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Abruptly, another image of C.P. Phalen came to the forefront of his mind. No suit or stillies this time, and her pale hair was all frazzled, her face younger without the makeup. She was wearing one of his fleeces, the soft folds of navy blue fabric billowing around her upper body, and sitting on a hospital bed down in the lab. She had been scared and keeping a lid on the fear as best she could, just like all the other patients he’d ever had.
She was just like that Daniel Joseph. Stage four.Different kind of cancer, though, not that that mattered because hers couldn’t be treated anymore, either.
God, he hated that woman.
Fine. He justwishedhe could hate her. And on that note…
“You might as well use that knife now, Hans,” Gus said softly. “Because I’ll die before I help you hurt that woman.”
FOUR
SO WHY’D YOUgive Vita to Gus.”
As Catherine Phillips Phalen glanced over her shoulder to the Suburban’s middle row of seats, two things occurred to her. One, given the angle of her view, apparently she was driving. This was a news flash that shouldn’t have been a surprise—and probably a contraindication for her being behind any wheel. Secondly, with the way Daniel was propped up against the rear door’s blacked-out window, his shoulders collapsed into his chest, his mostly bald head at a bad slant, one arm lying dead across his lap, she probably should have laid him out flat in the back-back.
“We’re almost home,” she heard herself say as the great stone wall marking her acreage started to run beside them on the shoulder of the rural road. “Less than a mile.”
The guard next to her nodded, but didn’t look up from his phone. His role in this fast-track back to her estate was monitoring an overhead dronefeed. Meanwhile, his assigned partner for this shift was in the rear bench seat and on a constant pivot, his eyes swiveling an owl-worthy three-sixty. The other two she’d brought with her were still in Plattsburgh going through Gus St. Claire’s condo, looking for what she was willing to bet they would not find: fingerprints, footprints… hair and fiber samples that were not the doctor’s.
Her hand went to rest on her abdomen.Gus. I’m going to find you, I swear.
As she looked down, like she intended to make the vow or prayer or whatever it was stick, it was as if the child she was carrying were God or something.
Which would make her the Virgin Mary. Or the Virgin Catherine, as it were—
Okay. It was official. She’d lost her mind.
Daniel spoke up again. “You might as well have put a target on the man’s back. He’s not like you and me.”
That’s right on too many levels to count, she thought.
Gus was the finest oncologist, researcher, and doctor she’d ever met—but he was also a prince among men, an Afro-sporting counterculture rebel with a Nobel Peace Prize brain, the moral compass of a saint, and an inexplicable, yet somehow charming, penchant for concert t-shirts from the seventies. He also liked basketball. Coke from a can.
What was she, his eHarmony profile?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Daniel demanded.
“About what,” she said with a low warning.
Which naturally went ignored: “That you were going to give that drug away.”
“You decided you weren’t going to be our patient one. So why do you care.” When there was no response, she glanced up into the rear view. “Funny, how when something is out of reach, its value to us becomes more clear, isn’t it.”
Wow. She was an asshole saying that to a terminal patient. But the shit applied to her as well.
And she missed the man just as much as Daniel did.
“Gus was your doctor,” she continued—because she always doubled down when it hurt and she was talking to herself at the same time. “Not your family, not your friend, not one of your black ops clients. Besides, when you witnessed my signature, you told me it didn’t matter what you were signing, remember?”
“I worked for the government,remember—so I didn’t have clients. And you lied to me. You told me it was a healthcare proxy or some shit.”
She glanced back at him again. “Considering all you kept from people at the beginning of your little adventure here in Walters, I wouldn’t throw stones in that glass house, if I were you—”
“He could have lived with you. Jesus, these interchangeable rent-a-guns you stack the housewith would have protected him, too. Or maybe you could have spared one or two out of your hundred or so and had him watched—”
“I amnotgoing to debate this issue with you.”
“Was it your last-ditch effort to try and get him to stay? Giving him the drug?”
