Page 73 of The Undead

“Once you were. Being a doctor is not something you can do now, understand? It isn’t possible.”

“It’s what I know. It’s mylife,Adam.”

He reached down to shut off the tap. Lights were going on in the house in response to the nearing alarms. “Yes” he agreed. “I know. It’s your life. But this, Mikey—this is yourdeath.And it lasts a long, long time.”

The fire trucks and police screamed by on the street, red and blue lights flashing over us in neon bursts.

Chapter Fourteen

Failing

I’d be lying if I said I expected Maggie to be waiting. Frankly, I never expected to see her again. It was a welcome shock to see her standing there next to the Volvo, arms wrapped around her body as she watched the house bum. She’d moved the car way down the block and into the shadows. Adam and I made our way slowly toward it.

She flinched when she saw me. I couldn’t much blame her. I stood there awkwardly until she gestured to the car and opened her driver’s-side door. Adam slid into the back. The doors slammed and left the world outside, cocooned us in cushions and silence. The wail of sirens was still audible, but it seemed very far away. God, I loved this car. Fine German engineering.

If only it didn’tstinkso badly. I shut off my breathing and made a mental note to never, ever wear Polo again. The seats stunk like whorehouse beds, and mingled unpleasantly with the odors of smoke and blood. Always, the odor of blood.

“Let’s get out of here,” she finally said, and started the engine. We pulled silently away, leaving the blazing inferno of my home behind. Maggie looked straight ahead and wrapped her fingers hard around the steering wheel.

“Did you find Foster’s address?” Adam asked. I saw her fingers tighten. “Did you?”

“You killed that man. I saw you do it.” She tried to say it calmly, but I was aware—as Adam had to be aware—of the heavy fast thudding of her heart. She was scared. The more she thought about it, the more frightened she got. “You drank—you—”

“Maggie, stay with us. Do you have Foster’s address?” I asked. She glanced aside at me and wiped at her blood- and soot-smeared forehead with her shirtsleeve. “Please, it’s important.”

“It’s not important that you just killed all those men?”

“They could have killed you. Probably would have, too.”

“Don’t change the subject, Mike!”

Maggie pulled into a lightless parking lot and threw the car into park with a jerk. I winced, more for the car than for myself. Maggie turned to look at me, though I was probably only a white blur to her. I could see her clearly—down to the fear in her eyes.

“I wasn’t changing the subject, I was explaining,” I said as calmly as I could. It wasn’t all that easy to talk about it, because I felt sick and hot and weirdly satisfied. How could I tell her that?

“I don’t give a damn about the explanations. Look, I saw something that I don’t—understand. I don’t want to understand. I just want to have my life back, I want you back, I want—”

Adam’s white hands came between us, drawing him forward out of the depths of the back seat like a trap-door spider. We both flinched, not the least because of the look on his face.

“I don’t have time for your marital difficulties. Drive,” he hissed. There wasn’t any doubt that he was serious. I nodded to Maggie; she didn’t argue, for once, just put the car in drive and back on the street. We turned left at the light and headed downtown.

“Foster lives with her mother in Oak Cliff. I didn’t go to see her, Nick did, but I have the address. Okay?”

Adam didn’t answer. When I looked back, he was staring out the window with a total lack of expression. His eyes were dark again, human and slightly bewildered. His fingers, as they rose to brush his hair back out of his eyes, were trembling.

“I haven’t done that in a long time,” he finally murmured. It was soft enough that Maggie couldn’t hear him, but I could. “Stupid. It was stupid. I was just—so angry—about Sylvia.”

“Nobody’s blaming you.”

His eyebrows jerked up, but he didn’t look at me. “Why the hell not? I did it.”

“So did I,” I admitted around a knot in my throat. “I’m not going to point the finger.”

“And her?” There wasn’t much doubt which “her” Adam was talking about. I felt my backbone stiffen, one vertebra at a time. “Our troubles are becoming more complicated every time I turn around.”

“Maggie will stick with me.” I said that with a conviction I didn’t feel. Maggie looked at me, frowning.

“What?”

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