“I had a mild attack of Takayasu’s inside the house. By the way, I slit that little shit’s throat. Anyway, in the fight I lost my Imuran and then with the house on fire I had to scramble out. I saw that shadow, I saw that Preach didn’t know I had come with you. He didn’t know who I was.”

“That’s right, he couldn’t see you,” Whitman said. “And neither could Crow.” At her puzzled look, he added: “The spirit of Preach’s familiar. The shadow you saw. Crow helped Preach see the future.”

“Not this future, surely.”

“No. In the end, Crow failed him.”

“As did everything else.”

Whitman nodded. “The Takayasu’s disease—go on.”

“Right. You saw the way the shadow—Crow—vanished when it got to me. It struck me then that something in my brain was affecting Preach. It was the only logical explanation. It also made sense that the closer I came to him the stronger my effect would be on him.”

“The change in your brain chemistry the Takayasu’s caused somehow negated Preach’s power.”

“I took a chance and I was right. The moment I touched my forehead to his, the bullet acted as any bullet would. It penetrated his brain and killed him.”

Whitman looked at her with different eyes. She was as altered as he was, only in different ways. “How are you feeling now?”

“I’m okay, for the moment, at least. I’ll need my medication, but for the first time I feel better the way I am.” She looked down. “What about Lucy? We should get her to the jet. We can fly her to an airport, get an ambulance to Walter Reed.”

Whitman scooped his arms under Lucy’s hips, indicated to Charlie that she should do the same with Lucy’s shoulder blades, and they lifted her up. He led the way across the lawn.

“What are you doing?” Charlie said. “The plane’s the other way.”

“We aren’t taking her to the plane,” Whitman said. “We’re taking her into the Well.”

Chapter 53

53

King Cutler, driving as fast as he felt safe, had crossed out of D.C. and was in Virginia proper. He had received the text from Whitman telling him to come to the Well as quickly as he could over an hour ago, but he had been so focused on trying to get a handle on his future business with NSA that he hadn’t noticed it. Omar Hemingway wasn’t returning his calls, and with St. Vincent dead there was no one else to contact.