The Vigilantes Part 31

So she was waiting for me to reply when I sent that text.

But I was up to my a.s.s in alligators. . . .

Then that made him think: Surreal. Surreal.

Four dead just three blocks from here.

Absolutely surreal . . .

He heard the soft padding sound of bare feet approaching.

"Here you go, sweetie," Amanda said, putting an enormous platter of antipasto on the low marble table in front of the couch. Her other hand held a crystal stem, its huge goblet full of red wine. "I thought we could do this instead of any dinner."

"It looks marvelous. I love it. Thank you."

He reached down and grabbed a giant black olive and wrapped it in a large, thin slice of salami, then shoved the whole thing in his mouth. He chewed, nodding appreciatively at her, his eyes following her as she dropped back onto the couch.

She scooted closer beside him, holding her winegla.s.s up and then tucking her bare feet under her golden-sequined f.a.n.n.y.

Just beautiful, he thought he thought. And so d.a.m.n s.e.xy.

He touched his gla.s.s to hers, and said, "Cheers!"

He then watched as she reached to the table and picked up a salad fork.

She attempted to delicately spear a prosciutto-wrapped rectangle of cantaloupe. Twice. On the third attempt, made very slowly, she hit her target. She chewed the morsel and followed it with a very generous gulp of her wine.

Over the top of her gla.s.s, she made eye contact with him. When she'd swallowed the wine, she smiled.

My G.o.d, she truly is a G.o.ddess.

But why do I suspect that may not be her first gla.s.s of vino?

Or her second?

And that is a huge gla.s.s. . . .

Matt drained the rest of his eighteen-year-old single-malt.

"I'll make you another, sweetie," she said, immediately kicking her feet out from under her.

He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead to keep her seated.

"You stay. You've already made all this. I can pour my drink. Think I'll move on to the cheap stuff."

He walked over to the wet bar. He filled his gla.s.s with ice cubes, then poured a hefty double of Jameson's Irish whiskey. He looked over to the couch. Luna now had her head in Amanda's lap as Amanda absently petted her and looked out the window while sipping more wine.

This is certainly getting interesting.

She's clearly in thought about something.

And d.a.m.n near in her cups.

He caught himself suddenly yawning.

Oh, s.h.i.t. Hope I don't fall asleep. That will really ruin the mood.

And leave it to me to really p.i.s.s her off.

"I don't see you forever and the few minutes you're here, you fall asleep!"

As he sat back on the couch, Amanda was holding the gla.s.s by the stem and swirling the wine around the goblet.

Kind of anxiously . . . nervously.

Then he noticed her left foot moving back and forth.

If that was attached to a churn at an Amish dairy, she could be making b.u.t.ter for all of Lancaster County.

Amanda turned to him.

"Want to talk about your 'crazy day'?" she said. "It's horrible that more people are dead and just up the street. Do you know who did it? And are they-you, I guess I mean-close to catching them?"

Matt took a sip from his drink, then said, "The simple answer is 'no'-to all that. No, we really don't know who. And I'm really mentally racked from thinking about the whole thing. So that means I'd really rather not talk about it. I hope you don't take that the wrong way."

Amanda smiled.

"Oh, not at all," she said. "I do understand. Sometimes you have to step back."

"How about you? Anything at the hospital?"

She nodded. Then she leaned forward and put her winegla.s.s beside the antipasto platter on the marble table.

She really is in deep thought.

She turned to him, and suddenly he could see tears starting.

My G.o.d. What the h.e.l.l has got her so upset?

"Matt, you saved my life. I will never forget that terrifying moment I realized who they were and what they'd done-and knew that was the end for me. But then . . . then you suddenly were there. And I heard your voice calling out to warn Tony Harris, 'It's me, Matt Payne!' I truly thought I was hallucinating."

Oh, s.h.i.t. In vino veritas. . . .

Matt stared into her eyes and felt his throat constrict.

And I remember that moment, too.

Inside that pillowcase they'd taped over her head, she whimpered.

When I cut her free, the last person in the world I expected to find a prisoner in that h.e.l.lhole was the woman I loved.

It was an unimaginable moment.

She reached back for her gla.s.s, took a big sip, and said, "You saved my life, Matt. Now it's my turn."

[FOUR].

"How does survivor's guilt fit?" Matt Payne was saying, reaching for another slice of salami and wrapping it around another big black olive.

