Greg Iles 3-Book Thriller Collection: The Quiet Game, Turning Angel, The Devil’s Punchbowl

Her face seems to crumple in on itself. “Daddy, I’m scared.”

I crush her to my chest, as though to protect her from the threat that has already passed. “I love you, punkin. I love you.”

She shudders against me.

“I said, I love you, punkin.” I pull her back and look into her eyes, waiting.

“I love you more,” she says softly, completing our ritual, and my anxiety lessens a little.

Livy climbs into the driver’s seat, squeezes Annie’s shoulder, then takes her silk scarf from the glove compartment and begins wiping soot from my face.

“Where do you want to go?” she asks.

“Let’s just sit for a minute.”

“Do you think it’s safe here? Your mom told me about the note.”

Instead of answering her question, I lift the Fiat’s cell phone, call Information, and ask for the number of Ray Presley. Livy takes her hand from my knee and watches me with apprehension. Presley’s phone ring twenty times. No one answers.

“Is he there?” she asks in a quiet voice.

“No.”

Her face is strangely slack. “Penn, why did you call Ray Presley?”

“There’s no time to go into it now.”

“Penn? Where are you, son?”

It’s my father. “Over here, Dad!”

Livy looks back over the trunk of the convertible. “He’s seen us. He’s coming.”

“Olivia!” Dad cries, rushing up to the car. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, it’s Penn and Annie who need help. I’m so sorry about this, Dr. Cage. It’s just unbelievable.”

Dad leans over the passenger door and hugs Annie and me. Annie keeps her head buried in my neck.

“Is she all right?”

“I think so. Considering what just happened. Somebody—”

“I already heard. The story’s spreading like—” He laughs bitterly. “Like wildfire. Where’s your mother?”

“I told her to go across the street and put the note in a Ziploc bag. There might be fingerprints.” I reach up and take his hand. “I should have listened to you. You told me they’d stoop this low.”

He squeezes my hand. “It’s just a house. We’ll build another one.”

“I was crazy to get involved in this case.”

He shakes his head, his eyes on the great column of smoke rising into the sky. “Gutless sons of bitches … laid hands on my granddaughter. If I find the man who did this, I’ll flay him alive.”

“Do you know anything about Ruby’s condition?”

He sighs heavily. “They carried her to St. Catherine’s Hospital. Peter Carelli’s in the ER with her now. It doesn’t look good. Massive third-degree burns, a broken hip. The helicopter’s on its way from Jackson. I’m about to go over there.”

“We’ll follow you as soon as Mom gets back.”

He nods absently, watching the water pour onto the ruin that sheltered our family for thirty-five years.

“Dad, the library—”

“I know. No point thinking about it now. Right now we worry about the living.” He looks down at me, his eyes flinty and cold. “This is the crossroads, son. We back off or we go forward. It’s your call. I’ll back you either way.”

Go forward? After this? “Let’s just find Mom and get to the hospital.”

He nods. “I’ll see you there.”

The treatment room in the ER is crowded but quiet. The muted beeps of monitors punctuate the hushed voices like metronomes. Ruby lies at the center of the room, a technological still life surrounded by doctors, nurses, a respiratory therapist, and my father. I move closer, straightening the scrub shirt a nurse brought me to replace the shirt I lost in the fire. Two large-bore IV lines are pouring fluids into Ruby’s arms, and oxygen is being pumped into her lungs through a mask. Her mostly nude body is exposed to the air, the parts ravaged by fire—her right arm, shoulder, trunk, and both legs—bathed in Silvadene ointment. She was apparently wearing some sort of synthetic dress that caught fire and melted into her skin. The helicopter ambulance summoned from Jackson is under orders to whisk her to the burn center in Greenville as soon as it arrives, but my father doubts she’ll survive to make the flight.

“Let my son in here,” Dad says, and the white coats part for me.

My first reaction is horror. Ruby’s dentures have been removed and this makes her face look like a sunken death mask. Her black wig is also gone, leaving a thin snowy frizz atop her head. Her eyes are closed, her respiration labored. She looks like a dying woman photographed in some plague-stricken African village.

“Is she conscious?”

“She was until a minute, ago,” Dad replies. “She’s in and out now. Mostly out. In her condition, it’s a blessing.”

One of Ruby’s hands is undamaged, and I move around the table and take it, squeezing softly. “Did Mom talk to her?”

“A little. Ruby had a panic attack and Peggy calmed her down.”

The thought of Ruby in terror makes it difficult for me to breathe. As I look down at her, her lips tremble, then move with purpose. She’s trying to speak. But what comes from behind the mask is only a ragged passage of air. I lean closer and speak into her ear.

“Ruby? It’s Penn, Ruby. I hear you.”

At last the rasps form words. “… fine blessing. You … give a fine blessing, Dr. Cage. You go on … go on, now.”

A chill races over my neck and arms. “Dad? I think she wants you to say something religious.”

“She’s obtunded, son. She doesn’t really know what she’s saying.”

“She knows. She wants you to say something over her.”

My father looks around at the ring of expectant faces. “Jesus. I don’t remember much.”

“Anything. It doesn’t matter.”