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I understand too. Dr. Doctor can’t write a prescription because he’s had his license revoked. That’s why he’s acting as a concierge doctor for Zacharov and for us.
“And if you need a cleanup service for in here, I know some very discreet people.”
“That would be very much appreciated.”
They sound like two civilized men, discussing civilized things. They are two men of the world, a man of medicine and a man of letters. They probably don’t think of themselves as criminals, no matter what they’ve done.
As the doctor walks out the door, I take my phone out of my pocket.
“What are you doing?” Dean Wharton demands.
“I’m calling his girlfriend,” I say. “Someone’s going to have to stay with him tonight. It can’t be me, and he wouldn’t want it to be you.”
“You have somewhere more important to be?”
I look up at Wharton. I’m exhausted. And I hate that I can’t stay, when this is all my fault in the first place. My gun. My dumb joke with Mina, the finger in my pocket that made it seem like bringing a gun was the right move. “It can’t be me.”
“I absolutely forbid you to call another student, Mr. Sharpe. This situation is chaotic enough as it is.”
“Bite me,” I say, my gloved fingers leaving sticky brown marks behind when I tap the keys.
“Did you find him?” Daneca says, instead of “hello.” “Is he all right?”
The connection isn’t very good. She seems scratchy and far away.
“Can you come to Dean Wharton’s office?” I ask. “Because if you can, I think you should come now. Sam could really use you. It would really help if you came right now. But don’t panic. Please just don’t panic and please come now.”
She says she will in a bewildered tone that makes me think I must sound very strange. Everything feels empty.
“You should go,” I tell Dean Wharton.
By the time Daneca arrives, he’s already gone.
She looks around the room, at the blood-soaked carpet, and the lamps on the bookshelves, at Sam lying on Wharton’s massive desk, unconscious. She looks at his leg and at me, sitting on the floor without a shirt on.
“What happened?” she asks, walking over to Sam and touching his cheek lightly with her glove.
“Sam got—he got shot.” She looks scared. “A doctor came and fixed him. When he wakes up, I know he’ll want you there.”
“Are you okay?” she asks. I have no idea what she means. Of course I’m all right. I’m not the one lying on a desk.
I stagger to my feet and pick up my coat.
I nod. “But I have to go, okay? Dean Wharton knows about this.” I gesture vaguely, mostly toward his carpet. “I don’t think we can move Sam until he wakes up. It’s what—about noon now?”
“It’s two in the afternoon.”
“Right,” I say, glancing toward the windows. Dean Wharton drew the blinds, I remember. Not that I would be able to tell the time by the amount of sunlight. “I can’t—”
“Cassel, what’s going on? What happened? Does where you’re going have to do with Sam?”
I start to laugh, and Daneca looks even more worried. “Actually,” I say, “it’s totally unrelated.”
“Cassel—,” she says.
I look at Sam, lying on the desk, and think of my mother in Zacharov’s house, nursing her own gunshot wound. I close my eyes.
At the end of a criminal’s life, it’s always the small mistake, the coincidence, the lark. The time we got too comfortable, the time we slipped up, the time someone aimed a little to the left.
