by Chelsea Cain
* * *
“Susan?” Archie called out. He was groggy. Where was he? He tried to sit up and felt someone stop him.
“You’re in the hospital.” It was Henry’s voice. “Easy.”
He was in a blue room. The sky outside the window was a dingy slate. “Is Susan okay?” Archie asked.
Henry took his hands off Archie’s shoulders. “Her ear’s all stitched up,” he said in an automatic tone that made Archie think they had had this conversation several times before. “Her arm’s in a sling and she’ll come see you as soon as she’s discharged, I’m sure.”
Archie relaxed a little, his eyes taking in his surroundings. He was in a long room with a pale blue couch, and a crowd of chairs, as if extra seating had been brought in from other rooms. He saw the word search book and remembered his children being there, and Debbie. He could hear muted hospital sounds—intercom announcements, snippets of hallway conversation. A plastic tray of half-eaten food sat near where Henry had been sitting, and the room smelled faintly of green beans and chicken.
Fragments of memories began to form in his brain, seizing him by the chest. “The uniforms outside my apartment?” Archie asked, trying to sit up again.
“They’re okay,” Henry said, gently pushing Archie back. “She drugged them.”
“Did you get Karim?” Archie asked.
“Gretchen killed him,” Henry said, pulling up a plastic chair and taking a seat next to Archie’s IV pump. “We’ll go through all the details when you’re a little stronger.” He paused, scratching at the white bristles on his chin. “One bit of business we do need to go over,” he said. “Rachel’s downtown. I had her held overnight as a material witness. You want her charged?”
Henry had gone to his apartment, just as Archie had known he would. He had found Rachel. She had told him everything. If Archie had had any shame left, he would have burned from the humiliation. But he was too tired, and Henry had witnessed his indiscretions before. “No,” Archie said. Where Rachel had been involved, he had been a willing fool. “But tell her to lay low for a while,” he said. “I don’t think Gretchen would hurt her.” He saw Gretchen in his mind, the nurse’s costume splattered with blood. “But I don’t know.”
“Your dog is at my house, by the way,” Henry said. “The kid next door is staying with her. Last time I checked in, he said that she had chewed the beads off my Minnetonka moccasins.”
“Claire hates those shoes anyway,” Archie said. He tried to smile, but it took too much strength. “How many dead at the house?” Archie asked.
“Ten, including Jack,” Henry said grimly. “Eleven, if you count Lisa Watson. You’re going to have to answer a lot of questions in the next few days.”
Archie thought of the chaotic trail of blood, Razor Burn slashed by Gretchen and then shot by Cooper. It would take a diagram to figure it all out. “Did Cooper make it out?” he asked.
“Cooper?” Henry pulled out his notebook and flipped through it. A tiny fragment of green bean was stuck to his mustache. “We didn’t find anyone by that name, alive or dead.”
Archie smiled weakly. Razor Burn would have died anyway, but Cooper had saved Archie’s life when he’d hastened the process.
“Should we be looking for him?” Henry asked. “Was it his gun you were using?”
Archie closed his eyes.
“Archie?” Henry asked from far away. “Should we be looking for him?”
* * *
Henry was in deep discussion with Sanchez. For a moment they didn’t notice that Archie was awake. Archie tried to overhear what the two men were talking about, but their voices were hushed and urgent and Archie’s senses were blurred by drugs. The plastic tray was gone. The sky was denser, emulsifying into dusk. The word search book was gone.
Sanchez noticed Archie first. “Look who’s up,” he said, and he and Henry both turned to Archie and headed to his bedside. Sanchez was in his FBI cap and bureau jacket, a badge on a lanyard around his neck, his weapon on his hip, and two BlackBerrys and a walkie-talkie clipped to his waistband.
“Nice costume,” Archie said. “You look like a real G-man.”
Sanchez looked down at his ensemble and grinned. “I was going to go as Hoover, but I couldn’t find a feather boa.”
Henry sat down in the plastic chair at Archie’s bedside. “Sanchez was just updating me on the manhunt,” he said. His eyebrows drew together. “Woman-hunt, whatever.”
