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Page 382
self," Cosmo acknowledged.
"Precisely. That's why I couldn't tell them what really happened at Chambers Bay."
"What about the woman?" Lucy asked. "You haven't told us about her."
The words had to snake around the lump in my throat. The price to bring an end to centuries of nightmare had come high. In a matter of a few short days I had developed a real fondness for the man called Jake Maddenand in the case of Brenda Cashman, it was something even more than that. It would be a long time before I forgot the woman-girl with the jeans with the hole in the knee. I closed my eyes and hoped against hope that the thought would somehow hurt a little less in the darkness.
"I suppose she suffered the same fate as the rest of them," I whispered.
Lucy drifted over to the side of my bed, shuffling through a fistful of scraps of paper. "I know you don't want to get into all of this now, but there are a lot of loose ends we need to take care of."
I nodded my understanding, but for the moment, as far as I was concerned, the world outside that hospital door could go straight to hell on a unicycle. It was going to be a while before E.G. Wages gave the matters of the living a high priority.
Lucy was more pragmatic. "I called Milt and told him the Z was blown up in an accident. He wanted some details, so I made

 
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