Clark Bush opened his eyes to the ever-present glow of LED lighting in the windowless ICU ward in the Tucson Medical Center. He breathed with the help of an oxygen mask placed over bandages covering most of his damaged face, swollen by cuts and myriad broken bones.
Drugs eased his pain. His vision was still blurred in the aftermath of a concussion. Everything in his curtained-off cubby hole seemed to swim. He faded in and out of a dreamy stupor, feeling like he was being pushed on a gurney through an endless maze of hallways.
Jumbled bits and pieces of the night before came back. His boyhood home reduced to cinders. His mother dragging him down the driveway. Someone knocking at the front door . . .
He moaned softly. Who had it been? He remembered nothing, hard as he tried to dredge up an image.
A nurse pushed aside the curtain and checked his IVs and life support monitor.
Clark struggled to focus as the woman straightened the sheet covering him. She patted his leg. “How are we doing?”
“Mmph.” Missing teeth made talking difficult. Clark pointed to a water glass on a cart.
“Let me get that.” The nurse pressed a foot control to raise the head of the bed, inserted a straw in the plastic cup and handed it to him.
Clark fumbled with the straw and poked at a sore spot inside his mouth where he had been cut by broken teeth.
“Here, let me.” The nurse held the straw and cup steady while he sipped.
“Are you up to seeing anyone? The police want to talk to you when you’re ready.” She stood by the curtain.
He made a slight nod.
“An officer will be in shortly.” The nurse left and he closed his eyes, wishing he could dream his way out of the nightmare he was trapped in.
He dozed off, but jerked awake. A man sat near him, wearing a brown suit, blue shirt, and a silver horned toad bolo cinching a string tie.
“Good morning, sir. Do you feel well enough to talk about what happened?” Detective Frank Ryder introduced himself and held out a badge.
Clark was self-conscious of missing upper and lower front teeth that had been knocked out. He covered his mouth with a hand and mumbled. “I’ll try.”
Ryder set a small tape recorder on the edge of the bed. “Take your time. You’ve been through a lot. What do you remember?”
“I don’t know. My memory . . .” Clark tried to make fists. One hand was fine; the fingers on the other were splinted. “Someone was at the front door. I opened it but after that it’s a blank.” He furrowed his brow. “My mom helped me get away. Then we heard the house go up. Saw the fire. How is she?”
“She’s very upset but not injured. I imagine she’ll come see you before long.” Ryder waited for Clark to resume, but the patient fell silent.
The detective coughed. “You both were lucky to get out when you did. Did you smell gas in the house?”
“No. My mom had been sleeping. I heard something and went to the door.” Clark paled. His forehead looked clammy with sweat.
“You didn’t hear a voice, see anyone?”
Clark massaged his hands. “I don’t remember. It’s like I was dropped into the twilight zone. But I think it was Rod Stone. He tried to kill us.”
“Who?” Ryder fastened his eyes on the patient.
“Fern’s so-called investment guy. We already talked to the police about him.” Clark smoothed a wrinkle in the sheet, frustrated at his truant memory.
“Was he at the door when you answered?” The detective sat on the edge of his chair.
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” Clark pressed a fist onto the bed.
“Your right hand was injured. You might have instinctively put it out to protect yourself,” Ryder said. “That might have saved your life.”
“I wish I could remember.”
The nurse poked her head around the half-opened curtain. “The patient needs rest. He has a head injury.”
Ryder tensed his shoulders and rose. Outside the enclosure, he addressed the woman. “I’ll need to talk to him again. I told the nursing supervisor we need to station an officer here in the ICU and by Mrs. Bush’s room for security. Someone tried to kill them and may try again.”
***
Cait kept waking up and rehashing the events of the night before. The barrage of automatic rifle fire pounding the vacant house, the sickening realization that she and Jack had been tracked from the moment they left Albuquerque.
She lay in the dark, listening to predawn sounds. Coyotes calling back and forth, commuters already racing down the Old Spanish Trail. Darkness faded, revealing the shapes of bedroom furniture, a picture hanging on the wall. Finally she threw back the blankets and turned on a bedside light to shake out her shoes. Thought it was winter, she was paranoid about stepping on a scorpion curled up inside.
She raised the blinds and stood at the window. Soon the first rays would backlight the Rincons and reveal a desert lush with wild grasses and cactuses.
Cait lowered herself onto a throw rug to do push-ups, sit-ups and stretches. When she finished, dawn outlined the big saguaro behind the cottage.
Someone stirred out front and she looked out the bedroom door. Dressed for a run, Jack filled the coffee maker on the kitchen counter. Chris snored away in a sleeping bag on the living room floor.
Cait stole over to the table and sat. Using his left arm, Jack retrieved mugs and set them down carefully to keep them from clinking on the counter.
“Sleep ok?” She leaned into Jack as he put his good arm around her waist.
“Better. This cast is coming off soon.”
“I smell coffee.” Chris shifted in his sleeping bag and stretched.
“Sorry to wake you.” Cait turned toward her brother.
“I’ve always been an early bird.” Chris wiggled around in the sleeping bag and emerged dressed in sweats. “Hit me with some caffeine.”
Jack filled the mugs and turned on a small TV set tuned into a local newscast.
They were riveted to the screen as the top story unfolded. A newscaster solemnly relayed the details of an apparent natural gas explosion that had leveled a Catalina Foothills home on Via Splendido. She noted that two people had been transported to Tucson Medical Center, one in serious condition. “Authorities are investigating the cause of the gas leak. No other homes or structures were damaged by the explosion and fire.”
“What are the chances?” Jack plucked his cell phone from the counter and tapped out a number. Fern Bush lived on that street.
He left a message for Clark Bush and then called Detective Larry Bison’s cell number. To his surprise, Bison answered, on the job already.
Jack explained his concern for Clark and Fern Bush after hearing about the disaster. His face tightened as he listened to the detective.
He hung up and faced Cait and Chris. “That was Fern’s house. Clark’s been seriously hurt.”