The problem only
seemed
insurmountable, he told himself.
Your greatest strength is your analytical skill. You can figure this out. Talk it through
.
He sighed. Why not?
Oliver's unconscious and constantly monitored by the intensive care unit staff. He's protected by a security team. And Helen is asleep in her room down the hall
.
So what? You've performed more difficult tasks under tighter circumstances, haven't you?
One secret to his success had been absorbed years ago: never assume you're safe. He had much work left to do in the world. He didn't intend to end his career with Helen Sullivan.
Obviously
.
It's grow or die.
Success is the progressive achievement of worthy goals in the pursuit of happiness
.
All humans are happiest when engaged in goal-directed behavior
.
True. His goal for some time, for years, had been to best Helen Sullivan, The Iron Cowgirl herself.
The first time he'd seen Helen was on television. The way she handled herself, her rigid posture, contemplative expression, and decisive nature revealed her self-concept to his practiced eye. She believed herself a woman with a bright future who had everything going for her.
At that moment, he'd settled on her as the necessary next step in his own evolution.
Look, you set out merely to prove you could reach the unreachable Helen Sullivan, and she was vulnerable. You planned to create her grief by hitting her hard in the gut and then to cure her, molding her into a newer, greater version of herself, right?
The precise recitation of his life's purpose puffed his ego as he knew it was designed to do.
Eric's death worked. It was the perfect hit. Knocked the swagger out of her. Brought her down to the level normal people live on every day.
Right. I did what I set out to do.
But then you were disappointed when she didn't linger in despair, weren't you?
An unwelcome reminder of his too-brief satisfaction following his initial skirmish with Helen. He'd underestimated her, a mistake.
But while Helen proved more resilient than he'd expected, the compensating benefit had been Oliver. When Milton Jones shot Oliver, the unanticipated blow struck Helen every bit as hard. And then came Oliver's ensuing stroke, a, well,
stroke
of good fortune.
Last night's work had been risky. He'd known that in advance. But he had never anticipated failing so dramatically, leaving Oliver himself as a live witness to identify him.
Part of the game is the challenge. You will never know all the consequences in advance
.
He snorted his derision.
A lot of good that does me now
.
So? It's time to adjust your plan. Orâ
What
?
Or you move on. Perfect your skills elsewhere.
Quit, you mean? While she's ahead? Relocate again? Start over again?
His heart pounded with fury.
No! I'm not ready to retire yet.
When Oliver dies, it will finally be over. Helen will no longer feel loved, strong or protected. She'll withdraw from public life and finally, really know the full measure of her humanity through her grief.
It sounds like you've made up your mind, then. But don't forget: Each time you strike her, you increase your risk of both failure and discovery. Are you prepared for that?
Fleming stood and turned on the waiting-room light. He felt renewed energy for the project and encouraged that he would win again. All he needed was a fresh approach, as simple as possible.
After pondering the possibilities for a few minutes, he realized that every potential solution had at least one serious flaw. Time to stop considering the flaws and go back over the elements he'd already resolved.
Getting into Oliver's room to kill him would not be difficult. There was a guard posted at the door, but the guard was friendly. They'd already spoken a few times. The guard wouldn't stop him from entering the room and getting close enough to Oliver to kill him. And maybe the guard wouldn't even be sitting there. He'd noticed the guard flirting with the pretty young nurse. What was her name? Lydia? The two of them might be off in a corner somewhere, if he was lucky. Afterward, he would talk to the guard or one of the nurses to establish his alibi.
The security cameras in the corridors would record his presence at the critical time. He didn't want to disable them because even that would leave clues to his identity that he wanted to avoid. What he needed was an alibi, so that his entry into Oliver's room wouldn't be a problem. He'd already figured out how to handle that.
The nurses at the station nearby typically kept busy attending to other patients; after all, the conscious patients tended to complain, unlike Oliver. Fleming could easily avoid arousing suspicion by stopping at the nurses' to let them know he was going in. They wouldn't object.
Timing would be important, but then, precision was always necessary in his work. With the curtains drawn around the glass walls that enclosed Oliver's bed, he'd be able to do what he needed to do fairly quickly without being thwarted.
The bigger problem was Oliver's monitors that reported his condition to the nurse's station. If one of those monitors either stopped working or alarmed, someone would rush into Oliver's room. So he needed a solution that wouldn't interrupt the monitors or cause Oliver's heart to stop beating before he made his exit and established his alibi.
What method could he use? Suffocation was out because he'd have to stay with the body until the heart stopped. The same flaw applied to strangulation. He could slit one of Oliver's major arteries fairly quickly and escape, but the blood pumping out all over the body and the room was not aesthetically pleasing. It lacked finesse.
No, ideally he'd administer some kind of injection that would work slowly, allowing him to escape nonchalantly and establish an alibi.
As he thought more about it, he liked the symmetry of killing Oliver by lethal injection on the same day Helen would kill Tommy Taylor by the same means. Helen might even make the connection someday down the road exacerbating her grief.
The down-side was that he had to inject Oliver tonight, which didn't allow time for researching and locating the right pharmaceuticals.
He continued to turn the problem over and over in his mind without reaching an effective solution. Finally, he realized he couldn't grab the solution from his conscious mind. It was too elusive. He was blocking his own progress somehow. This had happened to him many times before. There was only one method left to try.
