The Society

CHAPTER 35

“Sit down, you stupid bitch! Right there! Now, or I swear I’ll just blow you apart! Did she do this, honey? Did she do this to you? God but this room stinks. Krause? Is that smell from Krause?”

Not even in the most critical surgical situations had Will ever seen anything approaching such fire in his partner. There was a pressure to her speech and a detached, chilling wildness in her eyes that left no doubt she would carry out any threat instantly and without remorse. She knelt next to Marshall Gold, stroking his face and hair with her left hand while keeping her submachine gun leveled at Patty with the other. Gold had quieted down considerably, but Will wondered if his demeanor might be a reflection of persistent, even worsening shock. He suspected Susan sensed the same thing.

“Will, get over here and tear off his pants leg,” she ordered. “Hurry, or I’ll cut your girlfriend in half!”

She punctuated the order with a burst of bullets that splintered the floor between Patty’s legs. One actually grazed her. Blood instantly began seeping through a rent in her pajamas, just below the knee. Will started moving to help her, but she stopped him with a raised hand.

“I’m okay, Will,” she said, her voice meek and whiny. “Just do whatever she says.”

Will remembered the fearlessness with which Patty had dealt with the two toughs by Steele’s Pond, and could only imagine how, in her condition, she had managed to take out both Krause and Gold. Sounding fearful and subdued at this moment was purposeful. He was certain of it. Patty knew, as did he, that there was no chance either of them would be allowed to live. In truth, there never had been. She was sizing up both Susan and the situation, searching for an opening-any kind of an opening-that would give them a chance at the gun.

The best he could do to help was to keep Susan as calm as possible and make himself essential by helping to stabilize Gold. When the moment was right, he would try to heighten the tension and create chaos in the room. At that point, he and Patty would have only seconds for some sort of coordinated, unscripted attack before one or both of them were dead. He inserted two undamaged fingers into the bullet hole in Gold’s trousers and, with difficulty, ripped the leg off. Gold, still awake though definitely slowed, moaned in pain at even the slightest movement.

“Careful, Will,” Susan warned. “You and I both know you’re not that clumsy.”

“That’s when my fractured cheekbone isn’t throbbing and I have all my fingernails.” Will showed her the bandages.

Gold’s leg looked bad-very bad. There was a massive amount of swelling in the thigh beneath the wound-a unit of blood, Will guessed, possibly even two. Almost certainly the femur had been shattered, and the femoral artery had probably been severed, as well.

“Use his belt. Put a tourniquet on.”

“Rather than jostle him any more than necessary, I’ll use mine. . So, it was you and Gold all the time. And here I thought you were just a mild-mannered surgeon.”

Susan laughed.

“Compared to the life I’ve led, surgery has been a big yawn. Over the last six years this man has taught me things and taken me places surgery never could.”

“You’re the one who sabotaged my shoes.”

“I had to. Otherwise you would have operated on that Davis woman, and we just couldn’t have that.”

“Because I would have discovered that she didn’t have any breast cancer at all. I get it now.”

“We had a bit of a problem because we had developed you so carefully as our public spokesman, but something had to be done quickly to get you out of the OR. Killing you would have been so messy and so final, and would have started people wondering if they were wrong about you and the Society and the managed-care killer all being on the same side.”

“So, after you crucified me and took the Davis case back, you threatened Jim Katz to try and get me reinstated at work.”

“As long as the attention was diverted from Excelsius, you were serving your purpose. Your pal the Law Doctor actually helped us out by planting those shoes in that ER closet.”

“He planted them?”

“Of course. What kind of a dummy do you take me for? I would never have just left your Chuck Taylors lying around the hospital. The lawyer made a calculated guess about how we got the fentanyl into you, and he guessed right. I’m sure the insoles of those shoes will turn out to be loaded with fentanyl. It’s not that hard to get.”

Will couldn’t help but smile. Augie realized that the only one who could prove he had hidden a pair of counterfeit, fentanyl-soaked sneakers in the ER was the person who had actually framed Will. The man had rolled the dice for him with both his law and medicine careers at stake, and he had won.

