TOM HAD BEEN awake for less than five minutes when he saw the first cop walk past his door. It looked like a city uniform, not the brown of the state police. A nurse had asked him his name, and he’d acted as though he was unable to hear her, but he knew the troopers wouldn’t be long in arriving. A man with a gunshot wound would always trigger a message to the police. At least he wasn’t handcuffed to the bed yet.
From staff chatter he’d gleaned that he’d suffered diabetic shock and gone into a coma. It couldn’t have lasted long, he figured, because he felt reasonably alert, and his wounds looked just as they had when he last checked them, albeit cleaner. His memory was sketchy, but he clearly remembered trying to save Caitlin beside the huge cypress tree in the swamp. He had no idea how she’d gotten there, nor had he even thought to ask her. He had no idea whether she’d survived her wound or not. The only thing he was sure of was that if Caitlin had not appeared at the Bone Tree, he would be dead by now.
The next time a nurse came through, he asked how Caitlin Masters was doing. The woman told him she’d been taken into the OR and a trauma surgeon was working on her. Tom would have given all the money in his name to rest on that bed and wait to hear the outcome of Caitlin’s surgery, but if he did, he would almost certainly be arrested by cops who reported to Forrest Knox.
He rolled onto his side, then slowly sat up on the treatment table and waited to regain his equilibrium. Once he had, he pulled the IV out of his wrist, held his thumb against the hole, and walked over to a chair, where a white coat had been left by the ER physician. After struggling into the dirty clothes they’d removed from his body, he slipped on the lab coat, then opened drawers until he found a surgical mask, which he placed over his nose and mouth.
He knew he should check his appearance in a mirror, but he didn’t have time. A nurse or tech could come in at any moment. He walked to the door and paused long enough to steel himself against the pain signals pouring into his brain from every extremity. Then he marched through the ER as he had ten thousand times in Natchez, walking with the purposeful tread that nurses would instantly read as the gait of a physician in a hurry to get somewhere he was needed.
Though Tom had never been in this emergency department, he’d worked in enough of them to sense the flow of people, and within seconds he was in the ambulance bay and walking through the parking lot. A spray of rain hit him as he moved out under the gray clouds, but he didn’t break stride. The lone security guard was staring at what appeared to be an illegally parked car as Tom approached. When the guard looked up, Tom gave him a quick salute and kept walking.
“Yo, doc,” said the guard, “have a good one.”
PEGGY CAGE STOOD AT the kitchen stove of Penn’s Washington Street town house, watching Annie and waiting for the six o’clock TV news. Kirk Boisseau had finally agreed to go to the hospital for treatment, and after that she and Annie had been moved here, where they would be surrounded at all times by at least a dozen cops and FBI agents. The Natchez police chief had told Peggy that a prisoner had either died or been murdered in the Concordia Parish jail, but he knew few details. As for Penn, Peggy knew only that he had raced out of town to try to find Caitlin in the swamp near Athens Point.
Peggy had tried to persuade Annie to rest, but all her efforts were in vain. Annie meant to sit up until her father returned. Peggy had thought she knew Annie pretty well, but right now she couldn’t tell whether the eleven-year-old was on the edge of cracking, or whether she was stronger than her own grandmother. Peggy was feeling pretty fragile after the events of the afternoon. Had Kirk Boisseau not reacted as quickly and selflessly as he had, she might have been badly burned. And there had been no word, neither open nor via a secret channel, about Tom or Walt.
When Peggy was stressed, she cooked, even if there was no real need. She’d decided to prepare chicken jambalaya for Annie, even though the child had claimed all she needed was a peanut butter sandwich. The policemen outside would certainly appreciate it. As Peggy stirred the chicken and rice mixture, she wondered whether the time had come to trust her son above her husband. During their life together, Tom had rarely made a bad decision about the big things. But this time, Peggy had come to believe, he was wrong. Even if he was right, he was wrong, in the sense that his choices might cost him and Walt their lives—not to mention what might happen to the rest of the family.
“Come sit down, Gram,” Annie said, beckoning her to the kitchen table.
“I’m cooking, sweetie.”
“What will Mr. Abrams think about his house? It smelled pretty terrible when we left, and some of the windows got knocked out by the fire.”
“Mr. Abrams’s son and your father are good friends. Your father will pay to fix it like it was before.”
“The news is on!” Annie cried, pointing at living room. “I hear it. Come on! Should we watch Baton Rouge or Alexandria?”
“I’m not sure we should watch either. You can’t be sure they have accurate information.”
As the announcer gave a précis of the night’s report—which included a possible murder in the Concordia Parish jail—the house phone began ringing, triggering a rush of fear in Peggy. She forced herself to calm down, then picked up the kitchen extension.
“Penn Cage’s residence.”
“Mrs. Cage?”
The voice sounded familiar, but Peggy wasn’t sure she recognized it. “Yes. Who is this?”
“Special Agent John Kaiser. I met you this afternoon, with Penn.”
“Yes, I remember.” Peggy’s throat tightened in dread. “Do you have any news?”
“I do. And I’m afraid it’s not good.”
Peggy stopped breathing, and her gaze flew to the kitchen door, to be sure Annie wasn’t eavesdropping from the den.
“Is my husband all right?” she whispered. “And my son?”
“Yes, ma’am, Penn’s alive and well. Dr. Cage, too, as far as I know. But . . . I’m afraid that Caitlin Masters has been killed.”