He heard the toilet flush. She was laughing. Oh, shit. The bathroom door opened. "Flynn," she said, "you've got the rules of admissible evidence taped to the inside lid of your toilet seat." She laughed some more. "That's about the geekiest thing I've ever seen."

"It was from a long time ago," he protested. "I was studying. I forgot to take it down."

She picked up her beer. His T-shirt hung off her like a beach cover-up. "I bet you put a new topic there every week." She grinned at him. "Maybe I ought to try that with Hudson. He's been having trouble with his fractions." She wandered out the other end of the kitchen, where a table and four chairs divided his small living room from the enclosed porch. "Wow. You have a ton of books. Maybe I should just send Hudson over here. Let you tutor him."

"Sure," he said. "I like kids." He rolled open the glass door to the porch.

She rested her bottle on one of his bookcases. "That's because you are one."

He picked up her beer. "Come out to the porch. It's cooler."

She sat on the rattan couch that used to be his parents' and he stretched out in an Adirondack chair that had been his oldest brother's shop project. They propped their feet up on the rattan coffee table. The early evening breeze sighed through the screens. They sat in silence, drinking their beers. Hadley studied the beads of condensation rolling down the amber glass.

"I'm going to quit the force," she said.

He stared at her. "What?"

"It hit me, today." She looked at him. "What the chief told me. This isn't like working at an insurance office or a restaurant. This is like signing up for the army. People get killed."

No officer on the MKPD has died on the job since 1979."

"Thank you, Kevin," she singsonged. Her voice hardened. "That statistic's about to change."

He pushed himself out of his chair. He couldn't sit still and talk about this at the same time. "The chief will be fine."

"We don't know that! Even if he lives, he could be disabled, or have brain damage from his heart stopping so many times, or-"

"Don't. Please, don't." He crossed to one screened-in window, then another.

"I'm sorry." She got up herself, now, and blocked his pacing. "I'm sorry." She looked up at him. "It's different for you. To you, it's still like a kid's game of shoot-'em-up."

"No," he said. "It's not."

She dropped her eyes. "No," she said. "It's not. I'm sorry."

He took a step closer to her. "And for once and for all, I'm not a kid."

"No." She looked up at him again. "You're not."

Then-he had no idea how-she was in his arms and he was hoisting her up, crushing her against him, and they were devouring each other, kissing, biting, sucking all the oxygen out of the room.

"I don't want to be alone tonight," Hadley gasped. "I don't want to be alone."

"No. No."

She hugged her arms and legs around him so tightly she nearly cut off his circulation. "Take me into your bedroom. Now."

"Yes. Oh. Yeah." He staggered down the hallway, and then they were in his room, then they were throwing off their clothes, then they were in his bed, and-oh my God-she was hotter, softer, wetter, sweeter than anything he could have imagined. He almost lost it, trying to touch her everywhere at the same time, but she slowed him down, said, "Here" and "Like this," and, "Oh, yes, that's just right." Let her show you what she likes, he had read, so he did. He was good at following directions, damn good, maybe, because she shook and then she clutched at him and then she arched off his bed, her voice strangling in her throat, and he felt amazed and powerful and tender all at the same time. Then she drew him over her and wrapped her legs around him and he pushed and everything in the moment must have been written all over his face because she laughed low in his ear and whispered, "In like Flynn."

XVII

There was no place to kneel and pray in the Critical Care Unit. A funny oversight, Clare thought. They had every other type of lifesaving equipment stuffed into the windowless space. They only had one chair, which she and Margy and Janet had rotated between them until Janet had to go home to her kids and her cows and Margy fell asleep on a wide sofa in the CCU waiting room. Clare dragged the chair's footstool to the foot of Russ's high-tech bed and knelt there. A little idolatrous, perhaps, as if she were praying to the long, broken body lying still and pale beneath the blanket.

She knew she ought to pray for God's will, not her own. She knew that bad things were not tests or punishments. She knew God was not a celestial gumball machine, and there was no combination of words or rituals that could force God's awful hand.

But desperation stripped away her knowledge, leaving her praying like a small child. Please, God, please, please, don't let him die. I'll do anything. Please don't let him die.

She had stopped in at the church and gotten her traveling kit after returning Sister Lucia to the Rehabilitation Center. The old woman had framed Clare's face between her hands and said, "I will pray without ceasing. For him and for you."

Now, at three in the morning, she anointed Russ with oil. "I lay my hands upon you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit," she said, "beseeching our Lord Jesus Christ to sustain you-" It was meant to be an outward and visible sign, but in her slippery fingers it was a talisman, a seal, a dare to God to take him now she had protected him. She would have drenched the room in holy water, hung crosses on his ventilator and saint's medals over his heart monitor if she had thought she could get away with it. Magic. Faith. Her will. God's will.

Please, God, please, please, please. Let him live…

She woke with a start when the day nurse entered. She was sagging off the end of the bed, her arms completely numb, her thighs cramping. She fell off the footstool when she tried to get up.

"Good heavens, Reverend. Fell asleep, did we?" The nurse hauled her to her feet and sent her lurching toward the waiting room. "We need to clear the room for a few," the nurse said. "Why don't we get something to eat and some fresh air in the meantime?"

"Why don't we?" Clare mumbled. She collapsed on a sofa opposite the sleeping Margy and tried to ignore the shooting pain of the circulation coming back into her limbs. She was lined up with the opening to the corridor, and so had a perfect view of Lyle MacAuley getting off the elevator. He had changed into a fresh uniform-she hoped he had burned the other one-but he was red-eyed and haggard from lack of sleep.

"You look terrible," Clare said.

"Not compared to you, I don't." He halted in front of her, like an out-of-gas car rolling to a stop where the road comes level.

"Sit down." She slapped the cushion next to her once, the best she could manage. "The CCU nurse is in there. No visitors right now."

MacAuley collapsed with a groan. He sat, simply sat, for a moment. "Any change?" he finally asked.

"No."

"Hell damn."

"Yeah."

They were silent for a while. She wondered if he was afraid to talk about it, like she was. Afraid that one wrong word, two, and she'd find herself saying I don't think he's going to make it.

"What's going on with the case?"

The lines in his face fell into something resembling a smile. "Well, that answers that."

"What?"

"I always did wonder if you were playing with police work because of Russ, or because you're terminally nosy."

"Both," she said. "Plus, it's a lot more interesting than the Mary and Martha's Guild meetings."

"Too damn interesting, these days."

She nodded. It seemed as if she could hear the slow whoosh… whoosh of the ventilator, breathing for Russ.