HAWK’S SURGEON, Dr. Dave Hammond, was a compact man with rusty hair and the tight manner of a perfectionist who’d spent the night stitching his patient’s guts back together. Conklin and I had spent the same eight hours in a small, dull waiting room at St. Francis Hospital, waiting for Hammond’s report.

  When the doctor entered the waiting room at 6:15 a.m., I shot to my feet, asked, “Is he awake?”

  Hammond said, “Right now, the patient’s condition defines touch-and-go. He was bleeding like a son of a bitch when he came in. One slug punctured his lung and nicked his aorta. The other damn near pulverized his liver.”

  Conklin said, “So, Doctor, when can we talk to him?”

  “Inspector, you understand what I just said? We had to inflate the kid’s lungs, transfuse him, and remove a chunk of his liver. This is what we like to call major surgery.”

  Conklin smiled winningly. “Okay. I hear you. Is he awake?”

  “He just opened his eyes.” Hammond sighed with disgust. “I’ll give you one minute to get in and get out.”

  One minute was all we’d need, enough time to wring two words from that bastard - his first name and his last. I pushed open the door marked RECOVERY and approached Hawk’s bed. It was a shocking sight.

  Hawk’s body was lashed down in four-point restraints so that he couldn’t flail and undo the work his surgeons had just done. Even his head was restrained. IV bags dripped fluids into his body, a chest tube drained ooze out of his lungs, a catheter carried waste into a canister under the bed, and he was breathing oxygen through a cannula clipped to his nose.

  Hawk looked bad, but he was alive.

  Now I had to get him to talk.

  I touched his hand and said, “Hi there. My name is Lindsay.”

  Hawk’s eyes flickered open.

  “Where . . . am I?” he asked me.

  I told him ............