She shook her head. “And they won’t tell me if he’s going to be OK, either.”

  “They probably don’t know. But they’ll try their best.” I nodded to the Volvo. “Get in. When they head out, we’ll follow them to the hospital.”

  “I should call Todd,” Mother said, but she moved toward the passenger side of the car. “And Dix. And Catherine.”

  The ambulance started up with a wail of sirens, and I hustled over to the car and slid behind the wheel while Mother did the same thing on the other side. “Make sure you strap in. I’m sure they’ll be going fast, and I’ll do my best to keep up.”

  “Don’t kill us,” Mother said. “I’d rather get there five minutes later than not at all.”

  Good to know. I put the Volvo in gear and followed the ambulance up the track to the road.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mother called Dix first. He was at the office, and said he’d tell Darcy and Jonathan, who were also there. But first he’d call Todd, who he said would meet us at the hospital. Once that was done, Dix would also make his own way to the hospital. Mother, meanwhile, called Catherine, who was at home with Cole and Marley’s Oliver, both of whom were too young for school, and broke the news to her.

  I, while I was sure Rafe had already told Grimaldi, called her myself, too.

  “De… Tamara.”

  She didn’t waste any time. “Your husband called. Which hospital?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “The ambulance is from the Sweetwater Fire Department. I assume the county medical center? We’re going north on the Columbia Road right now. We just passed Beulah’s Meat’n Three, if that helps.”

  “I’ll head that way. If you end up somewhere else, let me know.”

  I told her I would. But— “Just so you know it, the ambulance is doing at least eighty. I’m having a hard time keeping up. And we’re coming up on that intersection with the Damascus Road soon. There’s a big light there. I might lose them if I can’t make it through the light behind the ambulance.”

  “Do your best,” Grimaldi said. “If you don’t know where to go, call me back. I’ll find out and tell you.”

  I thanked her, and then I put both hands on the wheel so I could better try to stay behind the ambulance the whole way to the hospital. In the seat next to me, Mother was on the phone with Audrey, giving her and Mrs. Jenkins all the details.

  “Vultures, Audrey!” Her voice shook with revulsion. “Vultures as big as motorcycles, circling the truck. There must have been two dozen of them.”

  Damn near, as far as I had been able to tell. Of course, they hadn’t been as big as motorcycles. Rafe has a Harley-Davidson, so I knew just how big a motorcycle is. They’d been more like tricycles. But they’d felt that large when we saw them sitting there, not to mention when they came swooping down toward us.

  Audrey murmured consolingly over the phone, and Mother took a breath. “But he’s alive, Audrey. Unconscious. Massive loss of blood, they said. He wouldn’t have survived another day out there. But now he won’t have to.”

  Her voice shook.

  I hadn’t heard any of that, but of course I’d been talking to Rafe while she’d been watching the paramedics.

  Audrey asked a question, I could just pick up the sound of her voice but not what she was saying, and Mother nodded. “I know, Audrey. I know. Massive loss of blood, and he’s unconscious. He might not make it. But they said it was a miracle he’d survived thus far. And he’s alive, Audrey. He’s alive! Alive is so much better than dead.”

  Up ahead, the ambulance breezed through the light at the Damascus Road on green. I lowered my foot on the gas pedal and made it through on yellow, and we headed up the road toward the regional medical center. Three more minutes later, the ambulance disappeared into the ER entrance, and I turned to Mother. “I’ll drop you off at the door and go find a place to park.”

  She nodded, fumbling for the door handle.

  “I’ll be inside in a minute or two. Go in with him if they’ll let you, but they probably won’t.”

  We pulled up behind the ambulance. “Go,” I told her. She was already halfway out of the car by the time we came to a complete stop. She ran toward the place where the paramedics were pulling the gurney with Bob out of the back of the ambulance. I put the car in reverse, went backward a few feet, and then forward past the ambulance toward the parking lot. The last thing I saw was Mother trotting behind the gurney like a faithful hound as the paramedics pushed it through the automatic doors into the ER.

