The Losing Game (21 page)

As the water slid like silk over Lucas’s lips and tongue and glided down his throat, he felt little by little that he could breathe again. Though the right side of his face was stiff.

His increasing consciousness allowed him to further assess his situation, as he waited for the surgeon? Doctor? (It had been hard to pay attention.) Not that he needed a doctor to tell him something wasn’t right with his left arm. He couldn’t move it at all, not even his fingers. It lay limply across his chest, inside a sling. If he hadn’t recognized his fingertips and square fingernails poking out of the edge of the cotton fabric, he could quite easily have believed it belonged to someone else.

His shoulder was another matter. That throbbed like a motherfucking motherfucker. The painkillers the bearded nurse had injected into the tube going into his right hand were beginning to ease the pain. But still. All was misery.

Lucas’s memory of last night (he assumed the shit had hit the fan last night) returned. It hadn’t, in truth, gone anywhere.

The nausea the nurse had warned Lucas about reared its ugly head. It looked awfully like Richard Shaw, an illegal firearm, and a man who’d taken Lucas on a date. Then—and this was the part that had Lucas feeling really sick—Dante had found Lucas’s handset, and then he had found him. How the fuck had he done that? And why?

And what the hell was Lucas going to say about everything when the police came to see him? Because there was no doubt in his mind that they would.

Lucas started shaking. It started in his right hand and his knees. The tremor traveled violently inward and upward, with the fervor of some holy roller, to his stomach and his throat. He didn’t have time to call for help. With one gravity-defying retch—fresh pain ripping through his jaw and shoulder—he threw up a bitter gutful of pungent yellow bile and water.

Over his clean sling and his dead hand.

A NURSE
in blue scrubs wearing Christmas tree earrings directed Dante to Lucas’s ward. “He’ll probably sleep most of your visit,” he said.

Dante didn’t catch the rest. He’d barely slept two hours of last night and the stench of overcooked vegetables and lemon-fresh disinfectant was playing havoc with his gut.

In the ward, six bodies in various states of repose occupied the six beds. On Dante’s near right, propped on pillows, Lucas lay with his head resting to one side. As the nurse had cautioned, he was asleep.

Dante put the paper bag, containing a kilo bunch of plump black grapes, on the bedside cabinet next to a plastic jug filled with water. Lucas didn’t stir. Dante stood at the head of the bed, watching over him.

The right side of Lucas’s face was swollen and mottled with an archipelago of purple bruising. His forehead sported an oval swelling that looked like half a crimson egg lying beneath his skin. His left arm lay across his chest in a sling, his hand pointing toward his right shoulder. Heavy padded bandaging covered his left collarbone and shoulder where he’d been shot.

Dante spent twenty minutes watching Lucas sleep before he sat and ate a few grapes. Another half an hour passed, and Lucas slept on. Occasionally he’d snuffle and look as if he was about to open his eyes. He’d frown and shift his hips or legs, only to settle back into his slumber. Only an hour of evening visiting time remained. Dante was tempted to wake him, but perhaps it was for the best he remained asleep.

Again and again, Dante had reexamined how he could have done things differently. If not before he’d kissed Lucas good night, then afterward. He shouldn’t have parked his car so far away from the Blue Bell. Hidden in the shadows, he shouldn’t have laughed, like a smug fool, when Lucas had lifted his handset to Shaw.
He only wants to film him! To catch him drink-driving. He was never going to kill him. I was wrong!

Yes, Dante had been wrong. Over and over. Every poor decision had layered itself like cancer upon the previous poor decision, and the final result was this—Lucas lying in a hospital bed, broken to pieces.

Lucas cracked open one eye and reached out with his right hand. “It’s you.” His voice was scratchy and rough.

“Lucas.” Dante dragged his chair forward and sat as close to Lucas as he could. He took Dante’s right hand and pressed the fingertips to his lips. “Are you thirsty?”

“Yes. Water’s up there.”

Stood next to the bag of grapes and jug of water, was a plastic beaker with a straw in it. Dante half-filled the beaker and directed the straw to Lucas’s dry lips. He made a mental note that tomorrow he would bring him some balm.

“I got shot.”

“I know.” Dante closed his eyes for a moment, centering himself. “It looks bad. Worse than I thought. The nurses and doctors wouldn’t give me any details.”

