After V muttered a quick "bye," he inhaled deep on his cig and muttered on the exhale, "You can stop pretending not to be next to me."
"What a relief. I suck at it."
"Not your fault you take up space."
"So she got him?" As Vishous nodded, Butch got dead serious. "Promise me something."
"What."
"You won't kill that surgeon." Butch knew exactly what it was like to trip on the outside world and fall into this vampire rabbit hole. In his case, it had worked out, but when it came to Manello? "This is not the guy's fault and not his problem."
V flicked his butt into the bin and glanced over, his diamond eyes cold as an arctic night. "We'll see how it goes, cop."
With that, he pivoted and punched through into where his sister was.
Well, at least the SOB was honest, Butch thought with a curse.
Manny really didn't like other people driving his Porsche 911 Turbo. In fact, short of his mechanic, no one else ever did.
Tonight, however, he'd allowed Jane to get behind the wheel because, one, she was competent and could shift without grinding his transmission into a stump; two, she'd maintained that the only way she could take him where they were going was if she were doing the ten-and-two routine; and three, he was still reeling from seeing someone he'd buried pop out of the bushes to hi-how're-ya him.
So maybe operating heavy machinery going seventy miles an hour was not a good idea.
He could not believe he was sitting next to her, heading north, in his car.
But of course he'd said yes to her request. He was a sap for women in distress ... and he was also a surgeon who was an OR junkie.
Duh.
There were a lot of questions, though. And a lot of pissed off. Yeah, sure, he was hoping to get to a place of peace and light and sunshine and all that namby-pamby bullshit, but he wasn't holding his breath for the kumbaya-all-cools. Which was ironic. How many times had he stared up at his ceiling at night, all nestled in his beddy-bye with his new Lagavulin habit, praying that by some miracle his former chief of trauma would come back to him?
Manny glanced over at her profile. Illuminated in the glow of the dash, she was still smart. Still strong.
Still his kind of woman.
But that was never happening now. Aside from the whole liar-liarpants-on-fire about her death, there was a gunmetal gray ring on her left hand.
"You got married," he said.
She didn't look at him, just kept driving. "Yes. I did."
That headache that had sprouted the instant she'd made her appearance instantly went from grouchy to gruesome. And meanwhile, shadowy memories Loch Nessed below the surface of his conscious mind, tantalizing him, and making him want to work for the full reveal.
He had to cut that cognitive search-and-rescue off, though, before he popped an aneurysm from the strain. Besides, he wasn't getting anywhere with it - no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't reach what he sensed was there, and he had a feeling he could do permanent damage if he kept struggling.
As he looked out the car window, fluffy pine trees and budding oaks stood tall in the moonlight, the forest that ran around Caldwell's edges growing thicker as they traveled away from the city proper and its choking knot of population and buildings.
"You died out here," he said grimly. "Or at least pretended you did."
A biker had found her Audi in and among the trees on a stretch of road not far from here, the car having careened off the shoulder. No body, though - and not because of the fire, as it had turned out.
Jane cleared her throat. "I feel like all I've got is 'I'm sorry.' And that just sucks."
"Not a party on my end, either."
Silence. Lots of silence. But he wasn't one to keep asking when all he got in return was I'm sorry.
"I wish I could have told you," she said abruptly. "You were the hardest to leave."
"You didn't dump your job, though, did you. Because you're still working as a surgeon."
"Yes, I am."
"What's your husband like?"
Now she winced. "You're going to meet him."
Great. Joy.
Slowing down, she took a right-hand turn off onto ... a dirt road? What the hell?
"FYI," he muttered, "this car was built for racetracks, not roughing it."
"This is the only way in."
To where? he wondered. "You're so going to owe me for this."
"I know. And you're the only one who can save her."
Manny flashed his eyes over. "You didn't say it was a 'her.'"
"Should it matter?"
"Given how much I don't get about all of this, everything matters."
A mere ten yards in and they went through the first of countless puddles that were as deep as frickin' lakes. As the Porsche splashed through, he felt the scrape on its tender belly, and gritted out, "Screw this patient. I want payback for what you're doing to my undercarriage."
Jane let out a little laugh, and that made the center of his chest ache - but get real. It wasn't like the pair of them had ever been together. Sure, there had been attraction on his part. Big attraction. And, like, one kiss. That was it, however.
And now she was Mrs. Someone Else.
As well as back from the goddamn dead.
Christ, what kind of life was he in? Then again, maybe this was a dream ... which kind of cheered him up, because maybe Glory hadn't gone down, either.
"You haven't told me what kind of injury," he said.
"Spinal break. Between T6 and T7. No sensation below the waist."
"Shit, Jane - that's a tall order."
"Now you know why I need you so badly."
About five minutes later, they came up to a gate that looked like it had been erected during the Punic Wars - the thing was hanging at Alice in Wonderland angles, the chain link rusted to shit and broken in places. And the fence it bisected? That POS was hardly worth the effort, nothing more than six feet of barbed cattle wire that had seen better days.
The damn thing opened smoothly, however. And as they went past it, he saw the first of the video cameras.
While they progressed at a snail's pace, a strange fog rolled in from nowhere in particular, the landscape blurring until he couldn't see more than twelve inches ahead of the car's grille. For chrissakes, it was like they were in a Scooby-Doo episode out here.
And then there was a curious progression: The next gate was in slightly better condition, and the one after that was even newer, and number four looked only a year old, tops.
The last gate they came to was spit-and-shine sparkling, and all about the Alcatraz: Fucker reached twenty-five feet off the ground and had high-voltage warnings all over it. And that wall it cut into? It was nothing for cattle, more like velociraptors; and what do you want to bet that its concrete face fronted a solid twelve or even twenty-four inches of horizontal stone.
Manny swiveled his head around to Jane as they passed through and began a descent into a tunnel that could have had a "Holland" or "Lincoln" sign tacked on it for its fortification. The farther down they went, the more that big question that had been plaguing him since he'd first seen her loomed: Why fake her death? Why cause the kind of chaos she had in his life and the lives of the other people she'd worked with at St. Francis? She'd never been cruel, never been a liar, and had no financial problems and nothing to run from.
Now he knew without her saying a word:
U.S. government.
This kind of setup, with this sort of security ... hidden on the outskirts of what was a big enough city, but nothing so huge as New York, LA, or Chicago? Had to be the government. Who else could afford this shit?
And who the hell was this woman he was treating?
The tunnel terminated in an underground parking garage that was standard-issue, with its pylons and little yellow-painted squares - and yet as large as it appeared to be, the place was empty except for a couple of nondescript vans with darkened windows and a small bus that also had blackouts for glass.
Before she even had his Porsche in park, a steel door was thrown open and -
One look at the huge guy who stepped out and Manny's head exploded, the pain behind his eyes getting so intense he went limp in the bucket seat, his arms falling to the sides, his face twitching from the agony.
Jane said something to him. A car door was opened. Then his own was cracked.
The air that hit him smelled dry and vaguely like earth ... but there was something else. Cologne. A very woody spice that was at once expensive and pleasing, but also something he had a curious urge to get the f**k away from.