  * * *

  They didn’t let her go inside with Bob. When I came into the lobby, she was sitting on one of the uncomfortable waiting room chairs staring at the double doors they must have taken him through. I put Carrie, sleeping in her seat, on the chair next to her and took the one next to that again. “Anything?”

  She shook her head. “A doctor and a team of nurses met them. They took him directly into the OR.”

  The operating room. I guess to get the bullet out, if it was still in Bob’s chest, and to repair any damage it might have done.

  “Any idea how long it’ll take?”

  “Nobody’s talked to me yet. Not beyond telling me to wait.” She didn’t take her eyes off the doors. “I’m waiting for someone to come back out.”

  It was probably a bit early for that. “Can I get you anything?” I asked, indicating the vending machine over in the corner. “Something cold? Soda? Juice? Or coffee?”

  “I’d take a stiff drink, but I don’t expect they offer that.”

  Sadly not, but if I ever made it onto the board of the hospital, or ever met someone who was, I’d be sure to mention it. A full bar would be helpful.

  I got us both a soda, though—Diet Pepsi for me, Sprite for Mother—and we settled in to wait. The smell of death in my nostrils was slowly overtaken by the antiseptic smell of the hospital—not something I enjoy most of the time, but under the circumstances I was grateful for the change—and the effervescence helped to settle the little bit of queasiness still left in my stomach. By the time the rest of the family—ours and Bob’s—started to trickle in, I was feeling back to normal, pretty much.

  Todd was first through the door, with Marley right behind. Todd made a beeline for the nurses station, while Marley stopped inside the doors and looked around. I lifted a hand and she made her way toward us. “Savannah. Mrs. Martin.” She nodded to Mother and turned back to me. “Is it true? They found him?”

  “We found him,” I said. “In a truck in the Bog. You know, the old trailer park that isn’t there anymore? Where Rafe used to live?”

  Marley nodded. “But Bob’s truck was up on the ridge. Whose truck?”

  “These three guys who went missing from Damascus on Friday night. They were all there, too.”

  “Were they alive, as well?”

  Sadly not. “I don’t expect Bob was intended to live,” I said. “From what I could tell, and I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know a lot about it, but from what I could tell, it looked like he’d been shot in the chest. It’s a miracle he survived.”

  Marley looked up as Todd came toward us. “Anything?”

  Todd glanced at me and Mother. “Savannah. Mrs. Martin.” He’s invariably polite. “No, nothing. They’re working on him. They’ll let us know when he’s out of the OR.”

  He dropped onto the chair beside Marley. “Can someone tell me what happened? Dix didn’t have any of the details.”

  I let Mother do it, while I sat back and sipped my soda. And watched.

  It was a hell of a way to start a marriage. Not even Rafe’s and mine had started out so fraught. He’d been snatched on the evening before the wedding—we were supposed to go to City Hall and tie the knot the next morning, and of course that hadn’t happened. But once he’d come back, we’d solved the problem with Hernandez (and with Rafe’s missing son, who had run away from summer camp to try to find him). By the time I actually walked down the makeshift aisle in the garden at the mansion, the same one Grimaldi would be walking down in a few more days, everything was copacetic. Hernandez was dead, Rafe was feeling better, and David was safe and sound and standing next to him as best man. All the monsters had been banished, at least for the moment.

  Not so when Marley and Todd tied the knot. They’d gone through with it without knowing what had happened to Bob, or how long it would take us to figure it out, and what the outcome would be. It would have been natural, I think, for the situation to have put a strain on their brand new marriage. I was happy to see that they seemed very comfortable together. Todd reached for Marley’s hand, in that natural and instinctive way, without looking at her, and she tucked it inside his. They remained that way for the rest of the time we waited.

  Grimaldi was next through the door, followed by Dix and Jonathan, who had been together at the office when Mother called. Darcy must have waited for her mother and aunt, for she came bearing Audrey and Mrs. Jenkins. Last of all, Catherine came through the door with Cole and Oliver, who ran to his mother. “Mama!”

