It was safe, something a stranger would ask, but the pause elongated without bubbles, and I had to wonder if I’d overstepped Katie’s bounds.
The bubbles flashed briefly after six minutes. I knew the time because I was watching the clock, willing him to forgive me yet again. Then the entire breadth of my phone screen filled with his painting, or rather the photograph he had taken.
Her face was painted in blue, not realistically, but rather the impression, the hard lines implied. Her hair framed her jaw, rounded but broader than most women, just like mine. From the seas of blue he had painted her eyes a dark brown, empty, staring away as if ignoring the spectators, ignoring the world. My eye was drawn to her lips, full and a deep wine red, better than I’d ever hoped to look. Hints of green and yellow flecked her cheekbones, making them prominent and proud. Had he done that on purpose? Was he trying to tell me something? The paint was thick. Wrinkles creased her nose where acrylic overlapped, as if he had been unsatisfied and added layer after layer to try to capture my face. Or maybe it was just how he remembered me, hazy at best.
“Well?” Ryder’s impatient message moved the picture up a quarter inch, breaking the spell that had captured me.
I didn’t have words. He’d sketched me before, and I had loved those pictures because they had been an exact representation of who I had been at the time, but this, this was who he thought I was now, and it disturbed me.
“It’s beautiful,” I wrote. “Is this Lindy?”
“Yes.”
Questions burbled up in my mind. Itchy feelings twisted over my skin. This wasn’t how I wanted him to see me.
“Is there a reason you used blue?”
“It’s cold,” he wrote. “Distant, like her.”
If only he’d been referring to my geographical distance, but I knew he wasn’t.
“Is that how she is?”
“I don’t know, but it’s how I feel now.”
His answers came fast, rapid like gunfire.
“You seem angry,” I wrote after I waited a moment. “Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
I tried again. “Are you mad at her?”
“Yes.”
I typed in, “Why?” and stared at it. Was I allowed to ask that as Katie? I hoped so and pushed the send button.
The bubble popped up immediately. He’d been waiting for me to open the floodgates.
“She’s not here. Other than one letter I haven’t heard from her at all. I can’t find her because everyone I know is hobbling me. I’m lost and confused and she has all my answers, and yet she’s deserted me. So yeah, I’m mad. I’m furious because I don’t understand how she could desert me like this.”
It may have only been writing on my phone screen, but I swore I could hear his words in my mind, taste the contempt and bewilderment in his tone. The worst was, at least from his side of it all, he was right. I had deserted him, and there was nothing Katie could say to make it better.
“Maybe you don’t have all the facts,” I wrote. “You said you’re having a hard time and seeing a lot of doctors, maybe you’re being protected.”
I barely counted to five before his answer showed up. “She’s broken the rules for everyone else. Why not me? Do I really mean that little to her?”
Amos had been right, too much of our lives were built on perspective and his was far too narrow. Katie or not, I couldn’t let him believe he meant so little.
“Maybe she’s dying inside because she can’t get to you. Maybe she needs you just as much as you need her. I bet she’s thinking about you every day, every minute. She can’t sleep. She’s stopped eating. She looks for every excuse to talk to you, and stares at your number in her phone knowing that even though you can’t call her, she could call you, but she doesn’t because she knows more than you do. She understands the danger of losing you forever.”
I set my phone down, meaning to be done, but words flooded my mind, and I picked it up again.
“You have to know that feelings like hers don’t just fade away. She couldn’t forget you if she tried. I can’t handle being away from you, but because of medical advice she listened.” I rolled my head to the left, letting the twisted metal grind against the back of my head before I wrote again, “Just because you don’t know why I’m not there, don’t assume it’s because I don’t care.”
It wasn’t until I’d pressed send that I noticed, “I,” not “she.”
No bubbles.
No words from Ryder.
Maybe he’d set his phone down when I’d started rambling. Maybe he’d logged off and missed what I’d written. I stared at the phone, willing it to go blank, wishing I could undo my mistake. This was against the rules. I’d made a promise. I had to keep him safe, and yet I’d slipped. Maybe he didn’t notice, maybe he assumed it was Katie.
Or maybe he was staring at his phone, gaping like me, holding his breath, just like me.
The bubbles blipped up once, then vanished. Then a one-word question appeared.
“Lindy?”
I threw my phone to the end of the bed as if it were dangerous. My knees drew back, crushing into my chest as I realized my mistake. He knew.
Katie was Lindy.
Lindy was Katie.
From where I clutched my legs, drawn in a tight ball, I saw the screen and read his words as they popped up in rapid succession.
“Lindy, is that you?”
“Lindy, have you been talking to me this whole time?”
“Lindy, where are you?”
“Talk to me.”
“Please, I need answers.”
I didn’t dare move, barely took a shallow breath. What had I done? What had I unleashed for him?
“PLEASE!”
His shouting echoed in my mind. The desperation shivered through me. My phone rang. His name displayed over the screen. “Ryder.” It made no sense, they’d erased my number so he couldn’t call me.
My PI Net profile.
I’d used my real number and licensing information, knowing people didn’t memorize numbers saved in their phones. It rang seven times before it went to my voicemail. It was only then that I realized my second mistake. It was my voicemail. All the confirmation he needed to know his assumption was correct.
