“Good morning, Sally. Don’t spit on me, okay?”

She stared up at him, so thirsty she could barely squeak out another word. Her brain was at last knitting itself back together, and all she could do was throw up her arms and pull him down to her. She said against his throat, “I knew you’d come, I just knew it. I’m so thirsty, James. Can I have some water?”

“You all right? Really? Let me up just a little, okay?”

“Yes. I’m so glad you’re not dead. Someone hit you and I was bending over you.” She pulled back from him, her fingers lightly tracing over the stitched wound over his left ear.

“I’m okay—don’t worry about it.”

“I didn’t know who’d done it to you. Then someone hit me over the head. I woke up with Beadermeyer leaning over me. I was back in that place.”

“I know, but you’re with me now and no one can possibly find you.” He said over his shoulder, “Dillon, how about some water for the lady?”

“It’s the drugs he gives me. They make my throat feel like a desert.”

She felt the tightening in him at her words.

“Here, I’ll hold the glass for you.”

She drank her fill, then lay back and sighed. “I’ll be back to normal in about ten more minutes—at least that’s my best guess. James, who is that man I spit on?”

“He’s a good friend of mine, name of Dillon Savich. He and I got you out of the sanitarium last night. Dillon, come and say hello to Sally.”

“Ma’am.”

“He said he was a hero, just like you, James.”

“It’s possible. You can trust him, Sally.”

She nodded, such a slight movement really, and he watched her eyes close again. “You’re not ready to eat something?”

“No, not yet. You won’t leave, will you?”

“Not ever.”

He would have sworn that the corners of her mouth turned up just a bit into a very slight smile. Without thinking, he leaned down and kissed her closed mouth. “I’m glad I’ve got you again. When I woke up in David Mountebank’s house, my head pounding like a watermelon with a stake in it, he told me you were gone. I’ve never been so scared in my life. You’re not going to be out of my sight again, Sally.”

“That sounds good to me,” she said. In the next moment, she was asleep. Not unconscious but asleep, real sleep.

Quinlan rose and looked down at her. He straightened the light blanket over her chest. He smoothed her hair back on the pillow. He thought of that little man they’d found in her room and knew that if he ever saw him again, he’d kill him.

And Beadermeyer. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on Dr. Beadermeyer.

“How does it feel to be the most important person in the whole universe, Quinlan?”

Quinlan kept smoothing down the blanket, his movements slow and calm. Finally he said, “It scares the shit out of me. You want to know something else? It doesn’t feel bad at all. How much credit am I going to have to give you?”

That evening, the three of them were sitting on the front veranda of Quinlan’s cottage, looking out over Louise Lynn Lake. For an evening in March, it was balmy. The cottage faced west. The sun was low on the horizon, making the water ripple with golds and startling pinks.

Quinlan said to Sally, “It’s narrow, not all that much fun for boaters unless you’re a teenager and like to play chicken. And you can see at least four different curves from here. Well, the sucker has so many curves that—”

“So many curves that what?” Dillon asked, looking up from the smooth block of maple he was carving.

“We are not a comedy routine,” Quinlan said, grinning to Sally. “Come on now, the lake has so many curves that it very nearly winds back onto itself.”

Dillon said, as he watched a curling sliver of maple drift to the wooden floor, “You sometimes don’t know if you’re coming or going.”

“You’re very good friends,” Sally said. “You know each other quite well, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but we’re not going to get married. Quinlan snores like a pig.”

She smiled. It was a good smile, Dillon thought, not a forced smile. Now, that showed she knew she was safe here.

“You want some more iced tea, Sally?”

“No, I like sucking on the ice. There’s plenty.”

Quinlan lifted his legs and put his feet on the wooden railing that circled the front veranda. He was wearing short, scuffed black boots, old faded blue jeans that looked quite lovely on him—it was surely a shock that she could even think of something like that—and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.