“So, how many women got treated for breast cancer they didn’t have?”

“Enough to force Steadfast Health into selling out to us. They were paying over a hundred thousand a case. With more and more women getting breast cancer these days, it wasn’t hard. Besides, we had a one hundred percent cure rate.”

“But Halliday couldn’t do that with every other company he wanted to take over.”

“No. It was a brilliant idea that worked, but we needed to develop a more. . direct method.”

“Jesus. Listen, Susan, this belt isn’t tightening enough. He’s still bleeding. I suspect his femoral artery’s torn. If so, this leg’s in trouble. He’s in trouble. I think we should use that IV tubing tied around Krause over there, and maybe break off the leg of the chair to twist it tight. Rope would be even better. He’s really getting shocky. You’ve got to get him to the hospital.”

“Watkins, get up and help us,” Susan ordered. “My medical bag is in the trunk of my car. Get the bag and also some rope. And I need something like a tire iron to tighten the tourniquet.”

“Look at me, Dr. Hollister. I’m handcuffed. He’s got the key in his pocket.”

“Will, unlock his cuffs. . Now!”

Susan swung her machine gun toward him, and Will saw Patty instantly change her stance so that one leg was beneath her now, ready to shove off. It was time to raise the ante. Without thinking twice about it, he pulled the key from his pocket and swallowed it.

“I told him I was going to do that,” Will said lightly, hoping to lessen Susan’s anger and the tension in her index finger.

“God damn you!” she shrieked, her cheeks crimson.

From the corner of his eye, Will saw Patty shift again.

“Don’t worry, Dr. Hollister,” Watkins said. “I’ve got another key in my room, in the drawer right by the bed. I can get it.”

The giant began struggling awkwardly to his feet, lost his balance, and tumbled heavily onto his side. Another distraction. It had to be now. As Watkins was righting himself, Will kneed Gold’s thigh at exactly the fracture point. The killer bellowed with pain and took an ineffectual, floppy swing at Will. Reflexively, Susan turned toward them. In that instant, Patty sprang forward, viciously swinging her bare foot upward in a punting motion against Susan’s wrist. The machine gun flew out of Susan’s hands and landed at the base of the wall, a dozen feet away. Will, who was on one knee, was trying to stand when Watkins slammed into him like a semi, driving him back against the wall. Powered by adrenaline, Will hammered at the man with his fists and feet and managed to pull himself upright.

Patty followed her kick by trying to dive over Susan toward the gun, but the surgeon moved with the quickness of a gymnast, striking her with a backhand fist flush against her skull flap, while in the same motion spinning and lunging toward her weapon. Patty cried out from the blow and dropped to her side. Dazed, she remained composed enough to grab on to one of Susan’s legs. Absorbing kicks to her face and chest, she hung on for a few precious seconds, but there was no way she could beat the woman to where the machine gun lay.

“Run, Will!” she shouted, losing her hold and rolling over and over toward the open door. “Run!”

Will grabbed her by the arm as he raced past and dragged her to her feet and through the doorway. They were sprinting down a long corridor toward what seemed to be the back of the house when they heard a burst of gunfire from behind them. Will risked a glance over his shoulder. Susan had fired wildly from inside the room and hadn’t yet reached the hallway.

“Straight ahead,” Patty gasped, pointing to a windowed doorway that led outside.

They charged past a richly appointed conference room and a vast, gleaming, brilliantly lit kitchen. Neither held any hope of protection or concealment. Getting outside was their only chance. Will dropped back a step to allow Patty to reach the door first. If only one of them was going to make it, he wanted it to be her.

Please don’t be locked. Please. .

Patty had already considered the possibility. With her left hand, she slid the dead-bolt lock aside and simultaneously pulled open the door with her right. The aluminum storm door, with a full pane of glass, was also locked. Without hesitation, she drove her knee and forearm into the pane, shattering it outward onto a small unlit porch.

“Stay low!” she screamed.

