Then, from across the room, he heard a shape coming in from the hallway, breathing raggedly. Mike sensed it hovering there, not moving.

“Hello, Frank,” Walker’s voice said.

Mike raised his head as much as he dared, unable now to avert his eyes. Coming here had cost him so much, almost everything, and he needed to see it finished.

He could see Snow looking into the scan room, wavering unsteadily with the hallway behind him, mouth slightly open, shoulders rising and falling with the exertion of his arrival. The handle of the ax still jutted upward from between his shoulder blades where Mike had planted it—it trembled a little with his breathing, like a wooden tail. Standing there, he looked more dead than alive, yet more dangerous than ever, kept upright solely by the twin life-support systems of his own rage and madness, and the inhuman thing that knotted them together at the rotten plexus of his being.

“Where…?”

“Over here,” Walker said.

“Not…you,” Snow croaked. “The boy.” He staggered around sideways and the handle of the ax whacked the doorway, the impact making him wince. From his hiding place behind the desk, Mike straightened up to follow his shambling progress toward the doorway of the scan room.

Through the glass, Mike could see Walker waiting in the room, sitting on the table where Snow had gotten his scan. The neurologist sat with one leg crossed over the other and his hands folded on his lap. It was the quintessential physician’s pose, the body language of a man prepared to deliver a sizable slice of life-changing news, good, bad, or uncertain.

“Come in here,” Walker said. “I want to talk to you.”

“About…what?”

“Oh, there are a few things.” The doctor spread his hands. “For example, do you really know who you are?”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s over. You lost.”

Walker’s glance was sympathetic, almost pitying. “Look at you, Frank. You can hardly stand upright.”

“Not…for long. I’m taking the boy’s body. It’s young…strong. Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Lying!”

“Am I?” Walker asked mildly. “At this point, why bother?” He patted the table next to him. “Come on, Frank. Let’s talk. You’ll find we have more in common than you think.”

CHAPTER 53

53.

Frank Snow didn’t move. Dr. Walker remained exactly where he was, a study in patience. With minutes left to live, he gave no thought to neurology or any facet of medicine that had consumed so much of life until now. For the first time in what felt like decades, Tanglewood Memorial Hospital was nowhere near his mind; it was like a dream to him now, something that had happened to another man entirely.

He was thinking about a nurse named Lana.