“Tell Ian to go fuck himself,” Susan said. She got her hairbrush out of her purse and started brushing her hair. The oxygen mask lay humming uselessly on the exam table.
“I’ll find a way to rephrase it,” Derek said. “Are you brushing your hair again?”
Henry walked in scratching his neck.
“I’ve got to go,” Susan said, hanging up.
“What’s going on?” Henry asked.
Susan started opening drawers in the exam room’s cabinets. “There’s a Texaco on 22—an attendant saw a silver Jag with Sabre wheels last night at eleven. Fits the time frame.”
“Mills Crossing?” Henry said.
Susan stopped, surprised. “Yeah.”
“We do police work, too. Flannigan just called Claire. We’ve had cops calling gas stations all over the state. A car like that? Sometimes people notice it.”
Susan opened another drawer and found what she was looking for—a cold pack. “What are you going to do?” Susan asked. She squeezed the pack until it cracked and started turning cold.
“Send a local cop over with a picture of Gretchen.” Susan zipped her purse up and slipped it over her shoulder. “Where are you going?” Henry asked.
Susan held the ice pack against her face. “I need to get some gas,” she said.
“You need to rest and take in oxygen,” Henry said. “There’s a fire up there. Mills Crossing will probably have been evacuated by the time you get there.”
Susan turned to Henry. Her face hurt. She felt like she was going to throw up. It was starting to affect her cheery disposition. “Bennett was trying to stop me from writing the Molly Palmer story,” she said.
Henry worked a finger along his upper lip. “Maybe.”
“He didn’t have to,” Susan said. “The Herald killed it. I’m going to find Archie. I’m going up the mountain, fire or not. You can stay here.” She walked through the doorway and turned back. “Or you can come.”
“Susan,” Henry said.
“Yeah,” she said, turning.
Henry smiled. “Did you want to stop by the Arlington and change?”
Susan looked down at the green scrubs she was wearing. “Right,” she said.
CHAPTER
58
Let’s go back into the bedroom,” Archie said. He stood up and held his jaundiced, swollen hand out to her. She looked vulnerable, lying there on the sofa, no makeup, her bruised clavicle visible at the neckline of the blouse. Maybe something or someone had turned her into a monster. Or maybe it was just who she was. Archie didn’t care anymore. It didn’t matter. The blackness was closing in. He had to act fast.
She took his hand and stood and he led her around the sofa.
“I try to be good,” Gretchen said. “You know that, right?”
“Yes,” Archie said gently.
They were near the banister now and Archie paused to tie his shoe. As he knelt, he retrieved the handcuffs he’d hidden in the bathroom and then stuffed in his sock. He’d counted on her hubris, believing she wouldn’t search him. It was her fatal flaw—she thought her control over him was absolute. But it wasn’t. Not quite.
In a swift motion he snapped one end of the cuffs on Gretchen’s slender right wrist, and snapped the other cuff around the wrought-iron banister. She reacted immediately, whipping her trapped arm in the air, pulling at the cuffs like someone staked to the bottom of the ocean, drowning. It was instinct. All animal. Archie took the moment to step away from her, out of reach. She snapped her head up at him. Her lips were wet, her eyes blazed. She swung at him, her fingertips almost brushing against his shirt. Her eyes darted back and forth, her mind working, looking for a way out. The red spots on her cheeks only made her look more beautiful.
She gathered herself, smoothing her hair with her free hand, lifting an eyebrow. “Darling,” she said slowly. “This. Is. A. Very. Bad. Idea.”
He didn’t say anything. It took all of his focus to concentrate on what he had to do. He left her and walked to the bathroom down the hall. It was a small bathroom, a toilet, vanity, and fiberglass shower all in close quarters. A watercolor print of a deer standing in snow hung over the toilet. The mirror above the vanity was surrounded with large round lights. He took a minute, hands gripping the counter, to steady himself through a wave of dizziness. His heart felt like it was beating too slowly. The pain in his side throbbed. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, knelt down, and opened the vanity drawer under the sink. Then he reached behind the extra rolls of toilet paper and found the small cell phone and folded piece of paper that he had hidden there that first night along with the cuffs.
He carried the phone and the folded piece of typing paper back into the living room, where Gretchen had twisted her body in an effort to get out of the handcuffs.
“They’re police issue,” he said. “They’re not going to give.”