Last Run Read Online Free PDF Page A

Sam’s other off-duty passion was amateur opera, something he’d managed in the past to squeeze into
his spare time, regularly singing with S-BOP, a South Beach group.
    They’d offered him Figaro in their next production, and ordinarily he’d have grabbed it, but he’d turned the role down this time because home was where he wanted to be right
now as much as possible, taking care of his wife, fretting silently about the baby’s safety, always quietly fearful too of letting them down some way.
    One child, his sweet baby boy, long dead and gone and
not
his fault, whatever his ex-wife Althea had believed, yet that searingly painful boomerang of blame still regularly looped its way
back to Sam, forcing him to relive and examine the tragedy over and over.
    Not the same.
    He reminded himself of that frequently, too, because this was his new life and Grace was the antithesis of Althea; he told himself that this son, once healthily – God willing –
delivered into their arms, their
care
, would be kept as perfectly safe as humanly possible.
    Not like Sampson. Not the same. Please God.
    Grace had always agreed with the maxim that rules were made to be broken.
    Lucia Busseto’s idea that weekends be kept for family and rest was a fine one that she had no argument with. But there were always exceptions.
    It was three months since Grace had seen young Gregory Hoffman, and in the two or so years that he had been her patient, his mother Annie had never struck Grace as overdramatic or hysterical. On
the telephone at a minute after nine that Saturday morning, however, Annie Hoffman had sounded near the end of her rope because not only had Gregory – now fourteen – woken screaming
from nightmares for the past two nights, but he was also, according to Annie, jittery and wrecked.
    ‘And I don’t think he’s been using,’ Annie had answered Grace’s unspoken question. ‘Though there’s no way to be sure, is there?’
    ‘You’ve both tried talking to him?’
    ‘Jay sat down with him after dinner last night,’ Annie said. ‘Greg hardly said a word. He’s been that way for days, Grace, almost as if he
can’t
speak,
except he can, at least to tell us to leave him alone.’
    ‘Normal teenager,’ Grace said, gently.
    ‘Not this,’ Annie said. ‘He looks sick, Grace.’
    ‘You sure he isn’t?’
    ‘Not in the sense that your father-in-law could deal with,’ Annie said.
    It was David who had first recommended Grace to the Hoffmans.
    ‘Has Greg said he’d like to speak to me?’ Grace asked.
    ‘Not exactly,’ Annie admitted. ‘But he’s always confided in you in the past.’
    ‘Not always,’ Grace reminded her. ‘And even if he does tell me what’s wrong, no quick solutions, remember, Annie?’
    ‘We know the score,’ Annie said. ‘Grace, will you see him, please?’
    ‘Of course I will,’ Grace said.
    ‘Today?’ the other woman said quickly. ‘I know it’s the weekend, and I hate imposing, but something is terribly wrong with him, I just know it.’
    Grace took a second. Sam was already out working the homicide, and Cathy was planning a run followed by a trip to the Aventura Mall.
    ‘Noon,’ she said.
    ‘Are you sure?’ Annie’s voice was loaded with gratitude.
    ‘I just hope I can help,’ Grace said.
    She was dismayed when she saw the teenager get out of his mother’s Mercedes, nod a farewell to her and walk up the short white stone path between the palms to her front
door.
    His walk was the first thing that troubled her. Nervy body language with hunched shoulders, yet not in a belligerent teen manner; something different, odder, about it.
    ‘Hi, doc,’ he said as she opened the door.
    Closer up, he looked sick. He was tanned enough, but the pallor beneath was noticeable and he was gaunter than she could remember ever having seen him.
    Annie had made a point of saying, though, that her son was not sick.
    ‘Hello, Greg.’ Grace had a sudden impulse to embrace him, but gave him her