Sanchez stood next to Henry, arms crossed over his chest. “Your girl is pretty slick at avoiding capture, but we’re working with our international partners to make it as hard as possible for her.”
Archie was still trying to piece everything together. “How’d you get to us?” he asked Sanchez and Henry.
Sanchez rocked back on his heels. “The elevator was disabled right after you got down there,” he said. “The thing was reinforced with steel, Kevlar, and bulletproof fiberglass. There was no way to get down the shaft. Leo was the one who showed us how to access the tunnel. He showed us the supply cabinet with tools to get through the door. If it hadn’t been for him, you’d probably still be thirty feet under that island.”
It appeared that Archie owed Sanchez an apology. “Sorry I thought you might be dirty,” he said.
“Never said I wasn’t,” Sanchez said. “Leo thinks I am. Carl was worried about him, his allegiances. So he got my name on a list he knew would find its way into Leo’s orbit. He wanted to see what the kid would do with it.”
“He reported it,” Archie said. “So he passed the test.”
“He reported it to you,” Sanchez said. “He was supposed to report it to Carl.”
“Maybe he couldn’t get his Ouija board to work,” Archie said. It occurred to him that it had only been three days since Carl had been murdered. It seemed like longer. “What’s the status of that investigation, anyway? Are there any suspects?”
Henry and Sanchez exchanged looks.
“What?” Archie asked.
Henry scratched his eyebrow. “It was Thor,” he said.
Archie waited for the punch line. Henry leaned back in his chair and glanced up at Sanchez.
“As in the god of thunder?” Archie asked.
“He also goes by Ralph Huntley, when it’s not Halloween,” Sanchez said.
Henry shrugged. “Ralph thought Carl was flirting with his girl,” he said.
“She was dressed up as the Enchantress,” Sanchez added, “so, it’s within the realm of possibility.”
“Turns out Ralph has some anger management issues,” Henry said. “The Enchantress dropped a dime on him—told detectives where to find the Beretta with his prints on it. He confessed this morning.”
“You’re saying that Carl’s murder had nothing to do with Leo or Jack or any of it,” Archie said.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Henry said.
Archie thought about all that Carl’s murder had set in motion—it had sent Archie to Leo, and because they’d been seen together, Leo had been taken back to the island, Susan had been taken to keep Leo in line, which had drawn Archie to the island, which in turn had led Gretchen there. So many were dead. All due to a pass that may or may not have even happened. But at least one good thing had come of it. “I’m just glad that Leo is out of there,” Archie said.
Henry made a coughing noise.
Sanchez looked at his fingernails.
“Leo’s staying,” Henry said.
It took a moment for Henry’s words to register through Archie’s morphine haze. “You’re shitting me,” Archie said, narrowing his eyes at Sanchez.
“Leo’s idea,” Sanchez said. “Not mine. He wants to take down the entire international syndicate,” he added. “He might be able to do it, too.”
“What about the whole underground narcotics warehouse thing?” Archie asked. They couldn’t just pretend they hadn’t seen it, not that kind of quantity.
“Oh, the DEA confiscated the dope,” Sanchez said. “They’re not crazy. But that
shit’s on Jack. And as you know, he’s toes-up. So Leo takes over the old man’s shop and the DEA has an agent in the catbird seat.”
“What about you?” Archie asked.
“I’m done,” Sanchez said. “That interagency cooperation business went out the window about the time I started protesting the decision to leave Leo in the game. The kid just lost his father. He’s using drugs. I don’t want him getting killed on my watch. Anyway, I think I have enough on my plate.” He exhaled slowly. “I have the feeling that Gretchen Lowell is going to be keeping me very busy,” he said. Sanchez glanced at his watch then and straightened up. “I’m supposed to be giving a press conference with the chief in fifteen minutes. We want to get the word out that you’re still kicking.” He nudged Henry’s shoulder with his elbow. “You told him, right? How much worse it could have been?”