Without hesitating, she stepped onto the shards of glass with her bare right foot, then leapt over three stairs and onto the lawn, finishing with a perfectly executed roll. It was an incredibly athletic move, and not one Will had any chance of duplicating. Instead, he pulled the inside door nearly closed behind him and was carefully stepping through the storm-door frame when a staccato of bullets snapped into the wood. One of them ripped into the muscle overlying his right hip. He fought through the intensely burning pain and drove ahead. Susan had to be wondering whether she could chance leaving her lover to go after them, or whether any risk was worth taking to keep them from getting off the farm alive. The longer they could keep moving, the more they could increase her indecision, the less effective she was going to be.

By the time he reached Patty, she was braced against a tree, pulling a two-inch-long stiletto of glass from the sole of her foot. He moved to help, but she waved him off, then raced with him toward the barn. The night was black and raw, the grass unpleasantly cold and slick, and she was barefoot and battered. Still she ran. It was as if by example she was willing him not to be hesitant or afraid.

Ignoring the searing in his hip, he hobbled along beside her until they had rounded the small corral and flattened themselves against the far side of the barn. Clouds of their breath hung in the chilly blackness as they gasped for air. Ahead and to the left of them, all was dark and quiet, but to their right, not too far away, were the lights of another house.

“What. . happened. . to your leg?” Patty asked between breaths.

Will needed several seconds before he could answer.

“My hip. . well, my butt really. . I took a bullet there. . for the home team.”

Patty squeezed his arm.

“Be tough.”

“That was. . amazing what you. . did back there. Does your. . foot hurt. . badly?”

“It’ll hold me.” Patty inched back to the corner of the barn and peered around it. “She’s out there, just beginning to move this way.”

“I guess she decided that getting us is more important than staying with Marshall.”

“That choice is a no-brainer. If we get away, life as they have known it will be over.”

“Let’s hope so. What do you think that house is over there?”

“Probably belongs to the farmer who actually works this place.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know what his landlord does when he’s not looking like a respectable health-care provider.”

“Maybe. It’s either go there or head across the fields and try to find a way out of here.” Patty risked a second look around the corner of the barn. “Watkins is with her now. No handcuffs. We’ve really got to move.”

“You’ve got to take my sneakers.”

“I don’t-”

“No argument!”

She sighed and did as he insisted, muttering about clownshoes. Moments later, she shuddered and then began to shiver intensely. Will held her, and for a few seconds she allowed him to. Then she pulled away.

“If I had known we were actually going to make it out of that room,” he said, “I would never have taken my jacket off. Hopefully the people in that house over there will help us out. Your hands are like ice.”

“They’re okay. My head’s the problem. It’s like a kangaroo’s in there, bouncing through a minefield, setting off explosions.”

“That settles it. Let’s go meet the farmer.”

Much of their path to the house was obstructed from their pursuers by the barn. Over the final twenty-five open yards, they kept low and moved steadily ahead until they were flattened against the house. In the distance they could still hear faint snatches of Susan’s voice and see the beam of a flashlight piercing the night. They turned and were peering through the window into a small, cluttered kitchen where a grizzled man in his fifties sat at the table in overalls and a narrow-strap T-shirt, drinking beer from a bottle and watching a small countertop TV. Beside him, a disheveled, silver-haired woman sat in a wheelchair, a beer in the cup holder by her right hand.

“American Gothic,” Will whispered. “They look friendly enough. I think we should go in.”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you have any other ideas?”

“We’ve got to get away from here quickly, or get inside and make a nine-one-one call.”

“I think those two will be able to help us. I’m a great judge of character by people’s faces.”

At that moment, they heard the phone start ringing inside.

“Shit!” Patty whispered.

The farmer’s conversation lasted only a few seconds. He hurried out of the kitchen and returned with a shotgun, which he held on to as he pulled on a red-and-black-checked hunting jacket, and a rifle, which he handed to his invalid wife.

“I forgot to add that sometimes I’m a lousy judge of character,” Will said.

