Page 42 of Her Last Doubt

She pulled it out and looked at the screen. It was Jack. The call display showing his name while she was on a case that had just broken wide open made her pause. He understood better than anyone outside the job what a call at the wrong moment could cost. He did not call unless it was something that couldn't wait.

Her first thought was Paige. She stepped into the hallway before she answered, pulling the apartment door partly shut behind her. "Hey," she said. "What’s up?”

"Hey." His voice was careful in the way it got when he was working up to something. "I'm sorry to call. I know you're in the middle of it."

"Oh…it’s pretty much over, but…God, it’s been weird. Anyway…is everything okay?”

"The hospice center called about half an hour ago," he said, and his voice sounded heavy. "Eleanor took a turn this morning. They're not sure she'll make it through the night. They said Eleanor was asking specifically for you and…I’m sorry, Rachel.”

Rachel stood in the hallway with her back against the wall, the apartment noise muffled behind the closed door. She pressed her free hand flat against the wall beside her and felt the plaster there, solid and cool, and thought about Eleanor's book list…a list that would never be finished.

They’d thought she had months. Maye as much as half a year on the bright side. But something had changed and…

"Thank you for calling," she said. “I’m going to try to get over there to see her.”

"I'm sorry, Rachel,” he said again.

"I know. I'll be home when I can."

She ended the call and stood there for another moment with the phone in her hand. Through the apartment door she could hear Purcell's voice, steady and low, directing her team. Somewhere further along the hallway another door opened and a resident peered out and then retreated again at the sight of the police tape.

Rachel went back inside. Novak was where she'd left him, watching her from across the room with careful attention. He cocked his head, asking without words: You okay?

"I have to go," she said. “Sort of a family thing. Sort of. I…”

He looked at her face and seemed to read enough of it not to press. "That’s fine. Go do what you need to do. I'll hold things down here."

“Thank you.”

She left the apartment without looking back at Hale or Neil Baxter or the lit-up opening in the spare bedroom wall. Beyond the hall, she took the stairs rather than waiting for the elevator, moving down through the quiet floors of the Hargrove toward the lobby and the waiting afternoon outside.

And by the time she reached the lowering sunlight, she was running.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

The hospice center was quiet when she arrived at 6:17, the hallways dim and warm, smelling of clean linen and something faintly floral. Dusk has settled in around the city and she could feel it as she made her way quickly down the halls. She moved faster than she normally would through the corridor toward Eleanor's wing, her coat still on, her keys in her hand from the parking lot, not quite running but close enough that an orderly she passed looked up briefly before going back to whatever he was doing.

As she rounded the last corner, she just hoped that she wasn’t too late. She was afraid that she might turn into that room and find the bed empty and straightened, the monitors dark, and a nurse who would look at her with quiet sympathy and tell her it had happened just a few minutes ago. The thought had driven her through three consecutive yellow lights on the way over and it drove her faster now through the last stretch of hallway.

The nurse outside Eleanor's door was a young woman Rachel recognized from her Tuesday visits, dark-haired and unhurried, who looked up from the tablet in her hand as Rachel approached and gave a small, warm smile.

"She was asking whether you'd already been here," the nurse said.

Rachel let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding and pushed the door open.

“Is she coherent?”

“Mostly. She’s in and out, you know? Sort of dozing most of the time. But I think she’s awake right now.”

Rachel entered and found the room softly lit, the window letting in the morose light of dusk. It seemed a lot too fitting for the moment. The monitors were doing their work, the numbers on them lower than Rachel had ever seen them, the lines moving slow and shallow. Eleanor was in the bed with her eyes closed, her hands resting at her sides on top of the blanket. Her breathing was visible but thin, a labor rather than a rhythm.

Rachel sat in the chair beside the bed and reached out and took her hand.

Eleanor's eyes opened. They were clearer than Rachel had expected, steady and present in a way that her body had stopped suggesting she was capable of, and she looked at Rachel for a moment the way she sometimes did at the beginning of a visit, as if confirming it was really her.

"You came," Eleanor said. Her voice was lower than usual, worn thin, but still hers.

"Of course I came."