Even though the platter was now nearly three-quarters empty, all the meat and cheese and fruit he'd eaten wasn't keeping up with the alcohol he was washing it down with. He was starting to feel a bit tight.

Or maybe it's a combination of that and being exhausted.

He'd made them both fresh drinks.

Luna was asleep at their feet, snoring softly.

"Survivor's guilt," Amanda Law said, "because Skipper died and Becca didn't."

Twenty-five-year-old Becca Benjamin, just shy of two o'clock in the morning on September 9, had been sitting in her Mercedes SUV waiting for J. Warren "Skipper" Olde, her twenty-seven-year-old boyfriend, to come out of a seedy Philly Inn motel room. Which he did, right after the meth lab inside had blown up the d.a.m.n place, turning it into an inferno. The blast demolished the Mercedes.

Becca suffered a head injury from the blast that had almost killed her. Skipper was critically burned.

Matt had known them while growing up, since they were all at Episcopal Academy. Both came from families of significant means. And both had a history of getting in trouble with booze and drugs.

Because of the severity of their multiple injuries, both had been taken to Temple University Hospital's advanced burn center, where the chief physician was one Amanda Law, MD, FACS, FCCM.

"Matt, I'll never tell anyone else this," Amanda said, "but it's my brutally cold a.s.sessment that Jesus Jimenez probably did Skipper a favor by killing him. Skipper was either going to die from his burns or suffer a long recovery and never be the same again."

Matt nodded.

"But Becca," she went on, "nonetheless is feeling responsible, saying they wouldn't have been there if Skipper hadn't wanted to make her happy with some of those G.o.dd.a.m.ned drugs. To get past this d.a.m.ned survivor's guilt, I sent her to Amy."

"That's interesting," Matt said. "Amy never mentioned she was now Becca's shrink."

"She's a doctor, sweetie. Just because she's your sister doesn't mean she's going to tell you and break the physician-patient confidentiality."

He shrugged.

Amanda said, "There can be a variant of survivor's guilt among doctors. They get a guilty feeling that they didn't do enough to save a patient. Luckily, I've never had it. But that doesn't mean I don't understand it. And I know that those who do do have it need to look at the gla.s.s as being half full, not half empty, confident in their skills that they did the right thing." have it need to look at the gla.s.s as being half full, not half empty, confident in their skills that they did the right thing."

I've had a few of those myself, Matt thought. Matt thought.

It wasn't that long ago that I held Susan Reynolds in my arms as her very life poured out from that bullet hole in her head.

And I loved her like I love Amanda.

Right down to the roadside cottage with the picket fence.

I endlessly questioned if I could've done anything different to save her from that madman of a killer.

And, bottom line, the answer was I couldn't.

Still, finally realizing that didn't ease the pain of loss.

He took a sip of Scotch as he glanced at Amanda.

Am I about to lose Amanda . . . ?

Amanda was saying: "I also understand that sometimes things play out the way they do no matter what anyone does. In fact, in some cases we probably prolong the inevitable by taking the heroic measures. Which was why someone in a wise moment came up with DNRs."

"Do Not Resuscitate orders," Matt said.

She nodded.

He sipped his drink again and tried to understand where she was going with this.

Maybe it's her body clock ticking. The abduction was a real wake-up call for her sense of mortality.

And maybe that's some manifestation of survivor's guilt-in part because she lived while that young teen Honduran girl, after being forced into prost.i.tution, died a brutal death.

Then she said: "Two months ago, Matt, I went to Hawaii for an M and M."

I know she can't mean candy.

"It's a conference doctors attend," she went on, as if reading his mind, "Morbidity and Mortality."

This is about mortality!

He said, "I heard those conferences are really just an excuse to write off trips to fancy places, like Hawaii, so you can play and take a business deduction."

"The idea of M and Ms is peer review. We look at how others cared for patients and how it could have been done better. Particularly cases in which a mistake was made and the patient died. Being head of the burn unit, I tend to be the one doing the reviewing. It's not exactly a pleasant task. No one likes to be told they screwed up, but we do want to do right by our patients-First do no harm-and the peer review, while sometimes painful, does help. You learn to modify behavior. And avoid repeating mistakes."

She looked at him a long moment.

"Matt, I don't like repeating mistakes. I can't."

"Of course not. I understand. There're lives at stake."

"Yes, there are. Ours."

What?

She said: "We're at a critical time in our lives. I feel we've both been given second chances, and I want us to get this next one right."

"Oh."

"I had a long talk with my father."