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“Listen, little brother,” she said in a tone that Matt decided was the same one she used with her more stubborn patients. “It’s not as if this topic has not been broached before. And you really better start thinking hard about what it is that you want. Really want. Remember lieben und arbeiten?”
Matt felt his temper about to flare. There was a long pause before he trusted himself to speak.
“And do you remember what Dr. Stein said?” he said, finally.
Amy, eyes narrowing, looked at her brother.
“Which particular time?” she said, sharply.
“When he came to see me,” Matt said, “after I took out those two in the parking lot of La Famiglia.”
He paused, and thought, The night Terry was in my Porsche and it got shot up and I shot the robbers. And that killed that relationship.
Then Amy told Amanda that story.
And now . . . Shit!
“Well?” Amy said.
Matt went on. “He said, and this is almost verbatim, ‘Your sister is a fine psychiatrist and a fine teacher. Perhaps for that reason I was terribly disappointed with just about everything she had to say, and certainly with her theories. She should have known that, and known that you should not even think about treating someone you deeply care for. It clouds judgment. In this case, spectacularly.’”
Payne paused, then added, “I think perhaps his point was flawed on the deeply caring part, but I agree with the rest of the premise.”
“Matt!” his mother said.
“Sorry, Mom.”
Payne’s phone vibrated, and when he yanked it out of his pocket, there came a sharp pain from his wound. He automatically put his hand over the bandage as he checked the phone’s screen. He grimaced.
“Are you okay, honey?” Patricia Payne said.
He walked over to his mother.
“I’m afraid I need to get back,” he said, kissing her cheek again. “I’ll take a rain check on lunch.”
He went to the door and through it.
No one said another word.
[ FOUR ]
On the drive back, it took Matt a great deal of effort to keep a heavy foot off the accelerator pedal. In short order, he had gone through a wide range of emotion—first bordering on rage, then anger, then frustration, then, finally, a fair dose of self-loathing. Taking it all out on the car—which, by design, performed extraordinarily well when pushed hard—was easy to do.
His mind racing, he entered the on-ramp for I-476 South. There was no traffic ahead. And, seven seconds later, above the growl of exhaust, the alarm went off loudly in the dashboard—Bong! Bong!—and the instrument display flashed 90 MPH LIMIT EXCEEDED!
He immediately laid on the brakes and set the cruise control at 65, grateful that he had taken the time a month earlier to set up the onboard computer to warn him of the speedometer needle approaching triple digits.
He sighed as he touched the icon labeled PHONE on the in-dash screen, triggering the artificial intelligence interface on his smartphone that Kerry Rapier had had hacked and upgraded for him.
“Who can I call for you, Marshal?” the sultry, computer-generated female voice filled the car, triggering in Payne the mental image of the actress Kathleen Turner. He once had made the mistake of telling Rapier how much he’d liked her in Body Heat.
“Call Tony Harris mobile,” he announced.
“My pleasure.”
On the screen in the dashboard, a text box appeared that confirmed the request. Next, he heard two rings, and then Harris’s voice.
“Hey, Matt.”
