"And he will die," Victor said, his deep voice filled with loving acquiescence. He turned in the seat and
put out a calming hand to the man in the back. "Have I not promised this to you many times? I will gut
him myself."
Luis's lip thrust out like a child's who has been denied a toy. "He hurt me." His dark eyes flashed.
"They all hurt me." He fingered the scars on his face, hating the feel of the puckered flesh.
"And we have hurt them,
Padrino,"
Victor reminded him.
"Not enough. Not nearly enough."
"No, but we are not through with them, yet, are we, _Senor Le Guerrero?_"
A small, delighted smile pulled at Luis Quinterras's mouth. "No, we are not." He took the thick hand
on his knee and brought it to his cheek, nuzzled his face against the callused palm. "You'll avenge me,
won't you, Victor?"
"_Si, Padrino_," Victor Busbee said with quiet insistence. "That I will."
*Chapter Thirty*
"Well, we were going on to Billings, Montana, but we've spoken to the man there and he confirmed
what we had already learned from the man here in New York," Boucharde told his Supervisor in Des
Moines. "No, Sir, I see no need to go on to Montana. I can have the Bureau there take Collins'
statement."
As Boucharde talked, Rhianna stood off to one side and watched the traffic in the Syracuse airport
moving past her. She had called Trip in New Gregory twice a day since she'd been gone and he had told
her there was no change in Conor's condition.
"I should be there with him," she had said.
"He's being watched, Rhee," Trip had assured her for the tenth time. "Nothing's going to happen to
Irish while you're gone. You've done more good for him with the Fibber than you could have done here."
"Anything on that Rogers bitch, yet?"
"Nothing of consequence. The ID she showed for the marriage license to Collins was a fake. Like
Sullivan told you, it's probably an alias. Nothing new on the sketch, either."
"Is Nolan's sister still keeping everybody from seeing him?"
"Cortesio called her and tried pleading with her, but she just hung up on him. Doesn't look like there's
anything we can do until Irish decides to wake up."
Rhianna jumped, coming out of her reverie, as Boucharde laid a hand on her shoulder. "Don't sneak
up on me like that, Franc."
"Edgy?" He grinned. "Too many cups of that 'damned fine coffee'!"
"Thank you for that pronouncement, Agent Cooper," she grumbled, wondering if Boucharde had
watched every TV show there had ever been about the FBI.
Boucharde chuckled, pleased that she had picked up on the _Twin Peaks_ idiom. "I gave them what
we have and they're going to start checking into Quinterras' background. They're putting in a call to his
father, whom apparently someone there in the office knew."
"Poor man," she said, feeling sorry for the gentleman Mick Sullivan had described. "He must have
been terribly embarrassed by what happened."
"Who could blame him?" He looked at his watch. "We need to get on over to the check-in. The plane
leaves in half an hour."
As she walked beside him, Rhianna noticed the envious looks of the young women they passed. She
smiled. Franc was a handsome man with his dark looks and soulful brown eyes. He had a way of making
a woman feel very feminine and very protected and if her heart wasn't already taken, she thought perhaps
she would like to get to know Francois Etienne Bouchard better. But she loved Conor Nolan. More and
more with every new thing she learned about him. Hearing his friends talk about him, even Tim-Pat
Collins, who over the phone had made himself out to be Coni's 'very bestest of friends,' made her realize
just what a special man Irish was and how hard it had been to win both his faith and his love.
On the plane later, as the blue sky began to give way to thick waves of clouds, she laid her head
against the back of her seat and stared out the window. Mick Sullivan's words made her remember just
how lucky she was that Luis Quinterras had failed in his first attempt to kill Conor Nolan.
"Coni used to sneak out of the dorm after curfew," Sullivan explained, "whenever things got too much
for him to handle. He never got letters from his mother or sister but his old man wrote him every other
week or so and always near the end of the trimester to make sure Coni was 'toeing the line' as Liam
called it. When those letters would come, Coni would take off.
"He'd go out behind the football field where nobody**could see him and just run and run and run until
he exhausted himself. He'd take some clean sweats with him and take a dip in a creek that ran at the
north end of the grounds before coming back. Then he'd slip back in and go to bed.
"Everybody, maybe even the staff, knew he did it, but no one said anything. His grades were excellent
and he**was one hell of an athlete so they just left him alone. He wasn't hurting anybody, getting into
trouble or nothing, so what was the harm?
"One night, it was the Tuesday before a big track meet we were going to be having with LWMA, he
went out and didn't come back. Jamie woke me up at about a quarter to two and said Coni wasn't in,
yet. I got up and me**and him and Tim-Pat went looking for Coni. As soon as we got around the back
of Kesper Hall, we saw the red lights flashing off the bleachers and knew something was wrong. We
starting running, worried sick that he had tripped over something in the dark and broken his neck. When
Coni ran to escape his demons, he ran; he didn't pace himself; he didn't pay any attention to where he
was; he just flat out ran.
"He was lying on the stretcher when we got there. The Commandant saw us and started yelling, telling
us to get the hell back to the dorm, but we ignored him. We got up to Coni and saw his face was all
bloody. His jaw kinda hung to one side and he was doing his level best**not to groan. His eyes were
glazed with pain."
Sullivan had stopped and popped open another beer, downed it in three gulps, and squashed the can
in one beefy palm. He threw the empty as hard as he could across his yard and it sailed over his dock
and into the lake.
"There had been three of them," he grated out through clenched teeth. "Three big old vicious rednecks
from Eufaula, liquored up on 'shine. They'd been watching for him for a couple of days and when he
came down to the creek to wash off after his run, they jumped him and beat the living shit out of him.
