Secret Prey

faded, and Sherrill bumped him from the back. He stepped forward and nothing was okay.
    ‘‘How’ve you been?’’ he mumbled.
    ‘‘Well: the firebomb . . .’’
    ‘‘Sorry; stupid question. But you know.’’
    ‘‘I know: I’ve been okay.’’ The smile was long gone now, and her face was tense, her voice controlled. ‘‘But the firebomb—do you think it might be the Seed?’’
    Lucas shook his head, found a chair, sat down. Sherrill was wearing a leather jacket, and she pulled it off to reveal a very large cherry-stocked .357 Magnum in a black leather shoulder rig. She looked like an S-and-M magazine’s cover girl. ‘‘Not the Seed,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘I talked to their head guy, and we’ve had feelers out everywhere. It’s not the Seed.’’
    ‘‘A crazy man?’’
    ‘‘That’s the consensus right now.’’
    ‘‘Unless you’ve got something going on that we don’t know about,’’ Sherrill interjected. ‘‘Have you had any serious problems with unhappy patients, or relatives of unhappy patients, or maybe state cases from the psycho hospitals . . . like that?’’
    Weather frowned, thought for a moment, then shook her head: ‘‘Not that I know of.’’
    Sherrill leaned forward a bit: ‘‘I only know you a little bit, and I don’t want to step on either your feet or Lucas’s feet. But how about new relationships? Or men who think you might be interested, who you blew off? There’s usually some kind of emotional basis for a nut attack.’’
    Weather was shaking her head: ‘‘Nothing like that.’’
    ‘‘Any kids?’’ Lucas asked. ‘‘Any teenage boys trying to cut your grass for you, water your lawn? Just hanging around?’’
    ‘‘No . . . Lucas, I’ve been racking my brains trying to think of anybody who might do this. Any hint. People from back home, people from the hospital, from the university, cops, but . . . there’s nobody. Not to just come walking up some evening and throw a bomb through the window.’’
    ‘‘Goddamnit,’’ Lucas said.
    ‘‘My best idea was that somebody was trying to get at you through me,’’ Weather said. ‘‘Remember that newspaper article after the thing with Andi and John Mail? ‘The Pals of Lucas Davenport’? Maybe somebody who goes way back read that article—maybe somebody in prison at the time—and decided to come after me. There’d be no way for an outsider to know that we’d broken off the relationship. So . . . I think you might look at your past, more than mine. That is, if it’s not just some random crazy man.’’
    ‘‘How about the landlords? Would they—’’
    ‘‘Oh God, Lucas, no. They’re the nicest people in the world. I called to tell them about the house, and they were worried about me . No. Not them.’’
    ‘‘All right.’’ Lucas looked at Sherrill: ‘‘Anything else?’’
    ‘‘Not if she’s sure she’s not the target. But Weather, if you think of anything . . .’’
    ‘‘I’ll call Lucas the next minute,’’ she said.
    ‘‘So is that it?’’ Andi Manette asked.
    Lucas looked at Weather for a long five seconds, then to Manette: ‘‘Yeah, that’s it.’’
    Outside on the sidewalk, with the door closing behind them, Sherrill pulled on her jacket and said, ‘‘Whew.’’
    ‘‘What?’’
    ‘‘She said that thing about breaking off the relationship, and you never even flinched. And she just said it like . . .’’
    ‘‘It was done.’’
    ‘‘Yeah.’’
    ‘‘I flinched,’’ Lucas said.
    ‘‘God,’’ Sherrill said. Then, after a while, ‘‘Bad day.’’
    REAL BAD DAY.
    That night, a little after ten-thirty, Wilson McDonald was shaking his hand in James T. Bone’s face, sputtering, ‘‘Vice chairman. That’s nothing! Nothing! You’re treating me like a piece of shit.’’
    Bone said, ‘‘Look, Wilson—you’re not gonna get the top spot. You’re just not. I can commit to leaving you as top guy in the mortgage company. I can get you the vice chairman’s job with the merged bank. But I can’t say what’ll happen after the merger.’’
    ‘‘Not gonna be any fuckin’ merger,’’ McDonald said. He’d never taken off his coat. He headed for the door, turned when he got there, and said, ‘‘And you’re never gonna run the goddamned bank. Maybe I can’t get it myself, but I can fuck you up.’’
    And he was gone.
    Kerin Baki said, ‘‘If they go to O’Dell, we may have a problem.’’
    Bone shook his head.