And maybe D’Amato took the time and trouble to mount video cameras in every storage facility in the city and has someone watching the tapes, so he’ll know when you’re back in town.
That might sound paranoid. But he wouldn’t put it past that devious bastard. D’Amato knew J.D. had shipped arms to San Antonio from Afghanistan, which he’d needed to store somewhere other than his home. San Antonio was where J.D. lived, where his family was located. It made logical sense that he would have shipped the heroin to an address here, and that he would have a storage unit somewhere in the city so the arms—and the smack—would be easily accessible.
Which, of course, he had and he did.
If D’Amato had arranged for the surveillance, how soon after the camera captured his picture was someone liable to show up at the facility? Did he have time to get in and out?
J.D. could buy the explosives he needed somewhere else. But he needed to retrieve the heroin, now that he’d found a buyer for it in South America.
He grimaced. He was going in. He would save himself time and trouble by using his own explosives. And he wasn’t leaving without those precious plastic bags of smack.
He couldn’t hide behind the tinted car window, because he had to key in his code to get the metal gate to open. He tugged down his white ball cap with the embroidered burnt orange University of Texas logo and pulled his hair forward as best he could to cover the scab on his cheek.
He had no way of knowing whether someone reviewed the surveillance video concurrently or once an hour or once a week, so he decided to get in and get out as fast as he could.
He punched in the numbers and waited impatiently for the gate to open. He drove to his storage unit, keyed open the lock and held his breath as he rolled up the door.
He didn’t know what he’d expected. That the government had come in and taken everything, maybe. That D’Amato had confiscated the munitions and heroin. That his wife had somehow discovered the existence of this storage unit and told her Texas Ranger boyfriend about it.
But everything was exactly as he’d left it.
J.D. grinned. He stepped inside and rolled the door most of the way down while he went through the munitions to see what he could use to make his IED. He collected some Composition C-4 (RDX), some trinitrotoluene (TNT), a couple of grenades and some Semtex—RDX and pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN).
He debated whether to take along a claymore mine. He wasn’t sure he could incorporate it in his IED, but he decided it couldn’t hurt to have it on hand. He collected a couple of throwaway cell phones he kept in storage, one of which he could use as a detonator.
J.D. planned to use an Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP), or shaped charge, with his IED to produce a jet of high velocity superheated gas to burn through whatever protection Shaw might have welded under his armored, bullet-proof, chauffeur-driven car.
He was careful to put the various explosive substances and detonators in separate cardboard boxes when he loaded them into the back of the Lexus. He loaded the heroin in the backseat.
He would need to obey all road signs on his way to Houston. It would be too ironic if the cops pulled him over for running a stop sign.
J.D. was almost done when he saw another car arrive at the front gate. He was instantly wary, because the car just sat there. The gate didn’t go up. And the car didn’t back away.
He didn’t hesitate. He pulled the door of his unit down and locked it, got into his Lexus and headed for the exit, which was on the opposite side of the storage facility. He needed to punch in his code again to get out. He waited with his hands clutched on the wheel for the railed wrought-iron gate to slide open.
He was already on the exit road when he realized it led right back around to the front entrance. He was going to be passing by whoever was stopped at the front gate. For the moment, he was hidden by the storage building. He had about five seconds to make up his mind what he was going to do.
J.D. tugged his hat down, gripped the wheel even tighter, and kept the Lexus traveling at the 15 mph speed limit posted in the parking area, as he made his way back out to the main road.
He glanced anxiously in the mirror and watched as a squat man with a bald head got out of the car parked at the entrance.
It was Roberto.
J.D. felt a spurt of terror but managed to resist stepping on the gas. He didn’t want to do anything to look like he was running, because if he did, that monster would come after him. He was so focused on the image in the rearview mirror that he nearly ran into another car coming off the main road. The driver honked angrily.
And Roberto looked to see what all the noise was about.
J.D. hit the gas.
