Alena continued to stay down. I got the splinter out of my foot.
Bennet was a middle-aged black man with a Jamaican accent who ran a clinic in Kingstown, St. Vincent. Jerry avoided the main harbor in Kingstown and instead landed us at Barrouallie, off Wallilabou Bay, and Carrie dealt with the one man at customs while we snuck Alena off the boat and into the back of a truck. Twelve minutes later we were in a surgery with dingy white paint on the walls and ceiling and cracked robin's-egg tile on the floor. Jerry handed Bennet his money as soon as we were alone, and while Bridgett waited outside, he and I watched as the doctor started to work.
"She's doped." He'd already started giving her blood, and had just hooked up an I.V. "What'd she take?"
"Etorphine," I said.
He glanced up from where Alena lay on the bed, shaking his head. "Not recreational."
"No."
"Maybe for the best. Narcotic, she's not feeling a thing right now. I can bring her back up with a hit of diprenorphine when I'm done working on her leg."
"Just stop the bleeding," I said.
He snapped on a clean pair of latex gloves, prodding the wound gingerly. "Deep wound, bone shards. I go digging in there, burning things closed and picking this shot out, could be a permanent disability."
"Is there another option?"
He scratched the bridge of his nose with a latex-covered thumb. "You take her to the hospital, they have surgeons could maybe do it. Tibia and fibula, problem is you can't break one without the other, and they're both ground up in here."
"No hospital," Jerry said.
"But I'm saying to you that I do this, she may not have everything in this leg that she once did, you understand?"
Jerry looked at me. I nodded.
"Okay, that's fine," Bennet said. "It's going to take me some time."
"Take all the time you want," I said. "Just make sure you do it right."
"Okay, that's fine," Bennet said again, and he began to work.
As soon as I'd stepped into the hall, Bridgett asked, "Well?"
"He's working on her. It'll take a few hours."
"In the meanwhile we do what?"
"I've asked Jerry to take me back to Bequia. I have some things I have to do there."
"Things that you don't want to tell me about?"
"No, things I need to do alone."
"And you want me to stay here?"
"I want you to stay with her, watch her. Make sure nothing happens to her."
For a second she considered that, then brushed some stray hair back behind her ear, glancing down the hall. When she looked back to me her expression had hardened, she'd made her decision.
Bridgett said, "This is what's going to happen, Atticus. I'll stay here. I'll watch her. I'll make sure no harm comes to your precious principal. I'll help you get her back to New York. But that's it, that's all. After that, we don't know each other anymore."
"You're going to write us offbecause of this?"
"There is no us, not anymore."
"I'm not talking about as lovers."
"Not lovers, not friends, not colleagues. We've been through a lot, Atticus, we've hurt each other plenty. But I never doubted who you were until now. Everything has changed. Please tell me that you can see that."
I could. I did.
I said so.
And she said she was glad that I understood, and she followed me back into the surgery, and I left her there with Bennet and Alena, and a sadness that I couldn't name.
Chapter 9
Jerry guided The Lutra back to Bequia, and it was dark when he reached the mouth of the lagoon that footed the house. He'd killed the running lights before we'd arrived, and he dropped the anchor and told me that he would wait an hour but no longer. I told him that an hour was all I'd need, and if he was waiting for me when I got back, he'd get another twenty grand.
"Then I hope you can swim well," he told me.
I stripped to my shorts, then dove over the side of the boat and into the water, feeling its warmth surround me. It was an easy swim, but I pushed it. The exercise and the sensation of the water were welcome and liberating, and as I swam I finally felt that the last of the Viagra had been driven from my system. I was breathing hard when I reached the beach.
Outside the house, I climbed one of the mahogany trees and used it to jump to the roof. I didn't think Oxford would be lying in wait – I knew I'd winged him, and he was obligated to tend to himself before finishing with me – but I wanted to be careful. At the overhang outside of Alena's room I lowered myself onto the veranda, walking carefully, feeling the broken glass beneath my bare feet. I stepped inside, made a quick search of the closets and the bureau, looking for anything incriminating that might come back to haunt Alena or myself. From her bedroom I moved to the bathroom, then to my room. Everything was clean.
I headed to the basement, to the hard room, and punched in the code to open the weapons locker. Even with the P7 and the Neostead removed, there was still a substantial amount of hardware, including some explosives – some plastique with blasting caps and kitchen timers, and a couple of grenades. Another safe was set inside the locker, at the back, and I keyed the combination. Inside was a short stack of documents, extra identities that Alena had worked up over the years, as well as the paperwork for Alena's various accounts worldwide, including the trust she'd established to finance all of the credit cards she used in her different aliases. I took everything from the safe, including the money, which I estimated at almost a quarter of a million in mixed currency. I left the safe and the locker open, grabbed the explosives.
I hadn't used explosives since I'd been in the Army, and I took my time with them, working carefully. I used one of the blocks of plastique for the work space by the basement door. The explosion would destroy the electronics, make it impossible to salvage any useful information from them.
I set the timers for thirty minutes, checked my watch, set them running.
Outside of the hard room there was a small gas generator that Alena had kept in case the power went down, and by it stood two five-gallon jerry cans of gasoline. I took the cans with me as I went up the stairs.
On the ground floor I found Chris where she had fallen. The heat had already started working on her body, and a cloud of flies had found her. I passed her without stopping, moved into the kitchen, and grabbed a handful of plastic trash bags from beneath the sink. I loaded all of the papers I'd grabbed from the hard room inside, triple-bagged them, and then squeezed the air out. Then I sealed the bag with duct tape, and then I duct-taped the bag to my stomach. It was going to hurt later and it would cost me some skin, but it was the best I could think of; I was going to have to swim back to The Lutra, and I didn't want to lose anything halfway there.
I took a book of matches from the drawer by the sink, where Alena had kept candles and flashlights. Then I went back to Chris's body and started going through her pockets.
She had some loose cash, a couple of receipts, and a pack of chewing gum. In the book-bag I found her wallet and passport, as well as a selection of pens, two more notepads, and a Macintosh laptop. The other pad, the one she'd used to take her notes, was on the floor by her right hand. I dropped it in the book-bag, then moved everything into the center of the room.
I took one of the jerry cans to the top of the stairs, opened it, and backed down again, splashing as I went. I splashed the contents of the second can throughout the living room, pouring it on the book-bag, the shelves, the furniture.
The smell of the gasoline followed me outside when I stepped out onto the porch. I checked my watch and saw that I had twenty-three minutes before the plastique went off, perhaps thirty before Jerry left me behind.