She studied him driving as they left the town of Stratham behind and headed for Belford on the narrow country road, the setting sun casting his profile in a reddish-gold glow.
“Ian, where are you keeping your mother’s ashes?” she asked, referring to the fact that Helen had requested in one of her more lucid periods to be cremated.
He glanced at her swiftly, his blue eyes cool in his sunlit face.
“Grandmother has them. She’s holding them for me. I didn’t want to take them where I was going.”
She absorbed his answer for a moment, blindly staring at the frozen-looking road before them.
“It wasn’t your fault, you know.”
The silence swelled. She glanced at him reluctantly. He stared fixedly out the windshield. Her throat felt tight. She could guess at how much guilt he carried for his decision to give permission for Helen to receive a medication that possibly had led to her liver failing, and ultimately death.
“You’ve given permission dozens of times over the years for medication changes and alterations in your mother’s treatment. She was very ill. She wasn’t eating. The medication was supposed to not only help with her depression and psychosis, but also increase her appetite. It was the doctor’s recommendation, Ian,” she said when she saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed thickly. “She would have died if she didn’t start eating more.”
“They could have kept her alive with a feeding tube,” he said.
“Yes. They could have, I suppose. But the doctor recommended this course of action first, and I agreed with her recommendation. I know you did, too. You didn’t want her kept alive on a feeding tube. You wanted to make a decision that respected her rights as a human being as much as you could. There’s no way you could have known the reaction she’d have to that medication. The fact of the matter is, there’s no clear-cut proof her decline was due to that medicine. You know how ill she was . . . how weak.”
“The medicine did it,” he said shortly, still staring fixedly at the road.
“You cared for her your whole life. You did a thousand times more than most sons. Whoever had been her primary caregiver would have faced a similar decision, and they’d have made the same choice you did, Ian. It was her time,” she added softly. “She’d suffered enough.”
His nostrils flared slightly, but she couldn’t tell if he was angry at her choice of topic or moved by her words. His hands tightened on the wheel. It took her a moment to realize he was no longer focused on their conversation. He glanced in the rearview mirror, his brow furrowed. She looked over her shoulder and saw a car driving far too close to their bumper for safety. Ian sped up slightly, but the car followed, maintaining its close tail. Suddenly, the car leapt forward and hit them, making them lurch in the rigid restraints of their seatbelts.
“What’s he doing?” Francesca asked in incredulous anger when the car behind them abruptly jerked the wheel into the oncoming lane. She yelped in alarm, sure he must have missed the corner of their bumper by inches or less.
“Francesca, get down,” Ian ordered.
The vehicle—a dark green sedan—flew up next to them. Fear shot through her when she looked into the cab of the car and saw the familiar craggy features and furious stare.
“Ian, that’s—”
Ian’s hand pushed at the back of her head and rapidly flew back to grip the wheel. She bent below the window, finally doing what he’d demanded, lowering her face toward her thighs, straining against the seatbelt. She squeaked in alarm and grabbed the door handle when their car jerked violently. The man had intentionally rammed into them sideways. Their car careened onto the side of the road, gravel popping beneath the wheels. Fear shot through her veins like it’d been mainlined. They were going to lose control and wreck.
But somehow, Ian miraculously kept the car in control as he braked. She rose and peered over the dashboard cautiously. The dark green car had shot past them. Her heart racing, she wondered if the vehicle would double back. Instead, it just zoomed over a slight hill in the road and disappeared.
Shivers coursed over every inch of her flesh. She turned and met Ian’s stare. His face looked rigid.
“Are you all right?” he asked tersely.
She just nodded. “That was the man.”
His eyelids narrowed dangerously. “What man?”
“I saw him,” she said, her tongue feeling numb. “That was the same man who attacked me in Chicago.”
“Are you sure?” he demanded.
She nodded. “One hundred percent sure. It’s not a face I’m likely to forget.”
* * *
The two police detectives interviewed Ian and Francesca in the sitting room with Anne, James, Gerard, Lucien, and Elise all present.
“I’d like you to come down to the stationhouse tomorrow morning to work with someone to render a likeness of the man who has attacked you twice, Ms. Arno,” Detective Markov said to Francesca as they stood in preparation to leave, putting away their notebooks.
“No,” Ian said abruptly, standing as well. “The sketch artist can come here. I don’t want Francesca going out until we get this situation under control. But Francesca is actually an artist herself. You can sketch this man’s face, can’t you?”
“Of course,” she said.
Detective Markov looked at his partner, taken aback by Ian’s decree. But then he shrugged, seeming to see Ian’s point. “I suppose you’re right. But we don’t use a traditional sketch artist. We’ve acquired the technology to do everything on the computer. It’s easier to send off the image to other police and crime officials that way. A few of us will be coming out to Belford Hall tomorrow for security during the press conference, as you requested, your lordship,” Markov said, nodding respectfully to James, “so we’ll just send the woman who specializes in the computerized renderings then. Will that suit you?” he asked Ian.