Under the Knife(121)

But the world had a right to know about everything else.

He hoped (wishful thinking, he knew) that he would see Grant again, someday.

He contemplated the stele as the tourists milled around him.

There would be no more jobs, he vowed it.

No more wasted days.

His phone rang. He smiled when he saw the caller ID.

“Hi, Sis.”

“So. When are you coming home?”

He laughed. This was a running joke, the first thing she said at the beginning of every conversation. Home. She meant the new one—the nice, big house in the suburbs.

He replied as he always did: “Soon, Sis. Soon.”

This time, he meant it.

For good.





SPENCER


1 year later

November

It was a magnificent day.

But then: wasn’t it always, in Southern California?

Spencer held Rita’s hand. He walked with a small limp, which his orthopedist had warned him he might have for the rest of his life.

Bullshit.

He’d accepted the prognosis as a challenge, a gauntlet thrown. He’d be damned if he was going to let himself hobble around like an old man. He’d flung himself into his physical therapy, which was a real bitch, and lately he was encouraged: There’d been some noticeable improvement. Plus, he was twenty-five pounds trimmer. Not too shabby.

Together they strolled, fingers entwined, among the headstones. They didn’t say anything.

There was nothing to say.

When they arrived, Rita released Spencer’s hand and knelt—not such an easy thing for her to do these days. She laid a small wreath over the grave. Spencer crossed himself.

After a few moments, when she didn’t get up, Spencer said, “Penny for your thoughts.”

“Trying to decide if I’m going to accept Chase’s offer.”

“Ah, yes.” Rita’s sly, squinting mentor had not only managed to survive the robot thing, he’d thrived. The guy was Teflon. “Has he moved into his new office?”

“The CEO’s office? Oh yes. It was supposed to have been in the new wing by now, of course. But with the fire damage, that’s not going to happen until next year.”

“He’s moving quickly to, uh, consolidate his position.”

“Well, you know Chase.”

“Chief medical officer and Chase’s right-hand man. Woman—sorry. Nice offer. Second-most-powerful person at Turner.”

“On paper, at least. Yeah.”

“With a huge salary to match.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“You could be my sugar mama.”

“Don’t count on it, Doctor,” she said, laughing.

Spencer understood her hesitation. It was a nice offer, but the job would be a lot of work. And there was Darcy to think of, who’d not only enrolled full-time at the University of San Diego (straight A’s so far this semester), but had already cranked out the first 150 pages of a novel. Rita had let him read them, and they were pretty damn good.

Then there was the matter of her swelling belly.

What a turn of events since last year. Thank God for that Grant woman at the Journal. God knew who her sources were, but the story she’d told in that series of articles! Sinister medical technology. Human experimentation in secret labs. Corruption. Murder. And she’d cast Rita as an ass-kicking heroine thwarting a brilliant psychopath. Rita had been on administrative leave at the time, under the black cloud of an investigation, her future uncertain. Hell, they’d both been on the hot seat.

The articles had changed all of that. For a time, they’d been a national sensation, all anyone could talk about. The rest of the investigation was expected to last for months, maybe years. Especially the overseas stuff. But Rita’s part was done, for now at least, and her professional star was again on the rise.

He suspected there was more. They’d found Finney’s body, eventually, underneath all of that dirt on the beach. But they’d never found the body of the man Rita had called Sebastian. The authorities had shrugged it off, said it must have washed away.

Had it really? Maybe. Rita wasn’t talking. Spencer had let it go. Because, even though this Sebastian guy had almost crippled him for life, it wasn’t important to him. Bygones were bygones. It didn’t matter.

She was important.

She was what mattered.

Rita pressed her hands to the small of her back, to support it against the extra weight, and stood up with a small groan. She gazed down at Jenny Finney’s headstone, hands still pressed to her back, and blew a strand of hair from her face.

She’d confided in him about the drinking, and the guilt she still nursed: the quiet doubt that, but for that Chardonnay, Jenny Finney would still be alive. Reminding her of the investigation that had cleared her, or that she’d been sober by the time she’d started operating, would not make the guilt go away. Ever. It was, he knew, her burden to carry, and always would be. Every surgeon, including him, had lost patients. She had to make peace with it. Pick up the pieces and move on.

That’s why they were here today.

“Okay?” Spencer asked her.

“Yeah.”

She looked him full in the face and smiled. She took his hand and pressed it against her abdomen. He felt it quiver with the baby’s kicking, as if signaling approval with her answer.