The floorboards creak once, then again. A soft curse floats through the dark. Then a dark hand splays itself against my white sheets, and two dark knees depress the mattress. I can’t see a face, but the unfamiliar scent tells me it must be Serenity.

Rising up on one elbow, I try in vain to make out her features in the darkness. I reach for the lamp on the bedside table, but she says, “No.”

Then she pulls my hand to one breast and flattens my palm over it.

“Tee,” I whisper. “What about—”

“Don’t talk,” she says in a low, insistent voice. “I mean it.”

After a few seconds without breathing, I begin kneading her breast. A purring sound escapes her throat. Then she presses me onto my back and hikes one knee over my hips, reaching between us, searching.

“Jesus,” I gasp.

“I warned you,” she says, settling her weight upon me. “If you say one more word, I’ll stop.”

Tuesday
Chapter 22

At 6:14 Tuesday morning, my mother checked herself out of St. Catherine’s Hospital against her physician’s advice. The fact that her physician was her husband’s partner gave Drew Elliott no special power to hold her; all Drew could do was call to give me a heads-up. Forty minutes after one of Mom’s friends drove her to my house, she was being helped to bathe and dress by Annie and Jenny. Nothing on God’s earth, she said, was going to stop her from sitting in the first row in the courtroom during her husband’s trial. If the Lord wants me that badly, she said, he’ll have to take me from the courthouse, not the hospital.

Once Mom was ready, we ate a light breakfast, then Tim Weathers talked us through the departure procedure he expects us to follow every morning of the trial. The armored Yukon is too wide to fit the narrow driveway beside my house, so we are to gather at the front door, then at Tim’s command move swiftly down the steps and into the safety of the big SUV, shielded by the bodies and weapons of the operators from Vulcan Asset Management.

I stand at the door with Annie and Mia, who are highly irritated about being forbidden to attend the trial proceedings, while Tim and his guys do a recon outside. Jenny has accompanied Mom to the upstairs restroom for a final pretrial stop. Serenity is upstairs, too, doing what she can to make Dolores feel at home. When Mom appears at the top of the stairs, Jenny is not beside her, so Annie races up the steps to help her down.

Left alone with Mia, I suddenly register that she’s wearing sunglasses inside, which is unusual for her. Before I can ask if she thinks Annie is doing all right, she says softly, “So, are you a southern gentleman now?”

“What?”