He was afraid to stay on I-410, so he took U.S. 281 out of San Antonio headed north. Which he realized was foolish, because he was going to have to head east sometime if he wanted to get to Houston. He was afraid to stay at even the cheapest motel, certain D’Amato had sent pictures of him to all the places in South Texas where he would be liable to pay cash.
He couldn’t afford to underestimate the mob boss. He’d seen what was left of men—and women—in Brazil who hadn’t spoken quickly enough when they’d been questioned by Roberto concerning his whereabouts.
So he spent the night sleeping under a tree. It seemed safer than sleeping in a car full of C-4 and TNT and Semtex. There was enough dew on the grass and enough chill in the air to make him miserable.
He took solace from the knowledge that it was just one more thing his bitch wife was going to pay for with her life.
19
Ryan was still running a fever of a hundred and two when Jack checked at three in the morning. He sat on the edge of his son’s bed, debating whether to wake Holly, who’d been sure the Tylenol she’d given their son at midnight would bring his fever down. She had to work in the morning and with her pregnancy, she needed all the rest she could get. So maybe he should let her sleep.
“Daddy?” his son croaked.
“I’m here, Ryan. Can I get something for you?”
“I don’t feel good. It hurts.”
Jack flipped on the bedside lamp. “Where do you hurt?”
Ryan put a hand on his right shoulder. And his left elbow. And his right knee.
Jack unbuttoned Ryan’s pajama top, which was damp with sweat, and moved it aside to see if there was a rash or some other visible symptom of what was wrong with his son. The only thing he found was a bruise on the kid’s elbow. He tugged the leg of his pajama bottom up and found a small bruise on his knee. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing you wouldn’t find on just about any normal six-year-old boy.
So should he wake Holly, or not?
Ryan moaned.
That did it. “I’m going to get your mother. I’ll be right back.” Holly was the doctor. Maybe she would see something wrong that he didn’t.
He put on the hall light and left Holly’s bedroom door open so the light could stream in, rather than turning on her bedside lamp. She was lying on her back, her five-months-pregnant belly pushing out the sheet. Maybe it was the uneven illumination from the hall, but he thought he saw dark circles under her eyes. He really hated to wake her. But he was afraid not to.
He touched her shoulder and said, “Holly?”
She came awake slowly, a sign perhaps of how tired she was, or how deeply asleep she’d been. She shoved herself up onto her elbows with effort and said, “What time is it?”
“It’s about three.”
“In the morning?” she said, blinking herself awake as she pushed herself completely upright.
“Ryan’s fever is still a hundred and two.”
She shoved the covers out of the way and dropped her feet onto the floor. She was so concerned about Ryan that she forgot what she was wearing.
Jack was treated to the sight of powder-blue silk sliding down over her breasts and belly the way his hands might have. He could see the shadow of her dark pink areolas. Static cling kept the silk attached to her belly and
legs, revealing her navel and the dark cleft between her naked thighs. He was still standing where he was when she was gone from the room.
Fully aroused.
He muttered a foul oath and hurried after her. It was a simple physiological reaction. It would have happened with any pretty woman he’d seen in a revealing nightgown.
Any pretty five-months-pregnant woman?
He consoled himself with the thought that his body didn’t know he was getting a divorce, so it was reacting as it always had to his wife.
When he got to Ryan’s doorway, he found Holly sitting beside their son, using her fingertips to check the glands on either side of his throat.
“Could it be mumps?” Jack asked.
“He’s been immunized against mumps, but there’s an infinitesimal chance the MMR vaccine didn’t work.”
“MMR?”
“Measles, mumps and rubella,” Holly explained. “Have you had mumps, Jack? If you haven’t, you shouldn’t be around him. The mumps can cause really unpleasant complications in grown men.”
“I had the mumps when I was eight.”
“As far-fetched as mumps seems, Ryan has all the symptoms—fever, achiness, loss of appetite. His lymph nodes are even swollen. They weren’t last night.”
