A Faint Cold Fear (40 page)

He said, 'How do you want to do this?'

Lena did not answer.

'How do you want me to get rid of him?' Richard asked. 'I can make him suffer, Lena. I can hurt him just like he hurt you.'

Lena still could not answer. She looked at her hands, thinking about Ethan in the coffee shop and how angry she had been when he hurt her. She had wanted to pay him back, to make him suffer for the pain he caused.

Richard lightly tapped his finger on the cast. 'I had more than my share of these growing up.'

She rubbed the cast. The scar on her hand was still red, dried blood around the edges. She picked at it as Richard laid out his plan.

'You won't have to do anything,' he said. "I'll make sure everything is taken care of. I've helped women like you before, Lena. Just say the word and I can make him go away.'

She could feel the scar give under her fingernails, peeling back like the sticker on an orange. 'How?' she whispered, playing with the edge of skin. 'How would you do it?'

Richard was watching her hands, too. 'Will it do any good?' he asked. 'Will it make you stop hurting yourself?'

She clutched her right hand around the cast and held it low on her waist, shaking her head, saying, 'I just need to get him out of my life. I just need to get away.'

'Oh, Lena.' He put his fingers under her chin, trying to get her to look up. When she did not move, he leaned down, putting his hands on her shoulders, his face close to hers. 'We'll get through this,' he said. 'I promise you. We can do it together.'

With both hands Lena rammed the cast up into his throat as hard as she could. The cast cracked underneath his jaw, clamping his teeth down on his tongue, throwing his head back whiplash fast. Richard stumbled backward, his arms flailing as he fell hard against the doorjamb. She bolted down the hallway toward Nan's room, slamming the door behind her, working the ancient thumb latch just before Richard turned the knob from the other side.

Nan's gun was under the bed. Lena dropped to her knees, pulling out the box. The cast had split open at the top, and she managed to use both hands to jam the magazine into the gun and release the safety before Richard broke down the door. He came in so fast that he tripped over her, knocking the gun from Lena's hand. She scrambled to reach the weapon, but he was faster than she was. She stood slowly, hands in the air, as he pointed the gun at her chest.

'Get on the bed,' he told her, blood and saliva spraying from his mouth. His words were thick from where he had bitten his tongue, and his breathing was labored, like he was not getting enough air. He kept the gun on her and put his free hand to his throat, coughing once. 'I could have helped you, you stupid bitch.'

Lena stayed where she was.

Despite his injury, his voice filled the room. 'Get on the fucking bed!'

When she still did not move, Richard raised his hand to hit her.

She did as she was told, lying on her back with her head on the pillow. 'You don't have to do this.'

Richard moved deliberately onto the bed, straddling her legs, keeping her in place. Blood dripped from his mouth and he wiped it on his sleeve. 'Give me your hand.'

'Don't do this.'

'I can't knock you out,' he said, and she knew that Richard's only remorse came from the fact that her being awake made things more difficult for him. 'Put your hand on the gun.'

'You don't want to do this.'

'Put your fucking hand on the gun!'

When she did not obey, Richard grabbed her hand and forced it around the gun. She tried to push the glock away, but he had the advantage of height. He pressed the muzzle to her head.

She said, 'Don't.'

Richard hesitated for half a second, then pulled the trigger.

Shards of glass rained down, and Lena put her hands over her head, trying to protect herself as the window exploded above her.

Richard was blown back onto the floor. That was how it happened: The window shattered, and he was on the floor. Empty space was above her, nothing but the ceiling fan in Lena's line of vision. She sat up so she could see Richard. There was a large hole in his chest, blood pooling around him.

Lena turned, looking behind her. Outside the broken window, Frank stood with his gun still drawn on Richard. The threat was unnecessary. Richard was dead.

SEVENTEEN

Sara sat at Mason's desk, the phone propped between her shoulder and ear as she listened to Jeffrey describe what had happened at Nan Thomas's house.

'Frank hung up on Lena when she called the station.

He felt guilty and went by to talk to her,' Jeffrey explained. 'Then he heard Richard screaming and ran around the back.'

