by Steven James
“Bowers!” he screamed. His voice was thick with hatred. He barely sounded human anymore. “You’re mine!”
He’ll be back in a minute.
You have to save Tessa now.
89
I clenched the ridge of the windshield, my feet hanging over the edge of the hood. My shoulder was exploding in pain, but I somehow managed to pull myself up. As I did, the wound in my shoulder ripped open, and the pain cruised up my neck and blistered apart inside my head. I felt warm blood oozing from the wound, drenching the back of my shirt. I tried to ignore the blast of pain but almost blacked out.
The ambulance was slipping, everything was slipping. I needed something to tie into, quick, before we went down. I felt along the icy rock face beside me. It was cluttered with fissures and cracks. I needed something to jam into one. Anything that would hold my weight.
And I only had one thing with me. My flashlight.
I pulled it out and pounded at it with one of the carabiners, smashing its precision-machined high-strength aluminum alloy case into a slim crack.
Using one of the prussiks, I flipped a lark’s head knot around it. Clipped in and then smacked my hand against the windshield. I had to wake her up. “Tessa!” I smacked it again. Nothing. “Please! Wake up!”
I eased closer, saw her chest rise and fall. Rise and fall. She was still alive, thank God. The ambulance tilted beneath me. Below us I could hear Sevren enraged into madness calling out my name, making his way up the rope with the catch and click of the ascenders. Catch and click. Ascending the rope. Catch and click. Getting closer by the second.
Tessa! You have to wake up!
I reached through the open window and grabbed her shoulder. Shook her. “Tessa!”
Her eyes fluttered open then closed.
“Wake up!”
I whipped off my belt and as gently as possible, tucked it around her arm above the cut artery and then cinched it tight. A crude tourniquet. She might lose the arm, but at least the tourniquet should keep her alive.
Then I whispered a prayer to the God I wasn’t even sure was listening. I begged the heavens to hear me, a guy who had no right to expect any divine favors. Please. Please, she doesn’t deserve to die. You took Christie, don’t take her. Please let her live. I don’t care about me, just let her live.
I shook her. I loved her. “Tessa!”
Snow fell past us, all around us. She blinked and looked up, confused. Behind her I saw the back doors of the ambulance burst open.
Sevren.
The cluttered contents of the ambulance spilled out all around him. He put his good leg on the bumper.
Tessa’s lips formed words that were faint, barely audible: “Help me.”
I hooked my hand under her right armpit. As I did, I noticed the rope had flipped over the body of the ambulance and was now jammed in the crack between the open back doors. Sevren was on the bumper, bouncing it with his leg. The ambulance began to rock. “Stop,” I yelled to him. “The rope. It’s caught!”
Tessa looked down at her bleeding arm. “My arm,” she whispered. Her voice was soft, fragile, that of a child. She’s a little girl, and I’m her daddy.
Sevren jumped on the bumper again, and the ambulance tilted one final time. I clutched Tessa’s good arm. I’ll never let go . . . I’ll never let go . . .
We were moving, moving. I slid down to the end of the prussik. My anchor held. My trusty flashlight.
I tightened my grip, and Tessa snaked up through the open window as the ambulance spit her out and slid away from us and into the gorge. As it did, it met Sevren Adkins’s body, jerking him into the slit between the doors. Pinning him. Crushing him. His piercing cries told me how tightly his body was wedged in place. The entire weight of the vehicle was crunching down on him.
Tessa and I swung into the cliff. “Patrick!” She was dangling over nothingness, and I was holding her.
“I’ve got you, Tessa,” I yelled. “I’m not letting go. I promise!” But the ambulance was still moving.
How? The rope tied to the guardrail should have held it in place.
Oh. The guardrail.
