RAIN HIT ME LIKE a swarm of hornets the instant I stepped out of the Honda. The wind was flinging the drops almost sideways. I ran up the middle of the street, toward the eastern side of Harborview. Was I too late? Again?
The ambulance dock was the closest entrance. I followed a group of paramedics and drivers as they race-walked their gurneys through the automatic doors. One of the patients fought violently against his restraints, screaming. Nobody looked at me. Inside, I broke off from the medics and headed for the hallway.
It could be a trap. I didn’t doubt that Addy’s message was legit, but Guerin might still be counting on the news to draw me in. He could have a couple of cops watching the critical ward right now.
I had to risk it. Had to. Even if Guerin handcuffed me right next to the damn hospital bed, at least I’d be there.
And I had to be there, for Dono, if this was the end.
The elevator doors opened on the fourth floor. No cops in sight on the ward. No guards from Standard Security posted at Dono’s door either. The hair on my scalp rose.
I ran, drops of water flying off me, down the hall. I was halfway there when Addy Proctor stepped out of Dono’s room, followed by Dr. Singh and one of the uniformed men from Standard.
Addy spotted me first. “Van, thank God,” she said. “He’s still with us.”
“You should go in,” said Singh.
I did. They stayed outside. The door shut behind me.
He looked very thin. The day before, I might’ve believed he was only sleeping. Now his head didn’t seem to dent the pillow quite enough, and his steel-colored hair was disheveled. They had more wires attached to him now, a new monitoring machine next to the bed.
I stepped forward and took his hand. It was cool to the touch.
“Dono,” I said, “it’s Van.”
A nurse had tucked the sheets and the sky blue blanket very neatly around him. The top of the sheet made a crisp white stripe across his chest. It rose and lowered a fraction as the air was forced into his lungs and sucked back out again.
Rain beat against the windows, the wind behind it calling. Loud enough to mask the erratic tap of the EKG. A downbeat of Dono’s heart every two seconds, then three, then holding back at two again.
“We’ll get him,” I said. “I’ve seen the son of a bitch. Boone McGann. He’ll burn.” I leaned in close. “You need to be there to see it. To watch his face when judgment day hits him. You need to see that, Dono.”
His hand squeezed mine. Light as a spider’s touch.
I squeezed back, willing it not to be a reflex.
“Dono,” I said.
His back arched violently. He coughed and choked against the tube of the ventilator. I turned and yelled for help as his arm jerked weakly under my hand.
A nurse yanked the door open and pushed me away from the bed. She pinned his forehead down while her other hand began removing the ventilator. The heart monitor was shrieking. The nurse called for Singh. Addy’s face at the edge of the doorway, pale and clenched.
Dono’s eyes half opened. Black gun barrels in his long white face. The first I’d seen those eyes in ten years. His body was rigid, and his head, free of the ventilator mask, moved an inch one way, then the other.
I stepped forward, and his eyes found mine. Stayed there. His mouth twitched.
I leaned down and put my ear close to his face. Singh said something to me. There was an exhalation of breath from Dono against my cheek.
“I’m here, Granddad,” I said.
Another breath. I was so close that the stubble on his chin grazed my face.
Somebody was pulling at my arm. The guard. I reached out without looking and shoved him, and he crashed over something and fell to the floor.
“Van.” I heard Dono say it. The V was only air, pushed out an extra fraction.
“Tell me,” I said.
His big hand flailed suddenly and grabbed mine where it rested on the blanket, my fingers still looped around the ring of keys from Juliet’s car. He gripped me with spasmodic strength until the metal teeth bit into my skin.
“Here.”
“I’m here,” I said, my ear still an inch from his mouth. “Tell me.”
Dono went limp. His clenched fist eased over my hand. I looked up in time to see his eyes lose the light.
Someone grabbed me again, pulling me back. I let them. Singh closed in and started checking Dono’s pupils. A nurse gave him an injection. Another stood by a defibrillator cart, pads ready.
Addy was saying something to me, from outside the room. I looked at her.
“Come away, Van,” she said. The orderlies at my back released their hold on me.
I went. My eyes were still on Dono.
Addy and I waited and watched the whirl of action try to match the storm outside. I already knew it was pointless. Three minutes. Five, until Singh called it. Then the air was still again, somehow, and everyone had left the room, hovering around my peripheral vision.
“There will be time later,” a voice said.
It was Hollis, next to Addy. “We have to leave, lad,” he said. The nurses and orderlies and Singh and Addy all stared at him, uncomprehending. “Police are coming. There’ll be time for your man soon, but right now you and I have to get gone.”
I wanted to stay with Dono, but there was no mistaking the tension lining Hollis’s broad face. He was soaking wet, his dark shirt plastered across his barrel chest and belly. I nodded.
He turned and walked quickly down the hallway, and I trailed along. Hollis led me out of the ward and to the open stairwell by the elevators.
He grunted. “Pray God they haven’t locked the fucking door,” he said as we went down the stairs and into a side hallway. At the end of it was a security door. “I found this doctor’s entrance.” He pushed, and it swung open instantly.
“There.” Hollis pointed, and I walked through the rain and stood at the passenger door of his big DeVille while he bustled around to get in the driver’s side and hit the power locks. I opened the door and sat down next to him.
The wind wasn’t as strong in the shadow of the building. With the starless night and the torrent of water washing over the car windows, we might have been on the ocean floor.
He started the engine and rubbed his hands together for warmth. “Christ Jesus. What a night.” He looked at me. “I’m not meaning to be cruel, son, but did you make it here on time? For your granddad?”
Van, Dono had said. Here.
I nodded.
Hollis sighed. “Well, that’s something at least.” He reached out and gripped the steering wheel, pushing against it until it creaked to stretch his muscles.
“How’d you know?” I said.
“About Dono? That lovely old bat back there. Miz Proctor. She called and told me what was happening. She said she’d already sent you a message but you’d not replied. And that the cops were here, too.” Hollis fidgeted in his seat, trying to face me square on. I hadn’t moved since I’d gotten into the car. Hollis couldn’t seem to stop.
“I knew you’d race here the second you heard,” he continued. “So I thought you could use a little help. I rang up Homicide. Your boy Guerin wasn’t there, but his partner was.”
“Kanellis.”
“That’s the name. I told him I was an old friend of your grandfather’s and that you had turned up at my door pleading for shelter. I thought you were armed and desperate. Begged him to hurry.”
I imagined Guerin out there in the rainstorm. “Where’d you send him?”
“Well, I might have told Kanellis I was Jimmy Corcoran. That little prick could use the excitement. Besides, Jimmy lives close enough to the hospital that I hoped they would send the cops on duty here. We got lucky.”
He exhaled and sat back in his seat. “Listen to me run on. God, boyo. I’m sorry. You have to know that your granddad held on as long as he could. He must have known you were here.”
I closed my eyes. Listened to the uneven drumroll of the rain on the roof. Twelve hours before, I’d listened to Julian Formes die. I’d chased after Boone. If I’d caught him then and been able to whisper the news in Dono’s ear, would that have made a difference?
“There’s something else I can do for you,” Hollis said. “If you’ll let me. Sometime back, your man was in one of his dark moods. He made arrangements for himself. A service, a wake, the whole deal. I know it’s not something you want to think about—”
“Get it rolling. He’d want it to be soon.”
“True enough.” He looked at me. “You can’t keep running like this, lad. Not for much longer.”
“I won’t have to. Thanks, Hollis.” I opened the door and stepped out of the DeVille. The rain fell straight down now, from clouds to pavement with hardly a sound.