The headline stripped across theStardeclared, in all caps, “SHOCKING TURN IN BLACKWELL CASE.” The lead paragraph read, “Peter Blackwell was framed in the attack on his sister-in-law, kidnapped and forced to work with another abducted scientist on a weapon that close associates of the vice president tried to set off yesterday, endangering tens of thousands of people in Detroit, according to both scientists, the vice president’s son and surveillance film.”
She read the rest, a woozy feeling of unreality setting in. How was Rosemarie alive? How had all this happened? Morse, Whitaker and Whitaker’s son had been arrested. President Abbott’s spokesman gave a statement strongly implying that the president was not ruling out that Draden conspired to kill him and level a swath of Detroit. Hickok even wrote that the film “purporting to show the Blackwells plotting to kill Lydia Harper” was clearly faked because both Blackwells had told theStarmonths earlier that they believed they were being surveilled in that part of their house.
She looked up at Peter, trying to put her fears into words.
“You’re not dreaming,” he said, sitting beside her and taking her hand. “I promise.”
“But Rosemarie,” she murmured, looking at the woman they’d thought was dead.
“Knitting,” he whispered in her ear. “She knit herself a soft landing.”
Beatrix stared at him, open mouthed. Rosemarie had never knit anything before. How on earth?—
But then, how on earth had she herself teleported to Lydia when it seemed as if her sister’s life depended on it?
Beatrix scrambled off her cot and threw her arms around Rosemarie.
“Oof.Careful.” Rosemarie patted her on the back. “I’ve got bruises on my bruises.”
“And three broken bones,” Peter said. “Left hip, right knee, left shoulder.”
“Shattered them on the way down,” Rosemarie said matter-of-factly.
“Sorry—sorry.” Beatrix pulled back gingerly to keep from hurting her. “You’re … you’realive.”
Rosemarie offered a half-smile, half-grimace. “More or less. My walking days, they tell me, are pretty much over. Oh, now,” she added, reaching up with her right arm, the one with no broken bones, and wiping away Beatrix’s tears, “none of that. I’m all right, really, I promise.”
“When Peter told me what Morse did …” Beatrix shook her head, throat clogged, unable to say more. Instead, she took Rosemarie’s hand and kissed it.
Now Rosemarie’s eyes were welling. “This is a fine how-do-you-do.” She sniffled and gave a wavering laugh. “Blubbering about being all right! I don’t know what’s come over me.”
“I love you,” Beatrix whispered. “I love you so much, mother of my heart.”
“I love you, too, my darling girl.” Rosemarie smiled at her through her tears, taking her hand back to dab at her face.“Well—I can’t lie around here in good conscience when there’s so much to do! Help me into the wheelchair, would you?”
Lydia’s room was two floors down. As they waited for an elevator, Beatrix murmured to Peter, “If they just wanted to take out the convention center, why did they insist on a five-mile blast radius?”
He leaned closer. “They were going to detonate it on the other side of the border. Morse slipped the stone onto the grounds of a Canadian weapons facility.”
She gaped at him.
His lips twisted bitterly. “They were planning to claim I gave it to the Canadians, who were intending to use it in the U.S. but screwed up a test and blew themselves up into the bargain. I take it Draden thought the resulting war would go better if the other side had lost most of its advanced weaponry.”
“He would have killed all those people in Detroit!”
“Yes.”
“Including top officials from every North and South American country!”
Peter raised his eyebrows. “Apparently, he saw that as a bonus. He seems to have had designs on both continents.”
“GoodGod.”
“Funny, isn’t it,” Rosemarie said as the elevator doors opened and Beatrix rolled her in, “how his people kept callingusthe subversives.”
When they reached Lydia’s room, a policeman—possibly the same one she and Ella tried to creep past several days earlier—waved them in. Beatrix’s heart lurched: Lydia’s face was pale, her eyes closed. Her whole body spoke of exhaustion if not pain.
But then Joan exclaimed,“Beatrix,” and Lydia’s eyes flew open. She broke into a beatific smile.