Lucas cleared his throat and smacked his chapped lips together. Blinking seemed to require a gargantuan effort. “The bullet hit my collarbone and splintered it. The shock waves fractured the whole length. Also, grazed my big….” He squinted at the ceiling while he struggled. “Mmm. Brachial artery. And the nerves.”

“Oh, Lucas.”

“They’ve pinned and wrapped my collarbone with titanium. Good as new. Nerve damage might be permanent, though. Don’t know yet. Have to wait for swelling to go down.” He coughed laboriously and cleared his throat. “Arm or hand might be paralyzed. So, um, I’d appreciate if you didn’t squeeze the life out of the good one.”

Dante hadn’t realized. He released his grip. Lucas placed his right hand on Dante’s jaw, rubbing his thumb back and forth across Dante’s cheek.

“My jaw has a hairline fracture. That’ll heal without doing anything.” The left side of Lucas’s face, that wasn’t swollen to the size of a grapefruit, lifted. “No toffees for Christmas.”

“How about grapes?”

“You have them.”

Dante didn’t want the grapes. He wanted to slide onto the bed next to Lucas and hold him, to feel the pulse in his neck against his lips. He wanted to crush Richard Shaw in his fist. Except it wasn’t only Lucas’s arm that was paralyzed.

Lucas sighed. His hand fell to his side. He blinked rapidly, returning to the land of the conscious, if only for a short visit. “I know you saved my life, and it’s not like I’m not grateful. But you owe me an explanation. I promise I’ll listen, and I’ll try to understand. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Then I expect you’re going to want me to explain myself to you.”

“When you’re up to it. Have the police spoken to you yet?”

“No.”

“What are you going to tell them?”

“Nothing. I’m going to say I don’t remember anything except going out for a night run after my date with you.”

Dante drew the curtain around the bed and returned to his chair, close to Lucas. Close as a conspirator.

“I made a mess of everything.” He should have trusted his instincts from the start. There was no room for excuses.

Lucas closed his hand over Dante’s clenched fists. “Tell me. I’m doped and incapacitated. You aren’t going to get a better chance.”

Dante hung his head. “It was a game. A losing game.”

He told Lucas about his wager with Jim and the terms he’d set. He soldiered on, describing the surveillance on Lucas and Shaw as a silent tear slid from Lucas’s eye and into his ear. Dante didn’t stop until he’d confessed his pièce de résistance—the GPS tracker he’d placed on Lucas’s handset, after Avery’s memorial.

He waited for Lucas to tell him to leave. But Lucas said, “When you asked me out to dinner, was it so you could find out if I still planned to go after Shaw?”

“No.”

“Liar,” Lucas said, without bite.

“I asked you out to dinner because I wanted to know you better. Because of my feelings for you.”

Dante was about to reach for Lucas’s hand, but Lucas motioned for another drink. The beaker shook as he drank. When he was done, his head fell heavily onto the pillows. “I ought to be livid, hadn’t I? I can tell—you’re waiting for it.”

“Give it a chance to sink in. You’re exhausted.”

After a grim stretch of silence, Lucas said, “I had no idea. You were spying on me, following me. All that time, and I had no fucking clue. It’s a wonder I’m alive.” He shifted his hips and shoulders and winced. His gaze didn’t leave the ceiling. “I don’t think Shaw meant to shoot me. Do you think he’ll go to the police?”

“No. Accident or not, he left you to die.” Just as he had Lucas’s sister. “There’s no defense to mitigate that decision.”

“Do you think he’ll try to finish me off?” Lucas’s voice was unsteady. His good fist clutched his bedclothes. “Or get someone else to?”

“I don’t know him well enough to say.” Dante had considered this at length. He’d considered many things during the wakeful hours of last night. “He took your gun. You were wearing gloves. There’s no evidence it was yours.”

“Except the bullets under my kitchen cabinet.”

“I can get rid of those if you’ll let me go to your house. While I’m there I can pick you up pajamas and toiletries and anything else you need.”

“All right.”

Lucas’s face screwed up, but Dante couldn’t say whether the expression was purely pain, or fear or anger or confusion. Probably, it was all of those, topped off with a dismal sense of betrayal.

“I don’t want you to be scared. There’s a way out of this for you. I’ll take care of everything.”

Lucas turned his head. “I told you—”

“I’m not going to kill anyone.”