Henry’s jaw tightened. “Not yet.”
Sanchez beamed at Archie, apparently tickled to get to deliver the news. “Doctors said that if you’d had a spleen you would have definitely bled out,” he said. “You’d be dead. The fact that she had already taken it out saved your life.” Sanchez shook his head in disbelief.
Just perfect. “Lucky me,” Archie said.
Sanchez eyeballed his watch again. “Either of you want to give me a statement to release to the media?” he asked Archie and Henry.
“Just make something up,” Archie said. Then he remembered what Debbie had said. “Are they really telling everyone to stay indoors tonight?” Archie asked.
“The city is crawling with jokers wearing masks,” Sanchez said. “She could be any one of them. The fewer people in costume, the better.”
It was all so ridiculous, such a waste of time. Didn’t they realize that? She had gotten what she came for. Archie looked from Sanchez to Henry. Why didn’t they see it? “She’s gone,” Archie told them.
“Sure, she’s gone,” Sanchez said, extracting a small, neatly folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket with two fingers. “For now.”
Sanchez held the paper out to Archie. “In the meantime, I know it’s not much, but you’d appreciate it even more if you knew how much paperwork it took.”
Archie took the piece of paper and unfolded it. It was a check made out to Archie from the FBI in the amount of $329.38.
“For the tuxedo,” Sanchez explained. “It was the least we could do.”
Archie laughed. It hurt, but it was the good kind of pain.
“Be seeing you,” Sanchez said with a nod to both Henry and Archie, and he went out the door to Archie’s room into the bright hospital hallway. As the door closed behind him, Archie noticed two uniformed patrol cops standing in the hall.
“It’s a precaution,” Henry said. “And not to change the subject, but I have a call.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and showed it to Archie.
“Go ahead,” Archie said.
Henry stood up and stepped away to the window to take the call. Archie watched him. He was wearing the black jeans and black cowboy boots he’d had on the day before. The pits of his black T-shirt were scalloped with sweat. The seams of his boots were edged with dirt, and the same pale yellow leaf still clung stubbornly to his heel. Henry’s T-shirt was puckered with dried bloodstains. The black cotton camouflaged them, but Archie could see the hardened blood on the fabric, just as it struck him that the blood must be from him.
The anemic sky darkened behind Henry. Archie watched as his friend pulled his notebook from his pants again and held it against the wall to scribble a few notes. Then Henry thanked the person who had called, hung up, and put the phone back in his pocket.
Archie tried to sit up a little, immediately regretting it. “Who was that?” he asked, wincing.
“Lab,” Henry said, walking back to Archie’s bedside. “The DNA on Karim’s teaspoon matched the DNA that Robbins found on Lisa Watson’s body.”
“And?” Archie asked.
“And what?”
Archie examined his friend’s face, looking for some hints as to what was coming. But Henry wasn’t giving him anything. “You’re just learning this now?” Archie asked.
“Yep,” Henry said. He sat on the edge of Archie’s bed, folded his hands, and waited.
Archie struggled to understand. If Henry had only just now matched Karim’s DNA, then what had led Henry and Sanchez to the island the night before? Henry would have had no way of tracing Archie to the island. Even once Henry had heard everything from Rachel—nothing would have led him to figure out where Gretchen had taken him.
“I thought…” Archie said.
“I called the number,” Henry said.
Archie was still. He could feel the saline and the morphine dripping into his vein, the cold bright burn in his blood. He could feel Henry’s girth on his bed, a heavy presence that seemed to anchor the bed to the floor. Archie watched as Henry wedged his hand into his pocket and pulled out a small folded piece of yellow paper: the Post-it note that Archie had given Henry before Jack Reynolds’s party.
Henry unfolded the Post-it note and held it out to Archie. Archie didn’t have to look. He knew what he’d written.
“It’s a telephone number,” Henry said.
Archie turned his eyes to the paper, a knot hardening in his throat. “I told you to look at that if I was gone for twenty-four hours,” Archie said. “I came back.”
