by Sophia Reed
I looked up blinking at that one and she grinned. "Just answer the question."
"Yes," I said. "And repeatedly."
"Good," she said. "You passed that one. I'd want to slug him too." She was tall and rangy and about mid-forties, with green eyes and a friendly manner.
Why did I have to get committed to find a doctor I liked?
"What happens now?" I asked.
She let out a breath like there wasn't much she could do to soften this one and said, "You get a two week vacation so sit back, relax, enjoy some movies, and look out for Mavis G."
I narrowed my eyes. "Who?"
She smiled, holding the stethoscope on both ends, the length of it wrapped around the back of her neck. "She's harmless. Mostly. But she thinks she's Mary Poppins. The old movie. The good one. With Julie Andrews. Only Mavis doesn't sing like that."
I went on squinting at her. "Are you kidding?"
"Unfortunately, no."
"Wonderful," I said, and we left it at that.
Mavis G. didn't sing like Mary Poppins. Or any other human.
I started looking for a way out.
I discovered that my craving for fet increased as my anxiety did. I was extremely anxious being locked up with Mary Poppins.
I found out I could refuse Mark the right to visit if I thought he was contraindicated for my recovery.
That. That felt good.
Two weeks observation. My father had sworn out a complaint that Cole and his people – what people? – were a cult. I was being detoxified. Or de-culted. Or something.
Yay.
And so I waited for someone to get careless. No one did. But one afternoon Zach came in.
"Annie! It's been forever. Are you dropping off or – "
I think he was going to say picking up, but instead he flashed scarlet, which clashed with his auburn hair. "God, I'm an idiot. I'm sorry."
I took those statements together. "You don't need to be sorry about being an idiot."
He nodded, wry smile. "Ha, ha. I thought you were a – "
"Shhh," I said, because I really didn't want to be outed to a bunch of people who were crazy and maybe here as involuntarily as I was. "I am. I work undercover a lot." I didn't quite come out and say I was currently undercover, but if that's what he picked up from the conversation, that was all right.
Seriously he shouldn't have believed that I was undercover in a psych ward. Meaningless pleasantries then, neither of us mentioning my being here, before he went on to tell me about being an EMT. He probably thought I was – what, a junkie dreaming of being in a position of authority? It didn't matter. What mattered was as April slid into May and I was still inside, Zach's visits were important. He was just gullible enough to believe me, to think I was working undercover in a mental hospital and to find that glamorous. He acted like he knew he was the deputation from planet sane.
I added him to the information I had about the place my father had stuck me in. We weren't in Seattle, but we were somewhere close. My guess was Mark and my father thought Portland was far enough away. It was hard to say because there'd been the apartment and then there'd been a period of darkness after the ambulance came and somebody stuck something in my neck.
I was getting sick of that.
But Portland? And even yet another bunch of males only pretending to take me somewhere and not. Either was good, if true. Because I didn't want to break out of the place and find myself in New Guinea or something.
I had every intention of breaking out.
I had every intention of getting Zach to help me. He both felt guilty about possibly insulting me (he hadn't – of everyone in our school, I probably did belong on the page of Girl Most Likely of Find Herself Locked Up for Seriously Disturbed Thoughts. Though maybe they'd have considered that not accepting enough of my unique brain chemistry.)
If only they knew.
I began exploring where I was, with an eye toward getting out and not being there anymore.
33
Cole
"When did this come out?"
Standing in the communications room again, I waved a sheaf of reports at the assembled techs. There were only four of them now, which meant they all looked like they wanted to hide behind each other.
"That's mine," a mousy heavy set girl said finally. "Did I – "
"You traced where Annie had been." I said it flatly. I wanted to understand what she'd found and do it fast.
"Yes, I – " She looked at me. "Yes."
"So this report is an eyes-on report from -- ?"
She named the date. Annie had been in Paris then. In the house where Kie was. Because Kie was featured prominently in the report. And I wanted to be certain.
You saw the body. You saw the scars on the face.
Yes, I had. But the further we were from Paris, the more I questioned what I had seen. A dead Asian woman with Kie's long dark hair and Kie's scarring, fresh cuts on her cheeks.
Slight and small like Kie.
The top part of her head blown off, a mangled mess like a close encounter with a big handgun would make.
"What did you do this trace for?" I still clutched the sheaf of papers. They were wrinkling under my fingers. I was sweating. I rarely got this nervous.
There was no reason to. Annie was with her family. They'd keep her safe. Probably she was in some form of "real" rehab.
But –
"Because the two of them were seen together, running. This woman and the girl you were tracing." The tech was almost cool now.
"And you stopped to concentrate on Annie?"
She looked like she was hedging her bets.
"Just tell me the truth," I said.
She nodded. "I was tracking the Asian because I thought she was probably still in Paris and it was possible Annie had been taken back there to the same place."
