by Frankie Rose
AT FIRST I think the thumping is loud bass music coming from a car out on the street, but the rhythm is off. It’s more of a hammering sound. I roll onto my side and try to block it out but it’s no use; it just keeps coming. After another ten seconds I realize someone is actually shouting my name. My eyes snap open and I sit bolt upright in bed.
Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! I scramble out of bed so I can rush to get the front door, nearly face-planting when my ankle snags in the bed sheets. The living room is freezing and pitch black.
“Avery! Avery, open up. It’s Luke.”
I falter, my hand on the doorknob. What the hell’s going on? He said he’d call when his shift ended, not try and knock my door down at 3.45 in the morning. I yank the door open in the huge, threadbare t-shirt I use to sleep in, immediately noticing the woman from 6b standing in the hallway leaning against the wall, her hair at angles. Luke looks grim when his eyes meet mine. He’s in full uniform and his partner, the same stocky, short guy with the Brooklyn accent I saw him with at the Irish party, stands beside him. Why would he bring his partner here to talk to me? I frown and try to chase away the remnants of sleep from my head. Luke clears his throat.
“Sorry to wake you, Ave. We need to talk to you.”
“Couldn’t this have waited until the morning?” I hiss, wrapping my arms around my body. “You said you were going to call. And you didn’t tell me whether or not you have the—”
“This isn’t a social call.” The tone in Luke’s voice is clear: this has nothing to do with your dad. His deep brown eyes are wide, unblinking like he’s focusing really hard. I take a second to actually look at him properly, to take in the way he holds himself and the way he’s staring at me. This is exactly how he looked when he turned up on our doorstep five years ago. A sudden stab of panic rises up in my throat, making me choke.
“Oh God, what is it?” My hand flies to my mouth. “Is it Uncle Brandon? Is it Mom?”
Luke shakes his head and gestures past me. “Is it okay if we come in for a second?”
“Just tell me!” The wall of calm I’ve trying to keep in place comes crashing down. “Tell me right now!”
He places his hand gently on my shoulder and pushes me into the apartment, walking in after me. His partner follows, pulling the door closed behind him.
“Luke, what’s going on? Please, just tell me. If it’s Brandon, you can tell me. Whatever it is, I’m fine, I can take it. Please, Luke—”
“Stop, okay. Take a breath, Beautiful.” He guides me through the apartment, peering through doorways until he comes to my bedroom. He sits me down on my bed, then positions himself by the window. “It’s not your mom or Brandon. It’s that girl, the one I saw you with coming out of that frat party—Morgan.”
“Morgan?” Every part of me goes still. I’m dizzy from lack of oxygen before I take another breath. “Is she dead?” I whisper.
“No, she was taken to hospital. Looks like she’s overdosed on something. She was asking for you before she passed out. The doctors have her in an induced coma while they try and clear the drugs out of her system. She’s pretty sick, Ave.”
A strangled sob fills the room—a weird, alien sound that couldn’t possibly have come from inside me. I cover my mouth with my hands and suddenly I can’t see. My room, Luke, everything—it’s all consumed by the tears flooding my eyes.
“I have to go to her. Can you take me to the hospital? I need to go right now. Her parents, they live in Charlestown. They need to be told. It’s going to be hours before they can get here. She needs someone with her, Luke. She needs…” I’m incoherent before I know it, trying to form words but only managing more sobs. Luke picks me up from the bed and pulls me into his arms, and then I’m crying into his police jacket while he strokes his hand over the back of my head, whispering things into my hair. I’m too numb to hear what he’s saying; I just cling onto him until I feel like I can handle standing on my own.
“What kind of drugs do they think it is?” I mumble, while trying to formulate what I’ll need to take with me to the hospital.
“It’s looking like ecstasy at the moment but it’s too early to tell. Do you know who she might have gotten pills from?”
“No, no way! I don’t know anyone like that. Morgan would never take anything willingly. She must have been spiked.”
