“An air ambulance is en route,” Robson continued. “When it gets here, why don’t you go back to the hospital with them if there’s room.”
“But…” Ali began.
Robson waved aside her objection. “I’m going to be here at the scene for quite some time. Once my guys get their warrant, I’ll fly up to Payson and be there when they execute it. If you stick with me, you’ll be in for twelve hours or so of crime-scene investigation before I’ll have a chance to take you back to the hospital.”
An hour earlier, Ali would have thought Robson was trying to ditch her. Maybe he still was, but it seemed like he was letting her opt in or out of the crime-scene situation at her discretion. She made her choice. If the ATF media people were still in charge, she had no reason to be there and would just be underfoot.
“Good,” she said. “If the ambulance folks will take me, I’ll stick with Sister Anselm.”
“They’ll take you all right,” Robson declared, standing up and once again attempting to dust off his now grimy suit. “Believe me, I can make that happen.”
In the absence of any local authorities, Agent Robson took charge. Both Sister Anselm and Deputy Krist were in bad shape, but Robson declared the nun’s condition to be more precarious than the wounded deputy’s. When the first air ambulance arrived a few minutes later, he called for that one to take Sister Anselm first.
As Ali had predicted, getting the injured woman onto a stretcher and lifted up out of the gully and into the helicopter was a difficult process. Fortunately, the trauma nurse from on board was able to start administering IV liquids as well as pain medication before they ever attempted to move her. Once they managed to get her onto a stretcher, they used a winch and a basket from the helicopter to lift her up out of the ravine. She rose into the air in a swirling storm cloud of sand. The stretcher was then transported back to the roadway, where the helicopter landed long enough for Sister Anselm to be moved from the basket and into the helicopter itself.
Following the complicated process from a distance, Ali wondered what Nadine Hazelett would have thought had she seen that. It would no doubt turn into something like “Angel of Death Ascends to Heaven.”
Agent Robson gave her a ride back down to the intersection, where a stretch of state highway had been transformed into an emergency landing pad with a full contingent of cop cars and cops on hand to direct traffic around the parked aircraft.
Ali retrieved her briefcase and purse from the borrowed patrol car and remembered to hand the keys over to Agent Robson for safekeeping. Once Sister Anselm’s stretcher was secure inside the aircraft, the nurse came looking for Ali.
“I understand you’re accompanying the patient?” she asked.
Ali nodded.
The nurse gave Ali a cursory examination. “Come along, then,” she said. “We need to go. From the looks of it, you’ve got some scrapes and bruises that could use some attention.”
“I’m okay,” Ali objected. “It’s nothing serious.”
“Doesn’t matter,” the nurse said. “We’ll deliver you to the ER, too. Believe me, the paperwork will be a whole lot easier on our end if we deliver two patients to the ER instead of only one.”
“Better insurance payout?” Ali asked.
The nurse nodded. “Yup,” she said.
“Should I feel guilty?”
“Let the docs x-ray you and plaster you with a few bandages. You’ll get a ride there, and it’ll be a whole lot easier on you than waiting for one of these guys to get around to giving you a ride.”
The helicopter took off the moment Ali was belted into her seat. For some reason, the ride back to Phoenix didn’t take nearly as long as the ride out, and not because they were traveling any faster, either. Coming, Ali had been desperately concerned about what was happening to Sister Anselm and petrified that they would arrive too late. Now, with Sister Anselm receiving much-needed medical attention, Ali was able to relax. She closed her eyes and was astonished to find that she dozed off and didn’t awaken until the drop in altitude indicated they were heading in for a landing on the hospital roof.
This time a crew of uniformed ER folks waited on the roof to take charge of the patients. Sister Anselm was wheeled off immediately. To Ali’s chagrin, she was ordered onto a gurney so she could be wheeled down the wide corridor, into the elevator, and down to the ER.
Naturally, that turned into a case of hurry up and wait. She lay in a curtained cubby for the better part of an hour and a half before a young ER doc finally got around to looking in on her.
“It looks like you’ve taken some hard falls,” he said. “We’d better do some X-rays for starters. And I’m going to order an IV. When you’re going to be out in the sun in this kind of heat, you need to be sure to stay hydrated.”
Yes, Ali thought. The next time I’m being held hostage by a crazed gunman, I’ll remind him that it’s his responsibility to provide the bottled water.
She did not expect the kids to be there. She did not want them-Serenity bawling as though her heart was broken even though it wasn’t and Win looking shocked. Devastated. He probably was. He had never been good at making his way in the world. He had always need Mimi to help sort things out for him, and he must be realizing that now he would be alone. On his own. In a way he had never been.
It always surprised her that it was possible to love one child so much more than the other, but she did. Win had needed her in a way Serenity had not. She had been her daddy’s girl, the apple of his eye. Serenity had always had her father. Winston had been his daughter’s be-all and end-all. Serenity probably thought her father had never lied to her. That, of course, was wrong. Winston had lied to everyone. Lying suited him.
And that was when Mimi Cooper finally remembered the terrible words that had been flung at her in anger, in outrage. And that was when she finally understood, too, about the lie. The essential lie. The one that explained everything. Not only the lie Winston had told his wife-one of many-but the lie he had told Serenity as well.
As soon as Mimi remembered, it seemed as though she should have always known. How could she not? The truth had been right there in front of her all this time. And if Mimi hadn’t known, what about Serenity? Most likely she didn’t know, either. If she had glimpsed the truth, it would have been impossible for Mimi’s daughter to go on pretending that Winston Langley was the perfect father. More monster than father.
But if Serenity didn’t know-if she had no idea-it was probably due to the fact that that kind of stupidity was most likely programmed into her DNA.
Like mother, like daughter, Mimi thought.
She needed Hal then, needed him desperately, right that second. Not to push the button. She understood she was beyond needing the button pushed. She needed to tell him what she knew. What she understood. What she remembered.
If only she didn’t have that damned contraption in her throat. If only she could speak. If only she could say the words. Or even one word.
But then Win and Serenity moved from foreground to background, and Hal was with her again, beside her again.
“Do you need me to push the button?” he asked.
Two blinks. No. No button.
“Do you need something else? Is there something I can get you, something I can do?”
Hal’s voice was desperate. He so wanted to do whatever it was she needed; to get her whatever it was she wanted. She could have told him to march off into hell itself, and she knew he would have gone willingly. She loved him for that. And because he had never lied to her. Not once. Not about little things and not about big things, either.
“Mimi?”
He was looking down at her, trying to suss out what was bothering her. Finally she realized that he had asked a yes or no question and she had been so busy thinking her own private, wandering thoughts that she had forgotten to answer.