Page 70 of Thin Ice

I placed a hand on his chest. His heart slammed beats underneath it.

"Stay down," I said. "Stay down. I've got you."

He stopped trying to stand.

"Squeeze my hand. Good. Now the left." The grips were even. I saw no unusual dilation in his pupils. The scalp wound was a laceration above the left temple, ragged, bleeding dramatically, but it was probably shallower than it looked.

His collarbones were intact. He successfully took a deep breath at my request, but it caused pain. There could be rib injuries, but likely manageable. The hip was a question mark. I told him not to move again.

I pulled off my jacket, folded it, and put his hand over it against the scalp. "Keep the pressure on. Hold it there."

"I know how head wounds work."

"Yes, you do."

I called Michael. He answered on the first ring. I gave him the details. "I need a doctor, a safe location, and Mac, in that order. No ambulance. No radio traffic."

"Copy. Stay on him." He didn't ask any questions, but he kept the line open.

Nolan lay with my jacket pressed to his head, and he looked around. There were no signs of concussion.

"Elias, the driver," he said. "I saw him for a second when I turned." He breathed. "It was him, the follower from yesterday. It was the guy with the gym bag." He looked at me. "Same face. The face that looked like nobody."

"Okay." I sat on the ground beside him, making sure I could breathe. "Michael's sending a doctor."

"He was waiting for me," Nolan said. "He was sitting there with the engine running. Sitting on my path. I heard the phone ring, and I figured I'd call you from the turn. I needed two more minutes." He stopped for a moment. "Elias, how did he know the path?"

"Doc's eighteen minutes out," Michael said in my ear. "Mac's up."

"Copy."

Nolan started to get up. It was the two-stage process he used to get up off the floor after his routine or the ice after a hard check. He loaded his weight on the right side first. "Fine," he whispered.

I didn't try to stop him. He got halfway and paused. One hand was flat against the wet grass. He raised his head and looked at me.

"Stay," he said. "Stay until the doc gets here."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Good."

He reached out and held onto my wrist while the fog burnt off around us. Michael said the doc was nearly there, and he asked whether the principal was stable.

I looked at Nolan, and he looked back at me.

"Stable," I said.

Chapter eighteen

Nolan

The doctor looked me over in the wet grass long enough to decide I wouldn't die during an SUV ride, and he did the rest of his examination at a kitchen table in an unfamiliar house.

Elias walked me in with a hand under my left arm. The house was a furnished two-bedroom four blocks from the Colchester. It was the kind of place a traveling consultant rented by the month. The sofa was gray. The art was gray with a few yellow highlights, and a fruit bowl on the kitchen counter held no fruit.

The doctor had unpacked his gear onto the table. He was in his mid-fifties, wearing reading glasses. His canvas kit opened in folds like the one carried by Dee, the locksmith. He didn't introduce himself, and I didn't ask. He pointed at a chair, and I lowered myself onto it.

"That's not something that happened this morning," he said.