Isaiah clutched her close, pressing her as tightly as he could without hurting her. “I can’t,” he whispered. “Not right now, but…” He tucked his finger beneath her chin and lifted. “Let me finish school. That’s only a year away. Then I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
Hope blazed white hot behind her eyes. “Promise! Promise me, Isaiah! Promise you’ll get us out of here.”
“I promise.” He kissed her lightly on the lips, sealing it in.
***
The bathroom door unlatching slapped him, jarring him back to reality. He blinked and focused on the figure standing in the doorway, watching him.
Blood still spattered the front of her dress like something from a horror flick, but her face and hands were clean. Her hair was damp in some places, but otherwise lay in knots around her thin shoulders. She stared at him like he was a complete stranger that just materialized in her bedroom.
Taken off guard by her remoteness, Isaiah fumbled for reasoning and his gaze landed on the fabric in his hand. “Here.” He held it out to her.
She didn’t so much as blink.
Scooping a hand back through his hair, Isaiah went to her instead, dress held like a shield between them. When he got to her, she still didn’t accept it, but continued to watch him as if waiting for something to happen.
He sighed, his hand dropping down to his side. “Talk to me, Ams. Please. Tell me what happened.”
Her head dropped to the side. Her eyes narrowed and her lips twisted into one of sheer glacial sharpness. “Why?”
He frowned. “What do you mean? You just…” He jerked a hand towards the spot Tomas had laid in a puddle of his own blood. “I saw…what happened?”
“I thought you saw,” she challenged mockingly.
“Stop that!” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just tell me what happened. Please! I deserve that!”
Her laugh was cutting. “You deserve nothing!” she hissed. “You left me here. You left me to them! I owe you nothing.” She snatched the dress from him and flung it back. It struck him in the chest and fluttered to the floor, forming a pale pool at his feet. “Get out of my room.”
The bathroom door was slammed closed between them before he could even wrap his head around what just happened.
“Amalie!” He stalked up to the bathroom door and gave it one hard pound of his fist against the barrier keeping him from her. “Damn it, open the door! Talk to me!”
Silence was his response.
He sighed, resting his forehead against the cool surface. “You’re right. You don’t owe me anything. I abandoned you and you have every right to hate me, but I’m sorry. If I could somehow take back that day I would in a heartbeat because I still love—”
The door flew open, nearly sending him crashing to the ground on his face.
“Don’t!” she snarled. “You don’t ever get to use that word with me. Not ever again.”
“Amalie—”
She jerked back when he reached for her. “I told you to leave.”
“Just listen to me!” he pleaded.
She shook her head. “You have nothing I want to hear.”
He slammed his palm into the door before she could close it in his face again. “Then you talk! Tell me if you’re all right.”
“Why would you care now when you couldn’t be bothered in over a year?” she countered.
“I always cared,” he murmured, the tension oozing into each word. “I never stopped caring. I didn’t know! I would have walked back if I’d known.”
She snorted. “Known what, exactly? Which part of this situation bothers you most? Which part of it would have made the great Isaiah Dennison come back for a…what did you call me again? A delusional nutcase?”
He flinched as his own words smacked him in the face. “I didn’t mean that.”
“Get out, Isaiah.” There were tears in her voice that twisted the knife in his chest.
He started to turn away, only to find his feet rooted to the floor. He peered up into her tightly set face, her clenched jaw, her balled hands and wet eyes. “I never once stopped loving you, Ams. You’ve haunted me every day for twelve months and I know I broke my promise once before, but I swear on my life that I’ll never leave you again.”
When she didn’t respond, he found himself unglued and walking to the door, faltering only slightly to find the doorway blocked by a figure. Derek said nothing when Isaiah shoved past him.
Chapter 18
Isaiah
“Hey, the boss wants to see you!” The guard was anything but gentle when he slammed the toe of his boot into Isaiah’s hip.
In his huddled, half dozing position next to Amalie’s door, Isaiah nearly toppled over under the assault. Pain where the boot had caught him splintered up his side as he threw up an arm to keep himself upright. He twisted his head and glowered up at the scowling face above him.
“What’s your problem?” He got to his feet, hands balled at his sides, ready to smash the other guy’s face in.
“Been calling you for ten minutes!” the guard retorted, resting a hand on the butt of his weapon. “I got other shit I need to do!”
Isaiah bared his teeth. He shouldered his way past the pudgy-faced jerk and stalked his way downstairs.
Garrison’s door was closed, but he could hear the low murmuring on the other side. He raised a hand and knocked lightly.
“Come in!” Garrison barked, uncharacteristically.
Isaiah slipped inside and shut the door behind him. “You wanted to see me, sir?”