I shut my eyes. It was possible, except that everyone there of consequence was dead and everyone else had run.
But you don't get to be the billionaire owner of a pharmaceutical company by ignoring what people have to say even when you know better than what they're saying.
Or you hope you do.
"Tell me what you found."
She looked startled, like she'd expected me to draw my own conclusions. "She's not there," she said, and at my look, flailed names into place. "Annie. Miss Knox. She's not in Paris or anywhere near the property there."
I frowned. "The property is either boarded-up or on the market, isn't it?"
It was the tech's turn to look surprised. "Not at all. The Asian woman is there. There's no sign of Annie, but the other woman is there."
Kie was alive.
I'd seen what they wanted me to see. I'd made the untenable assumption that even Kie and Vincent wouldn't go so far as to leave a body to be found so that it was believed Kie was dead.
I should have known better.
Had it been for Annie's sake? She was supposed to see her nemesis was dead and become tractable for Vincent? Or was it –
I shook myself. Whatever it was, I had been wrong. They were that sick. Annie was out of their hands, but she wasn't in mine. And Kie –
Now – "Is she still in Paris/"
The girl shook her head. "That's what I'm trying to tell you. She was on the move even as we got the surveillance on her. She was planning to leave the community she was in. It was obvious from the feelers she put out. She was searching for something." She studied her own handful of papers, then stared into the tablet she'd brought with her as backup for the desktop she was using.
I rubbed my eyes and asked the question I didn't get to ask. "Do you have any idea, was she planning a trip? Was she booking a flight anywhere specific?"
The tech looked briefly taken aback. Then she caught herself and said, "The Asian woman isn't at the Paris address where you found her."
My breathing seemed to suspend. "Where is she?"
She consulted the tablet this time. "She's headed to the U.S. most likely, though she's makin
g stops at places that are major tourist draws." She looked confused at that.
I wasn't. The way Kie was arranging things, she could have a series of boyfriends to help her pave the way since she wouldn't have automatic use of all of Vincent's accounts. She was traveling cheap and light.
I thought the heaviest thing she would carry would be the gun.
I thought she was coming here.
I thought I had to find Annie.
34
Annie
Routine is the killer of brain cells.
Nope. That wasn't good enough.
Routine is the death of creativity.
Argh. The attending psychiatrist or whoever he was had the empathy of a sledgehammer and the subtlety of a sociopath. Or maybe those were backwards.
Maybe they weren't.
The hospital operated around the theory that routine was good for dangerous cases. Probably not far from true. It was easy to get lulled into something so stupefying. Bells and humans and printed instructions wafted me through each day. Where in the past I'd certainly adhered to schedules, even when undercover there are unmistakable rhythms to life that need to be followed, here there was no chance to be late, to oversleep, to hurry and get something done early.
We existed in routine.
Zach was the only part of the routine that kept me from going nuts. He had split days off which irritated him – he'd gotten together with a girl we'd both known in high school and wanted to spend time with her but they had different days off – but meant I only had to go one day at a time without news of the outer world.
I was slowly bringing him around to the idea that I might need his help to get out of the ward and out of the hospital when the time came and Zach, surely a frustrated law enforcement type or possibly a frustrated superhero – I wasn't sure of his grasp of reality – was coming around so quickly to my side I was afraid he'd try smuggling me out before I was ready.
I was waiting because I didn't have a phone and I didn't have a number for Cole. I didn't have a credit card or cash, and only by dint of screaming and yelling and acting like I really needed to be committed for my own good was I able to keep my jeans and t-shirt, even after they were laundered and returned to me.
Because escaping in the colorless, shapeless sweats emblazoned with the hospital name and no ID or money, I wouldn't make it long on the street without being picked up and returned.
Two damn weeks of antidepressants that turned my stomach to mush, and one-on-one counseling with the sledgehammer did the same to my brain. Then there was group therapy, but since I refused to say what had happened to me, I was in a sort of general group, which despite the ineffectual yammerings of the "leader," revolved around the complaints of the inmates.
Until the morning the call came through.
Mark and my father called daily. At first there was a lag time between being told I had a call and being given the call. They came to visit, too, but not as often, which was good, because sitting and refusing to talk to them or trying to get them to answer my one question – "How dare you?" – got old.
But the phone calls. Initially it was the notification that I had one. Then I was taken to where there was a phone. Then the call went through after a delay. And that, I assumed, was some kind of verification process. Because the lag time kept getting smaller each day until there was none.
The hospital staff was used to Mark and my father calling.
And then that morning, two weeks and one day in, April already colliding with tax day, and I had a call coming in.
35
Cole
Morning two weeks after they took Annie. Half an hour after learning Kie wasn't dead.
"Sir! I've got the staff at the Phoenix property online." That was a tech who looked cliché – covered in crumbs of snack food, needing a haircut and a shower. He was good. He was fast.
