Eleventh Hour by Catherine Coulter
“I ate too much fat over a couple of days and got a gallbladder attack,” Lou said. He moved Dane’s hand and pressed his own palm hard over the wound. After a few minutes, he tied his handkerchief around Dane’s upper arm. Dane thought about his single piece of KFC and hoped he’d never have a gallbladder attack.
“There,” Lou said, “that should slow the bleeding down. Try to remember to give it back to me. My wife gave me that handkerchief for my birthday just three days ago. It’s real linen and she embroidered my initials on it. If I lose it, my goose is cooked.”
“It won’t be lost, Lou,” Dane said, “but it will be bloody.”
“My wife is used to blood. That’s okay.”
“I’ll keep an eye on it,” Nick said, looking up a moment from picking glass out of Dane’s hair. She said to him, “You just have a few nicks where some glass got you. Hold still. Bo, if you’ll take care of our rental car, Lou can take us to that hospital, okay?”
Bo gave Dane the once-over, nodded, then saluted. “Lou, try to get him a different doctor than the one you had.” He loosened the handkerchief a bit as he added, “The guy wanted to cut Lou up right there.”
“Didn’t happen,” Lou said. “I started feeling better and got the hell out of there. Your jacket’s ruined, Dane. Hey, Nick, you got yourself together?”
“I’m nearly together, thank you,” she said.
Lou looked at her more closely, seemed satisfied. “All right, we’re out of here. Bo has already called in. He’ll secure the crime scene until someone gets here. Dane, I don’t suppose you saw the shooter? Maybe a license plate?”
Dane just shook his head. “The guy wasn’t in a car, he was riding a Harley. I didn’t even get a good look at the gun. I was too busy trying not to get a bullet through my head. Nick, are your hands still bleeding?”
“No, hardly at all,” she said. “I’m just fine. Be quiet now, and let’s get you to the hospital.”
She’d regained her balance, held the shock at bay. He was proud of her.
Special Agent Lou Cutter got them to Elmwood Community Hospital in under eight minutes. He used the siren and traffic disappeared in front of them. It was an experience Nick had never had. It was, she told him, very cool.
Dane was breathing lightly through his mouth, the pain sharp and hot now, and he didn’t like it one bit. It was the first time he’d been shot. By a guy on a damned motorcycle. He said to Lou, “He was probably planning to come up along the passenger side and shoot Nick. We were lucky. He couldn’t get up on the sidewalk next to her, too many people. He still tried it from my side.”
“If he shot you,” Nick said, “you would have lost control of the car and crashed. Then he could have shot me really easily. Or maybe the car crash would have killed me.”
Lou said, “Thanks to you, Dane, you kept it together and pulled both of you through. Good job. Now, you do realize that this little show is way over the top. None of us expected anything like this. It’s completely different from what he’s done to date.”
Dane sighed. “Like you said, Lou, this performance was over the top. The guy’s desperate, he’s losing it. Nick, I’m sorry.”
“You’re the one he shot.”
Lou took care of all the administrative hassles with the emergency room staff, which was a relief since Nick was focused entirely on Dane.
She supposed that Dr. John Martinez thought she was Dane’s wife and so didn’t kick her out of the cubicle.
“Went right through your upper arm, Mr. Carver,” he said after cleaning and examining the wound, poking around while Dane watched him, his mouth tightly closed. “You were very lucky. Not anywhere near any major vessels. It isn’t bad at all, when you think about how bad it could have been. How did it happen? Were you cleaning your gun or something? You know that I’m going to have to tell the cops about this.”
“You already have,” Dane said. He pulled his FBI shield out of his inner pocket and flipped the case open.
“FBI. I’ve never treated an FBI agent before,” Martinez said as he injected Dane’s arm. “Let’s just give that anesthetic five minutes to kick in. Then, just a few stitches and that’ll be it, apart from a tetanus shot.” It felt to Dane like ten years passed before Dr. Martinez sank his first stitch.