  “Hi, baby.” Marley hauled him up on the seat next to her.

  “I’m not a baby,” Oliver said. “She’s the baby.” He patted his mother’s stomach.

  It must have taken at least an hour before the double doors into the ER opened. A man in blue scrubs with a little hat on his head came out. “Satterfield?”

  “Yes,” Mother and Todd said, in unison. Marley didn’t, so maybe she hadn’t gotten used to her new last name yet.

  The doctor glanced from one to the other of them, and then he addressed himself to Mother. “He’s through surgery. The bullet is out. It ricocheted around in his chest a bit, but somehow, miraculously, managed to avoid hitting anything important. It came within an inch of his heart, a lung, and an aorta, but managed to avoid nicking all three. We’ve cleaned up the damage and he’s resting on a saline drip at the moment. He’s lost quite a lot of blood that we’ll have to replenish, so if you want to be helpful, please go give blood.”

  We all nodded, puppet-like.

  “But he’s all right?” Mother asked.

  “He made it through surgery. And he managed to stay alive for several days with a bullet in his chest and internal and external bleeding and no medical care. There are no guarantees, of course. But he’s avoided getting an infection so far. That’s in his favor. And now that he’s in a controlled environment, we’ll be better able to manage it if he does. But the outlook is middling to fair.”

  That didn’t sound much like a medical opinion, but otherwise it sounded pretty positive, I’d have to say. I could see everyone’s posture relax just a little.

  “Can we see him?” Todd asked.

  The doctor looked at him for a moment. “Son?”

  Todd nodded.

  “He’s still under from the surgery. He won’t be able to talk to you. But if you’d like, you can come in and look at him.”

  “I’d like.” Todd extricated himself from Marley with a little pat, and got to his feet. “Mrs. Martin?”

  Mother blinked up at him for a second before she realized that he was offering her first dibs instead of Marley. “Thank you, Todd.”

  She took his hand and let him help her up. The two of them followed the doctor through the double doors and out of sight.

  “I’m going to call Rafe,” I said, and got to my feet, too. “Someone keep an eye on Carrie, please.” She was still asleep, snoozing quietly in her car seat with no idea about what emotions were swirling around her. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Tell him to report in when he has something to share,” Grimaldi told me. She was sitting next to Dix, but they weren’t holding hands. Their knees were touching, though.

  I nodded, and then I headed out the automatic doors into the warm air for some privacy to give my husband the good news.

  * * *

  He was still at the Bog, it turned out. “The car from the medical examiner’s office is here to remove the bodies once the forensic investigator is done.”

  His tone, already crisp, got a little grimmer when he added, “She says they were shot execution style in the back of the head while they were lying the way you found them. Face down on the bed of the truck with their hands tied behind them.”

  “That’s terrible.” But certainly justified to call it an execution. “Who’d do something like that?”

  “Somebody who was either really angry or got paid really well,” Rafe said.

  “A hired killer?” We hadn’t had one of those in Sweetwater since Jorge Peña had come after Rafe in the fall two years ago. And met his own demise not too many feet from where the truck had been sitting this afternoon, if I were any kind of judge. The Bog looked different now that all the shacks and trailers were gone, but I thought the Colliers’ mobile home must have been standing in that general area.

  “More likely somebody was really pissed off.”

  Yes, much more likely. “Anything else?”

  “They’ve been dead for days. Most likely happened Friday night, and that’s why they didn’t make it home that night.”

  Yes, I had already figured that out for myself as the most likely scenario. But I supposed it was useful to have it confirmed. “Well, Bob is out of surgery. I got the impression it’s a fifty/fifty chance, or perhaps a little better, that he’ll be all right. The surgeon said that as he’s survived several days with a bullet in his chest and no medical intervention, and he hasn’t picked up an infection, the outlook is positive.”

  “Sounds like better’n fifty/fifty.”

  It did. “He wouldn’t make any guarantees, though.”

  “They can’t,” Rafe said. “You staying there the rest of the afternoon?”