They broke his nose and his jaw; six ribs, one of which punctured a lung; they stomped on his hand and
broke two of his fingers; and bashed him in the head with a goddamned baseball bat. They would have
killed him for sure if there hadn't been someone else there that night. Someone who always followed Coni
when he went out at night and saw the**men jump him. The moment they did - knowing he wouldn't be
of any help up against men three times his size - he sprinted for the Commandant's house and started
pounding away on the door."
"Danny Keane," Boucharde had said.
"Yeah. Danny," Sullivan agreed. "He was in love with Coni; still is, I think. Maybe even a
little**obsessed."
"Lucky for Nolan," Boucharde acknowledged. "Both then and now."
"So Danny saved Conor's life," Rhianna said.
"Yeah. They'd just hit Coni with the bat and were about to do it again when the Commandant and one
of the other staff members came roaring out of the dark at them. Before they could get away, the
Commandant and Sergeant Billiard caught 'em and made mincemeat out of them." He chuckled. "The
Commandant had a black belt in Karate and Sergeant Hilliard owned a dojo and was very proficient in
Tai Kwan Do. When the police questioned the men, they admitted to having been hired by one of the
cadets, a boy with a Spanish accent. Since Luis was the only Spanish boy at NBMA, they didn't have
any trouble pointing him out to the Commandant the next day. The men were convicted of assault and
battery and Luis, being a minor, was named as an accessory.
"Luis was expelled. His father arrived, grateful to the Commandant that he had insisted that Luis be
handed over to the school for house arrest instead of being sent to juvie hall. He apologized for what had
happened, asked for Coni's mother's address so he could make financial restitution for what had
happened. He made some kind of deal with the local cops and they handed Luis over into his custody,
glad to have the**shitty little bastard off their hands and a potential international incident aborted. You
know what I mean - diplomatic immunity and all.
"Coni spent three weeks in the hospital and came back with a cast on his hand, his jaw wired shut, and
a brace around his chest. He never said a word about what had happened to him. Never let on about
what General Quinterras had said to him when he went to the hospital to apologize to Coni, taking his
crazed son with him, too. I don't know if Luis apologized, but somehow**I doubt it. Luis wasn't into
self-abasement."
"Doesn't sound like it," Boucharde agreed.
"I'll lay you odds the General asked what he could do and Irish asked him to find his son," Rhianna
said quietly.
Sullivan nodded. "That would make sense, wouldn't it?"
"But the General must not have been able to find the child."
"How did Luis take being expelled?" the Fibber asked.
Sullivan had chortled. "When Luis was leaving, he jerked away from his father and started shouting up
at the dormitories; telling us how he'd get even with us if it took him twenty years. How he'd make each
of us pay for having hurt him. How we'd be sorry we'd ever heard the name Luis Quinterras. The general
was pulling him toward the car, slapping him, trying his best to get the boy under control. The chauffeur
finally got out of the limo and ran to Luis, picked him up and carried him kicking and screaming to the
car. All the time he was being carried, he kept shouting for Coni, although Coni was still in the hospital.
He kept saying how he would make Coni suffer worst of all; how he'd take everything Coni had ever
held dear and destroy it right before his eyes, making him watch while the life drained out**of everything
he loved.
"Four months after his departure, he sent a letter to Coni with just seven words written on the pages."
"What did it say?" Rhianna asked.
Sullivan lowered his head. His face paled and he squeezed his eyes shut_. _"It said, 'You will be sorry
you lived, pig.'"
One*
He woke up slowly, his eyelids feeling as though they were glued down. There was a foul taste in his
mouth and his throat hurt. He tried to turn his head, had to stop when he realized there was a tube in his
mouth. The ceiling shifted, settled, shifted again, then seemed to slip away to the right. His head spun
crazily for a moment, then the white acoustic tiles popped back into place above him.
"Good morning," a soft voice said and a face appeared in his line of vision. "Welcome back."
His vision blurred and he blinked, trying to clear away the fog. He felt hands on him - assessing,
probing, lifting his arm and pressing lightly against a small sticking pain along the back of his left hand.
"I'll tell the doctor you're awake."
When the man in the white coat appeared before him, Conor Nolan became even more disoriented.
He didn't know this man. He tried to get away from the threatening situation in which he found himself,
but discovered he couldn't move.
"I'm Dr. Singleton, Detective Nolan," the man said, patting him on the shoulder, seeming to understand
the unease that formed in his patient's mind. "Your sister placed you in my care. You're in the Midwest
Clinic."
_Why had she moved him?_ The doctor shone a light in his eyes. Did Rhianna know where he was?
Was she here? He wanted to ask, but the tube down his throat would not permit it. Instead, he grunted,
hoping someone would understand.
"I think we can remove the tube, nurse," the doctor said and Conor slowly closed his eyes with
gratitude.
"You've been in a coma for more than two weeks, Detective," the doctor explained. "That is why
you're so weak and things appear a bit out of sync." He scribbled something on Conor's hospital chart,
then laid his hand on his patient's shoulder. "You're going to be fine."
The doctor drifted out of his line of vision and the nurse reappeared. Another head moved into sight
and he cocked his eyes that way, fearful again of masked faces and sharp needles and the blackness in
which he'd spent so much time.
"This may be a little uncomfortable, but we'll be through before you know it," one woman said as the
other laid a reassuring hand on his arm.
When they removed the tube, he gagged reflexively and the pain was nearly more than he could bear.
He twisted his head to the side, gorge rising up in his bruised throat as he felt a cool plastic surface
pressed lightly against his cheek. "Poor baby," one of the nurses said and Conor's mind jerked back from
the voice and the words. He dug his hands into the sheet, frantically tried to lift his head to see the
woman, but he gagged again, his stomach muscles tightening.
"Doctor has ordered ten milligrams of Vistaril," the other woman said. "Stay with him until I get back."
No!
he cried out in his mind although his aching throat could not release the words. He struggled again