I’m pulling a sweatshirt over my head when he asks, “When was the last time you heard from her?”
“Uh...I guess about six, six thirty or so. She was…she was already drunk. She wanted me to meet with her at Tate’s place to party. Is that where they found her?”
Luke’s radio starts to chatter but he ignores it, and for some bizarre reason I find myself marveling at how damn tall he seems in his uniform. “No. The ambulance picked her up from an address in Williamsburg. She was with a bunch of guys from King’s College.”
“But that’s in Manhattan.”
“I know. They were at a party and no one seemed to know who had thrown it. None of them had ever met Morgan before tonight.”
That makes even less sense. I feel sick. Morgan was slipped drugs at a party where she knew no one? What the hell was she doing out there in Williamsburg with a bunch of complete strangers? And where the hell had Tate and Noah been? Luke averts his eyes when I pull a pair of jeans up my naked legs. I tug my boots on angrily and get my coat.
“I’m going to kill whoever did this to her.”
“Let’s just make sure she’s okay first, yeah?”
Luke and his partner, Officer Tamlinski, drive me down to Woodhull hospital in north Brooklyn, where Morgan was taken by the ambulance. I do my best to keep myself in one piece; Morgan will be pissed at me if I collapse into a useless wreck and I can’t handle Luke seeing me like that, anyway. It’s bad enough that he feels sorry for me because of everything else. I won’t add this to the list.
The city traffic is much lighter at four in the morning but it still isn’t great. Being in a cop car definitely helps move things along, especially when Tamlinski hits the lights and sirens to get us through the most congested areas, but the cab drivers are still jerks and there are plenty of people on the streets. I hunker down in the back of the cruiser, pulling my coat up around my ears, and I wrack my brain, trying to figure out how Morgan has landed herself in an induced coma. Fuck, I’m going to wring that girl’s neck when she wakes up.
“Okay back there?” Tamlinski asks as we pull into the hospital parking lot.
“Yeah, I’m freakin stellar, thanks. My best friend’s possibly dying and half of Columbia just saw me get carted off in the back of a police cruiser.”
Luke doesn’t say anything, just continues staring out of the windshield with a clenched jaw. Tamlinski sucks his teeth and mutters something under his breath. As soon as he parks up, I unclip my seatbelt and am trying to open the door when I realize there’s no handle. Luke gets out and opens the door for me, offering me a tense smile.
“We prefer it if the people we arrest don’t tuck and roll.”
“Uhuh.” I climb out and start to head inside, but he catches me by my elbow.
“This didn’t go down in our precinct so I’m not technically supposed to stay with you, but I will. I’ll show you where Morgan is and—”
“No! Luke, it’s fine. Don’t get yourself into trouble on my account.”
His jaw sets as he slams the cruiser’s door closed behind me. “I’m not leaving you alone, Avery.”
“Luke! I don’t…I don’t need you to stay, okay!”
“I’m not leaving you alone.”
I glance up at the hospital, light pouring out of every window, staff loitering around the side so they can smoke out of sight of the lung cancer patients, and I feel myself wilt a little. The thought of sitting in a waiting room on my own for who knows how long isn’t appealing at all. But what choice do I have? “Okay, fine, I’ll call someone.”
“Someone?”
“Yeah, someone. Morgan’s boyfriend, Tate, or ma
ybe I’ll call my boyfriend.”
Luke’s eyes frost over. He voice is positively arctic when he asks,“That guy from the bar?”
“Yeah, the guy from the bar.” And then, “No!” I hide my face in my hands, trying to get a grip. This is ridiculous. Now I’m lying to him? “Not the guy from the bar. I’m not really seeing him, but—”
“It’s okay, Beautiful. Just focus on Morgan right now, okay?” Luke’s eyes have defrosted, although he still looks seriously pissed when I lower my hands. “Are you going to be all right?”