  “For a little bit, anyway. I’m sure Mother will want to stay. Although she could get a ride back with someone else, I suppose. We’re all here. Even Grimaldi. She said to report in.”

  “When the forensic investigator’s done,” Rafe said.

  “I don’t suppose you had a chance to look in on Ronnie Burke’s mother in the time between the first time we spoke and the time I called about the truck and the vultures?”

  “No,” Rafe said. “But I had somebody check on Ronnie and his girlfriend. They’re still where they’re supposed to be.”

  And not out here shooting people in the back of the head, then. “Is Tucker behaving OK?”

  “Tucker’s irritating the snot outta me. And for somebody who’s—” His voice changed to imitate Tucker’s growl, “—had this job since before I was born, he don’t know much about how to behave on a murder scene.”

  “He works narcotics,” I said, “doesn’t he? Maybe they don’t see a lot of murders.”

  “More than a lot of people, I imagine.”

  Maybe so. “Try to be patient with him. I’m sure he’s happy that Bob’s been found safe.”

  Rafe grunted. “That don’t mean I’m gonna want him walking all over my crime scene.”

  “Is it your crime scene? It’s in Cletus’s jurisdiction, isn’t it?”

  It was outside the Columbia PD’s borders, certainly. But well within the State of Tennessee. It just depended on which hat Rafe was wearing at the moment, Columbia’s or the TBI’s.

  “He’s here, too,” he told me.

  “How are you holding up?” Having to work with Tucker, who didn’t like him and didn’t make a secret of it, and Cletus, who didn’t like him a whole lot better.

  “We all want the same thing here,” Rafe said. “We’re making it work.”

  “Good for you. I don’t expect you’ll be home for dinner tonight?”

  “I imagine it’ll be another late one. I’ve got notifications to make once I get through here.”

  Everyone’s least favorite part of the job, notifying the survivors that their loved one was dead. “Tell Reena I’m sorry for her loss.”

  Rafe promised he would. “Anything else you need, darlin’?”

  I shook my head, not that he could see me. “I just wanted to update you on Bob. And tell you that Grimaldi’s looking for a report when you have one.”

  “Tell her I’ll be in touch in an hour or so. I gotta get back to it, darlin’.”

  I told him goodbye and wandered back into the lobby to sit down and wait with the others.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mother spent every waking moment at the hospital after that.

  Every waking moment that wasn’t taken up with wedding prep, anyway. Grimaldi’s family—sister, brother, father, and girlfriend—arrived the next afternoon, and were distributed between our various houses. Francesca at Grimaldi’s, Tony at Dix’s, and Joseph and Marianne at Mother’s—or more accurately, Bob’s. I didn't end up with any of them after all, but that was more than all right, because my time was taken up with a lot of other wedding prep. Grimaldi couldn’t take off work, not with everything that was going on, so during Thursday and Friday, Francesca became my responsibility. Mine and Catherine’s, and also Charlotte’s, who pitched in, as well. We went sightseeing and drove up to Nashville to go shopping, and just in general got to know each other, since we were going to be related.

  Dix, meanwhile, worked for himself and could organize his own schedule. He went about with Tony and Joseph, sometimes Marianne and Mother, when Marianne didn’t come with us, and did the same thing. They had dinner Wednesday night, and then there was the bachelor- and bachelorette-parties Thursday night, before I had to bow out of all the festivities on Friday, because things started happening at the mansion. The tables and chairs arrived and were set up for the wedding and reception. The Flower Mart people came and decorated. The caterers came with the tablecloths, flatware, and silverware, and started setting up for the rehearsal dinner.

  Through it all, I barely saw a sign of Rafe. He got in late every night and was up early every morning. His case had blossomed from one missing person on Saturday to four on Monday, and then by Tuesday afternoon, he had three coldblooded murders and one attempted. It was enough for anyone to have to deal with, and since Grimaldi was getting less and less accessible, and had less and less time to spare as the days went on, he got less and less help with it, too.