Lathan pushed himself upright, a dull resonance thrumming in his heart. Everything inside him screamed to hurry, hurry, hurry, but he couldn’t afford to end up unconscious again. Gill awakened, stood, and stretched his arms above his head.
Lathan got out of bed. Tested his weight on his legs. Somewhat steady. Gill handed him a pair of scrubs pants. Lathan half sat, half leaned against the bed and pulled them on. After he situated the pants well enough to cover the necessary parts, he let the hospital smock fall off his body. His chest hurt every time he moved his arms. He’d go without a shirt rather than trying to lift his arms through sleeves. An inch-thick bandage covered his heart.
The room was too dark to see Gill’s mouth, but he seemed to know exactly what Lathan was going to do. Lathan ripped out the tubes in his hand. Gill handed him a towel to wrap around the bleeding.
Lathan shuffled across the room toward the door. “I’m ready to go.”
Gill draped his jacket over Lathan’s shoulders. Lathan gave him the finger—his version of thanks—then opened the door. A nurse power walked in their direction, irritation pinching her face and scenting the air. Gill pointed toward the elevators, and Lathan continued in that direction. Let Gill handle the nurse.
Once he was in the car, exhaustion snuck into Lathan’s bones, but every time he closed his eyes, he was back on that kitchen floor watching Junior bite Honey’s breast, back there feeling so angry, so helpless, so fucking weak. Sleep was not his friend.
The headlights of Gill’s car sliced through the bleak darkness of the highway. Gill pushed the speedometer into the high eighties. Miles and miles of blacktop passed without them seeing another vehicle. Lathan imagined the entire world had simply gone to bed, granting him the small gift of unimpeded progress toward home.
A cuticle of bloodred sky split the horizon, soaking the world in its sinister color. His skin tingled with foreboding.
Gill parked at Lathan’s front door, turned on the overhead light, and touched his arm—a request for attention, when he knew Lathan was nearly delirious with worry. “There are some things you need to know. I sent your parents home. Told them not to come back. Your mom was lobbying for you to be shipped to the nutty ward. Between her and her checkbook offering donations to the hospital, she almost succeeded. You weren’t even medically stable or mentally unstable. I’m not sure that she’s not going to try some legal craziness to get her way. She wasn’t happy.”
Lathan nodded. Didn’t really expect anything less from his mom.
“And Junior shot Little Man too.”
“Asshole shot my dog.” Lathan’s fists clenched tight. “If I hadn’t already killed him once, I’d kill him again. And again. And a-fucking-gain.”
“Little Man’s alive. He’s at the veterinary hospital. The bullet lodged in his shoulder muscle. He’s had surgery. The doctor says he should be back to normal in a few months, but because of his size, he’ll always have weakness in that leg. Probably a limp.”
As fucking sissy as it made him sound, Lathan wanted to run his hands over Little Man’s gangly body, wanted to smell dog dander and all the places Little Man visited in a day. He wanted to watch the big oaf flop down on the floor in a fit of canine ecstasy at having his ears scrubbed. He missed his dog. He missed Honey. He missed his fucking life.
“Evanee’s prints were on the gun that shot you. And on the knife that killed Junior. She was gone. The evidence pointed to her. Dr. Jonah reinforced the theory. He suggested that her mother’s death was the inciting incident.
“If the Strategist was in your home, he staged the scene. And did a flawless job. There’s nothing to support what you say happened, and everything points at Evanee.”
“She didn’t do it.”
“I’m only going to ask you this one time, and I’ll never ask it again. Are you certain—one hundred percent—that she wasn’t working with the Strategist?”
“I’m so far beyond certain that your question is bizarre.” Lathan didn’t waste time pondering the answer. He got out of the car.
Like in the movies, crime-scene tape was wrapped around his front porch.
Gill used Lathan’s house key to slice through the police seal and open the front door.
The stench of decomposing biological material bashed into Lathan like a physical entity. His gag reflex kicked open his throat. He dry heaved over the side of the porch, each spasm of his throat sparking a punch of pain in his chest. How the fuck was he going to go in if the smell was so overwhelming he couldn’t stop heaving?
Swallowing hard, he summoned his willpower. Underneath the rot was the smell of people. Strangers. Probably EMTs, police, FBI, crime-scene techs. How many people had been in his home?
Without going in, Gill reached inside and turned on lights.
From the front door, Lathan could see the kitchen. See the horror. Blood. Everywhere. On the walls. Gallons of it on the kitchen floor, some seeping into the living room. A flood of blood. No way that was all Junior’s. Some of it, a lot of it, had to be his too. How had he survived? Honey. She was the answer.
Lathan walked in the door, but didn’t move any closer to the nightmare in his kitchen.
He closed his eyes and inhaled slow, long, and deep breaths, searching for her scent underneath all the layers. His brain sorted and sifted. A whisper scent, a thin thread in a complicated weave. He strained to lock onto her. Sweat slicked his armpits and trickled down his bare chest. Every time he almost got her, another scent overpowered hers.
“How long have I been in the hospital?”
“Five days.”
Lathan’s heart liquefied, the last bloody bits of hope evaporating in the reality of time. Five days. He’d been gone five days. The Strategist never keeps his victims long. She’s dead. The Strategist probably killed her four days ago.
Lathan beat his head with his fists, heard the sounds of anguish escaping his mouth.