Chương 8
“Where are you?”
“Near the old pump house.”
“Vale has people at the road.”
“Can you contact federal agents?”
“I already did.”
Raphael’s eyes closed.
Elena shook his shoulder.
Rachel continued quickly. “My father gave me a name before he died. Special Agent Lenora Glass. I sent her a message ten minutes ago, but I don’t know if she received it.”
“Send her our location.”
“I don’t know your exact location.”
Pike took the phone, gave coordinates from memory, then said, “Tell them we need medical support.”
Rachel’s voice changed. “Is he conscious?”
“Intermittently,” Elena said.
“What was he given?”
“We don’t know.”
“I found a prescription bottle in Vale’s briefcase.”
“What medication?”
Rachel read the label.
Elena recognized the name as a powerful sedative but not one she could responsibly interpret in the dark. “Take a photograph. Don’t touch anything else. Send it to this phone and to the agent.”
“I already touched the bottle.”
“Then put it down and stop improving the crime scene.”
Rachel gave a breathless, startled laugh.
Over the phone came Dominic’s voice: “Who are you talking to?”
The line went silent.
“Rachel?” Elena said.
A sharp sound followed, then the call ended.
Raphael opened his eyes. “Go back.”
“No.”
“She helped you.”
“And going back will help no one.”
Pike looked toward the mansion, its upper windows visible through rain and trees. “Vale won’t kill an attorney in front of Dominic.”
Raphael said, “You overestimate Dominic’s courage and Vale’s patience.”
Elena pressed the emergency call button.
The dispatcher answered.
Elena gave the road, the pump-house location, and Raphael’s symptoms. She did not mention mafia, poison, armed guards, federal evidence, or her dead brother. She said there was a critically ill man and possible danger at the estate. The dispatcher asked whether anyone had a firearm.
Pike looked at his pistol.
“Yes,” Elena said. “One person with me is armed. He will place the weapon on the ground when responders arrive.”
Pike removed the magazine, cleared the chamber, and set both pieces in the grass.
The dispatcher instructed Elena to stay on the line.
Raphael’s breathing slowed.
She knelt in the mud, kept his airway open, monitored him, and answered questions. Nursing students practiced assessments on mannequins whose pupils did not change, whose families did not lie, whose bodies did not carry the consequences of decisions made years earlier. The mannequins never looked at you as if there were one last thing they needed to say.
Raphael looked at her that way.
“Don’t,” Elena said.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what part?”
“All of it.”
“That is too large to be useful.”
Rain ran from his hair into his eyes. Elena wiped it away with the bloodstained handkerchief before remembering it was evidence.
Raphael watched her.
“Daniel had a blue truck,” he said.
“Stop.”
“He kept a St. Christopher medal tied to the mirror.”
“Stop talking.”
“I found it after.”
Her hands went still.
The medal had never been returned with Daniel’s belongings. Elena had asked the tow yard, the police, the funeral home. Her mother accused a paramedic of stealing it. For six months, she had watched every silver medal worn by every stranger in every grocery store.
“Where is it?”
“In the chapel safe. In the envelope.”
Elena looked at the sealed paper lying beneath the textbook.
“You kept it?”
“I told myself I would give it to you when I confessed.”
“One hundred seven nights.”
“Yes.”
“You could have mailed it.”
“Yes.”
“You could have left it outside my door.”
“Yes.”
“But you wanted me to see you suffer while you told me.”
His eyes shifted away.
The accuracy of her accusation hurt him. She was glad.
Sirens sounded faintly from Sheridan Road.
Pike crouched beside them. “Vehicles coming from the north.”
Red light flashed through the trees.
Then white headlights appeared from the south, too fast and without emergency strobes.
“Vale,” Pike said.
He reached instinctively toward the pistol, remembered it lay disassembled in the grass, and cursed.
The private ambulance came over the rise first. It was white, unmarked except for a small medical transport logo. A black SUV followed.
Elena told the dispatcher what she saw.
“City units are two minutes out,” the dispatcher said. “Do not approach those vehicles.”
The private ambulance stopped beside them.
Two men in navy medical jackets stepped out. Neither carried a visible hospital identification badge.
The taller man opened the rear doors and lowered a stretcher.
“We’ll take him,” he said.
Elena stayed between them and Raphael. “Who dispatched you?”
“Estate medical.”
“What facility?”
“Lakeview Recovery.”
“What’s the receiving physician’s name?”
The man glanced toward the SUV.
Pike stepped beside Elena.
The SUV doors opened.
Victor Vale emerged beneath a black umbrella held by another guard. He wore a charcoal overcoat and no hat. His silver hair remained perfectly in place despite the storm.
He looked first at Raphael, then Elena, then the textbook in the mud.
“Miss Marlowe,” he said. “You have created a very complicated evening.”
Elena kept the emergency call open in her robe pocket.
“You poisoned him.”
Vale’s eyes moved to the private medics. “Mr. Orsini mixed alcohol with medication. We are taking him to a treatment facility.”
“He needs an emergency department.”
“He needs discretion.”
“You need him quiet.”
Vale folded his hands over the umbrella handle. “You are frightened, tired, and outside the scope of your training.”
“That last part is true.”
“Then let professionals help.”
“Tell them the medication from your briefcase.”
For the first time, Vale’s expression altered.
Only slightly. His eyes shifted toward Pike.
“Rachel,” he said.
Pike replied, “She has a conscience. They’re difficult to predict.”
May you like
Vale ignored him.
“Elena,” he said, using her first name with a softness that made her skin crawl, “Daniel made an impulsive mistake. Raphael made a selfish one. I made a necessary one. We can spend the next ten years arguing over the adjectives, or you can step aside and let us save a man’s life.”
