“See, that’s the thing,” Ollie said. “I don’t want you to be redeemed.” She took the pistol from her pocket. “I find it offensive that someone who’s done so much evil should be chemically converted into a saint. I believe—and maybe this is old-fashioned of me, Lyda would think so—I believe that there is a you who is responsible. Not a corporation. Not a machine. One person. A soul.”
“I agree with you,” he said earnestly. “I know now that there’s something bigger than this life. Something … after.”
“I do too,” she said.
“If you believe in Hell,” he said, “and even if you don’t—don’t do this. For your sake, don’t do something that you’ll regret.”
“We’re almost done,” Ollie said. She thumbed the hammer, cocking the gun. “You know what I need to hear.”
He nodded. “His name is Vincent.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I woke in a different room, a smaller space but somehow less crowded. Fewer machines, I realized. So, out of the ICU, then? Rovil wasn’t there, no nurses were in sight, and Dr. Gloria …
A chill of panic moved through me. I was alone. For the first time in years, truly alone.
I could feel the emptiness where the doctor used to reside. Even when she was angry with me, staying out of sight, I had never felt this absence. I remembered talking to her during the height of the fever, the way she seemed to be slipping away into shadows, the way she leaned over me that final time.
You have been betrayed.
I tried to sit up, but a stab of pain in my shoulder brought me up short. The left side of my body was wrapped in an elaborate sling. I pulled aside the sheet. My right ankle was in an oversized handcuff (footcuff?), which was secured to the bed by a steel chain. What the hell?
I lay back down. My body was heavy with fatigue, and my brain felt sandbagged with painkillers and antiepileptics and whatever else they’d pumped into my veins. But the fever was gone. I was fully awake for the first time since the shooting. And all I could think about was Ollie.
Eventually a nurse—a skinny kid who looked, despite his muttonchops, to be sixteen years old—arrived with a breakfast tray. I pointed to a bouquet of white and red flowers that sat on the windowsill. “Who are those from?” I asked. My voice came out as a croak.
He found the tag. “‘Get well soon,’” he read. “‘The Millionaires Club.’” He smiled. “Hey, that’s nice.”
Fuck. Fayza and the Millies had found me.
Hootan was dead, Aaqila was dead or injured … and I was alive. Fayza had to assume that I was associated with the cowboy and had set up her people. Could she have sent someone across the border to kill me? Was someone in the hospital right now?
When the police arrived I was almost glad to see them. They were three detectives from the New Mexico State Police. They told me they’d been here twice before, but I’d been too out of it to answer their questions. “How about now?” they asked.
They spoke to me as if I were a criminal. Understandable, I suppose; they knew how egregiously I’d violated my parole. One of them even checked my arm for the missing pellet. It was also clear that they had already talked to Rovil, and there was no telling how much he’d told them.
“Start again from the beginning,” one of the other detectives said.
The beginning? I didn’t know when that was. Francine? The night Mikala died? Or before that, on the night I first saw her, standing in a crowded room, a wineglass in her hand? And then where to stop—with Dr. Gloria’s flaming sword?
I was exhausted and angel-less. There was no narrative line I could skate, no combination of facts and lies I could imagine that would make my position any better. Worse, any details could be used against Ollie and Bobby … and Edo. If I incriminated Edo, I would only hurt Sasha.
I said the only thing I could think of: nothing.
My silence made them angry, and they did not give up so easily. At some point one of them said something that got me to react: “You don’t have to be afraid of him. We can protect you.”
“Afraid of who?” Then I got it. “Wait, he’s alive?”
“We found blood, and a bloody handprint as he left the house.”
The cowboy was alive! I’d been sure he’d been mortally wounded by the doctor’s sword. During the fever, that had made perfect sense. I’d even bought her reassurance: The man who is responsible for this will not bother you again.
“That lying bitch,” I said under my breath.
“Pardon?”
“I thought he was dead,” I said.
“Just tell us what you saw,” the lead detective said. I shook my head and ignored him. “Okay,” he said. “How about Rovil Gupta? Have you heard from him?”
“Rovil? Why?”
“He last checked in with us two days ago. He said he was driving home to New York, but he hasn’t arrived at work, and no one has heard from him.” He made his voice sound reasonable. “If he attacked the shooter, he’s not going to be in trouble. It was clearly self-defense.”
“I haven’t heard from him since he left me in the ICU.”
“Then you wouldn’t mind if we looked at your pen?”
“I don’t have a pen.”
“It’s in with your clothes.” One of the detectives reached into the cabinet and withdrew a large, clear plastic bag. Inside were smaller bags containing my shirt, my jeans, my shoes. They all looked bloody. “We would like to look at your local or externally stored messages, as well as related files and internet history.” He’d said this sentence many times before. The southland was way behind Canada when it came to electronic privacy, but the Supreme Court had set some limits.
“Fuck no,” I said. “I want my lawyer.”
“You don’t have a lawyer,” he said.
An idea came to me. “Sure I do,” I said. “It’s the same guy who represents Eduard Vik, Junior.”
The detectives looked at each other.
I stopped speaking, which made the interrogation more difficult for them but almost enjoyable for me. They grew more frustrated and I grew more tired, nearly falling asleep between their sentences. Eventually a doctor came in and said I should be resting. The detectives reminded me that I was under arrest and implied that unless I cooperated, they would need to keep me in the US—and not in some cushy hospital. This smelled of bullshit. I was a Canadian citizen, here illegally but only a witness to a crime, not a suspect. Jurisdictionally I was as complicated as an Akwesasne cigarette smuggler. But I didn’t have the energy to spar with them.
“One more thing,” the lead detective said. “Olivia Skarsten.” I didn’t bother to open my eyes. He said, “Your hospital said she skipped out the same time as you, and Rovil said she traveled with you as far as Amarillo. I don’t suppose you’ve seen her?”
I said nothing.
When they finally left I asked the doctor for a favor. “Jeans, back pocket,” I said.
She fished out the pen, then wiped it down with an antiseptic.
Turns out, I had a few messages. The first three were from Ollie.
* * *
The fever had screwed with my biological clock. For the rest of the week I could not stay awake during the day, but nights I spent staring at the TV or the pen. Mornings crashed through the window like the grille of a Mack truck. Of course that’s when the cops liked to time their visits. The detectives came twice more, the second time to tell me that the US Marshal Service would be escorting me back to Canada. Their case was going nowhere. Rovil still hadn’t shown up in New York. The descriptions of the cowboy—Esperanza, Sasha, and I largely agreed on what he looked like—hadn’t led to anyone.
Every time I wanted to move off the bed, my RN had to find the head nurse to get the key to the leg irons. My skinny, sideburned, day-shift nurse—his name was Dan, but by the time I’d learned that I’d already nicknamed him Baby Chop—helped me hobble back and forth to the bathroom and instructed me on how to shower without soaking my bandages. After five days my body still felt as sturdy as a corn husk, but I was deemed ready to travel. Suddenly I could no longer put off a particularly onerous task.