“He’s waiting for me now.”

She gives me a long look. “Promise me you won’t give Royal anything that matters. You can’t trust him, Penn.”

“I know that.”

“Stop by the newspaper when you’re done. I can’t make any final decisions about tomorrow’s editions until I know where you stand with him.”

“I will.”

“All right, then.” Slipping the photo back into her coat, she stands on tiptoe and kisses me.

As she starts toward the hospital entrance, Jordan Glass gets out of a car to my right and follows her to the doors. Maybe Kaiser told his wife to keep an eye on Caitlin, or maybe she’s just concerned.

Shaking off my worry, I climb into my Audi, throw it into gear, back out of the space, and race out of the parking lot. As soon as I hit Highway 15, something in my chest comes loose. It’s not empathy for Henry, or grief over the woman he loved. The reckless attack on Henry—with Caitlin standing only feet away—has penetrated the most primitive fibers of my brain. I feel myself gearing down into survival mode, a state without sentiment, hesitation, or moral constraint. Instead of apprehension, I feel an almost surreal sense of calm.

The ambient glow of Vidalia fills the sky ahead, and the lights of Natchez flicker like stars high on the bluff across the river. Taking out my cell phone, I call Kirk’s number.

“I’m on him,” he says. “Still at St. Catherine’s. Whole family’s outside the ICU.”

“Randall Regan, too?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Are you still up for this?”

“Oo-rah, brah. Let the games begin.”

CHAPTER 84

AS SOON AS the guard passed Caitlin through the front entrance of the hospital, Jordan Glass called out her name, then beckoned her toward some chairs in the corner of the darkened lobby. The seats had cracked covers, but they were comfortable enough. The coffee table was strewn with well-thumbed magazines. Jordan sat beneath a poster warning about heart disease in women, then waited while Caitlin took a chair to her right. Caitlin’s skin felt cold, and her ears were ringing. She wondered if she was finally going into shock.

“You saved Henry,” Jordan said, as though they had been discussing the issue for the past twenty minutes.

Henry’s frozen face kept floating behind Caitlin’s eyes, the trickle of blood running down to the pillow, then Sherry whirling from the window, her hands flying to her throat as one eye socket poured blood. Caitlin didn’t want to say anything about it, for fear of sounding like a baby in front of a woman who’d spent years in war zones. Who opened those damned window blinds? she asked herself for the hundredth time.

“And Sherry died doing what she could to save the man she loved,” Jordan added.

“She died doing what I told her to do,” Caitlin corrected.