by J. R. Ward
For a long moment, he watched her barreled rib cage expand and contract with her breath. Just seeing her on the slab with those beautiful legs lying like sticks and her tail hanging down onto the tile made him realize anew that animals like her were meant to be on their feet: This was utterly unnatural. And unfair.
Keeping her alive simply so he didn’t have to face her death was not the right answer here.
Bracing himself, Manny opened his mouth—
The vibration inside the breast pocket of his suit cut him off. With a nasty curse, he took his BlackBerry out and checked in case it was the hospital. Hannah Whit? With an unknown number?
No one he knew, and he wasn’t on call.
Probably a misdial by the operator.
“I want you to operate,” he heard himself say as he put the thing back.
The short silence that followed gave him plenty of time to realize that not letting her go smacked of cowardice. But he couldn’t dwell on that psychobabble bullshit or he’d lose it.
“I can’t guarantee anything.” The vet went back to staring at the X-rays. “I can’t tell you how this is going to go, but I will swear to you—I’ll do my best.”
God, now he knew how those families felt when he spoke to them. “Thanks. Can I watch in here?”
“Absolutely. I’ll get you something to put on, and you know the drill with scrubbing in, Doctor.”
Twenty minutes later, the operation started, and Manny watched from her head, stroking her forelock with his latex-gloved hand even though she was out cold. As the head vet worked, Manny had to approve of the guy’s methodology and skills—which were just about the only things that had gone right since Glory had fallen. The procedure was over in under an hour, with the bone chips either removed or screwed into place. Then they rolled the leg up and moved her out of the OR and into a pool so she wouldn’t break another leg coming out of sedation.
He stayed until she was awake and then followed the vet out into the hall.
“Her vitals are good and the operation went well,” the vet said, “but the former can change quick. And it’s going to take time until we know what we’ve got.”
Shit. That little speech was exactly what he said to next-of-kins and other relatives when it was time for folks to go home and rest up and wait to see how a patient’s postop went.
“We’ll call you,” the vet said. “With updates.”
Manny snapped off his gloves and took out his business card. “In case you don’t have it in her records.”
“We’ve got it.” The guy took the thing anyway. “If anything changes, you’ll be the first to know, and I’ll update you personally every twelve hours when I do rounds.”
Manny nodded and stuck out his hand. “Thank you. For taking care of her.”
“You’re welcome.”
After they shook, Manny nodded back at the double doors. “Mind if I give her a see-ya-later?”
“Please.”
Back inside, he took a moment with his filly. God . . . this hurt.
“You hang on, there, girlie.” He had to whisper because he couldn’t seem to draw a full breath.
When he straightened, the staff were staring at him with a sadness he knew was going to stick with him.
“We’ll take excellent care of her,” the vet said gravely.
He believed they would, and that was the only thing that got him back into the hall.
Tricounty’s facilities were extensive, and it took him a while to change and then find his way out to where he’d parked by the front door. Up ahead, the sun had set, a rapidly fading peach glow lighting up the sky as if Manhattan were smoldering. The air was cool, but fragrant from spring’s early efforts to bring life to winter’s barren landscape, and he took so many deep breaths he got light-headed.
God, time had been running at a blur, but now, as the minutes drooled by, clearly the frantic pace had exhausted its energy source. Either that or it had slammed into a brick wall and passed the fuck out.
As he palmed up his car key, he felt older than God. His head was thumping and his arthritic hip was killing him, that flat-out race over the track to Glory’s side way more than the damn thing could handle.
This was so not how he’d envisioned this day ending. He’d assumed he’d be buying drinks for the owners he’d beaten . . . and maybe in the flush of victory taking Ms. Hanson up on her generous oral suggestion.
Getting into his Porsche, he started the engine. Caldwell was about forty-five minutes north of Queens, and his car could practically drive the trip back to the Commodore itself. Good thing, too, because he was a goddamn zombie.
No radio. No iPod music. No phoning people, either.
As he got on the Northway, he just stared at the road ahead and fought the urge to turn around and . . . yeah, and do what? Sleep next to his horse?
The thing was, if he could manage to get home in one piece, help was on the way. He had a fresh bottle of Lagavulin waiting for him, and he might or might not slow down to use a glass: As far as the hospital was concerned, he was off until Monday a.m. at six o’clock, and he had plans to get drunk and stay that way.
Taking the leather-wrapped wheel with one hand, he burrowed into his silk shirt to find his Jesus piece. Gripping the gold cross, he sent up a prayer.
God . . . please let her be okay.
He couldn’t stand losing another one of his girls. Not so soon. Jane Whitcomb had died a whole year ago, but that was just what the calendar told him. In grief time, it had been only about a minute and a half since it had happened.
He didn’t want to go through that again.
FOUR
Downtown Caldwell had a lot of tall, windowed buildings, but there were few like the Commodore. At a good thirty floors in height, it was among the taller in the concrete forest, and the sixty or so condos it housed were Trump-tastic, all marble and nickel-plated chrome and designer-everything.
Up on the twenty-seventh floor, Jane walked around Manny’s condo, looking for signs of life and finding . . . nothing. Literally. The guy’s place was about as much of an obstacle course as a damn dance floor, his furniture consisting of three things in the living room and a huge bed in the master suite.
