“He’s alive?”

“The patient hasn’t regained consciousness, but vital signs are stable for the moment. Head injuries, these first few hours, are crucial. We’ll be monitoring his condition, ready to intervene if his brain swells.”

“The way he hit, I thought sure he broke his neck.”

“X-rays showed no serious damage to the spinal column,” the doctor says, ticking off the injury list. “Most of his ribs are broken. Various scrapes and cuts. Let me see…his kidneys may be bruised. He sustained a hairline skull fracture that may eventually require surgery. We’ll make that decision later. Are you next of kin, by any chance?” he asks, indicating his medical notes.

“There are no next of kin, as far as know.” I fumble in my purse for Mario Savalo’s business card and give him her number, which he dutifully writes down.

“And Ms. Savalo would be?”

“His employer. May I see him?”

“If you like. I must warn you, Mr. Shane is nonresponsive. What we’d expect at this juncture, with a severe blow to the cranium. Oh. The police are on the way. They’ll want to interview you about the accident. I understand it was a hit-and-run.”

“Yes, it was. I’ll be in the ICU if anybody needs me. Thank you, Dr. Vance.”

He nods, walks away, on to the next patient.

Shane is barely recognizable. Every aspect of his face is swollen and misshapen, including his ears, scrapped raw on the pavement and now tinted with green antiseptic. I’d been expecting to see his poor head swaddled in bandages, but the ICU nurse explains that it’s best to leave the scalp stitches exposed for the time being. The hair has been shaved away around the scalp wound, making it look even more vulnerable.

“He’s breathing on his own,” I observe.

“Mr. Shane is getting oxygen,” the nurse says. “That little tube in his nose.”

“But no respirator.”

“Not unless he needs it.”

“That’s a good sign, no respirator.”

“Very good,” agrees the nurse.

I slip my hand into his, give it a squeeze, hoping for some sort of instinctive response. His hand is cool, dry, and does not respond.

“That doesn’t mean anything one way or the other,” the nurse says, trying to be helpful. “Think of him as being deeply asleep.”

“He’d like that,” I say.

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind. His belongings?”

“In the plastic bag, hanging from the bed.”

Shane’s notes are spattered with blood but legible.

“I’ll give these to the police,” I explain. “It may help.”

Then I kiss his swollen lips and leave.

I’m lying about the police. My son is still out there. I can’t risk being detained. I can’t even wait to see if Randall Shane is going to live, but as I hurry from the hospital I know one thing for sure. He’d understand.

38 already dead

Cutter pulls the stolen Cadillac into a slot behind the boat shed, where it can’t be seen from the access road. Not much traffic in this part of the waterfront, but with his ID out there in the wind, he needs to be ultracautious for the next twelve hours. After that it won’t matter.

Not that he intends to let himself be arrested. When the moment comes, he’ll do a Houdini, or maybe check out permanently, he hasn’t decided. No rush, he’s good at making instant life-or-death decisions under pressure, and right now he has to concentrate on getting the job done. Not for the first time he regrets having to terminate Hinks and Wald, not only because he rather enjoyed their moronic banter, but because it makes the execution of his plan more complicated.

No use crying over split blood, he tells himself. Have to play the hand that’s dealt. Living happily ever after had been, he now realizes, a fantasy, a way to keep focused. The odds of getting away undetected had always been low, on the order of drawing to an inside straight flush. Let it go, Cap, get on with the show.

Next move, prepare the boy.

Inside the shed, Cutter carefully snugs the padlock to the inner hasp. Insuring there will be no surprises from an inquisitive landlord, not that the old man was likely to drop by unannounced. Still, you can’t be too careful.

Turning from the padlocked entrance, he senses that something is wrong. Can’t put his finger on what exactly. A noise or sound? Possibly.

Cutter stops breathing, listens. Notes the transformer hum of the idling air compressor. A barely audible metallic ticking that could be steel drums expanding in the heat—the interior of the shed has gotten quite warm—and from outside the faint cry of a wheeling gull. Nothing out of the ordinary.

He wonders if the contents of the fifty-five-gallon drums are spooking him. Yesterday it seemed vitally important to dispose of the drums and the bodies they contained. Today, much less crucial. It’s just dead meat. Nothing human about it, not anymore. But he’s keenly aware of Hinks and Wald, their telltale hearts beating in the back of his mind. The look in their eyes as they died.

Stop it.

Cutter smacks his palm against his forehead, hard. Grunts and grimaces and forces the kinks out of his mind. The kinks and the hinks and the hinks and the kinks. Stop it. Take a deep breath, hold until your mind clears. Focus on the mission. Focus on saving Jesse, on returning your son to his grieving mother, on making things right in her world, if not your own. You have no life to lose. You’re a dead man, and dead men feel no pain. Dead men do not suffer from guilt or regret. Dead men do as they please.

The boy. Concentrate on the boy in the white room. He’s waiting. He knows what must be done because he saw it in your lying eyes. You think Hinks can haunt you? You ain’t seen nothing yet, amigo. The boy will send your soul to hell like a rocket-propelled grenade, exploding into eternity.

Stop, stop, stop.

Cutter shudders, a full-body writhing, like a snake speed-shedding it’s vile skin. He vomits hot, foul-smelling air. And then he’s clean again and ready for what he must do. Quick-marching to the enclosure, he keys the outer padlock, remembers to lock it behind him. Clever boy, he’ll be plotting an escape. Four strides and he’s at the inner door of the enclosure, noting the blood spatter left by the late Walter Hinks, furious because the clever boy had broken his nose. Hinks complaining, I’m breeving froo my mouf, totally unaware of the comic implications, or that he’d made himself redundant, expendable.

In the white room, chaos.

Cutter instantly notes the missing plywood wall panel, the stink of the upended potty-chair. Sees the ragged hole clawed through the Sheetrock of the outer wall. A hole just big enough for a boy to pass through.

Gone.

The loss brings a banshee howl from his throat. A broken scream of grief, because if the boy is gone, if he’s found a way out of the boat shed, then all the killing was for nothing.

Cutter lets instinct take over. Instinct shaped by years of training. Without even thinking about it, he crashes through the damaged Sheetrock, finds himself standing in the back of the boat shed, with the dilapidated stern of the ancient Chris Craft rising above him.

He searches for a breach in the outer walls. Walls and roof constructed of galvanized steel, fastened from the outside. One of the features that had attracted him to the building in the first place. The boy unscrewed the plywood inner wall somehow—how did he manage that without tools?—but galvanized sheathing is another matter. Needs a drill and a hacksaw, at the very least, or better yet a cutting torch. No torch on the premises, but there’s got to be a hacksaw lying around somewhere. Did he find it? Did clever Tomas cut his way to freedom?