The phone lit up again. A text. I didn’t have to touch the phone to read it.
“It IS you. Why aren’t you talking to me? Where are you?”
Tears fell onto my hands. I needed him. He needed me, but I had sworn to stay out of it. I’d promised to leave him until his mind healed. Shane had said nothing was working, but I was the lynch pin, the cornerstone piece that could collapse the entirety of it all. Yes, I was dying to pick up the phone and talk to him, but would my voice shatter him? Would it trigger every memory like an avalanche? Through my blurry vision I watched the texts roll in one after the other. I was proving him right, distant and cold.
Using my foot, I kicked my phone over the edge of my bed. The ringtone started again. I waited through it. The voicemail chimed. Then the texts. Then the call again. The dark night told me I’d never survive the torture of ignoring him. I pulled two sleeping pills from my nightstand and swallowed them.
I couldn’t even pick my phone off the floor to turn off the ringer. My willpower would fade to nothing. I would have to break my promise. I smashed my extra pillow over my head and squeezed my eyes shut, praying for the medication to take over and end my torment.
♦ ♦ ♦
The pills made my mind muddy, like the time Jackie and I dug a hole in the backyard and filled it with water from the hose. At first it was exactly what we wanted, a child-sized built-in pool, but after a full day of sunshine the water evaporated and left us wallowing like pigs. She always had great ideas like that, the mastermind to my willing heart. I held on to the memory of us playing, lost in the dream, lost in that time when I had been just a child and she had been my hero.
My arm jerked hard. I cried out in pain. The room wouldn’t come into focus, che
micals still bogged me down like weights in the water. The jangle of metal on metal sharpened me, but not in time. Pain rippled through my opposite arm. I clawed through the sleep to understand it. A hand slipped over the length of my arm, rough, calloused, not mine.
“Wake up, zorra,” he called to me. A sharp slap to my face brought tears to my eyes. Nightmare merged with reality, and then back to nightmare as his face came into focus. First, the thick chops over his wide jaw. The goatee had been left untrimmed. It dangled close to my face as he leaned over me. His neck bulged with veins and excitement that he finally had me.
I jerked to be free, to slap my heavy fist into his face, but my arms refused to respond. The metallic jangle resonated again. His hands gripped either side of my abdomen, running the length until he found my jeans. Power surged through my legs. I whipped my leg and caught him clean across his face. Pain screamed in my bones on impact, but I reached back to kick again. He caught it, twisting until I shrieked. Rope grated my skin, cutting into me as he fastened my legs to the bed frame.
“Why you rushing, zorra?” He spoke as if this were a treat. “We have all night.”
Thoughts tore through my mind, escape, regret, everything that told me I’d made a horrible mistake somewhere along my path. The windows were locked tight, but he’d obviously made it in. Perhaps one had been left open.
Drawing in my breath, I screamed with all my strength. My vocal chords shredded at the pressure, but I ignored the pain and drew in another breath. In one motion his palm gripped my throat and cut off the oxygen, eliminating the sound.
“You want amigos, zorra? I could’ve brought friends. I thought you wanted to be alone.”
My face burned hot as the air ceased in my lungs. Black dots spotted my vision. His grip jerked once as it tightened. I looked anywhere but his face, anywhere but the eyes that glittered in delight at my demise. I jerked against the restraints that held me, shaking the entire frame. Balcazar’s free hand roamed my stomach once more, peeling back my shirt until my pale skin was revealed.
“Someone has already marked you, little fox, hasn’t he?”
I saw movement over his shoulder. We weren’t alone.
“Look at me!” The hand that held my neck released long enough to slam my head against the wrought iron. I gave in, but only to show him my hatred at the sight of him. The sneer on his face chilled me.
“I want you to watch me.”
A barrage of Spanish filled the room. His hand fell away. Air filled my lungs so fast I barely kept from retching through my coughs. My vision blackened and blurred, righting and then hazing on a continual loop. I smelled something through the night air. The single light of my lamp made my eyes ache, but I strained through it to see Balcazar and another man arguing.
His brother.
I recognized him from the mug shots. Balcazar motioned to me, but his brother waved an arm cross his body to say no. A blur of red followed his arm, small, plastic, but I couldn’t put a name to what I’d seen.
“Now!” was the first word I recognized from the torrent exchange, but Balcazar obeyed. My body pulled hard against the restraints as he took the space beside me on my bed. The smell grew stronger. His fat fingers traced my right jaw, and I wished my face were still numb.
“I have to go, my little fox. This is goodbye.”
Twisting my head, I pulled my face as far from his as I could. It left my neck exposed. I shrieked as I felt his tongue glide the length of it as if I were a Popsicle on a hot day. His laughter flooded the room, drifting and fading into the night. The door slammed, and I smelled smoke.
The crackle of the fire.
The smell.
Gasoline.
They’d tied me up and lit my cottage on fire.
My panic doubled, tripled, exploded as I wrenched against the restraints. My phone reflected the growing fire from where it sat still on the floor. The bed rocked back and forth as I jerked my legs. Smoke thickened. The heat of the flame grew steadily in the room.