I bite the inside of my cheek, feeling tears prick my eyes. “I think I got it.”
“All right, well call me if you need me.”
Luke remains behind in the dark, his eyes burning holes into my back as I stomp across the parking lot. I don’t look back when I reach the entrance; I just pause to wait for the automatic doors to open, and then rush inside. The nurses’ station is deserted when I get there, which is typical. I wait ten minutes before someone shows up, and when the stout nurse does arrive, she’s hostile to say the least. I ask her where I can find Morgan Kepler and she stabs her finger at the floor.
“Follow the blue line to the ICU. There’ll be another nurses’ station there. You’re not going to be able to see your friend until she’s stable, though. I’d have stayed home and gotten some sleep if I were you.”
I almost snap that if she were me and had stayed home, she would have been a royally shitty friend, but I manage a tight smile and set off following the thick blue band on the floor. I trace it to an elevator, where it disappears. Does that mean I’m supposed to get on the elevator? Thankfully there’s a blue sticker next to the button for the fifth floor, and when the doors roll back the line picks up again. I pull my coat around myself, trying to avoid the hollow gazes of the people sitting in chairs along the hallway, until I locate the nurses’ station. An older nurse with smudged mascara and a weary expression tells me that the angry nurse downstairs was right—there’s no chance I can see Morgan until she’s out of the woods. She directs me to take a seat with the other folks in the hallway and promises she’ll come find me if there is any news.
I collapse on a plastic fold-down chair and stare at my sneakers, immediately in need of someone else to be here with me. The fear coming off the others, all sitting in silence, is palpable. They’re in the same boat as me, waiting to find out if someone they love is about to die. Car crash. Assault. House fire. There are a hundred and one different ways a person can end up in a place like this. I don’t want to think about any of them.
I need Leslie. Maybe Tate and Noah, depending on what they have to say for themselves. My hand goes to my pocket, searching for my cell, and I almost choke when I realize I left in such a panic that I forgot to bring it. My purse and all my cash, too. I’m stranded way across New York City with no money and no cell phone, and no hope of having either one any time soon. There isn’t much I can do about it so I sit back and stare at the wall, trying not to contemplate what will happen if Morgan dies. I don’t want the first time I meet her parents to be when they find out she’s dead. Sleep takes me after a while, but it’s an awkward, restless sleep thanks to the uncomfortable chair. The nurse comes and finds me at six am to tell me nothing has changed, and the next time I wake up I find Luke sitting next to me. He’s in his regular clothes: a dark hoodie pulled up over his head, ratty jeans and beaten up DCs. He doesn’t notice I’m awake for a minute and I watch him tapping away on his cell phone, gently frowning. He looks tired, but he still came. Gratitude washes through me. I was hideous to him and he still showed up.
My voice cracks when I speak, broken from sleep. “Hey.”
He starts and almost drops his phone, giving me a half smile. “Hey yourself.”
“Sorry about earlier.” I drag my hands back through my hair—God, what must I look like?—and sit forward, stretching out stiff joints. Luke stoops down and collects a takeaway coffee cup, which he then hands to me.
“It’s okay. You were polite compared to some of the crap I get at work, trust me. Drink this, it should still be warm.”
I take a swig and smile a little when I taste how sweet it is; Luke has sat and watched me empty sachet after sachet of sugar into my drinks during our many coffee catch ups back in Break. It’s nice that he remembered. “Thanks, Luke. Thanks for being here.”
He nods, scratches at the back of his neck. His eyes have that soulful look to them that always makes me think he needs protecting from the world. I have no idea why, when he’s the one protecting everyone else for living, but that’s what I’ve always thought.
“Just finished?” I whisper.
“No, it’s nearly ten.”
“What?” I can’t believe I managed to pass out for so long. “Has the nurse been by again?”
Luke nods, leaning back in his chair so his shoulder touches mine. “Yeah. No change. They’re going to try waking her up soon, though.”
