Chapter 9 - The Last Forty-Three Minutes
Catherine confessed at sunrise.
We sat inside an FBI interview room.
Liam's shoulder had been stitched.
My mother sat beside me.
Tommy joined by secure video from the hospital.
For once, nobody was hiding anything.
Catherine spoke.
After forcing Dad's car off the road, she had climbed down the embankment.
Daniel was alive.
Badly injured.
But conscious.
“He recognized me,” she whispered.
I said nothing.
“He asked me to call an ambulance.”
My hands curled into fists.
“And did you?”
“Not immediately.”
“How long?”
“Eleven minutes.”
Mom began crying.
Catherine continued.
“Patrick called me. He told me to leave Daniel there.”
“But you didn't.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because he said your names.”
I froze.
“Nora and Tommy?”
“He had your photograph in his wallet.”
Catherine wiped her face.
“He made me promise his children wouldn't pay for what he'd done.”
My anger cracked around grief.
“So you called the ambulance.”
“Yes.”
“Eleven minutes later.”
“Yes.”
“Would those eleven minutes have saved him?”
Dr. Ellis, seated across the room, answered.
“Possibly.”
I closed my eyes.
Possibly.
The cruelest word in medicine.
Catherine continued.
“Then Patrick ordered Ellis to delay treatment.”
Liam looked at Ellis.
“You obeyed.”
Ellis nodded.
“Yes.”
“And my father lived another forty-three minutes because two cowards were more afraid of Patrick Mercer than of letting an innocent man die.”
Neither defended themselves.
Good.
Tommy's voice came through the monitor.
“Nora.”
I looked at him.
He looked impossibly thin beneath his hospital blanket.
But he was smiling.
“Dad wouldn't want this to destroy you.”
My throat closed.
“You don't know what Dad would want.”
“No.”
Tommy shrugged weakly.
“But I know what you taught me.”
“What?”
“That being angry at cancer doesn't cure it.”
I laughed through tears.
“That sounds annoyingly mature.”
“Steroids.”
Even Liam smiled.
The federal prosecutor entered.
Calder had begun cooperating.
So had Ellis.
Catherine would face charges.
Liam didn't interfere.
That mattered.
He could have used money, threats, lawyers.
Instead, he told his mother, “Tell them everything.”
She did.
Over the next three weeks, Chicago erupted.
Judges resigned.
Police officials were arrested.
Businesses tied to Calder were seized.
The remaining illegal operations belonging to the Mercer organization were surrendered through Liam's attorneys.
For the first time in generations, the Mercer family wasn't buying silence.
They were paying for truth.
And Tommy began the trial.
I visited every day.
Liam often came with me.
At first Tommy hated him.
“You're mafia?”
“Technically less every day.”
“You own casinos?”
“Not anymore.”
“Cool cars?”
“Yes.”
“Can I have one?”
“No.”
“Then what's the point of organized crime?”
I nearly choked on my coffee.
Liam laughed.
It became easier after that.
Tommy's treatment was brutal.
Fevers.
Vomiting.
Mouth sores.
Days when he couldn't stand.
One night his temperature reached 104.2.
I sat beside him terrified that after everything, infection would take him anyway.
Liam arrived at three in the morning.
He didn't speak.
He simply sat beside me.
Hours passed.
At dawn, Tommy's fever finally broke.
I cried.
Liam held my hand.
“I don't know how to do this,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Hope.”
His thumb moved across my knuckles.
“Neither do I.”
I looked at him.
“Then what are we doing?”
“Learning.”
He leaned toward me.
Slowly.
Giving me time to move away.
I didn't.
Our first kiss happened beside a hospital vending machine while my brother slept twenty feet away.
It wasn't dramatic.
No fireworks.
No orchestra.
Just warmth.
And relief.
And two exhausted people realizing they'd stopped pretending they meant nothing to each other.
When we separated, I whispered, “You're still my patient.”
“No longer.”
“Your leg isn't healed.”
“I have another nurse.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“You hired another nurse?”
“She doesn't yell.”
“I hate her.”
He smiled.
“There she is.”
Three months later, Tommy's preliminary results arrived.
I couldn't open them.
He made me.
The first line blurred.
I read it again.
Then again.
Complete molecular remission.
Tommy stared.
“Well?”
I couldn't speak.
Liam took the paper.
His eyes moved across it.
Then he looked at Tommy.
“You did it.”
Tommy started crying.
So did I.
Liam pulled both of us against him.
For several minutes, nobody cared that the most feared man in Chicago had tears running down his face.
But life wasn't finished testing us.
Two days later, Liam received an envelope.
No return address.
Inside was a photograph.
The Mercer mansion.
His old bedroom window.
On the back, someone had written:
CALDER WASN'T THE SHOOTER.
Below it was another sentence.
THE MAN WHO ORDERED LIAM'S DEATH IS STILL INSIDE HIS HOUSE.
I looked at Liam.
“Who took the photograph?”
He turned it over.
A date was printed in the corner.
Yesterday.
Someone had been watching us.
Someone close.
Then Liam's phone rang.
Leo.
Liam answered.
His expression changed immediately.
“What?”
He listened.
Then looked at me.
“Stay with Tommy.”
“Why?”
“Nora.”
“What happened?”
He lowered the phone.
“Someone just entered my mother's house.”
My stomach tightened.
“Who?”
Liam looked at the photograph again.
“My father.”
Silence.
I stared at him.
May you like
“Your father is dead.”
“That,” Liam whispered, “is what I've believed for nine years.”