That was it.
Well, and some leather-seated stools at the counter in the kitchen. As for the walls? The only thing he’d hung anywhere was a plasma-screen TV the size of a billboard. And the hardwood floors had no rugs, just gym bags and . . . more gym bags . . . and athletic shoes.
Which was not to say he was a slob. He didn’t own enough to be considered a slob.
With growing panic, she walked into his bedroom and saw half a dozen blue hospital scrubs left in piles on the floor, like puddles after a rainstorm, and . . . nothing else.
But the closet door was open and she looked inside—
“God . . . damn it.”
The set of suitcases lined up on the floor were small, medium, and large—and the middle one was gone. So was a suit, given the bald hanger hanging in between the other jacket-and-slacks pairings.
He was off on a trip. Maybe for the weekend.
Without much hope, she dialed into the hospital’s system and paged him once more—
Her call waiting clicked in, and as she looked at the number, she cursed again.
Taking a deep breath, she answered, “Hey, V.”
“Nothing?”
“Not at the hospital or here at his condo.” The subtle growl coming over the connection amped up her going-nowhere rush. “And I checked the gym on the way up here as well.”
“I hacked into the St. Francis system and got his calendar.”
“Where is he?”
“All it said was that Goldberg is on call, true? Look, the sun’s set. I’ll be out of here in, like, a—”
“No, no . . . you stay with Payne. Ehlena’s great, but I think you should be there.”
There was a big pause, like he knew he was being held off. “Where to next for you?”
&
nbsp; She gripped the phone and wondered who she should pray to. God? His mother? “I’m not sure. But I’ve paged him. Twice.”
“When you find him, call me and I’ll come pick you up.”
“I can get us home—”
“I’m not going to hurt him, Jane. I’m not incented to rip him apart.”
Yeah, but going by that cold tone of voice, she had to wonder whether the best-laid plans of mice and vampires, blah, blah, blah . . . She quite believed Manny would live to treat V’s twin. Afterward? She had her reservations—especially if things tanked in the OR.
“I’m going to wait here a little longer. Maybe he’ll show. Or call. If he doesn’t, I’m going to think of something else.”
In the long silence, she could practically feel a cold draft through the phone. Her mate did a lot of things well: fight, make love, deal with anything computer-based. Being forced into immobility? Not a core competency. In fact, it was guaranteed to make him mental.
Still, the fact that he didn’t trust her made her feel distant.
“Stay with your sister, Vishous,” she said in an even tone. “I’ll be in touch.”
Silence.
“Vishous. Hang up on me and go sit with her.”
He didn’t say anything further. Just cut the connection.
As she hit end on the phone, she cursed.
A split second later, she was dialing again, and the instant she heard a deep voice answer, she had to brush away a tear that for all its translucency was very, very real. “Butch,” she croaked. “I need your help.”
As what little was left of the sunset disappeared and night stamped its time card and took over the next shift, Manny’s car was supposed to have gone home. It was supposed to have driven itself straight into Caldwell proper.
Instead, he’d ended up on the southern edge of the city, where the trees were big and the stretches of grass outnumbered the asphalt acres ten to one.
Made sense. Cemeteries had to have good stretches of pliable earth, because it wasn’t like you could plug a coffin into concrete.
Well, guess you could—it was called a mausoleum.
Pine Grove Cemetery was open until ten p.m., its massive iron gates thrown wide and its countless wrought-iron street lamps glowing butter yellow along the maze of lanes. As he entered, he went to the right, the Porsche’s xenon headlights sweeping around and washing over stretches of grave markers and lawn.
The site he was drawn to was a beacon that ultimately signified nothing. There was no body buried at the foot of the granite headstone he was going to—there hadn’t been one to bury. No ashes to put in a canister, either—or at least none that you could be sure weren’t mostly those of an Audi that had caught on fire.
About a half a mile of roping turns later, he eased off the accelerator and let the car glide to a stop. As far as he could tell, he was the only one in the whole cemetery, and that was just fine with him. No reason for an audience.
As he got out, the cool air did nothing to clear his head, but it gave his lungs something to do as he inhaled deeply and walked over the scratchy spring grass. He was careful not to step on any of the plots as he went along—sure, it wasn’t like the dead would know that he was above their airspace, but it seemed like a respectful thing to do.
Jane’s grave was up ahead, and he slowed as he approached what wasn’t left of her, as it were. In the distance, the sound of a train whistle cut through the stillness—and the hollow, mournful sound was so fucking clichéd he felt like he was in some movie he would never sit through at home, much less pay to see in a theater.
“Shit, Jane.”
Leaning down, he trailed his fingers along the top of the marker’s uneven edge. He’d chosen the jet-black stone because she wouldn’t have wanted anything pastel-y or washed-out. And the inscription was likewise simple and unfussy, just her name, dates, and one sentence at the bottom: REST IN PEACE.
Yup. He gave himself an A for originality on that one.