'Is Lena okay?'

'Yeah,' he said, but she could tell from his tone of voice that she wasn't. 'If Richard knew how to load a gun, she would be dead right now.'

Sara sat back in the chair, trying to process everything he had said. 'Has Brian Keller said anything?'

'Nothing,' Jeffrey told her, sounding disgusted. 'I brought him in for questioning, but his wife was here an hour later with a lawyer.'

'His wife?' Sara asked, wondering how anyone could be so self-destructive.

'Yeah,' Jeffrey said, and she could tell he agreed with her. 'I can't hold him without a charge.'

'He stole Sibyl's research.'

'I'm meeting with the DA and the school's attorney in the morning to see exactly what we can charge him with. I guess we'll go with theft of intellectual property, maybe fraud. It's going to be complicated, but we'll get him in jail somehow. He's going to pay for this.' He sighed. 'I'm used to cops and robbers. These white-collar crimes are way over my head.'

'You can't prove he was an accomplice to the murders?'

'That's the thing. I'm not sure if he is,' Jeffrey told her. 'The way Lena tells it, Richard copped to all of them: Andy, Ellen Schaffer, Chuck.'

'Why Chuck?'

'Richard didn't exactly spell it out. He was just trying to get her on his side. I think he liked her. I think he thought he could help her.'

Sara knew that Richard Carter would not be the first man who tried to save Lena Adams and failed spectacularly. She asked, 'What about William Dickson?'

'Accidental death, unless you can figure out a way to pin it on Richard.'

'No,' Sara told him. 'He never implicated Keller?'

'Never.'

'Why did he make up that lie about the affair, then?'

Jeffrey sighed again, clearly exasperated. 'Just to stir up more shit, I guess. Or maybe he thought it would make Brian come to him for help. Who knows?'

'Succynilcholine would be kept under lock and key at the lab,' Sara offered. 'There should be a log to account for its usage. You could check to see who had access.' "I'll follow up on it,' he said. 'But if both of them had access, it'll be hard to prove the case.' Jeffrey paused. 'I have to say, Sara, if Keller was going to kill one of his sons, it would have been Richard, and not with a needle.'

'It's a nasty way to die,' she told him, imagining the last few minutes of Andy Rosen's life. 'His limbs would have been paralyzed first, then his heart and lungs. It doesn't affect the brain, so he would have been completely cognizant of what was happening right up until the last minute.'

'How long would it take?'

'Depending on the dosage, twenty, thirty seconds.'

'Jesus.'

'I know,' she agreed. 'And it's nearly impossible to find postmortem. The body breaks it down too quickly. They didn't even have a way to test for it until about five years ago.'

'Sounds like it'd be expensive to find.'

'If you can put the succynilcholine in Keller's hands, I'll find money in the budget to run the test. I'll pay for it myself if I have to.'

'I'll do everything I can,' Jeffrey said, but he did not sound hopeful. 'I know you'll give your folks the news, but do you want to wait until I get there to tell Tessa?'

'Sure,' Sara said, but she had hesitated a second too long.

He paused before saying, 'You know what? I've got a lot of work to do here anyway. I'll see you around.'

'Jeffrey-'

'No,' he said. 'You stay up there with your family.

That's what you need right now, to be with your family.'

'That's not-'

'Come on, Sara,' he said, and she could hear the hurt in his voice. 'What are we doing here?'

'I don't know. I just…' Sara searched for something to tell him but came up blank. 'I told you I need time.'

'Time's not going to change anything,' he said. 'If we can't get past this, past what I did five years ago-'

'You make it sound like I'm being unreasonable.'

'You're not,' he said. 'And I'm not trying to push you, I just…' He groaned. 'I love you, Sara. I'm tired of you sneaking out every morning. I'm tired of this damn hokey-pokey where you're half in and half out of my life. I want to be with you. I want to marry you.'

'Marry me?' She laughed, as if he had asked her to go for a walk on the moon.

'You don't have to sound so shocked.'

'I'm not shocked. I'm just…' Again she was at a loss for words. 'Jeff, we were married before. It wasn't exactly successful.'

