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“What does that have to do with anything?” he asks.
I don’t know what to tell him. “Just tell me who she was engaged to.”
He shrugs one shoulder, and I think he is just confused, but I realize a moment too late the shrug was his hand sliding up to the holster on his hip and drawing his gun. Patrick spins in his chair, aims the gun, and fires.
I knock the gun out of his hand, but not before heat rips through my shoulder. I know I’ve been hit, but the adrenaline in my body is keeping me focused. The gun clatters across the floor, and I stab my knife into his chest. A whoosh of air leaves his lungs, blood spilling out of him and across the handle of my knife. I want to stay and finish the job, but I hear footsteps overhead, and I don’t want to confront a wife and daughter. I may be a murderer, but I’m not a monster.
So, unsure whether I’ve killed him or not, I leave Patrick O’Neill gasping and bleeding and run from the house.
* * *
Dr. Cruso is working in the morgue when I arrive. It’s after midnight, and it is the only quiet place in the hospital she could meet me. I’m in enough pain that I don’t care how many dead bodies are around me. I just want the bullet out of my shoulder.
“I wish I had some anesthesia I could give you,” she says, digging a long pair of tweezers into my shoulder.
I grit my teeth. “Just get it out. I’ll be fine.”
Just to prove I’m not as tough as I say I am, she digs the tweezers in a little further and twists. I swear she smiles when I groan. “How is Eve doing? I haven’t seen her since before the wedding. How is she adjusting to married life?”
“Fine.” I don’t want to talk about Eve. It is late, I’ve lost more blood than I planned, and I just want to go home.
“You two still trying to have a baby?” she asks.
“Yep.”
She nods. “How is it going?”
I bite my tongue as she pulls a bullet fragment out of my skin and drops it in a tiny glass bowl on the table next to us. “Are you asking how the sex is?”
She lifts one eyebrow. “Well, if you’re willing to tell, I’m willing to listen. My girlfriend has been out of town for two weeks, so I’m desperate for a little action.”
“I’m not willing.” I hope this will be enough to shut down the topic, but Sarah is relentless. Worse, she knows she is irreplaceable to my family. No matter how inappropriate or persistent she is, I can’t even threaten her. She is the only doctor we have who is willing to patch us up at all hours of the day and night, allowing us to avoid emergency rooms and, therefore, the police. She is vital to our operation, and we pay her handsomely for it.
“I saw your dad the other day,” she says casually, though I know there is a larger point. “He told me things might not be all rose petals and sunshine in the honeymoon suite.”
God damn him. As if everything isn’t bad enough, he is jabbering to our doctor about my personal life. Whatever happened to family loyalty?
“He shouldn’t have said anything.”
She shrugs and drops another bullet into the bowl. I was upset enough that I didn’t even feel her remove it. “I’m a good listener, and a good extractor. Of more than just bullets, if you know what I mean.” She laughs at her own joke. “People open up to me.”
Probably to get her to stop talking. “That’s nice.”
“So,” she probes. “What seems to be the problem?”
I put up a valiant effort resisting her questions, but next thing I know, I’m telling her about how I received the bullet during my search for Eve’s ex-fiancé who she failed to tell me about. I tell her about the Irish connections and the attack at the wedding.
“I guess, the root of it is that I’m mad at Eve for treating me the same way she did her ex-fiancé,” I say.
“But she didn’t,” Sarah says, raising her eyebrows and pointing the bloody tweezers at me. “She left that man. She didn’t leave you.”
“But she would have,” I say.
“I wouldn’t be so sure. Are you sure you understand her aim in marrying you?”
I pull my lips to the side and think about it. “To tear down my family from within, I suppose.”
“Maybe,” she says, sounding doubtful. “But I have to wonder if there isn’t a bigger plan at play here. I’d be careful if I were you. Don’t get too confident. From the sound of it, this Eve character, no matter how nice she appears from the outside, is a criminal mastermind. She is a master manipulator who doesn’t care about anyone and will do whatever it takes to get ahead. You have no idea what someone like that is capable of.”