He remembered exactly where he’d been when he’d found out that she’d died: in the hospital—of course. It had been at the end of a very long day and night that had started with the knee of a hockey player and ended on a spectacular shoulder reconstruction, thanks to a druggie who’d decided to take a shot at flying.
He’d stepped out of the OR and found Goldberg waiting by the scrub sinks. One look at his colleague’s ashen face and Manny stopped in the process of removing his surgical mask. With the thing hanging off his face like a chin bib, he’d demanded to know what the fuck was wrong—all the while assuming it was either a forty-car pileup on the highway or a plane crash or a fire at a hotel . . . something that was a community-wide tragedy.
Except then he’d looked over the guy’s shoulder and seen five nurses and three other doctors. All of whom were in the same state Goldberg was . . . and none of whom were rushing to pull other staff in for rotation or prep the operating rooms.
Right. It was a community event. Their community.
“Who,” he’d demanded.
Goldberg had glanced back at his support troops and that was when Manny had guessed. And yet even as his gut had gone ice cooler on him, he’d held on to some irrational hope that the name about to come out of his surgeon’s mouth would be anything but—
“Jane. Car accident.”
Manny hadn’t lost a beat. “What’s her ETA.”
“There isn’t one.”
At that, Manny had said nothing. He’d just ripped the mask off his face, wadded it up, and thrown it into the nearest bin.
As he’d passed by, Goldberg had opened his mouth again. “Not one word,” Manny had barked. “Not. One. Word.”
The rest of the staff had stumbled over themselves to get out of the way, parting as sure and clean as fabric torn in half.
Coming back to the present, he couldn’t remember where he’d gone or what he’d done after that—no matter how many times he played that night back, that part was a black hole. At some point, however, he’d made it to his condo, because two days later he’d woken up there, still in the bloody scrubs he’d operated in.
Among the galling shockers of the whole thing was the fact that Jane had saved so many people who’d been in car wrecks. The idea that she’d been taken in that very way had seemed like Grim Reaper payback for all the souls she’d snatched out of the bony-handed reach of death.
The sound of another train whistle made him want to scream.
That and his cocksucking pager going off.
Hannah Whit. Again?
Who the hell—
Manny frowned and glanced at the headstone. Jane’s younger sister had been Hannah, if he recalled correctly. Whit. Whitcomb?
Except she had died young.
Hadn’t she?
Mad. Pacing.
God, she should have brought her track shoes for this, Jane thought as she marched around Manny’s place. Again.
She would have left his condo if she’d had a better idea of where to go, but even her brain, as sharp as it was, couldn’t seem to throw out another option—
Her phone ringing was not exactly good news. She didn’t want to tell Vishous that forty-five minutes later she still had nothing to report.
She took out her cell. “Oh . . . God.”
That number. Those ten digits that she’d had on speed dial on every phone she’d owned before this one. Manny.
As she hit send, her mind was blank and her eyes filled with tears. Her dear old friend and colleague . . .
“Hello?” he said. “Ms. Whit?”
In the background, she heard a dim whistle.
“Hello? Hannah?” That tone . . . it was just the same as it had been a year ago: low, commanding. “Anyone there?”
That quiet whistle sounded again.
Jesus Christ . . . , she thought. She knew where he was.
Jane hung up and flashed herself out of his condo, out of downtown, out past the suburbs. Traveling in a blur at the speed of light, her molecules w
ent through the night in a twirling, swirling rush that covered miles as if they were but inches.
Pine Grove Cemetery was the kind of place you needed a map of, but when you were ether in the air, you could case a hundred acres in a heartbeat and a half.
As she came out of the darkness by her grave, she took a halting breath and nearly sobbed. There he was in the flesh. Her boss. Her colleague. The one she’d left behind. And he was standing over a black headstone that had her name carved in its face.
Okay, now she knew she’d made the right decision not to go to her funeral. The closest she had come was reading about it in the Caldwell Courier Journal—and the picture of all those surgeons and hospital staff and patients had all but snapped her in half.
This was so much worse.
And Manny looked exactly how she felt: ruined on the inside.
Jesus, that aftershave of his still smelled good . . . and in spite of having lost some weight, he was still handsome as sin, with that dark hair and that hard face. His suit was perfectly tailored and pin-striped—but it had dirt around the cuffs of the precisely pressed slacks. And his loafers were likewise soiled, making her wonder where the hell he’d been. He certainly hadn’t picked it up from the grave site. After a year, the soil was packed down and covered with grass—
Oh, wait. Her plot had probably looked like this from day one. She hadn’t left behind anything to bury.
As his fingers rested on the stone, she knew he had to have been the one to pick the thing out. Nobody else would have had the sense to get her exactly what she would have wanted. Nothing froufrou or wordy. Short, sweet, to the point.
Jane cleared her throat. “Manny.”
His head shot up, but he didn’t look over at her—as if he were convinced that he’d heard her speak only in his mind.
Making herself fully corporeal, she spoke louder. “Manny.”
Under any other circumstances, the response would have been a laugh riot. He wheeled around, then shouted out, tripped over her headstone, and landed flat on his ass.
“What the . . . hell . . . are you doing here?” he gasped. The expression on his face started as horror, but shifted quickly to utter disbelief.