They stayed pressed into the shadows and worked their way to the far end of the house. There was a broad expanse of fields, perhaps a quarter mile or more, between them and the forest.

“We’ve got to try it,” Will whispered.

At that moment, the farmer, shotgun at the ready, clunked across the back landing and made his way into the field a short distance from where they were standing. The move effectively cut them off from any kind of race to the woods.

“Now what?” Will asked.

They were peering back at the barn, expecting any instant to see Susan and Watkins come around the corral and the other corner, cutting them off even further from any escape.

“We have one chance,” Patty said.

“What?”

“The tractor. Did you see it? Just past the barn. If we can somehow get around that side of the barn and onto it, we can try and drive it around the house and down the drive.”

“What about the key?”

“People always leave the key in tractors, especially on a place as isolated as this one. And if there’s no key, I’d be surprised if I couldn’t hot-wire it.”

“Of course. How stupid of me not to think that you knew how to hot-wire a tractor? You are really a remarkable piece of work, do you know that?”

“Right now I’m a freezing cold, miserable piece of work. Let’s head back to the barn before Susan and Monstro show up. From there, maybe we can make a run at the tractor. If they leave the barn unguarded, maybe you can even find a pair of boots inside.”

“My feet are okay for the moment.”

They moved back along the shadows, shielded from the farmer by the house and from Susan and Watkins by the barn. Just a dozen or so yards ahead, washed faintly in some of the light from the old farmhouse, they could make out a split-rail fence enclosing a fairly large corral, which featured a water trough and filled hay bin. Patty put a finger to her lips and motioned in that direction. Seconds later they were crouching by the fence. Initially, Will thought the corral was empty, but then he noticed four cows standing huddled together at the far end.

“We should cut through,” Will whispered.

“You’re barefoot.”

“I’ve got socks on. Besides, I’ve stepped in shit before.”

“You really are a piece of work.”

“Maybe it’s contagious.”

They hunched down and carefully slid between the middle and highest railing into the corral. For the moment, at least, they were hidden from the barn by the shoulder-high hay bin.

“Patty, look! Talk about American Gothic.”

Propped against the far side of the bin, nearly as long as the bin was high, was a pitchfork. Just as Will seized the handle, they heard Susan’s voice, close enough to make out her words. She had come around the side of the barn and seemed to be headed directly toward them. With the submachine gun pointing their way, she was speaking on a cell phone as she moved cautiously forward.

“Quick, over there,” Patty ordered, pointing to the cows.

Keeping low enough to be partially screened by the fence, they hurried across to the massive animals and worked their way among them. There was some slight, irritated movement from the beasts, but otherwise no reaction to the intrusion. Susan had reached the far corner of the corral, no more than thirty feet away.

“Watkins, I don’t see anything out here,” she was saying. “Just cows. You watch the front of the barn. Call Sanderson and tell him it’s his ass if they get past him. Then call your people and tell them to get the hell out here now! Those two are still around here someplace. I’m positive of it. I’m going in to check on Marsh and get another flashlight. I’ll be right out. Stay sharp.”

Will pressed his face against the cow’s flank and patted her silently as she shifted nervously from one foot to another.

Easy, Bossie, easy does it. Come on, Hollister, leave. Leave!

He didn’t dare to raise up and look. To his right, Patty seemed completely concealed between two cows. An endless minute passed. Is Susan still there? Dammit, he never should have told her about Newcomber. He was so certain Gordo was behind everything that he just didn’t think things through.

Finally, moving with exquisite slowness, Patty crouched down, peered out under the cow to where Susan had been, and then gave him a thumbs-up sign. They crossed the corral and slipped out through a gate. Patty, now limping even more noticeably, moved close to him and took his arm with one of hers, then appropriated the pitchfork to use as a walking stick.

“If we split up,” she said, “and you go that way toward the forest and I go that way, one of us might make it.”

“No go. We’re getting out of here together. Besides, neither one of us is moving very well. We look like that painting of the Spirit of Seventy-Six, only no one’s bothered to bandage us up. Now, let’s get to the tractor. You can really hot-wire it?”

