“Why?”
“I actually don’t know all the reasons. Maybe he doesn’t either. I do know it hasn’t made him very happy.”
“From the little I saw, he didn’t strike me as that sort of person. Depressed or anything.”
“Really? How did he strike you?”
“Funny, smart, identifies well with people.”
“I see he identified with you.”
“He didn’t even know I was there.”
“You would have liked him to, though, wouldn’t you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Only that I’m not blind. And I’ve walked in his shadow all my life.”
“You’re the boy genius with a limitless future.”
“And he’s a heroic ex-cop who now defends the very people he used to arrest. He also has a martyr quality about him that I never have been able to get around. He’s a good guy who pushes himself unbelievably hard.” Michael shook his head. All the time his brother had spent in the hospital. None of them knowing if he was going to make it day to day, minute to minute. He had never known such fear, the thought of losing his brother. But he had lost him anyway, it seemed, and not because of death. Not because of those bullets.
“Maybe he feels like he’s living in your shadow.”
“I doubt that.”
“Did you ever ask him?”
“Like I said, we don’t talk anymore.” He paused and then added quietly, “Is he the reason you turned me down?” He had watched her as she observed his brother. She had been enraptured with John Fiske from the moment she saw him. It had seemed like a fun idea at the time, the two of them going to watch his brother. Now Michael cursed himself for doing it.
She flushed. “I don’t even know him. How could I possibly have any feelings for him?”
“Are you asking me that, or yourself?”
“I’m not going to answer that.” Her voice trembled. “What about you? Do you love him?”
He abruptly sat up straight and looked at her. “I will always love my brother, Sara. Always.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
* * *
Rider wordlessly passed his secretary, fled to his office, opened his briefcase and slipped out the envelope. He withdrew the letter from inside, but barely glanced at it before tossing it in the wastebasket. In the letter Rufus Harms had written his last will and testament, but that was just a dodge, something innocuous for the guard to read. Rider looked at the envelope closely while he punched his intercom.
“Sheila, can you bring in the hot plate and the teakettle? Fill it with water.”
“Mr. Rider, I can make tea for you.”
“I don’t want tea, Sheila, just bring the damned kettle and the hot plate.”
Sheila didn’t question this odd request or her boss’s temper. She brought in the kettle and hot plate, then quietly withdrew.
Rider plugged in the hot plate and within a few minutes steam poured out of the kettle. Gingerly grasping the envelope by its edges, Rider held it over the steam and watched as the envelope began to come apart, just as Rufus Harms had told him it would. Rider fussed with the edges, and he soon had it completely laid out. Instead of an envelope, he now held two pieces of paper: one handwritten; the other a copy of the letter Harms had received from the Army.
As he turned off the hot plate, Rider marveled at how Rufus had managed to construct this device — an envelope that was actually a letter — and how he had copied and then concealed the letter from the Army in it as well. Then he recalled that Harms’s father had worked at a printing press company. It would have been better for Rufus if he had followed his daddy into the printing business instead of joining the Army, Rider muttered to himself.
He let the pieces of paper dry out for a minute and then sat behind his desk while he read what Rufus had written. It didn’t take long, the remarks were fairly brief, though many words were oddly formed and misspelled. Rider couldn’t have known it, but Harms had scrawled it out in near darkness, stopping every time he heard the steps of the guards draw close. There wasn’t a trace of saliva left in Rider’s throat when he had finished reading. Then he forced himself to read the official notice from the Army. Another body blow.