"Mr. St. Martin! I've found a trace. Phone calls between the fiancé's phone and a Portland mental hospital."
I swore, listening to the others reporting in.
Kie was on the move, headed our way.
The Arizona house was up and running. We'd take choppers there, set up housekeeping, put together an operation to retrieve Annie.
New guards were on their way but held up getting weapons.
That I didn't like.
I liked even less that Kie was already in the west.
"Get me Annie at the hospital. Use her fiancé's name." By now whatever protocol the hospital had in place, they'd be used to calls from Mark.
"Sir? There's – "
And the tech just stopped talking. The screens mounted on walls of the communications room showed the outside perimeters.
There was no point in sending extra guns and men. Or another way of looking at it – they needed to hurry.
Kie had arrived and her men had just taken out four of eight of mine. She arrived with a crew there wasn't time to count and they came in and opened fire.
Now they stood outside the compound doors, demanding entry.
There were reasons to hold out. I could get to the roof and to the helicopter, but she could get her men to the roof from the outside.
I could bring in my new team, they were already on their way, and techs were already sending out messages about what they were walking in to, but it would take them time to gather their weapons.
Or I could let her in. Because Annie wasn't here and Annie was who she wanted. Letting her in, that put her on my turf, even if at the start, I wasn't in control. When she didn't have Annie, I didn't think she'd kill me straight off.
And when she came in, I'd be in body armor and armed as well. Standoff. Waiting for the compound's reinforcements.
Waiting on Annie, which I had been anyway.
And finding a way to take down Kie. This time I'd be certain she was dead. Because this time I'd do it myself.
"Open communications with exterior," I said, then "No, don't. Not yet."
It was time to call Annie.
36
Annie
"Which one is it this time?" I asked Bunny as I followed her to the Room of Phones. It was kind of legendary. So was Bunny. She was everybody's favorite nurse and she'd even grown on me.
"Oh, it's that fiancé of yours. He's just so cute and concerned," she said.
Of course he is, I thought. Can't wait to go home with him and appreciate all his concern up close and in person. If Sledgehammer knew what I was thinking, I'd never get out of here.
Not that I'd ever hurt Mark.
Of course not.
I might slip while talking to him, though. Wave my arms wildly to make a point. Accidentally collide with his gut a few dozen times.
Patients could refuse a call. Of course. Staff could refuse for them if the calls seemed to wind them up too much. I'd only refused one call from Mark and it caused him to come visit the same day. Now I took them. Besides, they broke up the monotony and kept me on my toes, making sure I dropped no tidbits of information in front of either Mark or my father.
My father I understood. I was still his daughter. He was still a cop. He liked control and he hated anything that threatened his daughter in any way. Probably he didn't think I was a virgin and apt to remain that way until my wedding night. But he wouldn't want to think of me being traded among sexual predators.
That was just being human. The fact that he was a superior human? Yeah.
So this call was my wonderful fiancé, was it? It was tempting to refuse.
But then, refusing to answer Mark's questions was actually a highlight of the day, and I'd be out of here in the next day or two. With Zach, I was putting together a sort of network of ambulances that for favors from me once they got me back to southern Nevada, would ferry me one after the other to Vegas.
Stupid plan, but I wouldn't be traceable until I was only miles short of the compound.
Plus I couldn't think of anything else. Amazing how powerless I felt just because I didn't have money. Or a phone. Or a gun. Or
a badge.
Or shoes.
"Mark?"
"Alternate Mark," Cole's voice said clearly.
My blood raced from my head to my feet and halfway up again, settling between my legs and in my boobs in a throbbing beat I hadn't anticipated.
I breathed out. "What do you want today?" I assumed if nothing else, my conversation was monitored in the room I was in. Whether or not the phones themselves were monitored, I didn't know.
"An old friend is looking to reconnect. I was wondering if you remember where you left your keys."
All that blood that had been throbbing hopefully went cold. I definitely wasn't breathing anymore.
"Oh, no." Show no emotion. Don't let the listening techs think I was getting upset. But I was. "Are you sure?"
"Sure as a bullet," Cole said.
Fuck. "You're sure right now?"
"Dead certain."
Oh, shit. I glanced at the big black plastic-framed clock, the kind that I looked at in school and saw Zach was due in minutes.
"What can I do? Let me think." But past getting out?
Only something happened. There was a scuffle and then I was talking to Kie.
I hadn't ever wanted to hear her voice again.
"For fuck's sake," she was saying as she grabbed the phone. "It's simple. Sweet baby Cole's requisitioned a chopper. It will be ready to leave the airport in 30. You need to be on it. Because you don't want to leave loverboy here alone, do you?"
"Don't do anything, Kie." There was as much warning in my voice as I could muster without causing staff to come in, calling for a doctor, looking worried.