She shrugged at him modestly.

“I can try. It may be tricky in the dark.”

Rather than cross between the main house and the barn, they chose to work their way back around the barn and the small, empty corral on the other side. Taking that route, they would be in clear, easy range of the farmer, Sanderson, should he spot them, but they would be concealed from Watkins until they were no more than twenty-five yards or so from the tractor, and also from Susan when she reemerged through the back door. No matter what, they knew that there was little chance of their making it unseen to the tractor, getting it started, and avoiding the bullets of two heavily armed professional killers.

“I don’t like these odds,” Will said.

“We can do this.”

Cautiously, more than grateful for the heavy overcast, they hobbled along the vast wall of the barn until they had reached the corral. To their right, past Sanderson’s house, they could just make out the silhouette of the farmer as he patrolled the broad, grassy field that separated the working farm from the forest. To their left, well beyond the far corner of the corral, facing the entrance to the barn, stood the tractor. With five-foot wheels in back, three-foot wheels in front, and a snout like a submarine, it was larger than Will had initially appreciated-certainly large enough to tow serious attachments for threshing or plowing and also, he hoped, to generate some speed with the two of them on board. If they could somehow make it out to a paved road, there was at least a chance of piling up some distance before Susan or Watkins reached their cars and caught up.

With Will keeping an eye on Sanderson, and Patty watching for Watkins, they reached the end of the corral.

“I know it’s weird,” Will said, “but after all that’s happened, after all I’ve been through and dealt with, all of a sudden I’m scared stiff.”

“That’s because all of a sudden we have a chance. I’m thinking that these are not the people I want to have end my life.”

“Amen to that,” Will whispered, slipping his arms around her. “Well, I guess we’ve got to go for it.”

“We do.” She took his face in her hands. “You’re a hell of a guy, Will Grant-very brave and a terrific lover, too. That’s a combination I like.”

Their kiss was brief, but intensely sweet.

“How long did you say it takes to hot-wire a tractor?” he asked.

“I didn’t. Let’s hope we don’t have to find out. Listen, though, one thing-you’ve got to drive. Even in your sneakers I can’t step down very well with my right foot. If any of them get in our way, you’re probably better off trying to run them down than avoid them. Sometimes people don’t react well with something coming at them head on.”

“Got it.”

“I’ll do what I can with this.” She held up the pitchfork. “Okay, Doc, ready. . and. . now!”

There was no sense trying to conceal their movement any longer. Hand in hand, they loped awkwardly across the grass as rapidly as Patty could manage. Just as they reached the tractor, the dense night was pierced by a piteous, screeching wail coming from the farmhouse. Susan.

“The key,” Will said. “It’s here.”

“Thank God,” Patty muttered.

Will scrambled up onto the broad seat.

“There’s not much protection up here.”

“Try praying.”

Ahead of them, Watkins had appeared at the doorway of the barn and, without looking in their direction, started toward the commotion in the house.

Patty balanced herself on the metal step, hanging on to the seat with one hand and the pitchfork with the other.

Will turned the key, and with a brief cough, the powerful engine kicked over, thrumming loudly.

“How do I make it go forward?” he asked, suddenly panicked.

Patty, anticipating the problem, grabbed the shift lever beside the seat and snapped the huge tractor into gear.

“I was the Four-H queen in junior high!” she explained.

“Amazing.”

Watkins had swung around and was lumbering toward them, his gun drawn, when the tractor lurched forward.

“Duck down!” Patty cried. “Head right at him!”

They were gaining speed when Watkins began firing. Bullets clanged off the grill, and one splintered the top of the steering wheel. Will was crouched awkwardly on one knee, peering along the side of the engine casing, reaching overhead to steer by one hand, wondering how long he could survive a bullet between the eyes. To his right, Patty was now hanging off to the side of the tractor by one arm, completely exposed to the gunfire, the pitchfork extended forward like a lance.

“That’s it!” she hollered. “Right at him, Will! Then keep him on my side!”

