Repairman Jack [05]-Hosts (54 page)

He caught up and turned her around. "Kate!"

She looked dazed, and surprised to see him. "Jack? What are you doing here?"

"Is it you, Kate? Really you?"

She nodded, her tear-streaked face reflecting the flames. "Yes, but—"

Jack threw his arms around his sister and hugged her, barely able to speak trough the joy exploding inside him. Kate was back. He could tell. The Unity was gone.

"Thank God! I thought I'd lost you!"

"But where's Jeanette!" she said pushing back. "I have to find her!"

"You can't," he said. "You… won't."

"But I've got to!" she sobbed. "I did this to her!"

She tore away from his grasp. Jack watched her approach the flaming ruins only to be pushed back by the heat. He wanted to pull her away, spirit her back to New York, but he knew she'd never go until she was convinced there was nothing she could do.

He glanced down the road. Cars were pulling over from the highway to watch, to call for help, to run and see. Gawkers trotted up the narrow sandy street, drawn like moths to the blazing spectacle.

Turning, he spotted a dark crumpled form sprawled in the sand on the far side of the wreckage. What were the odds it was Jeanette? Almost nil, but he hurried forward, skirting the heat of the blaze, and the closer he got the more it looked like a person.

He knelt beside the scorched body. No, not Jeanette. Someone else—a male, face mostly torn away by the blast, clothes shredded by debris missiles, but still recognizable as Sandy Palmer. Where had he been hiding?

Poor jerk. Looked like he finally was going to get the fame he'd been chasing—HEROIC REPORTER DIES INVESTIGATING MURDER CULT!—but he wasn't going to be around to enjoy it.

"Oh, Jesus!" said a voice behind him. "Is he dead?"

Jack rose and glanced at the middle-aged gawker, but didn't answer him; more were coming up the street. He could hear sirens approaching.

Time to go. He looked around for Kate, saw her wandering on the far side, near a neighboring bungalow half consumed by flames. He started toward her.

"Hey, I wouldn't get too close to those shacks I were you," said another gawker. "Another one of these propane tanks could go any second."

Propane? Is that what they thought? Of course they would. But Jack knew the bungalow's tank had only added to the blast, not caused it.

And then he stiffened as he spotted the rusty four-foot tank on the side of the burning house where Kate stood, the flames licking at its flanks…

"Kate!" Get away from—!"

The blast was a pale shadow of the first—smaller burst of flame, barely a tenth of the noise and impact—and it momentarily staggered Jack. But it engulfed Kate and sent her flying. She slammed against the wall of the neighboring house and tumbled to the ground like a discarded doll.

As the gawkers screamed and ducked and fled, Jack pounded toward the still form huddled on the sand, repeating one word over and over in a moaning whimper, the only word his dread-mired brain could manage.

"No-no-no-no-no-no…"

When he reached her he saw that her hair was singed and her blouse scorched, but her clothes hadn't caught fire. He was about to send up a prayer of thanks when he noticed the blood… and the jagged piece of metal jutting from her upper abdomen.

He dropped to his knees beside his sister—not simply to be closer to her but because his legs refused to support him. His hands instinctively reached toward the bloody metal shard to remove it but paused, hovering, unsure, afraid of touching it, her, doing anything that might make things worse. Finally he grabbed her hand in both of his.

"Kate! Kate! Are you okay?" Dumb-ass thing to say—she was anything but okay.

Her eyes fluttered open. "Jack?" Her voice was a whisper in a shell. "Jack, what—?"

"Propane tank… it…" The words dried up and blew away.

He watched her gaze lower to her body and fix on the protruding scrap of metal.

"Oh, dear."

This helpless kneeling and watching was killing him. Jack needed to do something.

"Should I pull it out?" She's a doctor, he thought. She'll know.

"Better not."

"Okay, then," he told her. "It stays. Help is on the way. Hear the sirens? You're going to be fine."

She was gazing at him now. "I don't… think so." Her fingers squeezed his hand. "Jack, the dark… it's coming and I'm scared."

"You're gonna be—"

"Not for me. For you and Kev and Lizzie and everyone. It's coming, Jack. The virus is still in my brain and it let me see. The dark is waiting but it will be coming soon, and it's going to roll over everything."

"Kate, save your strength."

"No, listen. Only a handful of people are going to stand in its way, and… and you're one of them."

She reminded him of the Russian lady now.
Is war and you are warrior
.

"Kate…"

"Please look after Kev and Lizzie, Jack. Promise me you won't let it get them."

"I promise. Now hush."

He looked up and saw half a dozen staring gawkers and wanted to shoot them all.

"What are you looking at?" he shouted. "Get outta here! Can't you see she's hurt? Get help!"

He looked back at Kate and his heart stuttered when he noticed her closed eyes. But she was still breathing.

"Kate?"

She didn't open her eyes, didn't move her lips. "Jack." Her voice so tiny, barely there.

He could feel her slipping away. "Kate, don't go. Please, don't go…"

Suddenly flashing red lights everywhere—two cop cars, an ambulance, and a voice shouting, "This way! This way! There's a woman hurt bad over here!"

Jack leaned over his sister, his lips close to her ear. "Help's here now. Listen to me, Kate: I love you, and I'm not going to lose you. Just hang on a little longer and you'll make it."

And then the EMTs, two men and two women sheathed in coveralls and latex gloves, crowded around; Jack watched their expressions change from curious to grim when they saw Kate. He allowed himself to be moved aside as three of them skillfully worked to lift her onto a stretcher while a fourth spoke on a phone to a doctor in the local emergency room, taking instructions and advising him to have a surgeon waiting.

Jack followed close behind as they moved the stretcher—carrying it instead of wheeling it—to the idling ambulance, watched as they slid it into the back of the rig and crawled in after it.