'Yeah,' he said. 'I was there, remember?'

'Why can't we just go on how we are now?'

'I want something more than that,' he told her. 'I want to have a really shitty day at work and come home to you asking me what's for dinner. I want to knock over Bubba's water bowl in the middle of the night. I want to wake up in the morning to the sound of you cussing because I left my jockstrap on the doorknob.'

She smiled despite herself. 'You make it all sound so romantic.'

'I love you.'

'I know you do,' she said, and even though she loved him, too, Sara could not bring herself to say the words.

'When can you get up here?'

'That's okay.'

'I want you to tell her,' she said. When he did not respond, she told him, 'They're going to have questions I can't answer.'

'You know everything I do.'

'I don't think I can tell them,' she said. 'I don't think I have the strength right now.'

He waited a beat before saying, 'This time of day it'll be about four and a half hours.'

'Okay.' Sara gave him Tessa's room number. She was about to hang up but said, 'Hey, Jeff?'

'Yeah?'

Now that she had stopped him, Sara did not know what to say. 'Nothing,' she told him. "I'll see you when you get here.'

He gave her a few seconds to add more, but when she did not, he said, 'All right. I'll see you then.'

Sara hung up the phone feeling as if she had just walked a tightrope over a lake of alligators. So much had happened this week that she could not even process what Jeffrey had said to her. Part of her wanted to pick the phone back up and tell him she was sorry, that she loved him, but another part of her wanted to call him and tell him to stay home.

Outside the door she could hear doctors being paged and codes being called. Shadowy figures walked by the glass, their images flashing like strobe lights as they ran to help patients. It felt as though a hundred years had passed since Sara had been an intern. Everything seemed more complicated now, and though she was certain that life had been just as overwhelming when she was younger, Sara could only think of those days with nostalgia. Learning to be a surgeon, treating critical cases that took every ounce of her discipline, had been as addictive as heroin. She still got a rush when she thought about working at Grady. At one time in her life, the hospital had been more important than air. Even her family had paled in comparison.

Making the decision to return to Grant had seemed so easy at the time. Sara had wanted needed to be with her family, to get back to her roots and feel safe, to be a daughter and a sister again. The role of town pediatrician had been a comfortable one to slip into, and she knew that it had given her some amount of peace to be able to give back to the town that had given her so much growing up. Still, not a week had gone by since Sara had left Atlanta that she did not find herself wondering what her life would have been like if she had stayed on. She had not realized until this moment how much she missed it.

Sara glanced around Mason's office, wondering what it would be like to work with him again. As an intern, Mason had been incredibly meticulous, which made him a very good surgeon. Unlike Sara, he let this trait spill over into his personal life. He was the sort of man who could not leave a plate unwashed in the sink or a load of clothes wrinkling in the dryer. The first time Mason had visited her apartment, he had nearly gone into apoplexy over the basket of unfolded clothes that had been sitting on her kitchen table for two weeks. When Sara had awakened the next morning, Mason had folded all the clothes before starting his 5:00 A.M. shift.

A knock on the door took Sara out of her reverie.

'Come in,' she called, standing.

Mason James opened the door, carrying a pizza box in one hand and two Cokes in the other. 'Thought you might be hungry,' he said.

'Always,' she returned, taking the Cokes.

Mason laid several napkins on the coffee table, holding the pizza aloft as he told her, 'I left one with your folks.'

'That was sweet of you,' she said, setting down the cans to help him with the napkins.

Mason gave her the pizza box so he could put napkins under the cans. 'You used to love this place in med school.'

' 'Shroomies,' she read off the top of the box. 'Did I?'

'You ate there all the time.' He rubbed his hands together. 'Voila.'

Sara looked down. He had lined up the napkins into a perfect square. She handed him the box. "I'll let you put it down the right way.'

He laughed. 'Some things never change.'

'No,' she agreed.

'Your sister's looking good,' he told her, placing the box squarely on the table. 'She's moving around a lot better than she was yesterday.'

