Chương 4
Thank God.
That was what he said.
Not Where have you been?
Not What are you doing here?
Thank God.
Then he hugged her.
Emily had gone rigid.
He whispered, “You’re making a terrible mistake.”
She stepped away.
“I’m meeting someone.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Come upstairs. You’re freezing.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
He looked tired.
That was the part she remembered most clearly. Not angry. Not threatening. Tired, as though Emily had created an administrative problem.
He picked up a water bottle from the cup holder of his rental SUV.
“At least drink something.”
She refused.
He unscrewed the cap himself, took what appeared to be a sip, then held it out.
Emily had been driving for almost three hours.
Her mouth was dry.
And some stupid, loyal part of her still wanted the situation to become normal.
She drank.
“What happened next?” Beth asked.
“I went upstairs.”
“With him?”
“No. He followed.”
“Did you see him add anything to the bottle?”
“No.”
“Did the bottle ever leave your hand?”
Emily shut her eyes.
“In the elevator. I dropped my glove.”
“How long?”
“Seconds.”
“Could he have touched the bottle?”
“Yes.”
“Are you certain?”
“No.”
She opened her eyes again.
“There. That’s what he’ll use.”
Beth’s voice remained neutral.
“What?”
“That I’m not certain.”
The doctor came in before Beth could answer.
He said Emily’s vital signs had stabilized. Initial tests suggested exposure to a sedating substance, but confirmatory testing would take time. They would keep her overnight because of the degree of impairment and because nobody knew the amount she might have received.
Emily asked whether she could shower.
The doctor said later.
She asked whether Daniel could come into the hospital.
Beth said no.
Emily nodded.
Then she started crying.
Not dramatically.
Two tears slid into her hair.
She wiped them away with visible annoyance.
“I’m sorry.”
Beth stood.
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“I’m not apologizing for crying.”
Emily looked at her.
“I’m apologizing because I fired Lauren.”
Lauren was sitting four floors below in the emergency department cafeteria, drinking coffee that tasted faintly of cardboard.
Richard sat across from her.
Neither had planned to stay.
Richard’s room was still at the lodge. His overnight bag was there, along with a paperback novel and the blood-pressure pills he had forgotten to put in his coat.
Lauren had a suite at Briar Summit and a reservation for dinner she had made months earlier, back when the weekend was supposed to involve her sister, two bottles of wine, and complaining about their mother.
Instead they sat under fluorescent light while a vending machine hummed beside them.
“You don’t have to wait,” Lauren said.
“Neither do you.”
“I do, actually.”
Richard stirred sugar into coffee he had already declared undrinkable.
“You’re not family.”
“No.”
“Police told you to stay?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t have to.”
Lauren looked at him.
“You always this irritating?”
“I was an emergency physician for thirty-two years.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s close.”
She smiled despite herself.
Then she put both hands around the paper cup.
“I hated her for a while.”
Richard did not ask who.
“I didn’t want her dead,” Lauren added.
“I assumed not.”
“I wanted her embarrassed.”
Richard looked up.
“That’s more honest than most people get.”
“She fired me in front of Daniel.”
Lauren stared at the coffee.
“He stood by the window like I wasn’t worth sitting down for. Emily wouldn’t look at me. She said the company needed ‘alignment at the senior level.’ That was Daniel’s phrase. Emily never said alignment unless she was making fun of consultants.”
Richard said nothing.
“I had worked for her father for nine years. I covered for Emily when she was learning the company. I stayed through his cancer. I missed my daughter’s middle-school orchestra concert because his lenders wanted revised covenants by six in the morning.”
“You have a daughter?”
“Fourteen. She currently communicates mainly by closing doors.”
Richard nodded.
“I had one of those.”
“Past tense?”
“She’s forty.”
“Oh.”
“She still closes doors.”
Lauren laughed quietly.
Then the laugh vanished.
“I almost didn’t come today.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Emily called me Thursday night.”
“And?”
“She said, ‘I think you were right.’”
Richard leaned back.
Lauren’s eyes filled, though she refused to blink.
“That was it. Six words. Four months, and that was all she had.”
“But you came.”
“I wanted my job back.”
There it was.
Ugly and true.
Lauren rubbed a thumb along the seam of the coffee cup.
“I wish I could tell you I came because I was worried about her. I was worried. But I also wanted her to see what Daniel had done and say I was right.”
Richard looked toward the dark cafeteria windows.
“What did he do?”
Lauren hesitated.
Then shook her head.
“I should tell the deputy first.”
“Good.”
“You really are irritating.”
“Yes.”
Richard’s own daughter had called three times that afternoon.
He had ignored the first two because he was in the lodge lobby.
He ignored the third because he did not want to explain why he had not left the mountains before the storm.
His daughter had been telling him for years that retirement did not make him invulnerable.
She was right.
That annoyed him.
He had come to Briar Summit because his wife, Margaret, had once wanted to spend Christmas there.
They never did.
Margaret died six years earlier from ovarian cancer after thirty-eight years of marriage, and Richard had spent the first two years afterward refusing to go anywhere they had discussed going together.
Eventually the list of forbidden places became ridiculous.
Paris.
Maine.
A steakhouse in Boulder.
Briar Summit Lodge.
So he had booked three nights alone.
He had not expected to save anyone.
He did not know whether he had saved Emily.
May you like
He only knew what he saw.
Daniel stood near the sofa while Claire went to get a blanket. Emily’s bottle sat on a low table. Daniel removed something small from his pocket, turned his body toward the window, and tipped his hand over the opening.