For several frozen seconds, the massive killer looked confused. Then, with the tractor bearing down on him, he took several clumsy steps to his left, stumbled, and fell to one knee. Although he still had a grip on his pistol, he never got the chance to fire it again. As the tractor rolled past him, Patty drove the pitchfork straight through the softness beneath his chin and then upward, almost to the hilt, in his brain. His death was instantaneous.

“Stop, Will!” she yelled.

Will slammed down on the brake. Clambering off the tractor, Patty retrieved the pitchfork, grabbed Watkins’s gun, and was quickly back on the step as Will again accelerated.

“I think that way,” he said, pointing.

“You’re in charge.”

“Boy, am I glad that isn’t true.”

Will swung the tractor to the right in a wide arc that would take them around to the front of the house. At that instant Susan appeared on the back porch brandishing the submachine gun and screeching at them hysterically.

“You killed him, you bastards! You killed my Marsh!”

She rattled off a burst, then raced down the stairs, but the tractor was moving away to her left, and it seemed as if none of the shots had hit. Firing like a commando as she ran, Susan took a line that would cut them off before they made the far side of the house.

“What should we do?” Will called out over the wailing engine.

“Just hold us steady,” Patty answered. “Real steady.”

She gripped the seat with her left hand and lay her right arm down across her left, sighting down the barrel of the pistol.

“Payback time,” she murmured, as she cracked off a single shot.

Through the gloom, thirty yards away, Susan cried out and fell, clutching her thigh and cursing. She was up with incredible quickness, though, hobbling after them, almost dragging her leg. But what chance she had to cut them off was gone.

Will swung the tractor to the left, alongside the house.

“That was an unbelievable shot!”

“It was a terrible shot. I was aiming at her chest. Take me past those cars. If she gets ahold of the keys to any of those, she’ll catch us in no time.” Will stopped beside Watkins’s Lincoln. Patty limped over to it and drove the pitchfork through the tire.

“Why don’t you just shoot it?” Will called down.

“I may need what’s in here.” It took two tries, but she stabbed through the left rear tire of Susan’s nifty Porsche. Then she climbed back onto the step. “Over there, the Jaguar!” she cried.

They were still twenty feet away from the car when Susan appeared at the corner of the house. She was bathed eerily in the light from the windows, her lips pulled back in a snarling, wolflike rictus as she fired.

“Go!” Patty cried.

She fired once at Susan and once at the Jaguar’s tire, missing both times. The third shot produced only an impotent click. With the cracks from Susan’s gun growing fainter, Will steered the tractor around two huge oaks and back onto the gravel driveway. One of the only things he remembered from the drive to Roxbury with Watkins was the right turn he took at the base of the drive.

“Even Boyd Halliday might have difficulty explaining that mess back there,” Will said as he made the right and they rumbled off down a narrow, deserted country road.

He was feeling absolutely buoyant.

“You have this thing wide open?” Patty asked grimly.

“Full speed ahead. Why?”

“I don’t think we can chance being on this much longer. Dammit, I should have taken more time for that shot at the Jaguar’s tire.”

“Nonsense.”

“Just the same, assuming Hollister limps inside, finds the keys to the Jag, and limps back out, she’ll be on top of us before you know it. Then there’s the people she told Watkins to call. They could come driving down this road at any second.”

Will rapidly deflated.

“So what should we do?”

“I’d rather take our chances in the dark in the woods than out here on this noble steed. You want your sneakers back?”

“No way. You’ve earned them. Besides, given where my socks have been, I don’t think I want to risk even touching them.”

“We should get off this thing soon,” she said. “One more minute, two at the most. I’m out of bullets, but I guarantee you that your pretty practice partner has plenty. I’ll get off and move inside the tree line. You drive about a hundred more yards, then ditch the tractor, get into the woods, and work your way back here. I’ll go straight in, twenty or twenty-five yards. That’s where we’ll meet.”

