First Thrills - Lee Child [140]
“You . . .” he said, his breath coming harder from the effort. “You . . .”
“I what, John? I what?”
“Came,” he said. “You . . . came . . .” he panted with exertion. “You . . . stupid bitch.”
Pam’s mouth opened—she felt the jaw pop, the breeze drying the back of her throat. The first class ticket, the warm towel, the nuts. She had even sipped from the bottle of cold water in the car. She had fallen for it all without even thinking.
“You . . .” he began again, smiling, showing his teeth.
Pam stood there. It was five years ago. Fifteen years. Twenty. She just stood there the same way she had from the beginning and waited for the ax to fall on her head.
“You . . .” The smile would not go away, even as he struggled to breathe. “You’ve . . . gained . . . weight.”
The mask popped back on and he inhaled, his breath fogging up the plastic.
“I should kill you,” she hissed. “I should kill you with my bare hands.”
His left shoulder went up in a shrug, then he froze in place, his eyes opening in shock. The monitor went off, a piercing, metallic beep that signaled a flatline. The doors flew open and instead of doctors rushing in, the well- dressed man and woman entered, each carrying a cooler between them.
“Please step out of the way,” the woman snapped, elbowing Pam aside. They opened the coolers and started to pack the bags of ice around John’s body. Oddly, Pam wondered if the man she had seen out by the van was the person who actually chopped off the head.
“Mrs. Fuller?” the NuLife woman asked. Pam was about to answer when Cindy stepped forward.
“Yes?”
So, he had married her. He had married her in the end so that she would have all of his money. Pam wondered if he had put her on an allowance.
“We need you to pronounce him,” the woman said.
“I . . . I don’t think . . .” Cindy faltered. She burst into tears, her hands around her face, shoulders shaking. “Oh, John! I can’t do it!” she sobbed, crumbling to the ground. “He can’t be gone!”
“Oh, for fucksakes,” Pam snapped, turning off the whining heart monitor with a snap of her wrist. “He’s dead,” she told them. “Look at him. He’s dead.”
And he was. Even without the heart monitor bleating its signal, any fool could see that John was gone. His eyes were still open, but there was no light there. His skin was slack—everything about him was slack, that is, except for that trace of a smirk on his lips.
He had gotten her. Even in death he had gotten the last word.
The NuLife woman opened the cooler and started handing bags to her partner. Pam watched as they packed the ice around John like a bowl of potato salad.
“Leave us alone,” Pam said. She had used her teacher voice, the voice that shook hallways and sent students running for their homerooms.
“You can’t order me around!” Cindy shrieked, but she wasn’t very persuasive sitting on the floor.
“Get out right this minute,” Pam commanded, and perhaps because she wasn’t much removed from her high school days, Cindy obeyed.
John’s beautiful library cleared quickly, but Pam took her time. She found herself staring out the window at the fountain, water burbling over into a copper bowl. There was a rock garden in the corner that she hadn’t noticed before, and chairs were scattered around for guests. He’d had parties here. She knew he’d had parties here. They had never had parties at home. John had said they were too expensive and that they couldn’t afford it.
Pam walked to the desk and picked up the knife. She couldn’t kill him—John had robbed her of that plea sure, but there was one thing she could do, one thing she could take, that he would sorely miss after his reanimation.
Until she died, Pam would always remember those last moments with John, the smirk on his face, his last words to her about her weight, the way he felt in her hand when she had walked out of the room and into the beautiful courtyard. She had crossed