“How, then? And why? Why would you do that for me?”

Now there was a million-dollar question.

The clank and squeak of a tea trolley sounded in the corridor. Through the top half of the partition, where the flimsy curtains weren’t drawn, Dante watched a wide lady push the trolley around the corner and into the ward. She poked her head in.

“Tea?”

Lucas replied, “Yes, please.”

She left a stiff brew on the bed tray at the foot of the bed.

“You have it, if you like,” Lucas said. “I can’t stand the stuff.”

“You don’t like tea?”

“No.”

Lucas’s admission made Dante uneasy. He took a sip of the lukewarm, copper-colored liquid, then another. For a hospital brew, the flavor was tolerable, if overstewed, and its effect was bracing.

Lucas looked as if he was ready to go back to sleep, but he rubbed his weary eyes and said, “I brought this upon myself. I don’t know what happened to me. Why I thought….” He took a shivery breath. “I wanted to be able to kill Shaw more than I actually wanted to kill him. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.”

“I almost killed a man. You tried to warn me…. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wouldn’t listen.”

“Shh. It’s all right. It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t listen.” Dante rubbed soothing circles over Lucas’s shoulder. “Where’s your handset? I’ll remove the GPS tracker.”

“In that drawer, up there, with my house keys. You’ll need those.”

Dante was glad to have something to busy himself with. That way he didn’t have to look at Lucas to say, “When I go to your house, I’ll remove the surveillance. Although, with your permission, I would prefer to keep it there, until we know what Richard Shaw’s plans are.”

“If you think it’s a good idea.” Lucas sighed again. “None of this means we’re all right. After everything that’s happened, I don’t know if I can be…. If we can be…. If there’s an us.”

“Rest. I’ll visit again tomorrow.”

Lucas closed his eyes with a weary murmur and returned to sleep. Dante continued to sit by his side, eating the grapes to ward off his growing hunger.

He’d meant to ask Lucas why he was in a Health Service ward. A large employer like Excelsior would surely furnish its employees with top-up health benefits, allowing Lucas access to a smaller ward and possibly more state-of-the-art treatment. Dante would make inquiries on his way out, and if necessary, make arrangements for the upgrades. It was the least he could do. The very least he could do.

During the drive home, Dante brooded.

Tired as he was, when he reached his office, he checked the surveillance on Shaw’s house. The Shaws were home, and the lights were out.

Still, Dante couldn’t settle. He contemplated the gin. He decided against it. He needed his wits about him. When a plan went awry like this, the aftermath could be unpredictable.

The house quieted as Lois and Kit went to bed. Using his palm and his fingertips, Dante tried to squeeze out some of the tension in the back of his neck. He rolled his head from side to side. His vertebrae made an unpleasant grinding noise, which he doubted was normal, except perhaps for a man his age with a tendency toward irascibility.

Because people didn’t have the guts to do the right thing. People like Shaw….

There was no time to waste. Dante raced to the basement, unlocked the safe, and kitted himself in his field gear. He checked his spring-loaded knife, pressing the button on its side. The blade popped out with a satisfying click, just as it had the last time it had been used. Fifteen years sitting in the basement safe hadn’t dulled the mechanism or its shine.

After returning to his office for one last look at the monitors, Dante pulled on his thin polymer gloves. He left via the back door, stole into the alleyway behind the Mill Street houses, and slipped silently into his car.

Across the Roseport Road, Dante pulled over at the end of a row of parked cars, close to the passageway between two houses that led into the wider streets of Milton. At this late hour, the residential streetlights had been dimmed. With his woolen balaclava rolled like a hat, low over his brow, Dante strode briskly, his head down, confident in his anonymity.

At Richard Shaw’s house, the lights were still off. The alarm box on the outside of the house flashed its warning. Inside the house, Richard Shaw and his wife slept. Perhaps. Or perhaps, Richard Shaw and his wife were lying in bed awake.

Undeterred, Dante slid along the inside of the high hedge fronting the house.

From the surveillance footage and the daily switching on and off of the lights, Dante had deduced the Shaw’s bedroom was upstairs, at the far end of the house. They didn’t own a dog. Dante’s easiest route to cutting the electricity supply to the lights would be the fuse box, but the ground floor was protected by the alarm. Dante had no choice but to take his chances without tampering with wires.