Dane stared straight ahead, felt the push of the needle, the pull of the thread through his flesh. He focused on the array of bandages on the shelf in the cubicle. All sizes of gauze. In and out—it seemed like a hundred times—then, thank God, Dr. Martinez was done. Dane looked down at his arm as they bandaged it, then watched a nurse clean and bandage the backs of Nick’s hands.
“The stitches will resorb, but I want you to have them checked in a few days,” Dr. Martinez said. “We’re going to give you some antibiotics to take for a while. Any problems at all—fever, heavy pain—you get your butt either back in here or to your own doctor.” He looked over at Nick. “Hey, you a special agent, too?”
“She’s above just an ordinary special agent,” Dane said and sucked in his breath when the nurse jabbed a needle into his right arm.
“That’s your tetanus shot,” Dr. Martinez said. “Now, just one more for the pain. It should keep you smiling for a good four hours. And you’re going to need some pain pills, enough for three days. Don’t be a macho, take them.”
“He’ll take them,” Nick said, her bandaged hands on her hips, as if ready to belt him if he got out of line. She was still wearing his bloody jacket. She looked ridiculous.
The nurse said something and the doctor nodded. “Since you’re not his wife, you need to step out, ma’am. She’s got to give him a shot in the butt.”
“I’ve seen a lot of him already,” Nick said, “but not his butt.”
When Dane walked out of the cubicle, his left arm well bandaged and in a dark blue sling, he was trying to get his pants fastened with just his right hand.
Nick shoved his hand out of the way. “Hold still.” She zipped the pants the rest of the way up, fastened the button, then got his belt notched. “There, you’ll do.” She smirked, no other word for it. “Hey, did you have Dr. Martinez check the teeth marks on your shoulder?”
“He said I didn’t have to worry about infection, the antibiotic should cover the teeth marks, too. If you’re rabid, that could, however, be a problem.”
She smiled, a small, stingy one, but still something of a smile. She straightened in front of him, studied his face for a long time. She picked out the last of the glass and stroked her fingers through his hair to neaten it. “You’re pale, but not bad. Thank you for handling that so well, Dane. I owe you.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You do.” He leaned down, kissed her, then straightened again. “Debt paid.”
She laughed, looked off-kilter for a moment, which pleased him, then took off his jacket and draped it over his back. He was about to kiss her again when Lou came up. “Everything’s taken care of. Everyone’s excited to have a real FBI agent in here with a bullet wound. They get LAPD occasionally, but never a Fed. I think that woman over behind that desk wants to jump your bones, Dane.”
“My bones wouldn’t jump back,” Dane said. He felt slight nausea now even though his arm throbbed only a bit. The nurse had shot him up with Demerol. Whatever it was, it was working.
“We’re going back to our Holiday Inn and I’m going to watch Dane rest until tonight.”
“All right,” Lou said, “but you can expect everyone to come over and see for themselves what happened.”
“Oh dear,” Nick said. “We’ll be needing another car.”
“Not to worry,” Lou said. “Bo is already working on it. You’ll have another car there within a couple of hours, guaranteed.”
“You could have been killed. Very easily.”
“Let it go, Nick. It’s my job. The arm will be fine in just a few days, according to Bo, who, according to Lou, has reason to know. How are your hands?”
She waved that away. “I don’t want you to get killed.”<
“I won’t. Drop it. Give me one of those egg rolls. Oh, dip it first. Thank you.”
She watched him eat. It was dark, almost seven o’clock in the evening. They’d been alone only for the past four minutes. Savich and Sherlock were the last to leave, Sherlock saying, “Remember, we’re two doors down, in twenty-three, and it’s the same phone number. Enjoy the Chinese.”
“You need another pain pill,” Nick said when she realized he wasn’t going to eat any more. She fetched him one from the bottle on the dresser.
She didn’t even take the chance that he’d try to be macho, just shoved it in his mouth and handed him a glass of water.
“That should help you sleep. You need rest, not any more talk.” She stood up and stretched, then began pacing the small room, to the door and back again.
“That was really much too close.”
“No,” Dane said, shaking his head, “that bullet old Milton fired in the church was much closer.”
“How many more times can we be lucky?”