Sara sat down on the couch. 'I think my mother's been pushing her.'

'I can see Cathy doing that.' He opened a napkin and put it in her lap. 'Did you get the flowers?'

'Yes,' she said. 'Thank you. They're gorgeous.'

He popped open the Cokes. 'Just wanted to let you know I was thinking about you.'

Sara played with the napkin, not sure what to say.

'Sara,' Mason began, draping his arm on the couch behind her shoulders. 'I never stopped loving you.'

She felt a flush of embarrassment, but before she could respond, he leaned over and kissed her. To her surprise, Sara kissed him back. Before she knew what was happening, Mason moved closer, gently pushing her back on the couch until he was lying on top of her. His hands ran up the inside of her shirt as he pressed his body into hers. She put her arms around him, but instead of the mindless euphoria she usually felt at this point, all Sara could think was that the person she was holding was not Jeffrey.

'Wait,' she said, stopping his hand on the button of her pants.

He sat up so quickly that his head hit the wall behind the couch. 'I'm sorry.'

'No,' she said, buttoning her shirt, feeling like a teenager who had just gotten caught in the back of a movie theater. 'I'm sorry.'

'Don't apologize,' he said, crossing his ankle over his knee.

'No, I-'

He shook his foot. 'I shouldn't have done that.'

'It's all right,' she told him. 'I did it back.'

'You sure did,' he said, exhaling in a short huff.

'God, I want you.'

Sara swallowed, feeling like she had too much saliva in her mouth.

He turned to her. 'You're so wonderful, Sara. I think you might have forgotten that.'

'Mason-'

'You're just extraordinary.'

She felt herself blushing, and he reached over, tucking her hair behind her ear.

'Mason,' she repeated, putting her hand over his.

He leaned in to kiss her again, and she tilted her head away from him.

Mason backed off just as quickly the second time.

Sara said, 'I'm sorry. I just-'

'You don't have to explain.'

'I do, Mason. I have to tell you-'

'Really, you don't.'

'Stop telling me not to,' she ordered, then barreled into an explanation. 'I've only been with Jeffrey. I mean, since I left Atlanta.' She moved away from him, scared that if she stayed too close, he would kiss her again. And worse, that she would return the kiss. 'It's just been him since then.'

'That sounds like a habit.'

'Maybe it is,' she said, taking his hand. 'Maybe… I don't know. But this isn't the way to break it.'

He looked down at their hands.

She told him, 'He cheated on me.'

'Then he's an idiot.'

'Yes,' she agreed. 'He is sometimes, but I'm trying to tell you that I know how that feels, and I'm not going to be responsible for making someone else feel that way.'

'Turnabout is fair play.'

'It's not a game,' she said, then reminded him, 'And you're still married, Holiday Inn or not.'

He nodded. 'You're right.'

She had not expected him to capitulate so easily, but Sara was used to Jeffrey's dogged tenacity, not Mason's casual repose. Now she remembered why it was so easy to leave Mason behind, like everything else she left in Atlanta. There was no spark between them. Mason had never had to fight for anything in his life. She wasn't even sure he, wanted her now so much as that she was just convenient.

Sara said, 'I'm going to go check on Tess.'

'Why don't I call you?'

If he had phrased it differently, she might have said yes. As it was, she told him, 'I don't think so.'

'All right,' Mason said, giving her one of his easy smiles.

She stood to leave, and he did not speak again until she was walking out the door.

'Sara?' He, waited for her to turn around. He was leaning back on the couch, his arm still draped along the edge, legs casually crossed. 'Tell your folks I said to take care.'

'I will,' she said, then shut the door.

Sara stood at the window of her sister's hospital room, watching traffic inch by on the downtown connector.

Tessa's steady breathing behind her was like the sweetest music Sara had ever heard. Every time she looked at her sister, it took everything Sara had not to get into bed with her just to hold her and know that she was safe.

Cathy came into the room holding a cup of tea in each hand. Sara flashed back to the Dairy Queen almost a week ago, when Tessa had been unbearably irritable. Sara wanted that moment back so badly she could almost taste it.