Greg Iles - True Evil

He lay down on his back, then scooted across to make a space for her. She got into the bed and laid her head on his shoulder, her body warm along the length of his side.

"Why did you marry Thora?" she asked softly. "Was it because she's beautiful?"

He thought about it for a while. "I didn't think so at the time. But now…I think maybe that had more to do with it than I knew."

Alex nodded, her cheek against his shirt.

"It wasn't only that, though," he went on. "And I still don't know why she would do this. I mean, why not just ask me for a divorce? I'd give it to her."

"I think it's about Ben."

"What do you mean?"

"She knows how much Ben loves you. She can't tell her son that she wants to take away his wonderful new father because she's suddenly bored. That she lied when she married you. Death solves all those problems for her. If you die, she's a noble widow, not a selfish divorcee. And noble widow is a role Thora already knows how to play."

"That's for sure."

"Not to mention adding a couple of mil to her bank account."

He sighed but said nothing.

"People used to think I was beautiful," Alex whispered, her hand rising to her scarred cheek. "Before this."

"You still are. You just can't see it right now. You're not the same as you were, that's all. It's like women who get chemotherapy. They're still beautiful, they're just bald. I call it the Sinead O'Connor look."

Alex laughed softly. "You've got a pretty good bedside manner, don't you?"

"Not good enough for Thora, it seems."

"Well, we know that bitch is crazy."

Chris closed his eyes. "I'm going to be bald myself soon, if I take the chemo."

"No ifs, bud." Alex wagged her forefinger in his face. "You're taking it."

"You're my doctor now?"

"Somebody needs to be."

He took her arm and turned her on her side, facing away from him, then spooned her tight.

"Oh, no," she said softly.

"What?"

"This is my favorite thing in the world."

"Good." After only a few breaths, sleep was returning.

Alex closed her hands around his arm where it enfolded her. "Don't freak out if I cry," she said. "Because I feel like I'm going to."

"Why?"

"Because life sucks right now. It's been sucking for a really long time."

Chris squeezed as tight as he could for a few moments, then eased up. "There are worse things than this. That's one thing I've learned in medicine. It can always get worse."

She turned her head so that her cheek touched his. "I hope not."

"We need to sleep, Alex."

"I know. Are you going to puke on me?"

His laughter sounded like someone else laughing in a dream. "I'll try not to."

She tensed in his arms.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"I forgot to check in with someone online. Jamie, actually. It's kind of a tradition."

Chris struggled to raise his arm. "Go ahead."

She pulled his arm back down and snuggled in close. "No…it's too late now. He'll be all right for one night."

"Oh, shit, " said a female voice.

Chris came awake with the bed moving beneath him. Every muscle in his body ached, but his chest and neck felt as though he had endured a car crash.

"Shit, shit, shit," cursed the woman. "I slept through my alarm."

Alex, he remembered. He blinked his eyes open and felt full daylight stab his retinas. Alex was standing beside the bed, pulling on her jeans.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"Nine a.m. I set my cell alarm, but I forgot to plug in my phone. It died during the night. I guess that snuggling scrambled my brain."

Chris sat up, and a wave of nausea rolled through his stomach. "Do you need to use the bathroom?"

She looked at his face and caught his meaning. "Just let me pee."

She disappeared into the bathroom. Chris slid his legs off the bed, then got up slowly and went to the minibar. He chose a cold Dasani, which felt good going down but made him pray he could keep it there. When he was confident that he could, he went to his bag and took his morning dose of antivirals: AZT, ritonavir, enfuvirtide, and vidarabine. As he swallowed the last pill, the toilet flushed in the bathroom.

"I'm done," Alex called. "All yours."

"I think I'm okay now. I felt like I had diarrhea, but it passed."

She walked over and sat on one of the club chairs. She had washed her face, and for the first time he saw the scars without makeup covering them. In his mind, he saw an image of someone throwing acid onto a painting of a woman.

"What are you thinking?" she asked.

"About today."

Her suspicion didn't fade. "You've got two choices. Drive back to Natchez for chemotherapy, or fly to Sloan-Kettering for chemotherapy."

"Now you're my mother?"

Alex turned up her palms. "You want to play Russian roulette with your life?"

"That's what chemotherapy would be under these circumstances. We don't know what was injected into me. My best chance for survival is to find out exactly what's killing me. Only then can I get effective treatment."

Alex considered this. "How do you plan to do that?"

"How about you and Kaiser catch the son of a bitch for me?"

"I guess you feel better this morning."

Chris picked up his pants and struggled to put them on.

"Where are you going that you need your pants?" Alex asked.

"Over to UMC, to see the researchers Peter Connolly told me about. If they're not there anymore, I'll get the names of the top people in the Hematology and Oncology departments and try to see them."

"For what purpose?"

A wave of dizziness hit him. He sat on the edge of the bed, rocking slowly. "I think we've focused too much on Shane Lansing. Okay, he owns a radiation-oncology center. He owns a lot of other stuff, too. We know that something was injected into me. If that something was radioactive, it probably would have shown up on the X-ray I had yesterday. I think it's more likely that Connolly is right.

Someone got hold of my blood-or semen-then altered it and reinjected it into me. If that's the case, the odds are against Lansing. Shane cares more about money than medicine, so he doesn't have that depth of knowledge. We're looking for superdoctors, Alex. People who are experts on bone marrow, genetics, oncogenic viruses. There aren't many of those in this entire state, and the ones we do have are right across the street."

Alex leaned forward in her chair, excitement in her eyes. "How's your body? Can you function?"

"I think so. I'd better take a shower, though. I'm not going to impress anybody smelling like vomit."

"Good call." She walked to the bedside phone. "I'm going to order some breakfast. Can you eat anything?"

"Toast and a bowl of grits. And hot tea."

She smiled broadly. "You're the only man I've spent the night with in the last ten years who ordered grits in the morning."

"Welcome home."

Andrew Rusk was ten miles south of Jackson when his fear hit critical mass. A few days ago, there had been only one car following him. Now there was a motorized battalion, operating in shifts. All American cars, most of the drivers white males between twenty-five and forty-five. He was in deep shit. Cursing Alex Morse with visceral hatred, he swerved off the interstate at the Byram exit and pulled into the drive-through lane of the Wendy's restaurant there. Two cars followed him.

"Goddamnit!" he shouted.

Last night, when he received the Viagra spam from Dr. Tarver, Rusk had been elated. He didn't know where Tarver had been hiding, but he was sure that the doctor had good reason to be out of contact. After all, they had hardly spent more than a few minutes in each other's company over the past five years. Last night this trip had seemed like a leisurely drive down to the hunting camp. Now it was impossible. If he led those sons of bitches in the government sedans to Chickamauga, Dr. Tarver would kill them and him without a second's hesitation.