“Should we take him to the emergency room?”
“He doesn’t have any abdominal or testicular pain,” she said. “I think tomorrow’s soon enough to take him to the doctor. If it is mumps, he’s going to be uncomfortable for three or four days. There isn’t anything the hospital can do for him tonight that we can’t.”
“I can stay home with him tomorrow,” Jack volunteered.
“Are you sure?” Holly said. “I can call the hospital and tell them I can’t come in for another week.”
“I can handle it,” Jack said. “How do you suppose he got infected?”
“He must have run into someone with mumps at school before we left Kansas,” Holly said. “I’ll call the principal tomorrow and let her know, so the school can watch for symptoms in other kids.”
“Mumps. I can’t believe the vaccine didn’t work,” Jack mused.
“Maybe it isn’t the mumps,” she murmured.
She ran Ryan’s pajama top through her fingers and muttered, “Night sweats. Night sweats.”
“What?”
“No. No,” she said. “It couldn’t be. Not Ryan.”
“What is it, Holly?”
She hurriedly removed Ryan’s pajama shirt, then tugged off his pajama bottoms so he was lying there wearing only a tiny pair of jockey shorts.
Jack took a step closer and watched as she examined their son from top to bottom, pausing at the bruises on his shoulder—which he’d missed—and on his elbow and his knee. She then turned him over and found another bruise on his hip that Jack hadn’t seen.
“No. No,” she said, shaking her head. “Not possible.” She stood and crossed to Ryan’s chest of drawers, pulled out a dry pair of pajamas and carefully dressed Ryan again. When she was done she turned to Jack and said, “Will you bring him some Pedialyte? I store a couple of bottles in the fridge. We need to keep him hydrated.”
Jack headed to the kitchen to retrieve the drink, which was specially formulated to replace fluids when a child had been vomiting or had diarrhea. But Ryan had neither symptom. So why had Holly asked him to get Pedialyte for their son?
He grabbed the plastic bottle from the fridge and hurried back to Ryan’s room. Holly wasn’t there. He followed her voice back to her bedroom. She was pacing away from him, her body arched backward against the weight of her pregnancy, one hand pressed against her hip as though her back ached.
She was talking on her cell phone.
“He has all the symptoms, the fever, the night sweats, the bruises, the petechiae. He has aching joints and he’s been feeling tired. I thought it was mumps.” She sobbed and let go of her hip to thread her fingers through her hair, shoving it away from her wan face. “I wanted it to be the mumps.”
“It’s not?” Jack said sharply.
She whirled and put a hand to her mouth. He could see her eyes were wide with fright. Which scared him.
“Who are you talking to?”
She held on to the phone with both hands, as though she needed them both to keep from dropping it. “It’s a colleague in Kansas. A specialist.”
His hand tightened on the bottle of Pedialyte. “What’s wrong with Ryan? Do we need to get him to the emergency room?”
Her eyes stayed focused on Jack’s as she told the person on the other end of the line, “I’ll call you tomorrow when we get the results of the blood tests.” She snapped her cell phone closed and set it down on the end table beside the bed.
When she turned back to Jack, he saw her face was bleached nearly white. She looked like she was about to fall down.
He hurried across the room and caught her around the waist as her knees collapsed.
She clutched him around the neck and began to weep.
Jack’s throat was constricted with fear. “What’s wrong with Ryan?”
“I don’t know for sure.”
“Then what do you think it is?” he persisted.
She took his face between her hands. “I don’t want you to panic, Jack. Treatments have come a long way.”
He reached up and shoved her hands away and held her shoulders as he pulled her face close to his and said savagely, “Just tell me what the hell is wrong with him, Holly.”
She pulled free and took a couple of uneven steps backward, wrapping her arms around herself, since his were no longer there to comfort her. She looked up at him, her chin trembling, and said, “I think Ryan has leukemia.”
