Noah left the room but returned a minute later with Nurse Terry. She carried a small plastic cup filled with ice chips.
“No gulps of water just yet,” she said. “Ice chips will have to do for now.”
She helped him scoop a few chips into his mouth, then put the cup on the cart next to the bed.
“Have you remembered who Grace is?” she asked. She turned to Nick and said, “When my patient opened his eyes, he started calling for Grace. He must have said her name at least ten times, but when I asked him who she was, he didn’t know.”
“Her name is Grace Isabel MacKenna,” Nick clarified.
“Isabel?” the nurse said, smiling. “I know her.” She turned back to Walsh. “She’s been very concerned about you. She came to see you, and she calls often to check on your progress. She’s going to be so pleased to hear you’re awake.”
“MacKenna.” Walsh’s voice was suddenly infused with a burst of energy. “I remember. Donal asked me to talk to her. He was concerned for her safety.” He took a deep breath, then winced in pain, squeezing his eyes shut. He opened them again and squinted up at the ceiling as though searching it for answers. When at last he returned his attention to Nick, he said, “Donal couldn’t get hold of her, but she had told him she was flying to Boston and staying with the Buchanans on Nathan’s Bay. He knew I was in Boston, so he contacted me. When I tried to reach her at the Buchanans’, I was told she was going to the Hamilton Hotel.”
“And you went there?” Samuel asked, urging him to continue.
Walsh nodded. “Yes, I did go to the hotel,” he said, pleased he remembered. “I pulled my badge out and hooked it to my belt. I wanted the staff to talk to me. I asked at the front desk to call her room, but she didn’t answer. According to the valet, Grace went for a walk along the Freedom Trail. He told me he gave her directions and watched her walk to the corner, but then she turned the wrong way. He said she was wearing jeans and a navy blue windbreaker, and if I hurried I might be able to catch her.”
“You were pretty far away from the hotel when you were shot,” Noah remarked.
“I must have walked a long time. I finally saw her. She was a couple of blocks ahead, and I tried to catch up. Then I lost sight of her and I figured she must have taken another route back to the hotel because I had made a wide circle and couldn’t find her, and then suddenly I spotted her. I was hurrying to her when a man came out of nowhere right in front of me. He was staring at Grace and heading for her. When I saw he had a gun, I ran at him. I knocked him down and we struggled.” Walsh stopped talking and looked bewildered, then said. “I don’t remember anything after that.”
“Do you want to take a minute and rest?” Samuel asked.
“No, I want to keep going.”
“Okay, then. Let’s move to something else and maybe what happened will come back to you,” Nick said, his tone brisk, anxious now to find out as much as he could before Walsh faded. “We know that Donal Gladstone is Isabel’s solicitor in Scotland.”
“Dunross,” he answered. “He only just moved there a month ago from Edinburgh. Donal and I have gone fishing a couple of times, and he fell in love with the area. Fishing’s always good, but it’s bitching cold,” he said with a smile.
Noah laughed. “Bitching cold? That doesn’t sound like fun to me.”
“It’s actually exhilarating. It’s a beautiful nook just north of Inverness. Donal wants to retire there.” He looked at Samuel and said. “I doubt he knows I’ve been shot.”
“We’ll tell him,” Samuel assured.
Wanting him to concentrate on what had happened, Nick pressed on. “Do you remember a flash drive?”
“A what?”
“A flash drive,” Nick repeated. “We think you had it in your hand and that you put it in Isabel’s pocket.”
“You had a gun in your other hand,” Samuel said.
“The weapon wasn’t mine,” Walsh said. Frowning as though unsure of what he had just declared, he asked, “Was it?”
“No, it wasn’t,” Noah said.
“You were shot twice while you wrestled with him to get his gun away. It’s possible that, somewhere in that struggle, you got the flash drive from him,” Samuel said.
“And then you got up and staggered around the corner while you were losing copious amounts of blood,” Noah added. “We know that’s a fact because you left a blood trail.”
Walsh grimaced.
“You really don’t remember getting shot twice?” Samuel couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around the idea of someone losing all memory of such a traumatic event.
“It’s coming back, but it’s hazy... except Grace Isabel MacKenna. I see her as clear as ever. I don’t know why.”
“Maybe because she saved your ass,” Noah said.