Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,128

body. Those fingernails fluttered, choosing their spot.

He had no one to help him and an eternity to morning.

63

The Most Awful Thing

In the not unlikely event that he got killed, Evan hadn’t made a contingency plan for Andre. So—at the end of this never-ending night—he’d reversed course to the one person who would need to step up.

He paused on the footbridge in the front yard, watching the sleeping swans bob on the placid moat. He’d spoken to Joey on the drive back to Bel Air. She was all over mission planning, interfacing with Tommy and Orphan V, laying the groundwork for the plan Evan had hatched. He could see her extraordinariness only when he considered the fullness of who she was, not just the shape of who he wanted her to be.

He wondered if that was what Veronica had arrived at with him, when she’d sat gazing across the kitchen table at his impaled arm, her face evincing total acceptance. When she’d placed her hand on his cheek, looked into him, and released him to do what it was that he did, she’d seen him for the first time, not the image of who she hoped him to be.

Simple as it sounded, perhaps that was what love really was.

What a lacking word, rife with clichés and misconceptions. It was so much more than what people talked about, with a depth that might accommodate even the darkness of his own soul.

There was no answer to his knock, not even from the dogs. He tried the front door and found it unlocked.

Worried, he moved inside. The dogs scampered to him but did not bark. They sniffed at his boots as he crossed the concrete stepping-stones. Seemingly contented, they bunched at his feet as he entered the kitchen, the living room.

Veronica lay on the giant white swoop of the couch, passed out, a handle of Tanqueray resting on the table before her. A crystal tumbler was tipped onto its side in a tiny puddle of melted ice.

No sign of the majordomo; perhaps he was off for the night. The dogs looked up at Evan, concerned. He crouched and petted their ratty little heads, and they licked his fingertips with rough tongues before scurrying off to curl up together in a corduroy disk of a dog bed by the bar.

He stepped down onto the lush carpet and approached Veronica. Her pajama top was hoisted slightly to show a band of her belly, which looked distended. Her face had an unhealthy pallor, jaundiced and sickly. Her breath whistled. He wondered again at her seemingly rapid deterioration. Was it because he was only now seeing her unvarnished? Or was it the haze of his own perception continuing to clear?

She blinked her eyes open lazily as he approached, and she reached for him, her fingers pale and thin. “Evan.” Tears beaded at the corners of her eyes, then dotted her temples. She tried to hoist herself up but couldn’t find the strength. Her words came in a slur. “What’re you doin’ back?”

“We have to talk about the next steps for Andre. If something happens to me—”

“I couldn’t bear it,” she said. “If something happened to you.”

He reached for the tumbler and set it upright. “You can’t keep drinking like this,” he said. “It’ll kill you.”

She produced a tease of a grin and stretched while barely moving, an elegant twist of her spine. “I’m already dead, Evan.”

“What does that mean?”

She sat up too rapidly, and her face yellowed even more with nausea. She lifted a trembling palm to her forehead, and then her pupils pulled north and she fell back against the cushions, seizing. She contorted, arched up onto the points of her shoulders, her mouth a twisted maw.

He shot around the coffee table and cradled her with his good arm, turning her head to one side to keep her windpipe clear. As quickly as it started, the seizure ended.

He held her and she breathed into his chest irregularly, one hand clawed in the fabric of his shirt.

“You okay?”

She nodded faintly, her hair rustling against him. “Happens sometimes. Just need … rest.”

He adjusted her back into the couch, doing his best to keep pressure off his wrapped right forearm. She felt frail, light as a bird.

He laid her head gingerly on a throw pillow, and she was asleep.

He drew himself up and walked over to the kitchen counter, where she’d moved her pill bottles.

He found the rifaximin once more, the antibiotic he thought she’d taken for traveler’s stomach, though