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“No. Go to hell, George!”
“If you help us find her, I think I can convince the district attorney to drop all the charges against you. And you could be saving her life.”
“For fuck’s sake, only an idiot would think for a moment that this confession isn’t a complete fantasy… Theo’s a writer—” Something started to beep again. It startled Gus as much as Mendes.
“Now look what you’ve done!” Jacqui snarled at Mendes. “It’s not enough that your people shoot him, you’ve got to try and finish the job!”
All sorts of alarms were going off now. Doctor and nurses converged upon the room.
Mendes backed off… “We can talk later.”
The detective and Jacqui Steven were pushed out of the room to make way for a crash cart.
CHAPTER 30
Jacqui put the coffee on the on the table beside the bed. She pushed the hair back off Gus’s forehead. “How are you feeling?”
“Confused.”
“That’s probably the painkillers.”
“My doctors are confused too, and they’re not on anything, as far as I know.”
“Why are they confused?” Jacqui’s smile was innocent.
“Well, the machines seem to think my heart stopped, and yet I remained standing.”
“They malfunction sometimes, I suppose.”
“Jac—”
She wrinkled her nose. “I may have accidentally disconnected a couple of wires for a while.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to make sure you didn’t talk yourself out of a pass because you lost your temper.”
He shook his head.
She took his hand and held it in both of hers. “Gus—”
“Theo didn’t kill anyone, Jac.”
Jacqui’s voice was metered. “I agree.”
“Then—”
“Theo may have decided to run while she still could.” Jacqui sat down on the bed, knowing Gus was going to resist this. “Maybe she’s scared, or exhausted. Maybe it got to be too much and she could see no other way. That confession was her trying to help you.”
“And any prosecutor worth their salt is going to see that. Theo isn’t an idiot—whatever she’s doing, she must know it isn’t going to work.”
Jacqui shrugged. “I don’t know, Gus. The decision to arrest you was based on the knife and the keys they found at your house, and now Theo has said she hid them there.”
“She was living at Mac’s when Mary Cowell was killed.”
“Which is why it makes sense she would hide them somewhere else. She had a key to your place.” Jacqui pressed on, though she could see Gus was tiring, and in pain. “That letter is going to give you reasonable doubt—you heard Mendes. Whatever he says, they’ve already given up on you being their man.” She hesitated. “Gus, a couple of days before you were shot, Theo asked me about what was happening at the firm.” Jacqui gathered her courage and told him about the day she met Theo for coffee, and the conversation they’d had.
“You told her that? Dammit, Jac! What were you thinking?”
