Whoa.

“That’s the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard out of you, Tim, and you know it and even the good Lord knows I’ve heard more than my share from you over the past twenty-seven years!”

Molly MacLean stood in the doorway, hands on her hips, her face nearly scarlet with rage.

“Mrs. MacLean,” Sherlock said, smiling at her, “would you please come with me for a moment?”

“If I stay in the same room with this . . . individual, I just might kill him,” Molly said, and waved her fist at her husband. “Lead on, Agent Sherlock. Save this idiot’s miserable lying hide by removing me.”

Savich found Sherlock and Molly in the nurses’ lounge, Molly in tears. He paused in the doorway. Sherlock raised her eyes. “Hi, Dillon. I think we’ve got things in some perspective. Do we, Mrs. MacLean?”

Molly knuckled her eyes. “Yes, I’ve got it together again. It’s so easy to forget he doesn’t realize what he’s saying, doesn’t begin to comprehend how his words twist and turn the knife. He doesn’t even know there is a knife. And when I heard him talking about me to you like that—I’m sorry. Oh God, he’s so sick, so unlike himself. Sometimes I can’t stand it.” Molly lowered her face in her hands and wept.

Sherlock lifted her to her feet and held her in her arms, murmuring nonsense to her, really, but kept it low and soothing.

Molly pulled back, sniffed, and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry I lost it like that. I’ve got your blouse all wet. I’m a miserable human being for losing it when I know—I understand—he can’t help it.”

“You’re doing remarkably well under the circumstances, Mrs. MacLean,” Savich said, and he meant it.

Sherlock said, “Dr. MacLean was wound up today, probably as a result of last night. He called a reporter and he verbally attacked you, probably because Dillon and I ruined his fun. We’re so sorry.” And Sherlock hugged Molly. “You’re hanging in there as best you can.”

Molly sighed and walked away from them to the window. She hugged herself. “Yes, I am. Poor Tim, to be trapped like that in this nightmare, and a lot of the time he doesn’t even recognize he’s in one. I spoke to his doctor at Duke, read what they gave me. It’s not going to be pretty, what happens from here on out.”

Thirty minutes later, when Savich pulled his Porsche out of the hospital parking lot, he said, “Jumbo Hardy agreed to keep this under wraps. He’s going to put Rachael’s announcement in the Washington Post right away.”

“What did you promise him?”

He gave her a quick smile. “Not much. Jumbo sobered up real fast when I told him the course of the disease. He also knew he didn’t have a source he could quote. I did, however, promise him a one-on-one, with the FBI’s approval, of course, when we catch who’s trying to kill Timothy.

“I’ve removed the phone from Timothy’s room. From now on, he’ll have to ask a nurse to dial any phone numbers for him to ensure he doesn’t pull something like this again. The nurses will have to be hard-nosed with him.”

Savich said as he wove the Porsche in and out of traffic, “Hey, you want to tell Congresswoman McManus how she barely escaped the big bullet?”

“That means she’d have to thank you. Fat chance.” She patted his shoulder. “It’s going to end soon, Dillon, both cases. But I’ve got some ideas of my own I want to check out.”

“You wanna share?”

She shook her head slowly.

FIFTY-ONE

Rachael was restless, and yes, she admitted it, scared out of her mind—a feeling she hated because it was so debilitating, a feeling that had been a part of her for more than a week now, ever since she’d been dropped into Black Rock Lake to drown. She remembered the coarse wet texture, the strength and stiffness of the rope as her fingers worked it. She closed her eyes for a moment. What was worse was that she was becoming used to the fear, a sort of vacant humming in her head that made her muscles clench. It should make a difference that she survived, but it didn’t seem to. She drew in a deep breath and looked around. At least she hadn’t been sitting lock-kneed on the sofa, her brain paralyzed. No, she’d cleaned Jack’s large corner apartment thoroughly, although, she had to admit, it hadn’t needed it.

Before Jack waltzed out the door, he’d had the nerve to tell her to take it easy, check out his music, and eat, she was getting too thin, maybe take a nap, and he’d held her face between his hands and kissed her fast and hard, and left without another word, the jerk.

She turned on his flat-screen TV and listened to the local newscaster while she watered plants—five azaleas and one ivy. She stopped when she heard the guy segue into a report on Senator John James Abbott’s memorial dinner at the Jefferson Club tomorrow evening. She stared at the TV while he listed some of the senators who would be there, mentioned Jimmy’s family, and at the very end, he finished by saying, “There’s an interesting aside here. Rachael Janes Abbott, Senator Abbott’s recently discovered daughter, will be one of the speakers.”

The local channel skipped to the weather. Summer rain, nothing new there. Rachael turned off the TV and began pacing Jack’s very nice living room. No antiques, but lots of big, overstuffed pieces in rich browns and golds, touches of turquoise. He needed a couple of bright throw pillows, the designer thought, a focal point, and the room would be perfect. He had good taste, she’d say that for him, and that special “knack” most people didn’t have. He was also, she noted, an extremely good kisser.

She wandered into Jack’s good-sized kitchen, all modern, appliances sparkling, and so they should because she’d shined them with a soft cloth for a good five minutes while she was off in never-never land. The walls were painted a pale yellow, the wooden cabinets the same yellow, the result bright and warm. She walked into the hallway, this time pausing to look at all the black-and-white photographs he himself had taken, photos of southwestern national parks, stark and wild, and a close-up of two mammoth elks fighting. And there were the pictures of people—diaper sized to ancient, faces lined and smooth, bodies twisted and straight. Her favorites were a teenage girl laughing hugely, her head thrown back, long hair blowing in a stiff breeze, white iPod wires in her ears, and an old man in baggy tweeds, his head bald as an egg, sitting on a bench, a meatball hoagie in his hand, smiling up into the bright sunlight, a drop of tomato sauce on his mouth.