“I understand, Quentin.”
“Let me finish. You’re welcome to use my house as long as you need to. If Doris and I aren’t here, no one can argue that we aided and abetted. My deepest wish is that you’d let me arrange a surrender to a district attorney, or even a U.S. attorney. But you’re not ready to do that, are you?”
“Not yet, I’m afraid.”
“All right, then. When you get ready to fight this case, or plead the charges down to something manageable, you call me.”
“I will.”
Doris’s shoes clicked on the floor, and she brought in a plate with a hot cheese sandwich on it. She set the plate on the coffee table, then some iced tea beside it.
“Thank you,” Tom said.
“Where’s mine?” asked Quentin.
“You get a salad.”
Quentin groaned, but then he said, “Doris put your car in our garage, so nobody can see it from the air. And there’s a laptop computer on the floor by your pee glass. We’ve got Wi-Fi in the house. You ought to be safe here for as long as you need to stay. Just promise me you’ll call somebody if that shoulder starts getting bad.”
Tom sat up a little and gave them a brave smile. “I’ve got some people I can call. I’ll have help here soon. You two already went beyond the call of duty. You saved my life.”
Doris laid a warm hand on Tom’s bearded cheek. “You think hard about your options, Tom. Don’t sacrifice yourself for the wrong reason.”
He didn’t know what to say to that.
Quentin reached out and squeezed Tom’s foot beneath the quilt. “I’ll be thinking about you. And you think about me. I’ve still got one good murder trial in me. Two, if there’s no other way.”
“I’m counting on that. You two take care.”
With that, Quentin squeezed his foot once more, then whirred out of sight.
Doris sighed, then stood up straight. “Does your wife know where you are?”
“No. But she knows I’m safe.”
“I doubt she’s resting easy.”
“No. But it’s her I’m doing this for, as much as anyone.”
Doris looked at Tom for a long time. Then she said, “I hope I see you again soon, and in far better circumstances.”
Before he could reply, she turned and walked back into the kitchen.
Tom listened until the back door closed. A minute later, the soft sound of an engine reached him. It grew louder for a few seconds, then faded fast.
He was alone.
His first thought was of Walt. His old friend had not acknowledged receiving the “safe” message, nor had he asked for information on Tom’s exact location. That meant one of three things: either he was busy, he did not trust his or Tom’s current mobile phones, or he was dead. Tom prayed it was not the latter. If so, he would carry the burden of Walt’s death for whatever remained of his days.
Tom’s next thought was for himself. If he didn’t get help soon, he would die in Quentin’s house. Above all, he needed a safe telephone, preferably several burn phones, and he had no hope of getting these himself. Second, he needed more nitroglycerine and antibiotics than Quentin had left on the table.
His options were few.
He could call Penn, but Penn would insist that he turn himself in to the authorities, which was out of the question. Tom couldn’t even consider that until he’d learned the result of Walt’s meeting with Colonel Mackiever. Peggy would do anything he asked, of course, but he wasn’t about to put her in further jeopardy. If he died, or was killed while on the run, at least she would remain to represent their generation in the family. A primitive thought, he reflected, but that was what he felt.
Drew Elliott had helped him once, but Tom had a feeling he’d stretched Drew’s loyalty about as far as he dared. No, what he needed was unswerving loyalty. A hundred patients came to mind, but Tom couldn’t bring himself to put them in lethal danger. Once he faced that reality, only one person remained.
Melba Price.
Melba hadn’t wanted to leave him last night, at the lake. Thankfully, she had finally relented, or the confrontation with Knox’s killers might have gone differently. Tom hated to ask more of her, but the grim truth was, Melba was single, her children were grown, and her loyalty was beyond question. Tom had only to close his eyes to remember what a wreck Melba had become when her husband left her for a younger woman. She’d drunk so steadily and suicidally—with various pills added to the mix—that she put even Tom’s worst excesses to shame. But with Tom’s intervention and help, she had survived. He didn’t think of the present situation in terms of her repaying any debt; he simply knew that if asked, Melba would come.
She was like Viola that way.
CHAPTER 25
WAITING UNTIL KAISER left the building had required almost heroic self-denial on Caitlin’s part. Even after Jamie assured her that the FBI agent had gone, she ran to the back window and checked the back lot to make sure the black Crown Victoria was gone. Satisfied that it was, she’d hurried back to her office, locked her door, then climbed onto her chair to verify that Henry’s two surviving journals were where she’d left them. Finding the Moleskines safe, she took them down and laid them on her desk, then opened her top drawer and removed the manila envelope Henry’s mother had brought her. No one else in the world knew these artifacts still existed, and that knowledge was intoxicating.