"I'm coming along," he told one of the EMTs. He had this insane feeling that if he stayed nearby, holding Kate's hand, he could keep her alive by pure force of will.

"Sorry, sir. Against the rules."

Jack's hand itched to pull his Glock for emphasis; instead he grabbed the man's arm. "Maybe you didn't hear me: I'm coming along."

"Even if you were allowed, there's no room for you and you'd only get in the way if she crashes."

Jack backed off. The last thing he wanted was to be in the way. He looked past the EMT's shoulder and saw the others starting IVs in both Kate's arms and hooking her up to a heart monitor.

As they slammed the rear door a cop hove into view on Jack's right.

"Did you know that woman?" he asked.

Jack nodded, eyes on the ambulance as it began to move off.

"I'll need to ask you a few questions," the cop said. His shoulder patch read DOVER TWP. POLICE.

Jack began walking, following the ambulance. "I'm going to the hospital."

A hand grabbed his shoulder and turned him a quarter way around.

"Sir," the cop said, "I need some answers before—"

He broke off and stepped back. Jack was ready to kill then and maybe the cop saw that in his eyes. Jack forced a breath and held up an open palm: peace.

"I'm going to the hospital. You want answers, you can find me there."

He turned and hurried through the red-flashing night toward the highway and his car. The cop didn't follow. Maybe he had more pressing matters to attend to, like herding the gawkers away from the site to let the fire crews through, or unspooling yellow barrier tape like the other cop Jack passed.

At a trot now, Jack was maybe a dozen feet behind the ambulance when it reached the highway and turned on its siren. Through the glass side he saw the EMTs go into furious motion, one of them leaning over Kate and beginning rhythmic thrusts against her chest…

"No!" he shouted. "NO!"

His heart was a booted foot, kicking at his chest wall as he leaped into his car and took off after the rig. Jack followed it across the median, then south along the highway, across a bridge to the mainland and down a crowded highway, staying close behind and traveling in its wake as cars pulled aside to let it pass.

"Come on! Come on!" he shouted as they raced mile after mile.

Where was this goddamn hospital? Why was it so far?

And all the while he fought a panicked sense of unreality. This shouldn't be happening to Kate, not after all she's just been through. She's one of the good ones, the best of the good ones. This can't be happening to Kate.

Finally the hospital. He trailed the ambulance up to the emergency entrance where he saw a doctor waiting at the curb. Jack was out of his car and standing with hands and face pressed against the rig's side glass in time to see the doctor shake his head and turn off his flashlight after shining it into Kate's eyes.

"No!" Jack's voice was a whisper as he moved around to the rear to catch the doctor as he exited. "There's got to be more you can do!"

"I'm sorry," the doctor said. He was dark skinned and spoke rapid, accented English. "She's gone. The steel must have nicked an artery. Only surgery on the spot could have saved her, I'm afraid."

Again the sense of unreality washed over him. Feeling lost, dead inside, Jack slumped back against the side of the rig. Gravity seemed to double, triple as he watched them wheel Kate's covered body into the hospital. Somehow he found the strength to follow. Her limp form was transferred to a gurney in one of the ER's curtained-off examination cubicles.

"I want to stay with her awhile," he told a nurse with pocked black skin and graying hair.

"Of course."

When she was gone Jack lifted the sheet and stared at Kate's pale face. She looked so peaceful, almost as if she were sleeping. He felt a pressure building in his throat, readying to explode when he nurse popped back in.

"There's a policeman out here who wants to speak to you."

He wanted to scream at her to leave us alone, goddamn it! But he held back.

"Can I have a few minutes? And a pen and a piece of paper if you can spare them?"

She fished both out of her pocket and laid them on the bedside table.

"I'll tell him you'll be out in a minute."

When she was gone, Jack steadied the paper with a knuckle and wrote
Kate Iverson, MD, Trenton, NJ
. He pocketed the pen. He peeked through the curtains and saw the cop from the explosion scene sipping coffee and chatting up the ward clerk.

Jack returned to Kate's side and kissed her forehead, then bottled up his emotions. Leaving her here alone seemed like the rankest sort of desertion; he felt like a rat, but he couldn't stay. He checked out the cop again, then slipped out through the far edge of the curtains and walked the other way. Moving on autopilot he followed signs to the lobby and exited through the front. Found his car and got rolling. A parkway entrance ramp was nearby so he took it north. Saw a sign for a rest area and knew he had to stop or explode. Pulled into the lot and turned off the engine.

Kate…

The sense of failure was overwhelming. He'd just got her back and now she was gone. Forever. And it was his fault. If only he hadn't listened to her and gone ahead and done what his gut had told him to do. If only he hadn't saved that damn bomb. If only he'd got home sooner…

Jack rested his forehead against the steering wheel and sobbed.

Kate…

EPILOGUE

Jack watched from the trees until everyone was gone, then he walked down the slope to where two workmen, one white, one black, were readying to fill in the grave.

"Hey, guys, can you give me a few minutes alone here?"

The white guy squinted at him through the obscenely cheery morning sunlight. "Sorry, mister. The ceremony's over and we've got to—"

Jack had two twenties ready. He held them out. "An extra ten-minute coffee break's not gonna matter in the long run, is it?"

They looked at each other, shrugged, took the twenties, and walked off to a pickup truck parked fifty yards away.

Jack dropped to one knee and stared at the shiny metallic surface of the coffin nestled deep in its hole.

"Sorry I couldn't be here earlier, Kate. I tried, but they wouldn't let me."

The explosion had been eight days ago. Because it was a medical examiner's case and various criminal investigations were involved, it had taken officialdom a long time to release Kate's body.