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Wilson dragged his hand down his tired-looking face, over his mouth and chin, then said, “Thank you, Dr. Lambert.” He reached over and closed the lid on the box.
Lambert didn’t acknowledge the thanks. He said, “Brynn, to prevent contamination or compromise—and let’s hope to God none has occurred—please reseal the box and get it here with all due speed. Since your car is out of commission, how do you plan to get back to Atlanta?”
She picked up the phone, switched it off speaker, and said, “Finding transportation is the next order of business.” For several moments, she held Rye’s stare, then turned her head aside.
Rye’s view of her was suddenly blocked by Rawlins’s hard-boiled mug. “Come back to my office. Soon as you sign a statement, you’ll be free to go.”
Chapter 8
5:10 a.m.
And they’re still in there. Nobody’s gone in or come out since the deputies took the two of them into the building.”
Delores Hunt had listened with mounting impatience as Goliad updated her on the circumstances. “How long ago was that?”
“Little over an hour.”
Delores lit a cigarette and blew the smoke toward the open French door to prevent Richard from catching a whiff, which he had a knack for doing even through walls. He hated it when she smoked. She only did so when she was extremely agitated. If he caught her at it now, puffing in frustration while she paced the width of the sitting room, he would know that something had gone terribly awry.
The last time she’d gone into the bedroom to see about him, he had begrudgingly agreed to change into pajamas and go to bed. The last series of radiation treatments had left him weakened and easy to tire, but neither he nor she had acknowledged that his former robustness was waning.
He had been quarrelsome and fretful because there had been no further communication from Goliad, and they remained in the dark as to when they could expect Dr. O’Neal back in Atlanta.
His edginess would escalate to full-blown rage if he knew there had been another delay, the cause for which Delores couldn’t explain to him because she didn’t know it.
She had calmed him by admitting that there had been a glitch or two, but she’d attributed them to the ghastly weather and assured him that she, Dr. Lambert, and Goliad were on top of the situation.
She only wished that were the case.
Their lives had been turned upside down six months ago when Richard had been diagnosed with a cancer that neither of them had ever heard of. They had consulted Dr. Nate Lambert, a specialist of renown, but also a man known to them through social connections.
His god complex was barely tolerable, but it had its uses. With Nate’s intercession, Richard’s treatments had begun immediately and had been administered under a cloak of absolute secrecy. Not even their most trustworthy staff members knew that Richard was ill, Goliad being the single exception. No one else must know. It most certainly must be kept from the media.
Thousands of people were diagnosed with terminal cancer every day. They didn’t make national news.
Senator Richard Hunt would.
“An hour, you say?”
“Yes, ma’am. Give or take,” Goliad replied.
Fidgety with irritation, Delores assessed this new and disquieting information.
“I don’t understand why so many officers converged on the airfield office. Were they investigating the crash? Why have Dr. O’Neal and the pilot been taken to the sheriff’s office? In short, Goliad, what the hell is going on up there? What haven’t you told me?”
After several portentous seconds, he said, “Timmy went a little overboard.”
She picked up her lighter and clicked it a few times, watching the flame in a sort of self-induced hypnosis. “Explain that statement, please.”
“He was fooling around with a laser.”
“Excuse me?”
In his stolid manner that often made her want to scream with impatience, Goliad talked her through the sequence of events. “Once we got back to the airfield office—”
“Yes, yes. So you said, it was crawling with cops. Knowing that Dr. O’Neal and the pilot would find the man, why didn’t you intercept them before they got there, as I remember telling you to do? Fog. That was your excuse.”
“Fog was definitely a factor. I had to find a place to turn around. They couldn’t have beat us by much.”
