The Pact Read online

  She felt a humming against her hip and shifted, thinking that the amorous couple had gotten a little too close. But the buzzing didn't stop, and when she reached down to find the source she remembered her beeper, which she'd carried in her purse ever since she'd started up Other People's Time. It was James who insisted; what if he had to go back to the hospital and one of the kids needed something?

  Of course, in the way that most preventative medicines work, just having the beeper had managed to ward off emergencies. It had beeped only twice in five years: once, when Kate called to ask where she kept the rug-cleaning supplies, and once when the batteries were low. She fished it out of the bottom of her purse and pushed the button that identified the caller. Her car phone. But who would be in her car at this time of night?

  James had driven it home from the restaurant. After crawling out of her sleeping bag, Gus walked across the street to the nearest phone booth, graffitied with sausagelike initials. As soon as James picked up, she heard the hum of the road beneath the tires.

  "Gus," James said, his voice catching. "You've got to come."

  And a moment later, leaving her sleeping bag behind, she started to run.

  THEY WOULDN'T TAKE the lights out of his eyes. The fixtures hung over him, bright silver saucers that made him wince. He felt at least three people touching him--laying hands, shouting directions, cutting off his clothes. He could not move his arms or legs, and when he tried, he felt straps lacing across them, a collar anchoring his head.

  "BP's falling," said a woman. "It's only seventy over palp."

  "Pupils dilated but unresponsive. Christopher? Christopher? Can you hear me?"

  "He's tachycardic. Get me two large-bore IVs, either fourteen or sixteen gauge, stat. Give him D-5 normal saline, wide open for a liter to start with, please. And I want to draw some bloods ... get a CBC with diff, platelets, coags, chem-20, UA, tox screen, and send a type and screen to the blood bank."

  Then there was a stabbing pain in the crook of his arm and the sharp sound of ripping adhesive tape. "What have we got?" asked a new voice, and the woman spoke again. "A holy mess," she said. Chris felt a sharp prick near his forehead, which had him arcing against his restraints and floating back to the soft, warm hands of a nurse. "It's okay, Chris," she soothed. How did they know his name?

  "There's some visible cranium. Call radiology, we need them to clear the C-spine."

  There was a scurry of noise, of yelling. Chris slid his eyes to the slit in the curtain off to his right and saw his father. This was the hospital; his father worked at the hospital. But he wasn't in his white coat. He was wearing street clothes, a shirt that wasn't even buttoned right. He was standing with Emily's parents, trying to get past a bunch of nurses who wouldn't let him by.

  Chris flailed so suddenly he managed to rip the IV out of his arm. He looked directly at Michael Gold and screamed, but there was no sound, no noise, just wave after wave of fear.

  "I DON'T GIVE A FUCK about procedure," James Harte said, and then there was a crash of instruments and a scuffle of footsteps that diverted the attention of the nurses enough to let him duck behind the stained curtain. His son was fighting backboard restraints and a Philadelphia collar. There was blood everywhere, all over his face and shirt and neck. "I'm Dr. Harte," he said to the ER physician who was barreling toward them. "Courtesy staff," he added. He reached out and firmly grasped Chris's hand. "What's going on?"

  "EMTs brought him in with a girl," the doctor said quietly. "From what we can see, he's got a scalp laceration. We were about to send him to radiology to check skull and cervical vertebral fractures, and if they report back negative, we'll get him down to CT scan."

  James felt Chris squeeze his hand so tightly his wedding band dug into the skin. Surely, he thought, he's all right if he has this strength. "Emily," Chris whispered hoarsely. "Where'd they take Em?"

  "James?" a tentative voice asked. He turned around to see Melanie and Michael hovering at the edge of the curtain, horrified, no doubt, by all that blood. God only knew how they'd gotten past the dragons at triage. "Is Chris all right?"

  "He's fine," James said, more for himself than for anyone else in the room. "He's going to be just fine."

  A resident hung up a telephone receiver. "Radiology's waiting," she said. The ER doctor nodded toward James. "You can go with him," he said. "Keep him calm."

  James walked beside the gurney, but he did not let go of his son's hand. He began trotting as the ER staff wheeled it more quickly past the Golds. "How's Emily?" he remembered to ask, and disappeared before they could answer.

  The doctor who'd been attending Chris turned around. "You're Mr. and Mrs. Gold?" he asked.

  They came forward simultaneously.

  "Can you step outside with me?"

  THE DOCTOR LED THEM to a small alcove behind the coffee machines, decorated with nubby blue couches and ugly Formica end tables, and Melanie instantly relaxed. She was a professional expert when it came to reading verbal or nonverbal clues. If they weren't being led to an examination room on the double, the danger must have passed. Maybe Emily was already up on a patient ward, or off to radiology as Chris was. Maybe she was being brought out to meet them.

  "Please," the doctor said. "Sit down."

  Melanie had every intention of standing, but her knees gave out from beneath her. Michael remained upright, frozen.

  "I'm very sorry," the doctor began, the only words that Melanie could not rework into anything but what they signified. She crumpled further, her body folding into itself, until her head was so deeply buried beneath her shaking arms that she could not hear what the man was saying.

  "Your daughter was pronounced dead on arrival. There was a gunshot wound to the head. It was instantaneous; she didn't suffer." He paused. "I'm going to need one of you to identify the body."

  Michael tried to remember to blink his eyes. Before, it had always been an involuntary act, but right now everything--breathing, standing, being--was strictly tied to his own self-control. "I don't understand," he said, in a voice too high to be his own. "She was with Chris Harte."

  "Yes," the doctor said. "They were brought in together."

  "I don't understand," Michael repeated, when what he really meant was How can she be dead if he's alive?

  "Who did it?" Melanie forced out, her teeth clenched around the question as if it were a bone she had to keep possession of. "Who shot her?"

  The doctor shook his head. "I don't know, Mrs. Gold. I'm sure the police who were at the scene will be here to talk to you shortly."

  Police?

  "Are you ready to go?"

  Michael stared at the doctor, wondering why on earth this man thought he ought to be leaving. Then he remembered. Emily. Her body.

  He followed the doctor back into the ER. Was it his imagination or did the nurses look at him differently now? He passed cubicles with moaning, damaged, living people and finally stopped in front of a curtain with no noise, no bustle, no activity behind it. The doctor waited until Michael inclined his head, then drew back the blind.

  Emily was lying on her back on a table. Michael took a step forward, resting his hand on her hair. Her forehead was smooth, still warm. The doctor was wrong; that was all. She was not dead, she could not be dead, she ... He shifted his hand, and her head lolled toward him, allowing him to see the hole above her right ear, the size of a silver dollar, ragged on the edges and matted with dried blood. But no new blood was trickling.

  "Mr. Gold?" the doctor said.

  Michael nodded and ran out of the examination room. He ran past the man on the stretcher clutching his heart, four times older than Emily would ever be. He ran past the resident carrying a cup of coffee. He ran past Gus Harte, breathless and reaching for him. He picked up speed. Then he turned the corner, sank to his knees, and retched.

  GUS HAD RUN the whole way to Bainbridge Memorial clutching hope to her chest, a package that grew heavier and more unwieldy with every step. But James was not in the ER waiting room