20
Holly sent Jack into the waiting room of the Robin Bush Child and Adolescent Clinic at M.D. Anderson’s Children’s Cancer Hospital, while a technician drew enough of Ryan’s blood to test whether his white blood cell count was elevated. Jack was fine when he was the one injured, but he’d nearly fainted the first time Ryan fell and cut his lip and blood dripped down his two-year-old chin.
Holly sat beside her brave son, who hadn’t cried when the needle went into a vein in his arm. She felt tears sting her eyes and burn her nose. If Ryan’s white blood cell count was high, as she feared, her son would be anesthetized tomorrow morning in order to withdraw a sample of bone marrow from his hip and do a spinal tap. Other tests would be done to check his liver and kidney function.
Ryan would learn to hate needles. To hate the smell of the hospital. To hate the chemotherapy treatments that would be needed to save his life. He would hate the fatigue and the nausea and the painful sores in his mouth and digestive tract. He would hate being bald at the age of six. And he would hate the seeming endlessness of it all.
Except, there would be an end. When he went into remission. Or when the disease accelerated and he needed a bone marrow transplant. Or when the disease won.
Holly couldn’t believe she hadn’t recognized Ryan’s symptoms immediately as leukemia. But they were similar enough to flu that she’d been inclined—needed—to believe the less serious cause for his illness. When she’d looked more closely last night and found the petechiae, the tiny red spots under Ryan’s skin, her heart had skipped a frantic beat.
It was inconceivable that her own child could be stricken with the disease she’d spent her entire professional career fighting to cure. Especially when she knew that, despite the best doctors’ best efforts, children still died from the disease.
The only comfort she had was the knowledge that if he had leukemia, Ryan couldn’t have been sick for very long. His pediatrician had given him a clean bill of health before he started school last fall. So if he’d developed leukemia, it had happened sometime during the past six months. Hopefully, if he was sick, the disease hadn’t spread to his spinal fluid. Finding the disease at an early stage could mean better management and control of it.
Holly gnawed her lower lip worriedly. The swollen lymph nodes were a bad sign. If it
was leukemia.
“I appreciate you running these tests for me so quickly,” she said, stepping aside with the technician as he labeled the last vial of blood he’d drawn from Ryan.
“You’re welcome, Dr. Tanner. It’s a privilege to meet someone who’s come up with so many breakthroughs to fight leukemia. Welcome to M.D. Anderson.”
“It’s Dr. McKinley,” she corrected him.
“You got married? Congratulations,” the technician said.
“Just not getting divorced, after all,” Holly explained with a smile.
The technician eyed her pregnant stomach and said, “Sounds like a plan.”
She turned and saw Jack standing in the doorway. His eyes were wary and anxious and his face was lined with weariness. He looked every one of his nearly forty-three years.
“Not getting divorced, after all?” he said cynically.
Holly had planned to use her maiden name at M.D. Anderson, since she’d expected to be divorced from Jack by the time she started work. Many of her journal articles and much of her initial research had been done as Dr. Tanner, so it was a name by which she was recognized in the medical community.
She shrugged and said, “My grant application and all my paperwork here at M.D. Anderson was done as Dr. Tanner. I’m making the correction on the go.”
“How’s Ryan?” Jack asked.
“He did fine. He’s hanging out in the playroom with the other kids, while we wait for the results of his blood test.”
“How long is that going to take?”
“Not long. I could use a cup of coffee,” Holly said, not because she needed it, but because she could see Jack did. “I saw a coffee shop downstairs near where we got on the elevator.”
“Should we take Ryan with us?”
Holly saw the panicked look in Jack’s eyes and said, “There’s someone keeping an eye on the kids in the playroom. Just let me tell Ryan where we’ll be. I’ll meet you at the elevator.”
Holly found her son sitting at a table coloring. He looked up and said, “Can we go now?”
Shattered Page 16