I draw in a shaky breath and clench my fists. “Do you see this happen to many people?”
“A few,” he sighs, taking a sip of his own coffee.
“And what usually happens? Do they…do most of them make it?”
Luke dips his head into his hood, staring at his hands. “Some of them do.”
Some of them. I blow out a strangled breath and bury my face into my hands. “This can’t be happening. This seriously can’t be happening.” Luke doesn’t lie and tell me everything is going to be okay, because there’s a real chance it isn’t going to be okay. Lies aren’t going to change that. He places his hand on my back, and the physical contact loans me enough strength to pull myself together. When I uncover my face, he leaves his hand there and I don’t say anything because I need him right then. “So are you going to tell me about those symbols?” I murmur, chewing on my thumbnail.
“They were left on the bodies of the murder victims,” he says in a hushed voice. “There were only three symbols for a long time, but toward the end the fourth one appeared. That information was never released to the public. I wanted to see if they were familiar to you. Killers are usually looking for recognition when they start out murdering. If your dad…” I suck in a breath. Luke pauses, but only for a second. “If your dad was responsible, he probably would have had these drawn out somewhere.”
“Why? Why would he…wouldn’t the killer have hidden it so he wouldn’t get caught?”
Luke twists the drawstring from his hood through his fingers, tapping his foot against the scuffed linoleum floor. “No, not really. Serial killers usually want to get caught. Typically they’re proud of their handiwork. They want to claim responsibility in the end.”
“Proud?” I can’t breathe. My dad would never have been proud of intentionally hurting anyone, let alone murdering them.
“I know, it’s sick. But these people usually are. Sick, I mean.”
That’s a given. A caustic remark is on the tip of my tongue, but when I turn to look at Luke, the nurse from before is walking down the corridor. A pair of glasses perch on the end of her nose now, and the rings under her eyes are even more pronounced. The statue-like people around us realize she is approaching at the same time, and everyone turns to face her. It’s like watching a speeded up version of flowers opening to the sun, as fifteen or so hopeful faces gravitate towards her. She walks past them, crushing them each in turn as she makes her way over to me and Luke.
“Morgan’s awake,” she says bluntly, her shoes squeaking as she pulls up in front of us. Those are the most amazing two words I’ve ever heard in my life. A tidal wave of relief crashes over me and I slump forward, drawing in a ragged breath. Luke’s hand finds mine. “You still won’t be able to see her for another couple of hours until we’ve got her stats leveled out a bit, but she’s going to be fine. No sign of brain trauma, no internal damage. She’s one lucky girl. We’re going to need to discuss rehab for Miss Kepler once she’s feeling up to it, but—”
“Rehab?” The nurse is stoic when I meet
her gaze. She’s obviously had to tell people this before. “Morgan doesn’t need rehab. She was spiked.”
“It’s standard procedure for us to ask some questions when OD patients come in, kid. And from her responses and the notes we have on file for her, Morgan requires medical attention.”
“What? No way! I’m her friend. I’d know if she were doing drugs.”
The nurse plants her hands on her hips and gives Luke the kind of look that suggests she’d like a little help. “I can’t discuss the content of Miss Kepler’s interview with you, but I will say this: drug users hide their addictions well. They get good at concealing things, and they get good at lying. You should talk to your friend, Miss Patterson.” She stalks away and vanishes through a set of double doors at the far end of the corridor, and I watch her back the whole way until she’s gone.
“Morgan doesn’t need rehab,” I say, clenching my fists.
Luke doesn’t look at me. He swigs his coffee and sighs. I’m on the verge of repeating myself when the elevator doors ding open and a man and a woman with panicked expressions burst into the corridor. I know in an instant they’re Morgan’s parents; the woman’s auburn hair is a dead giveaway. Luke starts to stand but I hold my hand out. I definitely don’t want to be the one to tell them about their daughter, but they deserve to hear the news from someone who knows her. I can at least do that.
Twelve
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