Catherine Coulter: Split Second

Mr. Hardnose. She looked at him for a long time, and finally she nodded slowly. “Yes. All right, then.” She kissed him fast, then left his office to discuss with Ollie Hamish his bizarre case in Biloxi, Mississippi, where some shrimp fishermen seemed to be on a rampage, killing off their competition.

Lucy and Coop were studying the composite sketch of their murderer, tossing ideas back and forth, when Lucy’s cell phone rang. It was a Dr. Antonio Pellotti at Washington Memorial Hospital. Her father had suffered a massive heart attack and wasn’t expected to live.

Washington Memorial Hospital

Thursday night

Lucy sat beside her father’s bed in the CCU and counted each breath. Dr. Pellotti had told her when they wheeled him out of the cath lab, honest grief in his voice, since he’d known her father for years, “They managed to open up his left coronary artery and found a large part of his heart was beating very poorly. We’re having to support his blood pressure with drugs. We’re not sure how much longer he’ll breathe on his own. We’ll discuss options when and if a respirator is necessary.” He’d taken her hands in his. “He may be in and out, Lucy, but I promise you he’s in no distress. He’s on morphine.”

How did he know her father wasn’t in distress? Lucy wondered now. Her father couldn’t tell them anything one way or the other. And when someone wasn’t conscious and was barely alive, where were they? Looking down at themselves lying there, helpless, wondering what was next? Praying they’d come back? Or were they asleep in the nether reaches of their mind, really unaware of anything at all?

Lucy stared at her father’s face through the oxygen mask, all lean lines and seams and so much thick, dark hair, only streaks of white at his temples. She’d had dinner with him on Tuesday night, her vibrant, handsome father, laughing over a federal regulator who’d overdrawn his own personal account and was raising hell about it. But now he looked old, his flesh slack, as if his life itself was leaching out of his body.

But he wasn’t old, he was only sixty-two, at the top of his banking game, he’d tell her, and it was true. But now he was still, as if his beloved face was a facade, as if he’d already left and was simply waiting for the door to close.

No, she couldn’t—wouldn’t—accept that. There was a chance he could come back; there was always a chance. If he was breathing, that meant his heart was pumping, and that meant—what?

It meant hope, at least to her.

“I told you to work out, Dad, or take a walk every evening; that would have done it.” But he hadn’t. He wasn’t at all fat, but he spent most of his time either reading his favorite newspapers and mysteries or working on his endless deals and strategic loan plans for the bank. He always had something going on, something he was excited about. He’d always been involved and excited about his life, and that was a blessing.

Joshua Acker Carlyle was a very successful man and a loving father. Everyone she knew thought of him as smart and honest, a man to trust. He’d never dabbled in junk bonds or sub-prime mortgages or any of the other shenanigans so many banks had been involved with. His three banks were as solvent as most Canadian banks.

She caught herself already hearing his eulogy, delivered by his uncle, Alan Silverman, only ten years older than he was, a parental afterthought, he’d say, and laugh. He’d always banked his money with her dad and played golf with him most weekends. Uncle Alan and Aunt Jennifer, and their children, Court and Miranda, had been there all through the evening, but the doctors had asked them to leave. Only Lucy was allowed to stay with him. She’d turned off her cell phone because so many friends were calling and she simply couldn’t deal with their sympathy and their endless questions.

“Can you hear me, Dad?” Lucy lightly squeezed his hand. The skin seemed slack, as if it were hanging off him. They said it was from the medicines, to help his lungs, but she hated it. He’d awakened earlier but hadn’t said anything, simply looked at her through a veil of drugs and closed his eyes again. But maybe he could hear her. If he was hovering up there, looking down, of course he could hear her. Dr. Pellotti said he couldn’t, but one of the nurses rolled her eyes behind the doctor’s back and nodded.

And so Lucy talked. She told him about the case she was working on, the killer who targeted single women in neighborhood bars, and how he seemed to be coming this way, since he’d killed in San Francisco, Chicago, and now Cleveland. And why not Washington? There were so many single women here. She told him her partner on this case was Special Agent Cooper McKnight, a man she didn’t much like because he had the reputation of being a playboy. He always had a different woman on his arm, and he was too good-looking, and he knew it. She’d heard a couple of agents in the unit talking about all the women he dated, and they wondered, laughing in the way men did, about how he managed to keep them all straight. What did he think of her? She didn’t have a clue. So far he was polite and attentive, maybe checking her out to put her in his line to take to bed. He’d said a couple of funny things, and wouldn’t that make sense? Women tended to like guys who were funny. It fit with what she’d heard.

She talked and talked, and her father lay there, moving his legs now and then; sometimes, she’d swear, squeezing her hand. Once he’d mumbled words she couldn’t understand before he lapsed again into that frozen silence. He was breathing, so she’d hang on to that. She told him about her boss’s wild-hair adventure Tuesday night at his neighborhood convenience store, how he’d brought down two armed robbers with two children in the store. Dillon had said the kids were both champs, and their dad was a champ, too. “I wonder how I would have done if I’d seen that guy with a stocking on his face and a gun in his hand, while two kids were standing six feet away eating ice-cream bars.”

She told her father all the rest of it before she paused for a moment, then rubbed her fingers over his knuckles, wishing he would squeeze her hand again, show her he knew she was here and recognized her. “I saw Sherlock in Savich’s office this morning, and she smacked him real hard on the arm, not that she could do much damage, he’s hard as a brick outhouse, and then she kissed him. I know she must still be replaying what happened again and again in her mind. Can you imagine, Dad? Two innocent kids, and knowing all the way to your soul their lives were in the balance?

“Sherlock called the father and gave him the name of a shrink for the kids. I’ll bet they’re going to have nightmares for a while.”

She smoothed her palm over her father’s forehead, his cheeks. His skin felt clammy, and why was that? His leg jerked, then he was motionless again, and there was only the sound of his slow, difficult breathing. Lucy laid her cheek against his chest. “You’re too young to leave me, Dad, please, you know it’s always been just you and me, so you need to stay. You need to get better and tell Dr. Pellotti you’re going to outlive him and his kids. Will you do that for me, Dad?”

She was crying silently when her father suddenly yelled, “Mom, what did you do? Why did you stab Dad? Oh my God, he’s not moving. There’s so much blood. Why, Mom?”

Lucy reared back, her mouth open to shout for the nurses when she saw he was looking at her, recognized her. He squeezed her hand. “Lucy,” he whispered, and then he closed his eyes and took in a hitching breath, and then he lay still.

She ran to the door to yell for the nurses, but she heard a nurse scream, “Code blue!” before she got there, and then the room filled up with men and women, and she stood by the lone window in the hospital room and watched them start to work frantically to save him, until she was ushered out.