent pure and drinkable. I just know it. I know it in my gut.”
Trevor did not look convinced.
“Fine, I’ll prove it to you,” Finley said. He took a few steps over to the closest pallet load, used both hands to rip a small hole in the plastic casing that held two dozen bottles together, and pulled one bottle out. He twisted the lid, heard the distinctive crack of the plastic seal being broken, tipped the bottle up to his mouth, and started drinking.