“Help!” I shouted. “Help!”
My voice was lost in the growing blaze. Flames roared like lions set to devour me, creeping, crouched, poised for their final attack. My scream shattered the air, but my lungs filled with smoke and racking coughs cut me short. I jerked my leg and the left pulled free. The right slipped out in the next second, but my arms remained bound, locked in leather shackles. Fire climbed up the wall on the opposite side, taking each inch like a ladder. I watched in horrified fascination, knowing if the smoke didn’t kill me, and the fire didn’t burn me, the roof would cave in on top of me and crush me.
“Help!” I cried again. I coughed once more, retching as the smoke became too much. “Please, someone help me!”
I screamed with all the air I had left. The room went black, from lack of consciousness or smoke, I couldn’t be sure.
But no, not that.
Black because someone blocked my view. Hands worked on my restraints, pulling and twisting until my left side was free. I rolled and pulled my right hand free of the buckled restraint. Arms helped me from my bed and looped my arm over broad shoulders.
The living room was nearly completely engulfed. Fire had claimed every wall. I heard the roof crack and took a step back. A cane rose up overhead. I cowered to avoid a beating, but the cane blocked the debris, then struck out and shattered the bedroom window. Through the smoke I barely recognized the face of my neighbor, Jack Stone.
He used the edge of his cane to clear the shards of glass, then shoved me through the opening. My skin cut and tore, shredding and peeling as I wriggled through and fell out to the wet grass below. I coughed and retched again, but forced my feet beneath me to help pull Jack from the window next. Sirens blared in the distance, but Jack and I were on clear ground before the engines arrived.
Chapter 18
The flames had mostly disappeared. Local police had followed not long after the fire department. It was all sticky, all interwoven, and too borderline illegal not to feel as though I was on trial.
Jack’s interview was easy. He’d seen the flames, seen two men fleeing the scene, then upon investigation he’d heard my screams. Before his diagnosis he’d been a decorated fireman, it hadn’t even been a choice for him. Hearing him describe how he found me, clothes torn, screaming and tied to a bed, that cut me deep. Knowing how close I’d come, how closely death had crept this time, that’s what shook me.
My interview was more difficult.
“I’m Officer Fisher. Can you tell me what happened tonight?”
Easy.
“I took two sleeping pills and when I woke up, I’d been tied down. Two men were in my cottage.”
I watched the officer take a few notes. Embers glowed in the night from the remnants of my cottage. A few firemen still kicked around the coals, spraying water where they needed and extinguishing danger where they could.
“Did you know the men?”
Not so easy.
“Personally, no.” I knew that was just the beginning of my issues.
“But you knew them?”
“Next question,” I said.
“What do you mean, next question?”
“I mean, I won’t answer the other question without a lawyer present.” My father would be proud. “Next question.”
“Are you involved in something illegal, Miss Johnson?”
I narrowed my eyes and barely managed a smile. “Define illegal.”
♦ ♦ ♦
By the end of the interview I’d given them enough to be confused, but managed to convince them that I was in danger and their secrecy was essential. A quick call to Uncle Shane helped my credibility. Granted, it also meant that he flipped around and had already started back to my side. The police secured a swab of my neck, hoping for DNA that might not have been damaged by the fire. Pictures were taken, more questions were asked, and some were even answered.
It could have been worse.
That was the thought that circled back every time.
> It could have been worse.
Balcazar’s brother might not have been there to stop his hungry hands. Jack might not have been up in the middle of the night. Too many variables, so many ways that my life could have ended.
“She’ll stay with me,” I heard Jack tell the officer who’d pulled him aside. “I’ll keep an eye on her until her parents come back.”
I should’ve protested, but the idea of being alone terrified me. When the engines pulled away, and the squad cars pulled back, it was just Jack and me headed for the sanctuary of his home.
♦ ♦ ♦
“Well.” Jack poured himself a half a cup of ginger tea. “That was the most excitement this old dog has seen in a while.”
I hadn’t even thanked him yet. In all the commotion, I’d never taken a moment to thank him for saving my life. But as I started up at him, words didn’t feel sufficient. No linguist had ever created something that could span the gratitude of saving another person’s life.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “I would have died in there, and you risked your life to save me.”
“Eh.” He waved it off and sank into his favorite chair in the corner. “Like I said, it was instinct.” Jack looped his cane over the neck of the floor lamp. In the dim light I spotted the bite marks in his skin from the broken glass. There was a twinkle in his eye as he watched me from over his mug. “Not bad for an old MS patient like me, though.”
“Not bad at all.”
The night was beginning to fade into day, far from sunrise, but the gray glow had begun outside his windows. After a night of struggle, it felt too soon.
Jack noticed my stare. “It’s a new day.”
“Almost.”
He said it again, but with more emphasis. “It’s a new day.”
The tone was enough to pull me away from the pending sunrise to look at my companion. It was the same tone my father used when he was about teach me what I’d done wrong.
“Every day is,” I said, still unsure of what he was getting at.
He mused over my words, and then ran his index finger over the scratches and nicks in his cane. “Not every day is the day after cheating death, though.”
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