Patrick nodded.
“Put her down,” Schoville said, gesturing to the narrow cot. “We cannot leave tonight. We need time to prepare—gather food, fresh water. You’re chummy with the lama. Do you think he might help us? Donate a little something to our cause?”
“I can ask.” He laid Linley on her bed and brushed a long strand of dry, broken hair from across her forehead.
“Then do it. Do everything you can. I’ll meet you here tomorrow night at midnight. Be packed and ready to run.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
“My friend is dying,” Patrick said. “She will not last much longer.”
The lama sat cross-legged before him, hands folded between the swaths of red and yellow robe draped around his shoulders and pooling on the floor. As Patrick spoke, the man tilted his head to one side and then to the other, listening.
“I am afraid.”
“You not stranger to death, to loss,” the lama said. “Why so different now?”
Patrick swallowed. “I do not want her to die.”
“But she will die. Someday, everybody die.”
“I don’t want her to die now.”
The lama shifted on his cushion. “That not your decision.”
“Yes, I understand that,” Patrick said.
“You should not try to stop what you cannot control,” the man explained. “Death beyond your control. You must accept. And you must help her accept.” He unfolded his hands and placed them on his knees, and then leaned closer to Patrick. “Let her die peacefully. Death not to be feared.”
But death was to be feared. Patrick had feared it all his life. He knew all too well what it could do to a home, to a family, to everything he held dear. It would take, and take, and take, and leave nothing left for him. Death had taken his mother, his brother, his father, and now it would take Linley, too.
He wanted to scream. To shout. To hold her close and say ‘No, not this one!’ He wanted to smear blood on the door of his heart and tell God to pass over. To spare her.
To spare him.
Please God, let her live. It was what Patrick prayed every night. Please God, just let her live. She must live, because Patrick was not sure he could live without her.
The lama sat back, watching him. “Do you remember what I told you was Purpose of Life?”
“To be happy.”
He nodded. “Yes, to be happy. But what make you happy?”
“Right now I will just be happy if she lives.”
Again, the man nodded. “Strange how things once important to us change. Money not important now, but before you thought it might make you happier. Power not important now. Neither are possessions. I ask you the question before, but you could not answer. Yet now, I ask you the question and the answer so simple to you.” He pressed his palms together and held his hands to his lips, as if thinking of the best way to say what must come next. “Maybe your friend die so that you learn to appreciate life, seeing how you did not before.”
Patrick balked. “You are telling me that the purpose of her life was to help show me the purpose of mine?”
“Everything must play its part,” the old lama said. “From you and me, all way down to lowly insect.”
“Then what is my part?” Patrick asked. “Couldn’t the purpose of my life be to save my friend?”
The lama thought for a moment. “It may be so,” he said. “But what you willing to give up to save her? Your home? Your family?”
“Yes, all of that.”
“If you save her, but never see her again, would you still do it?” he asked. “Would you die for her?
Patrick looked him straight in the eyes. “Yes. Absolutely.”
“Then I will help you.”
***
Patrick’s heart raced. More than once he thought it was a trick, an ambush. That at midnight, not only Schoville would walk through that curtain, but Archie and Reginald as well.
Thank God he found a pistol in the bottom of Linley’s bag. He shoved it into the waistband of his trousers and took a seat by her bedside.
Footsteps sounded in the hall. Was it only one man? Two? Three? More? Had the entire monastery conspired against him, and did they come now to capture him, like a stupid moth tangled in a spider’s web?
His hands shook. The footsteps drew closer. Patrick swallowed, his throat tight and dry. He grazed his fingertips across the grip of the gun, feeling the damp space between it and the fabric of his shirt.
The curtain at the door swept aside. Patrick pulled the gun out just as a figure stepped into the room.
Schoville blinked, face to face with the business end of a .455 Webley. “Who do you think you are, bloody Hopalong Cassidy?”
“I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get Linley out of here,” Patrick said. “I’d shoot anyone who tried to stop me.”
“The next time you point that thing, you’d better mean to use it. You could get us all killed waving a gun around.”