Garrison stood behind his desk, leaning over a set of papers. He had both hands planted far part on either side of several documents, folders and leaflets. He wore no coat and the sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled to the elbows. His normally sleeked-back hair was mussed as if torn from its tidiness by restless hands. Three buttons on his dress shirt lay open at the throat, exposing more skin than Isaiah had ever seen. But then again, this untidy, anxious-looking man was something he’d never seen before.
“I need your help,” Garrison said at once, his green eyes wide, a little glassy when they lifted from the papers to fix on Isaiah.
Isaiah crossed to the desk slowly. “Everything all right?”
“Yes!” The single word sounded automatic. He closed his eyes, shook his head. “No!” He opened his eyes and stared into Isaiah again. “It will be with your help!”
Isaiah stopped across from him. “What can I do?”
Garrison slammed his palms into the table and straightened, pleased. “I knew I could count on you, my boy! Never failed me, not once. You’re the only one I can trust. The only one that won’t betray me!” His voice dropped and there was an odd light in his eyes. “There are people out to get me, to ruin me, to take away my life. We can’t let that happen, Isaiah! My research…” He licked his lips. “It will change everything!”
Isaiah said nothing. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t think he’d be heard even if he had.
Garrison was off again, rounding the desk and moving rapidly to the tea cart. “Do you know what this situation with Tomas has done to us?” He didn’t wait for Isaiah to answer. “It has set us back a whole year!” China rattled as his hands shook pouring tea. No steam wafted from the spout and Isaiah guessed the tea had long since gone cold. “His influence in Amalie’s daily routine…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I don’t even know what that’s done. How much of what Amalie was reacting to was my treatments and what was because of him? We’ll never know,” he answered himself, a little high pitched. “It could have all been her reacting to him. I will never know, not fully. This could mean big alterations in my notes. This needs to be researched and I don’t have time.” The teacup rattled in its saucer as he stood there staring off into some far off distance. “Time,” he repeated taking a sip of cold tea.
Isaiah turned to the mountain of papers littering the desk, each one marred by meticulous notes in Garrison’s penmanship. Several were charts and
graphs. There were a few x-ray scans and normal photographs of…Amalie.
His hands trembled as he reached for the closest image and drew it out from amongst a set. She was on a steel slab, naked except for a thin, white sheet. Her eyes were closed and she looked almost peaceful except for the dark trickle of blood oozing from her left nostril. It stood out like a neon sign against the pallor of her skin.
Isaiah dropped it and reached for another. Same steel slab, but she was awake. Her head was thrown back, her mouth twisted in a horrific and frozen scream. Her entire body was arched off the table. But he couldn’t tell what was happening to her. There was no sign of what was hurting her.
His entire body was shaking now, clammy with cold sweat. His stomach roiled. He pitched the picture across the table. It sailed like a leaf in the wind, drifting over the papers and disappearing over the lip of the desk. He rifled for the other images, shoving aside the papers covering them, tearing some, wrinkling others. He was breathing hard by the time his hands closed over them.
The images were grotesque, worse than any horror movie he’d ever seen. Each moment of Amalie’s torture was frozen forever in his hand, scenes of her bleeding, screaming, crying. Images of her cut open, drowning, burning! Dear God! Just when he didn’t think it could get any worse, there was another one and another, each one tearing a strip off his soul. Droplets of water dropped on the glossy finish of several and it took him a moment to realize he was crying, that the pain in his chest was a giant hole where his heart had once been. Bile choked him, suffocating the sob that threatened to escape.
The snapshots fluttered from his hand and scattered at his feet. They lay like broken blossoms beneath the grit of his boots as he lunged for the papers.
An explanation. There had to be an explanation. Garrison wouldn’t do these things without a reason. He wouldn’t! Not to Amalie! Not to sweet, kind, delicate Amalie. He wasn’t a monster. Garrison was the man who saved him from a fate worse than death. He gave Isaiah everything. He was kind and good. He was a doctor! He helped people. He didn’t torture them! He didn’t hurt them. It was a mistake.
“Promise you’ll come back, Isaiah!” Amalie’s smiling face that last day flashed through his mind. “Promise you won’t forget me here.”
“I promise!” He’d laughed at her concern. “I’d never forget you, Ams! We’re going to get married!”
Her smile had been brighter than the sun. “And get far, far away from here!”
“As far as you want.”
His hand closed over a set of notes. Not much of it made sense. He wasn’t a doctor. But words like electroshock, Atropa belladonna, Papaver somniferum, purgatives and bloodletting he recognized from his medical training at the academy and his blood crystalized into sheets of ice.
“What are these?” He whipped around, hands crushing the pages as he waved them at the pensive man across the room.
Garrison came out of his thoughts with a little start. He blinked green eyes and turned to face Isaiah. He studied the documents being thrust towards him. Recognizing them, he shook his head, waving them away with a flick of his wrist.
“Garbage,” he remarked coolie. “Complete rubbish. We have to start over.”
