‘I thought I heard something!’

They all turned to Halo.

‘Gimme a hand here,’ said Tom, and Halo edged between Mrs Holmes and the end of the chamber, keeping a wary eye on the nurse with the gun. ‘Step on that cigarette, will you?’

Halo obliged.

‘Get me something to tie this bastard with.’

Halo pulled open a couple of drawers and found an Ace bandage. Together he and Tom got the still-groggy Stanley’s wrists bound tightly together, then fastened to a metal strut under the chamber.

Tom sat heavily on Stanley’s belly, ignoring the grunt it forced out of his captive. He turned to the nurse. ‘Can you call security?’

The woman’s eyes narrowed and Tom sighed. He tugged his ID from the scrubs.

‘NT—’ he started, and then got all choked up and couldn’t say the rest because he was so happy and relieved to be able to say those dumb initials and for it still to be true.

‘SB,’ Halo finished for him. ‘He’s a federal investigator. You need to call security.’

The nurse, who should really have been recruited by the marines, Tom reckoned, jerked the gun. ‘I’m keeping this,’ she said. ‘So no funny business.’ She backed away and picked up a phone on the wall.

Tom turned to Mrs Holmes. ‘Lucia needs a doctor.’

As if coming back from a trance, the woman snapped into action-mode and hurried from the room.

Tom knelt forward, still straddling Stanley, and ran his hands through the man’s pockets until he found a wallet, then he dropped heavily on Stanley’s guts to check through it, making him groan.

‘I’m gonna kill you, asshole,’ Stanley choked out.

‘Again?’ said Tom, mildly. ‘You’re shit at it.’ He pulled out a California driver’s licence. ‘Rickard Westacott Stanley. The Third.’ He looked up at Halo and they both spurted laughter.

Tom grinned at the glowering killer. ‘Where’d you learn to shoot cops in the face, Rickard? Princeton?’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Whatever.’

He flicked through the rest of the wallet. Cash; credit card in the name of John Ronson; receipts … ‘These for the expenses you claim on fucking murder?’ Tom tossed them aside, not waiting for an answer.

Stanley was quiet, watching him. Despite his victory, it made Tom uncomfortable. The look said Stanley knew something he didn’t; there was even a little curl to his lip that said something amused him.

Tom finally found it.

A photo of Stanley and Ness.

Arms around each other. Happy together.

Stanley saw the precise moment Tom found the photo written on his face, and laughed. Despite the blood on his nose and in his mouth, he laughed and laughed and laughed, while Tom stared at the photo, his mind spinning back through time, snatching at clues, gutted by realization.

I know that guy. He’s an asshole …

What’s your boyfriend’s name?

Richard …

The shock and surprise in her eyes when Stanley had hit her in the barn; Stanley’s fury as he ran his hands over her breast, between her legs, suspecting that Tom had fucked her, jealous because of it, letting her know she was still his, whatever orders they were under.

‘You were just a job to her, Patrick.’ He raised his eyebrows towards Lucia. ‘Like this whore.’

Things went kind of dark and speedy then, and the next thing Tom knew, Halo and two security guards were dragging him off Stanley, while Lucia’s mother hit him repeatedly in the back with what was left of her copy of Little Women.

44

THE TWO ARRESTING cops grinned happily and gave the thumbs-up to Tom’s phone-cam as they held the bandaged Rickard Stanley between them. Then Tom sat on a low wall to watch them push the man’s head roughly down into the back of a Lexington Police Department cruiser.

A doctor had checked Stanley out in a manner so cursory and rough that Tom figured he must’ve been told about the incident with the hyperbaric chamber and the cigarette. He’d declared that Stanley’s nose was broken but that his other cuts and bruises were not serious and that he could be released into police custody. He remembered his Hippocratic Oath in time to hand Officer Ridge a bottle of codeine, with offhand instructions about when Stanley should take the tablets.

As the cruiser pulled away, carrying with it a message to contact Assistant Director Luke Channings at the FBI office in DC, Tom flipped open his phone and called Ronaldo Suarez.

‘Hey, it’s Tom Patrick.’

‘Hey. What’s up?’

‘I’m sending you a photo. Show it to Chuck Zhong. I’m betting he’ll feel safer about talking once he sees this guy is behind bars.’

Suarez gave a low whistle. ‘Nice work.’

‘Tell him we got the man in the suit too.’

‘Nice one.’

‘Yeah, well, it’s a lie but it’ll help. And offer him protection in the joint.’

‘You think he needs it?’

Tom sighed. ‘I’m amazed he’s still alive. These guys go all the way.’

‘You sound like you know what you’re talking about, Tom.’

He could hear the question in Suarez’s voice but was too tired to explain.

‘I wish I didn’t.’

‘Thanks, man. Anytime you’re in Irving, lunch is on me.’

‘Not at that crappy place I took you to, you cheap bastard.’

Suarez laughed and hung up.