Triage: A Thriller (Shell Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

with us. I could feel her energy, could interpret her movements, even over the phone line. Fiber optics posed no problem. Nevada could do the same with me. Secrets didn’t stay secrets long where we were concerned.
    “The courtesy of a return call would have been much appreciated,” she said.
    I didn’t reply.
    “That’s the least I’d expect from you.”
    I didn’t reply to that, either.
    “The past three days I’ve left you somewhere around four messages, Shell. Obviously something important has been on my mind.”
    “Seven in two,” I said.
    “What?”
    “Seven messages, two days.”
    She sighed. “Seven in two, then. I stand corrected.”
    “Now you’ve got me. What did you need?”
    The naked woman in my bed shifted but didn’t awaken. Still, I padded away from her, across the pile carpet, then outside on the hotel balcony. The night had cooled what had been a hot day. The jet black sky was salted with stars. I didn’t bother making a wish. In the distance were sights I could see and others I couldn’t but knew were out there somewhere. Parrot Jungle. The Metrozoo. Vizcaya, an Italian Renaissance-style villa.
    “What’s all that noise?” Nevada asked. “Where are you?”
    “Miami.”
    She sighed. “No doubt with some nearly anonymous woman. Some things never change.”
    “Thank God for small miracles.”
    “You disgust me, Shell.”
    “Glad to hear it. Now get to the point, Nevada. Refrigerator on the blink? You spilled wine on the carpet and need the stain cleaned? Quickly state your reason for the calls. In three seconds I’m hanging up.” Fever ticked through my blood like a worm. I started a countdown, “One, two…”
    “May first is—”
    “Coming up,” I said, cutting her off. “I’m aware. You and I just happen to be using the same calendar.”
    “Were you planning on—”
    “No.”
    “You don’t know what I was going to ask,” she said.
    “Whatever it was,” I said, “the answer is no.”
    “Bitterness will kill you.”
    “As will a million other things. Hypertension, cancer…love.”
    I threw that last bit in as an afterthought. That fooled neither of us.
    “I wish things could be different between us, Shell.”
    “Nevada wishes,” I said. “Somebody get the President on the line.”
    She said, “There’s a verse in the Bible that says to forgive seven times seventy.”
    “You’re quoting the Bible now?” I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of that.
    “I’m trying to evolve, to grow.”
    “Quite a project,” I said. “Good luck with that.”
    “You’re not being very nice.”
    “That’s good to know.”
    “I have another verse for you,” she said, undaunted. “First Corinthians, thirteenth chapter. They call it the love chapter.”
    Love is patient. Love is kind. Keeps no record of wrongs.
    I knew it well enough. But I’d still prove a poor proselytizer.
    “Are you familiar with it?” Nevada asked.
    “No.”
    “Read it sometime. I’ve tried to measure up to its standard.”
    “You’ve failed,” I said. “Miserably.”
    “Yes. I failed. I’m not alone.”
    “Anything else, Nevada?”
    “Hold on. Don’t hang up…”
    Her voice faded. I heard faint sounds in the background of the line. She was quickly up and walking across the linoleum in her kitchen. Barefoot, her footfalls a soft slap to my face. Then the thick carpet of the living room swallowed the noise of her steps. She rushed past the television, what sounded like a cooking show playing, and moved down the hall and stopped at the second door on the left. The Serenity Prayer, set in a gold-painted wood frame covered in layers of dust, hung on two nails embedded in the wall between the bathroom and bedroom. It took two nails to hold it straight. I’d put it up . ‘Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace’ went one of the lines. I don’t think Nevada or I ever fully understood the words. We’d certainly lived our lives as though we hadn’t.
    The faint