“No. You just told me I had beautiful hair.”
“That, too. That’s your crowning glory, I’ll admit it.” He raised his hand and curled a thick strand around his finger. He smiled at her. “Feels like springy silk. Yeah, you’re beautiful. I think every skinny little bone in your body is beautiful.”
He looked over at Emma, who was panting from her run, dragging the kite behind her, looking tired and pleased. “You’re sure you like me enough, Molly?”
“I like you enough.” She looked down, scuffing the toe of her black boot in the dirt. She said then, making his eyes nearly cross, as she looked back up at him through her lashes, “I particularly like your body.”
She thought for a moment that he was going to grab her, and she wouldn’t have minded, but he didn’t. He just smiled and said, “Excellent. That’s a really good start. Let’s get married, Molly, as soon as we get back home. We can stop off in Nevada. Let’s have the honeymoon before the wedding. What do you think?”
What was love anyway? she thought, as she slowly nodded.
They didn’t have the opportunity either to honeymoon in Ireland or to tell Emma that she was getting a new daddy. Waiting for them at the reception desk at Dromoland Castle were two phone messages and a fax from Savich.
THEY flew from Shannon to Chicago O’Hare in Business Class, in the middle section that holds three seats, putting Emma between them. She slept most of the way, propped up on three pillows on Ramsey’s armrest, covered with a blanket, holding her piano close, the top keys sticking out from beneath the blanket. The piano had sat in the corner of their suite, seemingly forgotten by Emma, until the phone call had come, her mother had paled, Ramsey had cursed quietly, and they’d started packing quickly.
Molly saw that the shoelace from one of her Nike sneakers was dangling. She stared at it, then finally reached down and simply pulled the sneaker off. She had a plaid sock on her small foot. Molly had washed out the pair the night before.
They’d said very little. Life had spun out of control again. Molly felt numb, nothing else, just a numb blankness that had taken over both her brain and her body. She supposed she should be grateful for it.
Finally, Molly said quietly, so as not to awaken Emma, “I’m having a hard time accepting it. I keep thinking it’s a mistake, that someone really screwed up, that Eve was utterly wrong.”
“I know.”
“Will they get Rule Shaker now?”
“I don’t know. We’ll find out exactly what happened when we get to Chicago. Listen, your father’s not dead yet. God knows how he’s managed to survive so far, but he has. That’s a good sign.”
“Maybe he’s already been able to tell the cops who shot him.” She stopped, staring at the blank movie screen directly in front of them. “Or maybe by now it’s over and he’s dead.”
Ramsey started to pick up the phone on the armrest. “No,” she said, placing her hand over his. “No. I don’t want to know, not just yet. For the moment, I want to think you’re right. He’s told the cops who shot him. It will all be over by the time we arrive at O’Hare.”
But Ramsey knew this wasn’t likely. In fact it was well nigh impossible. He said quietly, “Remember I told you it was a distance shot, from a good seventy-five yards away, given the trajectory. The assassin probably fired from the roof of the four-story building just across the street. Mason never saw his attacker. Savich said the preliminary ballistics report was that the bullet, a heavy 7.62 mm, was from a sniping rifle, like a SIG-Sauer SSG2000. That’s a popular military rifle.” He didn’t tell her that the bullet had ripped through Mason Lord’s chest, hurling him into a car parked at the curb. The impact had smashed the driver’s-side window of a new blue Buick Riviera.
“Gunther was just a single step in front of your father. He wasn’t touched.”
Emma groaned in her sleep. Ramsey reached over and gently began to rub her shoulders and back. She pushed against his hand, then quieted.