“Shit!” Snake cursed. “That’s one of them Live Alert things!”

Snake tried to wrench the necklace from Morehouse’s clawlike grasp, but Wilma cried, “Don’t worry about it! That thing don’t even work! I quit paying the bill after he moved in with me.”

Sonny couldn’t take his eyes from Morehouse’s face. His old friend wouldn’t look so proud of himself unless he’d foxed them somehow.

“Make him give it to you,” Sonny said, passing the knife back to Snake.

Snake followed the catheter line to where it disappeared under Morehouse’s boxer shorts. The knife vanished under the shorts.

“I’m counting to three,” Snake said. “After that—”

Morehouse hurled the Live Alert necklace across the room, where it caromed off the wall and rattled on the floor.

“I oughta cut ’em off anyway,” Snake said, “just for the aggravation.”

The ringing telephone froze them all where they stood. When it rang the second time, Morehouse began to laugh.

“I called ’em with my credit card last Friday!” he cried. “What you gonna do now?”

Wilma snatched up the cordless phone and checked the caller ID. “Oh, God. He really did. It’s the Live Alert people.”

“Goddamn it!” Snake shouted.

“I’ll tell them it was a false alarm,” she said, moving quickly to the door.

“You need a password for that,” Morehouse told her, giving Snake a defiant glare.

The phone kept ringing in Wilma’s hand.

“False alarm’s no good,” Sonny said, thinking aloud. “Not if he turns up dead in the morning.”

Something changed in Snake’s demeanor. He looked like a big buck realizing he was being watched from a tree stand. Turning to Wilma, he said, “Tell the dispatcher Glenn just died.”

Wilma’s mouth fell open.

Glenn began to scream.

“Hurry!” Snake shouted. “Go in the other room. Tell ’em it looks like a stroke or a heart attack. No breath sounds, no heartbeat. He’s already going gray.”

Wilma scuttled through the door on her macabre errand.

Sonny saw Snake looking at him the way Frank used to look at him when they were about to assault a hostile beach. “Take his right hand, Sonny,” Snake ordered. “Don’t bruise him any more than you have to.”

Without a word, Sonny laid the fentanyl syringe on the bedside table, then grabbed his old friend’s thick wrist and held it against the mattress. Snake had already done the same on the opposite side. Sonny was surprised it was that easy, even after the cancer. Glenn Morehouse had been physically stronger than any man he’d ever known.

“Pass me that syringe,” Snake ordered.

“Wait!” Wilma cried from the doorway. “They’re sending an ambulance anyway, just to be sure. It’s already on the way.”

Fear bloomed in Sonny’s chest, and his mouth went dry.