“Where is he?” I demand.

Shane thinks I mean Cutter, the man in the mask. “He got away. We don’t know how, exactly, with all these cops and agents converging on the place. They’re conducting a thorough search of the building and grounds, but he’s gone.”

The figure in the green surgical scrubs.

“I saw him in the hallway,” I tell them as it all comes flooding back. “Said he was a nurse. It was him. I couldn’t focus, but it had to be him. He took the ambulance. That was the siren.”

“You have to tell the agents about this,” Shane advises.

“After I see my son.”

Frankly, it no longer matters to me, what happens to the man in the mask. Arresting him won’t bring Tommy back. I simply don’t care about him, one way or another.

Shane and Sherona are guiding me down the hall, shielding me from the harried cops, who look grim and impatient and much too busy to bother with the emotional needs of mere civilians. Connie hovers fretfully, tears freely streaming down her narrow face, dripping from her chin.

“Did they do it?” I want to know. “Did they save the other boy?”

“You stopped ’em,” Sherona says. “Hit the building, all the bells went off, they stopped whatever it is they were doing. Right after is when he started shooting.”

“Shooting?” I vaguely recall thinking about fireworks.

“One of the doctors, he’s been gut shot. Guess what happened, he tried to stop the man from running away.”

It’s all too complicated. My entire being is focused upon one simple goal. See Tommy, hold him in my arms, tell him how sorry I am that I wasn’t able to save him.

After that, I couldn’t care less.

They’re guiding me into a small recovery room when Shane says, “Kate? There’s something you need to know before you go in there.” He hesitates, looks helpless. “Something that needs to be clear.”

I’m in no mood for this, for trying to shield my feelings. I haven’t got any feelings so there’s nothing to protect. “Just tell me, Randall. Quickly.”

“Your son is brain dead.”

“Of course he’s brain dead,” I say angrily. “They took his heart.”

“No,” says Shane, holding me back from the room. “No, no, his heart is still beating. He’s breathing on his own, too. But the nurses just gave him a brain scan. There has been terrible damage, quite recent. Nothing anybody can do to bring him back. He’s gone, Kate, I’m so sorry.”

I wrench my arms away from Shane and run into the room. Smells faintly of disinfectant. Stark lights glinting off tile floor and walls. In the center of my vision, a gurney. And lying on the gurney, a small figure with his head carefully balanced on a special supportive pillow. Not moving, not reacting. Not dead, exactly, but not fully alive, either.

I fall to the floor, weeping. Ashamed of myself.

Connie hugs me from behind. “Oh, Kate. I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t understand,” I bleat.

“I know, I know.”

“That’s not Tommy,” I explain, dragging myself to my feet, and Connie with me.

Shame on me, but I’m crying tears of joy.

“I don’t understand,” says Dr. DeMillo, looking perplexed.

A vain-looking man with a very expensive hair weave and beautifully capped teeth, DeMillo is one of the clinic partners. A surgical specialist in diseases of the liver and kidneys, he had been preparing to assist Dr. Munk with the hastily scheduled heart transplant, and apparently still believes the recipient was somehow related to a Very Important Person in the State Department. Whatever that might mean. I’m having trouble keeping all the partners straight—there are five at the clinic—but I’m aware that a Dr. Stanley Munk was the one who was shot, and who evidently had some sort of prior relationship with Stephen Cutter. The fact that Munk is expected to survive is apparently due entirely to DeMillo, who performed emergency surgery to repair an artery torn by a bullet fragment.

“Stan said one boy was breathing on his own and the other was on the respirator. That they had run a preliminary scan and one had recently suffered irreversible brain damage. Gone from vegetative to brain dead. I naturally assumed it was the donor. Neither patient had been prepped. The nurse accompanying the brain-dead boy was very upset. It’s been so confusing. We just assumed that—”

“Doesn’t matter,” I interrupt, waving him off. “Let me guess, the donor, the boy on the respirator, he was still in the ambulance?”

DeMillo looks started. “As a matter of fact, yes. We were on our way to bring him into the building for evaluation when the explosion happened. I mean the car crash. I thought it was an explosion. Sorry, I guess that was you.”

Ignoring DeMillo, I turn to Shane and give his arm a squeeze. “Get it?” I ask. “Do you see what happened?”

“Yes,” he says. “Cutter still has Tommy.”

“I let him walk right by me. And before, when Connie and I first got here, I was standing right next to the ambulance while Tommy was inside.”

Can’t believe I was so stupid. Why hadn’t I thought to look in the ambulance? Why had I assumed Tommy was already in the building?

“Where are you going?” Shane asks, hurrying to catch up.

“I think I know where he’s headed,” I tell him. “How long was I out?”

“Not sure exactly,” he says, consulting his watch. Squints as if he’s having trouble seeing with his trauma-blackened eyes. “I got here almost exactly when the crap hit the fan. Or rather when you hit the building. You were unconscious for an hour or so, is my best guess. They had to sedate you to get the tube down your throat.”

“Sherona! Do me a favor?”

“If I can.”

“Find out if there’s anyone here who can fly that helicopter. Be nice, and if that doesn’t work, threaten to sue. Got it?”

Sherona grins. “Yes, ma’am,” she says. “Get you a flyboy.”

46 he said goodbye

My idea of transportation involves wheels on the road, or the rails. To my way of thinking, flying is about as glamorous as falling. Both involve speed, fear and the uncertainty of a sudden stop. When Ted surprised me with a three-day getaway for our first anniversary he learned the hard way that “small aircraft” and “Kate Bickford” should never appear in the same sentence. The flight down to Fort Lauderdale was okay—I was determined to make it okay—mostly because if you try really hard, you can pretend that a 757 is a big fat train compartment in the sky. It’s important never to look out the window, and if the ride gets bumpy, think of frost-heaves on the road. Plus, I was deliriously pleased that my handsome husband hadn’t forgotten after all, that his baffled looks in the preceding days were feigned. At the time we were basically broke, paying off school loans and a car payment, so our destination wasn’t exactly a five-star resort, but it was in the Caribbean, so who cared? Palm trees, steel drums, reggae in the moonlight—until Ted gently informed me that steel drums and reggae were Jamaica and we were heading for the Bahamas, a scant fifty miles off the coast of Florida.

I didn’t care where we were going as long as we were going there together, and I was so impressed with his ability to surprise me that at first I thought the little airplane in Fort Lauderdale was part of the joke. You’re kidding, right? That’s not the real thing, it’s a model airplane! Ha, ha, ha. No, it’s a six-seater Cessna, honey, and the flight takes less than thirty minutes. As soon as we take off you’ll be able to see our destination. It’ll be fun, all part of the adventure.

Flying in the clinic’s helicopter—a Bell 407 EMS, whatever that is—makes the Bahamas flight seem like a bike ride to the end of the block. My first helicopter experience and, I hope, my last. Can’t get airsick because to be sick you have to have a stomach and mine has been left somewhere far below. We’re crossing a swath of Connecticut at a hundred and fifty miles per hour and the roar of the Rolls-Royce turbine is so loud you have to wear shielded headphones.