“I want you,” he said, “to listen.”
He rolled the word like something to be savored.
“Listen carefully,” Marsh continued, “because it’s the last story you’ll ever hear.”
Cold gathered in the hollow at the base of her throat.She made herself nod, small, obedient.“All right.”
“Good.”He shifted in the chair, settling in as if for a long conversation.The gun never wavered.“First, though, let’s be clear about the rules.You don’t reach for anything.You don’t shout.You don’t try to run.You stay where you are, under your little motel blanket, and you keep those special agent hands where I can see them.Yes?”
“Understood.”She let her fingers flex once, slowly, on top of the thin sheet.“You’re in charge.”
“Say that again.”
“You’re in charge.”The words tasted of ash.“I’ll do whatever you want.”
He sighed, like a teacher pleased by a correct answer.“See, when people accept the proper order of things, everyone is so much happier.The Lawgiver would agree.”
Cox.The title slid through her brain like oil.
“May I…?”She swallowed.“Can I sit up?It’s unnerving having a gun pointed at me while I’m lying down.”
“Slowly.”
She moved.Inch by inch, she pushed herself up against the headboard, keeping her hands in his line of sight at all times, the sheet dragged up over her legs.Her feet were bare.A stupid detail, but it made her feel more vulnerable, less capable of delivering the kind of kick that might knock the gun free.
He waited until she was upright, then leaned back slightly, as if granting a privilege.
“What I would like,” Kate said carefully, “is if you’d put the gun somewhere else.Not… away,” she added quickly, seeing his expression tighten.“Just—on the nightstand, maybe.Still within reach.You’d still be in complete control, and you’d be less likely to… accidentally… pull the trigger.”
“Accidentally,” he repeated, as if tasting the shape of it.“You’re worried about accidents.”
“Guns go off sometimes,” she said.“People flinch.Or their fingers cramp.Or they trip on something.And then something irreversible happens.”She tried to inject a bit of wry humor into it.“I’d prefer not to die because the Forest Suites has uneven carpet.”
He shook his head faintly.“The gun will go off when I want it to.”His voice was calm.
When.
She filed away the failure of that attempt and moved on.
“Tell me the story,” she said.“The last one.”
His eyes brightened, like she’d hit the right switch.
“Winter of ’83,” Quinn began.“Do you remember it?”
“I wasn’t born,” Kate said.“So, no.”
“Then you might remember the way your parents talked about it.”His gaze went distant, not unfocused exactly—more like he was looking at a screen only he could see.“Still, to date, the worst winter to hit the East Coast since records began.Blizzards, ice storms, roads closed for days.But that wasn’t the worst of it.The worst was the flu.”
He said the word like a curse.
“The hospitals were overwhelmed,” he went on.“Not enough staff, not enough beds, not enough anything.People dying on gurneys in corridors, respiratory complications, pneumonia, collapsed lungs.Nurses collapsing, too, because they’d done three shifts back-to-back and hadn’t eaten in eighteen hours.For the first time since 1929 people started muttering that maybe America was… slipping.Failing to meet the basic needs of her population.”
He glanced at her to make sure she was following.
“I read about that,” Kate said quietly.“And my Dad talked about it, too.”
“Of course he did,” Marsh said, an unmistakable blade of contempt in his voice.“Your father would have framed it as a noble struggle against impossible odds.Doctors as heroes.Nurses as angels.All that shit.”His lip curled.“Meanwhile, on the ground, people like us were just trying not to starve.”