He settled more deeply into the chair and gazed at the clock across the room. He stared without seeing, allowing his eyes to slightly lose their piercing focus, and turned to the meditation that never failed him: “What doesn't kill me makes me stronger,” he repeated in his head, followed by, “I can do it. I can do it,” then, “What am I missing?”
Within twenty minutes, his subconscious delivered his solution. His eyes popped open and he sat up straight in the chair. The easy way was always the best. He knew that. He had been making it too complicated.
He'd deliver the injection via one of Oliver's IVs already in place. Within a minute or two, Oliver would simply fall deeper into his coma, something the nurses would not even notice.
Later this morning or tomorrow, the neurosurgeons would drain the hematoma, but Oliver wouldn't respond as they expected.
Delivering the right dosage would be a little tricky, but he didn't anticipate a problem.
Now that he had the method, he'd have to look around for the means: insulin, an almost embarrassingly easy substance to find in a hospital.
He almost whistled as he rested his hands in his trouser pockets and walked into the corridor.
With his luck, Oliver would be dead in less than an hour.
Chapter Twenty
Tampa, Florida
Friday 5:30 a.m.
OLIVER FELT VAGUELY ANXIOUS as he hovered between here and there, not quite sleeping, not quite awake. The feeling wasn't new. He knew how to deal with it. He allowed himself to sink into light sleep again, or perhaps a state closer to self-hypnosis, lucid dreaming, a technique he'd learned from his grief counselor.
He could call up Dr. Fleming and relive their sessions to calm himself when Dr. Fleming wasn't with him.
“You're improving exponentially,” Ben told Oliver in a recent session. “It's amazing how much progress you've made.”
Oliver had been skeptical then, and still was. He felt sad all the time, cried easily, had no appetite. He missed Eric. He obsessed over Eric's drunk driving. He felt totally responsible for the deaths of Ryan and Milton Jones. He pushed those negative memories aside and floated to a better, more cathartic session.
“Let's go over it one more time,” Ben said, his deep, soothing tones almost like a lullaby. “Tell me everything. Leave nothing out. Really feel absolutely every nuance you suffered from the time Eric fell out of the tree until Milton Jones shot you.”
Unlike reality, in his dream Oliver resisted Ben's suggestion. He'd begun to think that reliving his nightmares wasn't helping him. They'd tried several forms of therapy over the years. Art and music therapy had never appealed to Oliver. Journaling helped, but he'd done that for years.
Helen seemed to have moved on with life and she never wallowed in misery, although Oliver knew she felt deep sorrow, too.
Maybe it was time to stop working with Ben. That's what Helen had done long ago. Maybe he should try something else, another plan might work better.
Oliver rolled over onto his side and snuggled deeper into the down duvet. His face was cold, but the rest of his body felt comfortably warm. December could be one of Thornberry's chilliest months, but Oliver enjoyed the traditional holiday weather. He wore sweaters and ancient boots and his favorite jeans every day as he performed the chores that connected him to his land.
Today, he'd planned to clear out the brush around Jake's barn. All of Florida had been experiencing a long drought for the past couple of years. Keeping the ground fuel under control was an important part of ranching. He and Todd Dale would do it together, but they didn't have to start for a couple of hours yet. Still time to catch a few more winks.
Something stirred Oliver from the depths of his dream. A familiar soundâthe voice of Ben Fleming speaking close to his earâeven if he couldn't make sense of the words.
“Good bye, Oliver. Have a good journey. I'll take care of Helen.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Tampa, Florida
Friday 4:00 a.m.
HELEN FLOATED BETWEEN CONSCIOUSNESS and slumber, too cold to sleep soundly and too tired to awaken. The hospital television set was on, volume muted, casting a blue glow over her room. She opened her eyes briefly to check the time on the screen before drifting back into a state of semi-consciousness.
Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn't eaten since breakfast the day before. The scrambled eggs and toast she'd consumed had long ago metabolized. She was hungry. Really hungry. She burrowed deeper under the light covers, still cold. Her shoulders bunched together and she inserted her icy hands between her legs. She still wore the lightweight green cotton scrubs she'd borrowed earlier. Her feet were bare, her toes numb with cold. She rubbed them together to warm up as best she could and went back to sleep.
A while later, she ignored the need to urinate because it was simply too cold to get out of bed. She noticed her entire body was shaking and her nose was chilled. She opened her eyes to check the time on the television screen and closed them again when she realized it was still the middle of the night. She dozed again.
Flashing lights on the television screen awakened her twenty minutes later. Her uncomfortably full bladder pressed her to do something about the situation this time. She pulled the thin cotton blanket off the bed and wrapped it around her when she stood, wincing at the painful burn on her arm. She slipped her feet into the terry slippers. They felt so warm she decided to wear them back to bed.
When she returned from the bathroom, standing before the mirror in the dim light from the television in the other room, she saw her face for the first time since the fire. Old makeup streaked her cheeks, mascara smeared around her eyes and ran down to her chin. The butterfly bandages, the stitches, makeup and soot all combined to create a Halloween horror mask. She bent over and threw several splashes of water on her face to clean off the mess as best she could. When she dried her face with the towel and looked again, she saw the remnants of a much younger Helen.
“Where did you go, anyway?” she said to her younger counterpart in the mirror. “I'll bet you didn't expect your life to work out like this, did you?”
When young Helen didn't reply, she wrapped herself up in the blanket again and walked like a geisha to the door.