The following morning, while Darby was watching CNN, Nurse Suzanne came in holding a breakfast tray. The woman was smiling.
‘Mr Cooper’s awake,’ she said. ‘He’s asking for you.’
Darby was pulling back the flimsy hospital sheets when the nurse said, ‘No. Eat first. That’s the deal.’
After she finished, Darby allowed Suzanne to help her sit up but she refused to sit in the wheelchair.
‘I’m not paralysed,’ Darby said.
‘But in your condition, you might still fall. Why chance it?’
‘I’m walking in there by myself.’
The woman sighed. ‘I won’t stop you.’
‘Good. You know what you could do for me? Help me to the bathroom. I want to shower first.’
It was difficult to stand. As she washed herself, she had moments when she felt dizzy, her legs acting like they were about to buckle. But the excitement she felt – the gratitude – of being able to see Coop gave her all the strength she needed.
Darby studied her reflection in the mirror. She thought she looked good. Healthy and strong. She wished she had some makeup, though, some lip gloss and just a touch of eyeliner, some concealer to hide the bags under her eyes. She didn’t have her clothes – they had been taken as evidence – and there was no way she was going into Coop’s room wearing a hospital gown.
When she came back into the room, she told the nurse what she needed. It took Suzanne about twenty minutes to gather everything, and when she returned she was holding a purse and a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt that was a little on the small side. ‘It’s the best I could do,’ she said about the clothes. ‘The makeup is in my purse. Help yourself to whatever you need.’
The hall and reception area were noisy, full of soldiers and various government types – Feds, she assumed, given their sharp suits. Everyone was staring at her.
‘First room there on your right,’ Suzanne said. ‘Let me help you.’
‘No. I can do it on my own.’
Suzanne watched Darby shuffle across the hall, using the wall for support.
Coop’s bed was elevated, his face turned to the window, which glowed with the last afternoon light. His bare chest was covered in bandages. He looked pale and, even underneath all the muscle, seemed so incredibly fragile.
He didn’t notice she was there until she sat beside him, on the edge of his mattress. He rolled his head slowly to her. His eyes widened, then closed into slits. He smiled weakly.
His voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper when he spoke. ‘I thought I dreamed you … I thought I’d die without seeing you again.’
She wanted to cry in gratitude and relief, but didn’t. She needed to be strong. For him.
‘Did they tell you the good news?’ he asked.
‘About the staph infection? They said –’
‘No, the other good news. That I’m officially a heroin addict. A junkie.’
His eyes grew wet and he turned his head to the window.
Darby grabbed his hand. He tried to pull it away, but he didn’t have the strength, and she wouldn’t let him go. ‘We’ll get through this together,’ she said, rubbing her fingers against his callused palm. ‘We always do.’
He said nothing, just stared out the window, Darby wanting to pull him close to her, find a way to put him inside her and keep him there because he was medicine and food and breath. He was everyone and everything she needed and wanted.
‘I shouldn’t have gone in there alone,’ he said.
‘Gone where? Karen Decker’s house?’
A slow nod and he licked his lips. ‘The first time I was in there, it kept bothering me, how neat and tidy everything was,’ he said, his eyes searching the sky beyond the windows. ‘It was too clean – too perfect.’
She rubbed his hand, only half listening because she no longer cared about Karen Decker or the Red Ryder or anyone else; she was overwhelmed by the fact they were both alive and sitting here together, a new road in front of them because of the words they’d shared in a shelter buried deep in the earth, a place where Karen Decker and others had begged for their lives.
‘So I went back there,’ Coop said. ‘I went back there late at night because something was nagging at me and I didn’t know what, so I went through the house and examined every inch of it. Every nook and cranny, because I was certain something was there and all I had to do was find it. And when I was in the bedroom, examining the bookcases, I stumbled – and that’s the right word – I stumbled upon the lever for the secret door.’
‘I found it. The passageway inside the house.’
‘The bodies?’
‘Yes.’
Coop nodded, kept nodding. ‘Who are they? Do we know?’
‘No. Not yet.’
‘I saw them. I saw the remains, and there I was, alone in this secret chamber buried inside this ordinary-looking house, and part of me – just closed. I don’t know how else to describe it. But right then I knew I was done. That I didn’t – couldn’t – do this any more. And when I was –’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Darby said. ‘What matters is –’
‘They were waiting for me in the bedroom. Lucius and the sheriff and some of his people, and they all had police batons. I don’t remember what happened, but when I woke up I was locked inside this room, and there was this girl there who had a knife. Couldn’t have been more than eight, maybe ten years old.’ Coop blinked several times and then closed his eyes, kept them closed. ‘She was there to practise how to cut, and Lucius, her grandfather, was there, teaching her. His granddaughter. An eight-year-old girl.’
Darby was about to speak when Coop suddenly turned his head and faced her.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.
‘I found you. That’s all that matters.’
‘What you told me …’ He was too weak to finish.
Darby said the words for him. For them. ‘I love you too.’ She brought his hand up to her mouth and kissed it. She smiled down at him. ‘Until the stars fall from the sky.’
Coop had drifted off to sleep when a woman who looked like she had been sculpted from God’s hand stepped into the room. She stood nearly six feet tall in high-heeled boots that went up past her knees, and she looked ridiculously beautiful, her features flawless, all perfect angles, not a single blemish.
Not a Fed, Darby thought. Too stylish. The woman wore black leggings – everything she wore was black, the skirt, blouse and chunky cardigan sweater. A female Fed wouldn’t dress that way, and she wasn’t carrying a sidearm or a badge – and her black hair, thick and coarse, was long and spilled artfully over her shoulders. A TV reporter, Darby thought, maybe a lawyer.
Only the woman had a wadded-up tissue in her fist, and her eyes were bloodshot from crying.
‘Darby?’ she asked. She had a British accent.
Darby got to her feet, wobbling slightly. The woman took her into her long and slightly perfumed arms, and hugged her fiercely against her cashmere-covered chest.
The woman wept, shuddering.
‘Thank you,’ she cried. ‘Thank you for saving him.’
Darby gently removed the woman from her arms. ‘I’m sorry, but have we met?’
‘I’m sorry. Yes. I mean, no. No, we haven’t, but I’ve heard so much about you. I’m Amanda. Jackson’s fiancée.’
Darby felt the room begin to spin.
Felt the sting of tears and blinked them back – willed them back, as Amanda said, ‘I’m sorry we had to meet under these circumstances.’
Don’t cry, an inner voice screamed. Don’t you dare break down in front of her.
‘They called me late last night,’ Amanda said, dabbing her eyes with the tissue. ‘Told me what happened and then some government men came over and put me on a private plane.’
‘Good,’ Darby said. Her voice was not her own, and her face felt hot and damp. ‘That’s good.’
And it all made sense now, why Coop had been acting so oddly that night at Logan Airport, why he had been paying her so many compliments – why he had gotten so drunk. He was trying to find a way to deliver the news that he was engaged.
Amanda cupped Darby’s face in her elegant and smooth hands. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and kissed Darby firmly on the forehead, as if wanting to brand her.
Amanda was crying again. ‘Thank you for bringing him back home to me.’