“Against the cliff!” I yelled. I hoisted Tessa up into my arms and embraced her as the twisted chunk of metal that used to be a guardrail rushed past us on its way to the bottom of the gorge. A long narrow scream cut through the valley. Sevren’s cry seemed to stain the day, a dark scar blacker than midnight arcing up toward us from his descent into hell. It lasted longer than I thought it would and then ended with a sickening crunch as the ambulance sandwiched his body against the boulders at the base of the cliff.
I hugged Tessa close. “It’s OK now. He’s gone. You’re safe.” And in that moment, I was neither angry nor afraid. Somehow, somewhere, I found a fragment of hope that I could hold onto, buried deep beneath the months of rage. A new anchor.
Chaos is evidence of human beings.
Hope is evidence of God.
High above me I heard the unmistakable gruff voice of Ralph. “Pat!”
They’d found us. The mic patch!
“Tessa’s hurt,” I yelled. “Hurry!”
I heard the clink of carabiners as someone pulled out the rest of my climbing gear and got ready to throw down another rope.
I was starting to get dizzy again.
“Hold on,” I said. She clung to me, and I took my last prussik, tied it into a quick field harness around her waist, and clipped her into the anchor.
“Patrick?” she whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Where did you learn all this rock climbing stuff?”
“Something called experience.”
“Oh yeah,” she said with a faint smile. “I’ve heard of that.”
“Now,” I murmured, “I need to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye? Why?”
“I think I’m about to pass out.”
“Really?”
And before I could answer, I did.
90
22 hours later
I heard voices all around me speaking in hushed tones, respectful tones, and for a moment I wondered if I was dead.
“Looks like he’s coming out of it,” said a voice from somewhere nearby. A husky voice. “’Bout time.”
When I opened my eyes and saw Ralph’s massive form next to me, I mumbled, “If I’m dead and this is heaven, what are you doing here?” I mumbled.
“Who ever said we’re in heaven?”
I blinked my eyes and then squinched them shut, overwhelmed by the sharp white glare of the room. I grimaced. “We better not be in a hospital. I hate hospitals.”
“At least this time, no one’s dying,” said Tessa.
I turned. She sat beside the window, her face outlined by daylight. She might have been an angel sitting there—a beautiful black-haired angel wearing a T-shirt with a cobra slithering through the eye socket of a human skull.
It was a beautiful sight, slightly twisted and macabre, but adorable nonetheless.
“I knew you’d wake up.” It was Ralph again. “I told the docs not to worry.” Then he added proudly, “While you were asleep I made it past the crypt.”
“Beheaded the ogre, huh?”
“Yup. Fast and clean.”
“I showed him how,” added Tessa.
“Well, that’s nice,” I said in a fatherly sort of way. I noticed that Tessa’s arm was thickly bandaged in the place the Illusionist had cut her. She didn’t seem to be in too much pain, maybe the cut wasn’t as deep as I thought. I’d ask her about it in a minute.
I rubbed my head. “So, how long have I been out?”
“A whole day,” said Ralph. “I guess you really needed your beauty sleep.”
“Wow, I guess I did.”
“They gave you some pretty nasty stuff, Pat.” I looked toward the voice. Lien-hua was the third and last visitor in the room. She was seated in the corner in one of the prerequisite ugly chairs.
“Phencyclidine, aka PCP,” piped in Tessa. “It’s a disa
ssociative hallucinogenic analgesic, kinda like its cousin—the ever popular but not as potent club drug Ketamine. A dose as low as 20 milligrams can kill you, and doses as high as 150–200 milligrams are considered not compatible with life.”
“Let me guess, the Internet?”
“Do you even have to ask?”
“So how much was in the capsule Kincaid tried to stuff down my throat?”
Lien-hua answered, “250 millgrams. If that capsule had dissolved any more in your mouth you wouldn’t be here talking to us.”
“Which reminds me,” said Ralph soberly.
“Yeah.” She lowered her eyes.
“What is it?” I asked.
Ralph’s voice stiffened. “Pat, I don’t think you heard about Tucker . . . He didn’t make it.”
The news took the air out of my lungs, the moment out of my heart.