Without questioning, Will did as he was told, nosing the tractor off into the edge of the woods, then gingerly hiking back to where he estimated Patty was waiting. In just a few minutes, he heard her harsh whisper, calling him to the right. He was holding her tightly, concealed in a dense grove of young beech trees, when they heard a car skid to a halt by the tractor. Another minute and it accelerated, headlights slicing through the blackness as it sped past them toward the farm.

“Once again the woman in the pajamas proves her worth,” he whispered, genuinely impressed as he had been so many times this night. “You are the master. Speak, and so it shall be.”

“Well, I say we head diagonally away from the tractor and away from the farm. They’ll be back as soon as they meet up with Hollister. If we can put some distance between us and that road, I think we’ve got a chance. It’s cold out here, but not cold enough to kill us. As long as you can walk, if we just keep putting one foot in front of the other, sooner or later we’ve got to run into some sort of civilization. Massachusetts isn’t that big. Your feet okay?”

“I can manage. How about yours?”

“The right one where I stepped on the glass is starting to kill, but I can handle it. The sneaks are a godsend.”

“And they really look good on you, too.”

As rapidly as they could manage, they pushed deeper and deeper into the forest. At one point early on they both heard voices, but those quickly died away. Soon, there was only silence, intense darkness, and the damp chill of night. After an hour, they sank down at the base of a tree and held each other.

“Should we keep going, or try to wait until morning?” Will asked.

“I don’t mind resting for a bit, but I think we should push on. Halliday has a big meeting in the morning. He spoke about it when he thought I was in a coma. A number of companies are going to sign themselves into a merger with Excelsius. The way corporate lawyers operate, these sorts of business dealings are much easier to stop before they happen than they are to untangle afterward. If we can’t stop it, Halliday may not only get away with murder, but he’ll get away richer than ever.”

“I see what you mean. We really have no proof of anything. We may not even be able to find our way back to the farmhouse.”

“I think with a chopper we’ll be able to, but I’d be surprised if Hollister and Sanderson and the rest didn’t have the place cleaned up by then.”

She sighed.

“What? What?”

“I have a feeling it’s going to come down to our word against Halliday’s. Without those X-rays we don’t have much in the way of hard evidence. I suspect the fake slides have already been taken care of, and the pathologist who cooperated with Hollister and Newcomber dealt with one way or another. So at the moment, there’s nothing tangible to connect Excelsius and Halliday to the killings, or even to the breast-cancer scam.”

“We’ll come up with something,” Will said. “That bastard isn’t going to get away with what he’s done, even if he wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger. Come on. If you’re up for it, let’s keep going.”

Will helped Patty to her feet, then kissed her softly.

“You’re right,” she said. “One way or another we’ll get him. Just the same, I hate that we don’t have one hard piece of evidence. . Will? Will, are you all right? What did I say?”

Will was smiling down at her in an I-know-something-you-don’t-know way. He had just brushed his hand across his pants pocket and remembered, for the first time since Roxbury, what he had thrust in there. He slid his hand into the pocket and slowly withdrew the creased, damp, sweat-stained letter Charles Newcomber had sent him in the envelope of mammograms. He had no doubt that it contained the link between Halliday and the cancer scam.

“Merry Christmas, Sergeant,” he said.

Bullock and Carruth, widely referred to as B amp;C, had been the brightest star in the Boston legal firmament for 150 years. Ed Wittenburg, in his twenty-fifth year with B amp;C, was the senior partner in charge of acquisitions and mergers. Now, he looked across the fortieth-floor conference room, past the massive floor-to-ceiling windows with their grand view of the harbor islands, and silently asked Halliday when the show was going to get under way.

Janet Daninger was worried. She had come over to Excelsius Health along with Halliday and Gold after Halliday had been wooed away from Bowling Green Textiles to become the new CEO. Marshall Gold had been his executive assistant at Bowling Green, just as he was now. It was absolutely out of character for Gold to keep his friend waiting-especially for a meeting as significant as this one, which represented the pinnacle of Boyd Halliday’s career to this point. Janet smiled inwardly at the objections from those who initially opposed his appointment as CEO by pointing out that successfully repositioning a textile manufacturer did not necessarily translate into dealing with the highly competitive and volatile managed-care industry. How wrong they had proven to be.