He nearly staggered beneath the invisible fist that pummeled him in the chest. “What?”
Teacup still in hand, Garrison stalked back to the desk and set his drink down on the papers. He bunched a few and stacked them, all the while shaking his head.
“Pity,” he said after a moment, “because we were making such progress, or so I thought. Clearly none of this can be taken seriously.”
Anger flowed through him fast, hot and unhampered. “What. Are. These?” He punctuated each word through his teeth, slamming the papers down on the desk.
Garrison blinked, both in surprise and confusion to the venom oozing from Isaiah’s voice. “I already told you. These tests are inconclus—”
“Test?” The growl splintered through the air like the dangerous cracks across a sheet of ice. Garrison ceased speaking. He straightened, dropping the papers in his hand back on the desk. “What the hell kind of tests were you doing on her? What the hell is this?” He snatched up the snapshot of Amalie, unconscious, nose bleeding and pitched it at the other man. “You were supposed to be helping her! That’s what you said!”
“I was helping her!” Garrison retorted sharply. “At least, my treatments were supposed to be helping her. If Tomas hadn’t—”
Isaiah dropped into a chair, stuffing all ten fingers through his hair and fisting. “Oh Jesus!”
“Language!”
Isaiah ignored him. “What the hell did I do?”
“What are you talking about?” Garrison demanded, stalking around the desk to stand before him.
Isaiah leapt to his feet. “I left her because you told me to! I left her thinking she was in good hands! You tortured her! Then you let that bastard…” He broke off, feeling the fine point of fury piercing the last shred of his control. White-hot rage veiled his vision and he had to storm away before he broke his hand in the other man’s face. “I trusted you to keep her safe.”
“You can’t fault me for what Tomas did!” Garrison followed him across the room. “Had I known, I would have dealt with him sooner.”
Isaiah stopped and turned to face him. “Dealt with him how?”
Garrison stilled. A steel wall slammed shut over his features. “You needn’t concern yourself with that. I assure you, he will never harm another soul again.”
Isaiah waited for the concern to rise, for the anger. Instead, he was unnaturally satisfied and the anger that did spark was only because he hadn’t done the job himself.
Garrison caught the glint in his eyes and his features became very cattish, very smug. “You and I aren’t that different, Isaiah. We’re not different at all. I see a lot of myself in you. We both have a bone-deep need to protect those we love in whatever manner is at our disposal, just like we both want what’s best for Amalie. You know I would never cause her harm.”
Not a lie. Garrison meant it. He truly believed he was doing the right thing, that he was helping Amalie, that he was making her better. The fact disgusted Isaiah more than if he’d been lied to. There was once a time he would have been elated to be considered like Garrison. The man had always been his idol, his hero, but at that moment, his skin crawled at the very idea of being anything like him.
Keep your head! A hidden voice at the back of his mind hissed. Now isn’t the time to lose control.
As much as Isaiah wanted to sneer at the sensible suggestion, he recognized it for what it was — necessary.
“You’re right,” he backpedaled smoothly. “The important thing here is Amalie.”
Garrison visibly relaxed. His mouth bowed into a pleased smile. “I’m so relieved to hear that. For a moment there…” he trailed off, releasing a soft chuckle. He patted Isaiah on the shoulder lightly. Isaiah fought not to flinch away. “I understand you’re as upset about these turn of events as I am, but we must remain steadfast! We can’t let them win.”
Isaiah frowned. “Let who win?”
Garrison walked back to the desk. He knelt and gathered the horrific snapshots off the floor. He studied them, his face showing no signs of disgust or regret, only a quiet deliberation.
“The enemy, Isaiah,” he said at last, dropping the photos down on the papers. “They lurk in the shadows, like snakes waiting to strike when our guard is down. We can’t let that happen.”
Isaiah edged a few steps closer, careful to keep a wide distance between him and the man across the room. “Who’s the enemy?”
For several long moments, Garrison said nothing as he neatly stacked the papers and tucked them into a folder. He nimbly walked around to the edge of the desk and dropped everything into the waste basket.
“There are too many to count.” He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “Each one wants us to fail. This new betrayal will set us back, but I think if we plan this out correctly,
we might get on track much quicker.”
A frown pulled on Isaiah’s face, drawing his brows together into a knot. “What do you mean?”
Garrison turned to him, his face carefully blank except for the spark of anticipation in his eyes. “We need to start fresh, from the beginning.”
Chapter 19
Isaiah
The door, a single slab of white wood, carved meticulously with webs of ivy and garnished with a brass knob, was nothing special. In the end, it was still a flimsy piece of wood. He could kick it down with a single blow. Yet it possessed some inexplicable magic that restrained him from doing so. It was the only thing separating him from the other half of himself, which was ironic because that door had been there for years and it had never stopped him before. It had never kept him from going inside. It was surreal. It was frustrating.
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