“He died trying to protect Tessa.”
We were all quiet for a few minutes. It seemed like forever but still not long enough.
“How’s his wife?” I asked.
“Taking it pretty hard. They didn’t have any kids. He was all she had.”
I hated hearing all this. Brent Tucker had been a decent man. A good man. Annoying at times, overly enthusiastic, but dedicated. I couldn’t have found Sevren without his ideas. I didn’t know what to say.
“We’re going to see her this afternoon,” said Lien-hua. I don’t know how long we sat in silence before a nurse came in to check my heart rate, and life eased forward again.
“Did you find Sevren’s body?” I asked Ralph at last.
“Not yet.”
“What?” I gasped. “He was in the ambulance when it fell!”
“Those things are built like tanks,” said Ralph. “If he slipped inside it, it’s possible—”
“No,” I said. “He couldn’t have survived.”
“We’ll find him.”
The nurse finished up and disappeared again.
“Any word on the governor then?” I asked.
I saw Tessa smirking. “The tape,” she said.
“What?”
“From the mic patch.”
Ralph grinned. “Yup, it’s made quite a splash on the Internet.” Tessa tapped her chest. “I posted it for him.”
“In one day Sebastian Taylor went from being a presidential hopeful to the top of the FBI’s most wanted list. I think that’s a record. You should see the cable news coverage.”
“No thanks.”
“His wife returned from Barbados last night only to find out her husband used to be a CIA assassin. She’s been thrown right into the middle of the international media spotlight.”
“I’ll bet she’s right at home.” Then I had a sobering thought. “Sebastian will be tough to find. He’ll know how to drop off the grid.”
“Yeah,” said Ralph, “but he likes the media too. I have a feeling we’ll be hearing from Sebastian Taylor again.”
“Enough about all that,” said Lien-hua. “Are you OK, Pat? Seriously? You were in pretty bad shape.”
“I’m all right, but I could use some coffee.”
She reached behind her and then handed me a cup of the good stuff: shade-grown Yrigacheffe from Ethiopia’s Sidamo region. I could almost smell the bananas growing above the beans.
Now I was in heaven.
“Cream and honey, no sugar,” she added. “It’s a little cold, though. I didn’t know when you’d be waking up.”
I tried to sit up, cringed, fell back.
“You sure you’re OK?”
“You want me to be honest?”
“Always.”
“Come here, then.”
She leaned closer. The scent of vanilla.
“Yes?” she said.
I spoke quietly, so no one else would hear. “I’m sorry about that stakeout.”
A pause. “Let’s not be sorry, let’s just be careful.”
“OK.”
“I was really worried about you, Pat. I was afraid we might lose you. And, well . . .” She was searching for the right words to say. Never found them. “One more thing. When I was talking about motives and I mentioned fear, you could see it, couldn’t you?”
“See what?”
“The history. In my face.”
I lowered my voice. “Something happened to you, didn’t it?”
She was quiet.
“When you’re ready,” I said, “if you want to tell me, I’ll listen. You can trust me, Lien-hua.”
“I know I can.”
“What are you two whispering about?” asked Tessa.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Yeah, right,” she said in her wonderfully sarcastic teenage way. Lien-hua returned to her chair. “Hey, come here, Tessa,” I said. I patted the bed next to me and, somewhat reluctantly, she joined me. “There’s something your mother wanted me to tell you, but I never did. I’m sorry, I just didn’t know if I believed it before.”
“What is it?”
“‘Our choices decide who we are,’” I said, “‘but our loves define who we’ll become.’ She wanted you to know that.” I paused for a second and then said, “I’m sure she would have told you herself if only . . .”
“She did.”
“What?”
“She did tell me. And she said you would too, someday. When you finally understood what it meant.”
Tessa waited for you, Pat. She’s been waiting for you this whole time.
I took a deep breath. “Thanks for sticking with me until I got the chance to say it.”