“And then you disappeared again,” Henry said evenly. “And there I am—you and Susan both missing, and I’ve got Rachel, or whatever the fuck her name is, with some hysterical, convoluted story, and I’ve got your computer infected with malware that Ngyun tells me has been on it since August, and I don’t mind telling you, I’m getting mighty concerned at this point—and then”—he looked at Archie, incredulously—“I remember the number. Your Visa number, right? That was your joke. Only when I unfold it and look at it, I find this.” Henry held the paper close to Archie’s face. “Ten digits. A drop phone. Untraceable. A hotline I could call if you ever got in the kind of trouble I couldn’t get you out of myself.”
Archie didn’t move.
“So I called it,” Henry said.
He was looking at Archie intently—his skeptical blue eyes watching him, cataloging his reactions.
The shadows in the room seemed longer, the air thicker. Archie swallowed. “Did she pick up?” Archie asked hesitantly.
Henry shook his head, his face shining with amazement. “She did,” he said. “She told me you were on the island, that Karim murdered Lisa Watson, among others, and that both you and Susan were in mortal danger. She even sounded a little concerned.”
A sharp knock on the hospital room door made both men turn.
“You guys decent?” Claire’s voice called.
Henry looked back at Archie and the gravity of his gaze made Archie’s spine hurt. Then Henry crumpled the Post-it note in his hand and rolled the balled-up paper between his palms until it was the size of a marble. “Come in,” he called at the door.
Claire walked in, gnawing at the side of a caramel apple.
“We’re done,” Henry said to her, standing up. “You ready to go home?”
“I have never been more ready to go home,” Claire said, coming around Archie’s bed and kissing Henry on the mouth. She gave Archie a supportive smile. “You look better. You should have seen yourself when we first found you two. You looked like you’d been dead for hours.”
Archie didn’t like to think of Susan having to see him like that. “She must have been terrified,” he said.
“No,” Claire said. “She was focused. She was holding you, to keep your body temp from tanking. She probably saved your life.”
Archie tried to remember, but the last image he saw in his mind was Karim threatening Susan, Archie firing the gun. “I don’t remember that,” he said.
Claire frowned. “You always miss the good stuff, don’t you?”
“Do I?” Archie asked.
Claire sighed and bent down and kissed Archie on the forehead. “Get so
me sleep,” she said. “We’ll come back in the morning once my ankles have returned to a semblance of their normal shape.”
“I look forward to it,” Archie said. “And remember, Ginger needs to sleep in the bed. It’s what she’s used to.”
Henry hesitated. “You want me to stay?” he asked Archie. “I can sleep on the couch. So you have someone around. Between the cats and the corgi, it doesn’t sound like there will be room for me in bed anyway.”
Archie considered the offer—the truth was he wouldn’t have minded the company and he still had a lot of questions. But Claire was giving him the evil eye. She needed Henry more than he did anyway. “You two go home together,” Archie said. “I’ll be okay.”
Claire grinned widely, and tightened her arm around Henry’s waist.
“Catch,” Henry said, tossing Archie the balled-up Post-it note from his hand.
Archie caught it. “I never called the number,” he said to Henry, his fist tightening around the small paper ball. “I didn’t even know it worked. It was something she gave me a long time ago.”
Henry put his arm around Claire, who Archie could tell was pretending not to understand their conversation. “Good thing, I guess,” Henry said.
“Oh,” Claire said to Archie, as if she’d just remembered something. “Star says you two are even, by the way.”
“Star?” Archie said.
“Your stripper friend?” Claire said brightly. “She says hi, and that you’re even.”
Archie tried to think what that could mean and how it had come to pass that he even had a stripper friend. “Okay?” he said.
“I’ll explain later,” Henry told him.
Archie watched as they left the room, arm in arm. Archie was pretty sure he saw Claire give Henry’s ass a squeeze as they went out.
* * *
A nurse in pink scrubs and a pair of white fuzzy rabbit ears on her head was checking Archie’s vitals.
“Sorry I woke you,” she whispered apologetically, her rabbit ears bobbing.
