Chapter 19: The Plan

Teo woke at six that evening and asked for pasta.

"No," I said.

"A little pasta."

"You have a tube in your side."

"Then broth," he said. "But a good one. Not that hospital water."

He lay in the guest bed with three pillows under him and a bell Luca had found in a drawer.

He had rung it half a dozen times in two hours.

"I'll cook it," Luca said from the doorway.

"Absolutely not."

"I can make broth."

"Boss, last time you made broth, the dog left."

"We don't have a dog."

"That's how bad it was."

I sat on the end of the bed and laughed so hard I had to put my face in my hands.

It was the first time I had laughed in that house.

Luca watched me do it.

He did not smile, but his grey eyes went soft at the corners, and he leaned on the door frame and stayed there.

"Teo," I said, wiping my eyes. "You were shot yesterday."

"This morning."

"This morning. And you're critiquing the food."

"A man needs standards, Doc."

A guard knocked on the open door.

"Boss. There's a woman at the gate. Blonde. Crying. She says she has a package for the doctor."

Luca's face went flat.

"Whitney," I said.

"She's alone?"

"Alone. Walked up from the bus stop."

"Search her twice," Luca said.

They brought her into the kitchen twenty minutes later.

She had no coat, and her blond hair was flat on one side.

One eye was swollen, and there was a handprint bruising along her jaw.

"He threw me out of the car at the Brooklyn Bridge," Whitney said. "After I gave my statement. He said I was a liability."

"Your statement," Luca said coldly.

"I told them what he told me to tell them. And then I walked all the way here."

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