“Like I had a choice,” she grumbled. But she let the wisp of a smile flicker across her face as she did.
Over the next couple minutes Agent Jiang told me that Alice and her children were doing fine and that Alice was even getting some reward money for helping us corner the killer. “She’ll be able to cut back on her hours at work to spend more time with her kids. She seemed thrilled by the deal.”
“What about the people at the hotel who were exposed to the contagion? What about all of us?”
Ralph answered as he punched at the keys on the PSP, which he’d started playing when I was talking to Tessa. “With Marcie’s help the CDC was able to vaccinate us. Lots of people are sick, but no fatalities so far.” Then he looked up from his game. “Without her help, though, we’d all be goners.”
“And, oh yeah,” said Lien-hua, “Jason Stilton won’t be seeing the outside of a jail for a long time. He was found with an envelope full of cash and a short list of excuses. He’s facing corruption charges as well as conspiracy to commit murder.”
“He’s the one who delivered the necklace to Kincaid, isn’t he?” I asked.
She nodded. “Of course, Stilton is saying he didn’t know anyone was going to get hurt, just that Trembley had offered him a way to make some easy money by delivering something of Tessa’s to a guy at the hotel, a guy Trembley had worked with before.”
She paused to collect her thoughts. “Oh, I almost forgot, Margaret called a couple hours ago to tell us she’ll be returning to teach at Quantico. It seems the director was very impressed with how quickly the team that she’d assembled was able to solve this case.”
“Wonderful.” I shook my head. “So, what’s next for you and Ralph?”
“I’m looking over a case from San Diego. A series of arsons. They want me to work on the profile.”
“And I gotta testify at a hearing,” Ralph said with a heavy sigh. “Seems an old friend of ours from Illinois was able to swing a retrial.” I gasped. “Not Richard Basque?”
“One and the same.”
“But how? That doesn’t make sense!”
“DNA. He’s been fighting for years to have it reevaluated. Finally got his wish. Samples didn’t match. Looks like it might clear him.”
Great. If there was one man I wouldn’t want to see walking the streets again, it was Richard Basque. He was one of only two people I’d ever met who made me genuinely, deeply, insanely afraid. Thankfully, the oth
er one was dead. Ralph shot him in a hostage situation back in 2004. The Illusionist came in a close third.
“By the way, Pat,” said Ralph, “where’s my phone?”
“Oh,” mumbled Tessa, “so it was yours.”
“What do you mean was?”
“The killer . . . well . . . he dropped it.”
I saw Ralph getting ready to cuss. “Not in front of Tessa, you don’t,” I said. He caught himself, sighed, and shook his head. Then he mentioned something to Lien-hua about the arsonist case and a string of grave robberies somewhere in the Midwest, but I didn’t really hear him. I was too busy watching my daughter look out the window. She was still dressed in black, but I saw she had painted one of her fingernails pink. She saw me staring. “It’s a start,” she said, glancing at her fingertip. “I’m getting used to it, but don’t get your hopes up.”
I decided to ask her about her arm. “So, how are you feeling? Is your arm OK? Where he cut you?”
“It will be.” Her voice faded to a whisper. “It’s gonna leave a scar, though.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not so bad. Back when I was a wilderness guide, we used to have a saying: ‘Scars are tattoos with better stories.’”
She smirked. “I like that.” She held her right arm out to me. “Here, help me. Pull up my sleeve.”
I gently nudged her sleeve up to her elbow and saw the series of straight scars on her forearm.
Cutting. So she is into cutting.
“Do they have good stories?” I asked softly.
She thought for a moment. “No. And for most of them, it’s the same story, over and over again.”
I struggled for the right words to say. “Well, maybe we can write a better one,” I said at last.
She nodded. “OK.”
Then I remembered the words of Zelda Fitzgerald: “I don’t need anything except hope,” she wrote, “which I can’t find by looking backwards or forwards, so I suppose the thing is to close my eyes.” No.