CHAPTER 81

HENRY SEXTON LAY half-conscious in a windowless room that only an hour ago had been an administrative office. Two doctors, four FBI agents, and a squad of nurses had hastily converted the office into a protective cocoon for the reporter-turned-assassination-target. Only one nurse had been with Henry since the ER doctor had patched the grazing wound to his skull, and at least one plainclothes FBI agent was standing guard outside his door. The nurse had been ordered not to speak to anyone about Henry’s condition, or even to confirm that he was alive.

To Henry’s dismay, neither Sherry nor Caitlin nor Penn Cage had been in to check on him. The FBI agents he’d questioned had been brusque, but as the dazing effect of his head wound began to wear off, Henry recognized his nurse as an old grade school classmate—Irma McKay. When he told Irma he recognized her, she lingered to talk to him, and he’d taken advantage of the opportunity to ask about the shooting. Nurse McKay tried to obey her orders not to reveal Sherry’s death, but Henry quickly read the truth in her eyes. Seconds later she broke down and admitted that Sherry was dead.

Although Henry had feared this from the start, something broke inside him when the nurse told him the truth. Not since the murder of Albert Norris had a death hit him like Sherry’s did. Her loss proved the cliché: you never knew what you had until it was gone. For years he had taken her for granted—the thousand things she did to make his life easier and, more important, the rock-solid support she’d given him when no one else gave a damn about his work. Sherry had always begged him to pursue a different type of story, but she’d finally accepted his need to see his quest through. She’d even helped him when she could. But now she had paid for his stubbornness with her life, while he had survived.

Try as he might, Henry simply couldn’t process the shock. As he lay on his back in a drug-induced haze, a conviction grew in him that soon became an obsession. He had to get out of the hospital. Before an hour passed, his obsession had become a compulsion, irresistible and beyond all logic. The goal of his escape seemed almost secondary. As though in self-defense, his mind had focused on logistical considerations rather than philosophical ones.