Secret Prey

NINE

MARY WASHINGTON CALLED AT NINE-THIRTY, AND when Weather Karkinnen picked up the phone, Mary said, Oh good, youre still up, and Weather rolled her eyes and lied: Just barely.

Henri asked about you again today. Hes interested, Washington said.

Oh, my God, Mary, why dontyougo after him? Exasperation, but also a little tingle of pleasure?

Cause Im Lets have a couple beers and go bowling, and Henris Lets have a couple of glasses of champagne and talk about monoclonal antibodies.

Well, thanks for the news, Weather said.

Would you go out with him if he called?

Henri was six three and had big eyes and long black eyelashes, was thin as a beanpole, balding, and spoke with a French accent. People who knew him well said he was almost too smart: Weather liked him. I dont know, Mary, she said. Im still pretty messed up.

I think Im gonna suggest he give you a ring, Washington said.

Mary… Like being trapped in a high school locker room.

Then maybe you can introduce me to one of those cops you know; somebody who bowls.

WEATHER HADBEEN READING THE WALL STREET JOURNAL when Mary called. When she got off the phone, she yawned, tossed the paper in the recycling pile, and headed for the bedroom.

Weather was sleeping again, finally. Her problem had been no less difficult than Lucass, but hers had less to do with errant brain chemicals. Her problem was plain old post-traumatic shock. Shed pulled the academic studies up on MedLine, knew all the symptoms and lines of treatment, recognized the symptoms in herselfand was powerless to do anything about them.

The unbreakable barrier was Lucas Davenport.

Shed never really been in love with anyone before Lucas. But shed been in love with him, all rightshed recognized all those symptoms too. Then the shooting…

Thered always been something in Lucas that was hard, brutal, and remote. Shed been sure she could reach it, smooth it out. He needed that as much as she did: he didnt know it, but his taste for the street, his taste for violence, was killing him, in ways that werent obvious to him. But shed been wrong about reaching him: the violence was essential to him, she now believed.

The shooting in the hallway, which Lucas had set up, had all the earmarks of that immutable trait. Hed risked his own life, hed risked hers, and hed absolutely condemned Dick LaChaise to death, all on his own hook, without consulting anyone, without even much thinking about it. Hed justdoneit. When the Lucas Davenport machine was in gear, nobody had a way outand when LaChaise had agreed to walk down the hall with Weather, he was dead no matter what else happened.

Weather could never quite put her finger on exactly how she objected to the killing of Dick LaChaise. Intellectually, she knew that she might easily have been killed by La-Chaise if Lucas hadnt done what hed done. Further, LaChaise was an undoubted killer, who deserved anything he got. She could say to herselfintellectuallyAll right. It worked.

Which had nothing to do with her emotional state.

Something had turned in her, the instant the bullet tore through LaChaises skull. She couldnt talk to Lucas without experiencing the flash of terror when the gun went off, followed by the horror of the death. There, in the hallway, with LaChaise slumping to the floor, with the pistol spinning down the hallway… she was actuallywearingLa-Chaise, the dead and dying remnants of the part of LaChaise that actually made him human…

SHED GOTTEN PAST THE PILLS NOW. SHE WAS STILL talking to her shrink, Andi Manette, and Manette was pushing her to consider and reconsider Lucas.

But Weather wasnt doing that anymore. Shed realized that however deeply she loved him before the shooting, that feeling was dead. And the psychological flashes that carried her back to the killing were no longer tolerable. Lucas brought them on. The sight of his face, the sound of his voice.

Shed learned that she could live without him. She was going to do that. And she was beginning to suspect that sooner or later, shed even start enjoying herself again. If she could keep him away…

She hadnt yet told this to Manette, much less to Lucas. She dreaded the idea: but the time was coming. Time to get on with her life.

WEATHER WENT TO BED EARLY, AS MOST SURGEONS did: she was on staff at three separate hospitals now, and the workload was increasing. She was operating five or six times a week, starting at seven in the morning. Shed be in bed by ten-thirty, up by six in the morning, walking into the womens locker room by six forty-five.

Went to bed every night feeling cool and lonely. But sleeping again.

She was in the very pit of the night when her subconscious picked up the sound of a car rolling to a stop outside the house, a subtle change from those few cars that simply tolled on by. In her dreams she thought, Lucas? though when awake shed never remember the thought. But she was there, just rising to the cusp of consciousness, when the front window blew out.