“This second time wasn’t entirely luck,” Dane said.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re Superman.”
He said, “Promise me you won’t run, Nick.”
“Listen, you, I want you to stop looking into my head.”
“You’re real easy to read, at least right now. Running won’t help you. You do realize that, don’t you?” His brain was stalling out, working slower, beginning to fuzz around the edges. He couldn’t be certain he’d make any sense in another minute. He felt bone tired, his body and his brain closing down.
She said, “Well, I’m not a jerk, so I won’t leave you while you’re down. So stop trying to figure out how you can get your paws on some handcuffs.”
“Thank you,” he said, and closed his eyes. At least Savich had gotten him out of his clothes. He was wearing a white undershirt and sweatpants, no socks. He liked to feel the sheets against his toes. Nick pulled the single sheet to his chest, then straightened it over him.
He had nearly died because of her.
TWENTY-FOUR
CHICAGO
She heard him unlock the front door, walk into the large entrance hall, and pause a moment to hang up his coat. She heard him mumbling something to himself about some contributor. When he walked into the living room, where she sat in one of the sleek pale brown leather chairs, his face went still, then lit up.
“Nicola, what a wonderful surprise. I was going to call you the minute I got my coat off. You lit the fireplace, that’s good. It’s very cold outside.”
She rose slowly, stood there, staring at him, wondering what was in his mind, what he was really thinking when he looked at her.
“What’s wrong? Oh God, did something else happen to you? No one told me a thing, no one—”
“No, nothing more happened. Well, actually, I did get a letter from your ex-wife, warning me that you are trying to kill me because you believe I’m sleeping with Elliott Benson.”
“From who? You got a letter from Cleo?”
“That’s right. She wrote to tell me you believe I’m sleeping with Elliott Benson, that you believed she slept with him, too.”
“Of course you’re not sleeping with him. Good God, Nicola, you won’t even sleep with me. Besides, he’s old enough to be your father.”
“So are you.”
“Don’t talk like that. I’m nowhere near that old. You know I’ve wanted to sleep with you, for months now, but you put me off, and now you’ve begun to back away from me.”
“Yes, I have, but that’s not what’s important here, John.”
“Yes, I agree. Now, what’s this nonsense about a letter from Cleo? That’s impossible, you know that. She’s long gone, not with Elliott Benson, for God’s sake, but with Tod Gambol, that bastard I trusted for eight long years. What the hell is this about?”
“I got the letter just a little while ago. She warned me that you would try to kill me, just like you did her. She told me to run, just like she ran. I want to know what this is all about, too, John. She makes serious accusations. She wrote about your mother’s supposed accidental death, and the death of your college sweetheart—both car accidents. Her name was Melissa.”
His face flushed with anger, but when he spoke, his voice was calm, like a reasoned, sympathetic leader reassuring a constituent, the consummate politician. “This is nonsense. Ridiculous nonsense. I don’t know who wrote you a letter accusing me of all this, but it wasn’t Cleo. She’s been gone for three years, not a single word from her. There’s no reason she’d write to you, for God’s sake. As I recall she didn’t even like you. I think she was jealous of you because, truth be told, even back then I thought you were wonderful. Don’t get me wrong. I loved Cleo, loved her very much, but I thought you were bright and so very eager and enthusiastic.”
She wasn’t about to go there. Yeah, she thought, she probably would have licked his shoes in those days, if he’d wanted her to. She said, “John, I could have dismissed this letter as a crank, but there was more.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“She included several pages from your journal.”
“My journal? Why would she do that?”
“She said she found it by accident one day in your library safe. She read it, read your confession about killing Melissa. It’s right here, John, in your handwriting. How many women have you killed?”
He stood stiff as the fireplace poker, just three feet behind her, close enough to grab to protect herself if she needed to. He said slowly, his pupils dilated, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Nicola. I have a journal, but writing something like that? What, as a joke? It’s absurd. No, wait. Did Albia put you up to this?”
