Major incident teams who’d rushed to the University of Kentucky Medical Center were sadly under-utilized. Hoping with stupid optimism for 127 casualties, they finally saw only fifty-two, ranging from the walking wounded to DOAs.

But it was fifty-two more than they would ever have seen if the starboard engine had disintegrated at 30,000 feet.

Lucia was one of thirteen passengers who arrived not breathing, paramedics keeping them alive in nearly pointless hope.

The paramedics who hitched Tom Patrick onto the ER gurney were confident he’d be okay, though. Despite smoke inhalation and concussion, they’d got him breathing fine in the rig on the way from Blue Grass. Other than that, he didn’t even have a break that they could find. He’d dropped out of the ruptured plane straight on top of some guy who’d obviously jumped out right before him. That guy – whose driver’s licence ID’d him as Lamarr Sweeter of Falls Church, Virginia – might have been killed by his own fall, or by Tom Patrick’s. They figured a coroner would eventually be able to tell but until then they went with the second option, as it was a far better bar-room anecdote.

43

TOM WOKE TO what he assumed must be a hallucination of Lucia’s mother sitting beside his bed in her white gloves, her head bent over a big old hardback copy of Little Women. He closed his eyes again, then forced them open more fully, and she was still there. He meant to say ‘hello’ but his throat wouldn’t co-operate, so he just grunted. She looked up from the book on her lap, stood up and came over to him.

He tried to say, ‘Where’s Lucia?’ but it didn’t sound right even in his own head. Still, it seemed Lucia’s mother understood him just fine, because she slapped him so hard in the face that Tom thought she’d broken his jaw. ‘Mr Patrick,’ she said politely, ‘if you ever come near my daughter again, I’ll kill you.’

Then she picked up her book and walked out.

Tom blinked at the fire-retardant ceiling tiles and felt a burning in his eyes that heralded tears of relief.

If Mrs Holmes never wanted him near her daughter again, that meant Lucia was alive. Her mother had answered his question with a killer right, but he’d take that news any way he could get it.

*

He woke again hours later to the much more welcome, though just as surprising, sight of Halo Jackson and Pete LaBello playing Rock, Paper, Scissors.

‘Hi,’ he managed, with far more clarity this time.

Pete raised a peace sign, which Tom surmised was Scissors, and came over.

‘How’re you doing?’

‘Okay.’

‘You want some water?’

Tom nodded, then dribbled most of it round the back of his neck. He looked at Halo. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Nice to see you too,’ said Halo.

‘How long have I been out?’

‘Near enough twenty-four hours,’ said Pete, looking at his watch.

Tom jerked upright and started coughing.

‘Take it easy,’ said Halo.

But Tom wouldn’t. He looked around wildly.

‘The file,’ he choked out.

‘I got it,’ said Pete, picking it up. ‘Relax.’

Tom couldn’t. He felt like he was going to cough up a lung. Halo came round and hit him harder between the shoulders than Tom thought was strictly necessary, but it worked, and he spat what looked like slimy black metal-flake paint into his hand. ‘Shit,’ he panted in disgust.

‘Charming,’ said Halo.

Tom lay down again, snatching at the air, feeling the panic subside. Pete took the file out of a briefcase he’d laid at the foot of the bed. It was in shreds.

‘What happened to it?’ Tom managed to gasp.

Pete quirked a little smile. ‘Stuffing the evidence down the back of your pants works fine – until some ER nurse has to cut them off you.’

Tom gestured at the file. ‘Is it enough?’

‘Hell, yes. But it can go higher.’ He put the file on Tom’s legs and jabbed at Allway’s signature. ‘This Bruce Allway’s the key.’

‘This is Bruce Allway,’ said Tom, emptying the Polaroids onto the bed.

‘Shit,’ said Pete. ‘Then we’re going to have to work harder.’

Tom thought about Ness, but said nothing. If there was any way of getting out of this without revealing his poker-playing activities, he would take it.

‘Still … it’s a start. It’s hard evidence.’

‘I’m hard evidence! Those sick bastards showed me what I’ve been searching for, then tried to kill me!’ He paused then added quietly: ‘Did kill some people?’

‘About seventy so far,’ said Pete, grimly.

‘And that’s just in the jet,’ said Halo. Tom glanced at him but he was looking at the pictures.

‘I’m sorry about Niño, man,’ said Tom.

Halo nodded and made a ‘what-ya-gonna-do?’ face. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘well …’

Carefully he picked up the pictures and put them back into the manila envelope, then replaced it in the back pocket of the cut-up file. He handed it to Pete.

‘Okay,’ said Pete. ‘Jan Ryland is already on her way to Avia Freight with a subpoena. As soon as we get the list of batch 501 purchasers, we can start grounding planes.’

‘Why not right now?’ said Tom. ‘There are potentially sixteen more planes out there waiting to fail – seventeen, if Oklahoma was something different.’

‘We’d have to ground every 737 in US airspace, Tom. That’d take an act of Congress.’

‘Yeah, God forbid lives should be saved just because we can. Christ, Pete!’

‘Where’s the bolt?’ said Pete.

Tom sighed. ‘They took it.’

‘Again?’