“Try once more, Janet,” Halliday said. “I think we’ve got to get going. It’s just that Marshall did so much to ensure that this day came to pass, it seems only fitting that he should be here.”

He turned to the twenty men and women seated a comfortable distance apart from one another around the massive mahogany table. In front of each of them was an elegant name plate with their name and the name of the company they would be bringing into the Excelsius family. Premier Care, Unity Comprehensive Health, Steadfast Health, Coastal Community Care. In front of each of the attendees was an inch of documents, flagged where signatures would be needed. Beside those documents was a glossy brochure, trumpeting the new corporation: Excelsius National Health.

“When ENH stock comes out,” Halliday had told Janet with a wink, “I recommend you have those in your family buy a share or two.”

Now he fidgeted for another minute, until he sensed the increasing restlessness of those in the room, then he cleared his throat and stepped to the table. Over more than a decade together, he and Marshall Gold had functioned as a unit, with virtually no philosophical or professional differences. Marshall’s missing a meeting as monumental as this one would be a first.

You’d better have a damn good reason.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry for the slight delay. I was waiting for Marshall Gold, my executive assistant, whom I believe most of you know. He’s tying up some loose ends relative to this meeting, and I’m sure he’ll be here shortly.” He took a deep, proud breath. “And so, without further ado, it’s time for us to make history. By the time we adjourn this meeting, each of us will be an important part of one of the largest, most influential health-care delivery companies in the nation, indeed, in the world-Excelsius National Health. The two-thousand-dollar custom-made diamond and gold Diablo de Cartier fountain pen on top of each stack of documents will be your souvenir of this day, but another pleasant and constant reminder of it will also be your bank accounts.”

The laughter from around the room was generous.

“Now, then, if you will each take your pen and refer to item one, we-”

The elegant double doors at the far end of the conference room swung open.

Welcome, Marshall, Halliday almost exclaimed. Instead, he watched in stunned silence as Will Grant and Patty Moriarity stepped shoulder-to-shoulder into the room. They were showered and dressed in clean, casual clothes, but nothing could hide the fearsome bruising covering their faces. Will’s left eye was completely swollen shut, and his hands were bandaged. Patty’s eyes were enveloped in violet, with gentian streaks running down her cheeks and over her jaw. Both were limping.

Moments after they entered the room, a third person followed-a tall, distinguished man, marching ramrod straight, wearing the uniform of a colonel in the state police. Tommy Moriarity remained there, unmoving, as Patty and Will split apart and slowly rounded the massive table, giving each of the people seated there a slow close-up of the battering they had taken. When they reached Halliday, Patty handed him a folded piece of paper. . then another.

“Boyd Halliday,” she said, “this is a warrant for your arrest.”

“On what charges?”

“The DA is just getting started on those, but the one you have in your hand is for fraud and accessory to murder. I can promise you that there will be others. The fraud part is outlined in that letter from a certain radiologist at the Excelsius Cancer Center.”

“Would you like us to add copies of these documents to those already in front of your business associates?” Will asked.

Boyd Halliday raised himself up and stared stonily out the window.

“That won’t be necessary. Ed, will you come here, please, and make certain these people don’t violate any of my rights.”

No one around the table moved as Ed Wittenburg held whispered conversations first with Patty, then Halliday. Finally, he stepped aside as Patty handcuffed Halliday’s wrists behind him and led him from the room, joined at the doorway by her father.

Will, bracing himself on the back of a chair, turned and faced the others.

“I hope most if not all of you are completely in the dark about what is happening here,” he said. “In time, much will become clear to you. For now, all I can say is: The stakes in the struggle between organized medicine and managed care have just gone up considerably. None of us should be taking care of the health problems of others until our patients’ or clients’ concerns come before our own. I challenge each of you to go back to your companies and figure out just how to put those words into practice. Oh, and meanwhile, feel free to keep your souvenir pens.”