Once that initial agonizing pain had faded, my shoulder felt sore, but the pain was bearable.
I realized then that Faraday was talking to me. “Maddie?” he said as he wiped the hair away from my face. “Look at me, sweetheart. Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” I croaked.
“You okay?”
I nodded dully, but then a wave of emotion came over me and that sob I’d fought so hard to hold inside gushed out, and it was followed by so many more.
Faraday lifted me into his arms and carried me over to the couch, where he held me protectively against his chest. “You poor kid,” he said. “The ambulance should be here in a minute, honey.” In the distance I heard the sounds of sirens closing in.
I leaned against his chest and shut my eyes, grateful to be alive.
“Hey,” Faraday said after a few seconds. “Did you know your clock’s still ten minutes fast?”
FARADAY STUCK TO MY SIDE LIKE GLUE. He rode with me in the ambulance even though I overheard someone tell him to stay at the house and give a statement. He’d told that guy to stuff it…or something to that effect. He’d said they could find him at the hospital and take his statement there.
I was so glad he came with me. I felt beaten to a pulp, both emotionally and physically. When the ER doc ordered Faraday to go wait in the lobby, he glared hard but muttered something about needing to give his statement anyway. He promised me he’d be back soon and left.
I had a long slice in the palm of my hand and a bad cut on the back of my head that both needed stitches, and my shoulder was X-rayed. Then they put my arm in a sling, but the doctor didn’t think there would be any lasting damage. He said I’d be free to go home as soon as they could find someone to drive me.
I pressed my lips together. I no more wanted to go home than I wanted my arm out of the socket again. But a few minutes later the curtain around my bed was pulled back, and Mrs. Duncan was there, wearing a coat over her nightgown and looking more concerned than I’d ever seen her.
“Oh, Maddie!” she gasped when she saw me. She shuffled over to my bed and wrapped her thin arms around me, hugging me very gently before stepping back. “I can hardly believe what Agent Faraday was telling me!”
My gaze dropped to my lap. I didn’t know what to say, because the nightmare was still too fresh.
“And that poor patrolman,” Mrs. Duncan added. My chin lifted, and I saw that her eyes were shiny.
“He’s…dead?” I guessed. And then I knew how Rick had gotten into my house. He’d killed the patrolman and walked right up the drive to the back door.
Mrs. Duncan wiped her eyes. “I’m so sad for his family, but at the same time, I’m so relieved and grateful that you’re still with us, Maddie.” She reached out and smoothed my hair. “Agent Faraday says I can bring you home to my house right after he gets your statement. But if you’re not up to it, then I’ll tell him to wait until you’ve had some rest.”
I swallowed hard and had to wipe my own eyes. “Thanks, Mrs. Duncan. I think I can talk to him now.”
She looked like she wanted to convince me otherwise, but then Faraday was pulling back the curtain and stepping over to stand next to Mrs. Duncan. “How’s she doing?” he asked her.
Mrs. Duncan smiled proudly at me and winked. “She’s her father’s daughter, Agent Faraday. And he had the heart of a hero.” Then she patted him on the chest and said, “I should let you two talk. Come find me in the lobby when Maddie is ready to leave, would you?”
“We won’t be long, Mrs. Duncan,” Faraday promised. After she’d gone he grinned at me, too. “She’s one tough cookie.”
I found the corners of my own mouth lifting. “She’s pretty great.”
Faraday looked around and grabbed a stool from right outside the curtain. Pulling it over to sit down, he took out a small notebook and said, “Tell me what happened tonight, Maddie.”
I did. It didn’t take very long. I’d been alone with Rick in my house for ten minutes. It’d just felt like an eternity. When I was finished, I had my own questions for Faraday.
“How did you know?” I asked him. “How did you know to come to the house?”
Faraday shrugged. I saw that he’d cleaned up a little from that afternoon. The soot from the fire had been washed away, but there was a good section of hair on the side of his head that was patchy and black. “I waited here until Kevin was out of surgery, and I was about to leave when one of the nurses found me and said that he was asking for me. He was pretty groggy, but when I got to him, all he kept saying was ‘Wrong guy.’ He said it over and over, like he was really worried about it, so I told him I’d look into it.
“Anyway,” Faraday continued, “at the time, that didn’t make much sense to me, so I headed back to Culligan’s to look through Wes’s locker, and you know what I found?”
I shook my head.
“I found a pair of Timberlands. Size nine and a half.”
“Wrong size,” I said, with a knowing nod.
“Exactly. So I started digging a little more. Miller’s boss had said there were two guys on the crew. I asked the old man about the other guy. I finally got it out of him that Wes’s partner was his cousin, Rick Kane—a guy in his early fifties—right in the age range of the profile from my buddy in D.C. I checked out Kane’s work locker next, but it was empty. That seemed kind of odd to me, you know? Not even a jacket or an extra shirt in there. So I went to Kane’s house. His wife said she was worried about him because he hadn’t been feeling well lately. She had begged him to go to the doctor, but he’d refused. He’d also told her something that stuck with her—he’d said it wouldn’t do any good. I remember standing on her porch and thinking about that….That’s something a dying man says.
“Before I left her house, I asked if Rick owned a set of Timberlands. He did. Size twelve.”