“Oh no, John, no joke. No Albia either. No, don’t come any closer to me. Not even a single step. You see this?” She waved three pieces of paper at him. “This is Cleo’s letter to me and two pages she copied from your journal. This is from the woman I knew when I first came to work for your reelection campaign, a woman I liked very much. When she left you, I believed, like the rest of the world, that you were devastated, but she tells me that she ran for her life. I remember how everyone felt so very sorry for you. No, stay back, John!”
He never looked away from the pages she held. She saw he wanted those pages, wanted them badly. He said, “Yes, Cleo left me, you knew that, Nicola. If you’ll show me the letter, show me those ridiculous journal pages, I’ll be able to prove that it’s not even from Cleo. Really, that’s quite impossible.”
“I don’t see why it’s impossible. And yes, actually, it is from Cleo. I know her handwriting. God knows I read enough of her memos when I was volunteering. She wrote that you not only tried to kill her—that’s the reason she ran, because of the journal—but you’re trying to kill me because you believe I’m sleeping with Elliott Benson.
“Again, John, how many women have you killed?”
“For God’s sake, Nicola. Somebody else wrote you that letter, someone who copied her handwriting, someone who hates me, wants to destroy us. Someone made up those journal pages. Don’t let that happen, Nicola. Let me see that letter. Give it to me.”
Nicola took a step back. She was nearly against the fireplace now. She felt the heat of the flames against her back. She said, “Cleo wrote that she doesn’t want me to die. She wrote that I should run, just like she did. She didn’t want to die either.”
“This is utterly ridiculous.” He looked dazed, as if he couldn’t quite grasp what she was saying, and all through it, he was staring at those pages in her hand. “Let me see that goddamned letter.”
“No, you’ll destroy it and the journal pages. I can’t allow you to do that.”
“All right, all right. Listen to me. I didn’t kill anyone—not my mother, not Melissa, not anyone. That’s just insane.” Still he stared at those sheets of paper, his pupils sharp black points of light, his face as white as his beautifully laundered shirt. “You’ve got to let me see that letter. It can’t
“She left because you wanted to kill her and because she realized you were insane with jealousy. You believed she was unfaithful to you.”
“She left me to be with Tod Gambol, everyone knows that. Listen, Nicola, let’s sit down and talk this over. We can start at the beginning. We can work it all out. I love you.”
“I’m going to the police, John. I suppose I wanted to confront you with the letter, hear what you had to say. I really hoped that I’d believe you—”
“Dammit, then listen to me,” he said, but still he was staring at that letter. “Give me a chance. I had nothing to do with my mother’s death. I was sixteen years old, for God’s sake. She was an alcoholic, Nicola, and the decision at the time was that she ran her car off the road because she was drunk. As for Melissa, by God I loved her, and she slept with Elliott—the bastard has always wanted what I have—but I didn’t kill her. I simply broke it off with her. It was a damned accident, it had to be. The letter and the journal—it’s got to be a forgery. Give me the letter, Nicola, let me examine it.”
“No. I think I’ll give it to the police, let them figure it out.”
“It would ruin me politically, Nicola, you must know that. Do you despise me so much that you want me to have to resign from the Senate? Spend my days being hounded by the press? I didn’t do anything, dammit! You can’t simply read a letter, some stupid pages from a make-believe journal, from God knows whom, and decide I’m a murderer, accuse me of killing my own mother? I was only sixteen! A boy doesn’t murder his own mother!”
She said very quietly, “The boy does if he’s a psychopath.”
“A psychopath? Good God, Nicola, this is beyond ridiculous. Listen to me. You must realize how impossible this all is. You can’t go to the police.” He drew himself up, becoming the patrician gentleman, tall, slender, elegant, and he was angry, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. He looked from her to the letter, the pages still clutched in her right hand. He said softly, “You’re not going anywhere, you stupid little ingrate. Just look what I’ve done for you—Jesus, I was going to marry you, make you one of the most sought-after women in America. You’re young, beautiful, intelligent, a college professor, and not left-wing, which was a big relief, let me tell you. With you at my side, with my coaching you, showing you what to do, we could have had just about everything, maybe even the White House. What is wrong with you, Nicola?”