He shook his head. “Not so sure of that.”
“Are you trying to insult me?”
“No, Miss. It is Miss, right?”
She nodded. “Yes. Curiosity overcame her. “Where are you from?”
“Denver. My father made a killin’ in gold and silver. He owns a mine near Central City.”
She’d meant where had he been in the war. Before she could ask again, Nurse Summit returned. Summit’s kindly face creased with concern. “My dear, are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“Hmm.” Nurse Summit’s attention turned to the soldier. “You haven’t checked in with the administration offices yet?”
“How do you know?” The Captain asked.
“I know everything around here.”
“She does,” Annabelle said.
Nurse Summit took the soldier’s arm and turned him toward the administration offices. “This way. Did you bring any papers?”
“In my pocket.” He stopped, pulling against Nurse Summit’s grip. “Before I check in, there is something more important I need to take care of, and it has to be done right away.”
Nurse Summit didn’t look amused. “What?”
“I have to find the woman responsible for my sister’s death.”
“Your sister’s death?” Nurse Summit’s face turned cautious and curious. “I don’t understand.”
The Captain’s gaze had turned hard and unforgiving. “I’ve searched long and hard to find Annabelle Dorrenti. I know she’s here. I’m Captain Cade Hale, and my sister died in France a few months back.”
Annabelle’s heart slammed into her throat. No. Velia’s brother. The brother Velia Hale had loved and bragged upon and cursed the very same day she’d died. Oh, God. Emotions crushed in upon Annabelle, chief among them guilt. Staggering, gut-stabbing guilt.
Nurse Summit glanced Annabelle’s way, shock registering in the older woman’s face. The Captain’s gaze snagged on Annabelle, and understanding bloomed in his eyes.
“You,” he said as anger exploded in his eyes. “You’re Annabelle Dorrenti.”
Chapter 2
Annabelle took two steps back. Three. Her heart galloped like a racehorse as fear found a new, as yet untouched place inside her and took root. She put up one hand in defense as he stalked toward her, rage in his eyes. To her disgust, fear kept her silent. She hadn’t been ready for this; she had never imagined in a million years this man would find her.
Nurse Summit raced toward Hale as she pulled a whistle from her pocket and blew, but the harsh, high-pitched noise did nothing to stop Hale’s motion toward Annabelle. She bumped against the wall behind her. Hale came to within two feet of her, his eyes burning with contempt, his mouth a line of condemnation. His hands curled into fists at his side. “You have no idea how long I’ve looked for you. How far I’ve traveled.”
She put up her hand again. “Captain Hale, I—I am so sorry for what happened to Velia. If I could—”
“Don’t.” His eyes flashed with anger. “Don’t imagine you can ever apologize enough. Ever do anything to make up for what you did.”
Tears rushed into Annabelle’s eyes even as she struggled with naked emotion to gain control. “I understand.”
“You could never understand the grief you caused my family.”
If he’d yelled, she could have rationalized that he was mentally ill. Instead, his voice held the cold ire of a judge and jury that had already convicted and sentenced. She met his dark eyes and saw the gut-twisting emotion roiling inside him—the agony and grief of a man whose beloved sister had been killed. Because of her.
Before she could speak, two nurses and two ward men rushed down the ward and came up behind Captain Hale. They grabbed his arms.
“God damn it!” He turned on them, but the ward men, hired just for this purpose, were huge bruisers with tremendous strength. “Let me go!”
Nurse Summit talked to him as they dragged him away. “Now, Captain Hale, we’re just going to see the doctor and he’ll make an assessment of your condition.”
“I’m not finished with her yet!”
“Be reasonable, Captain.” Nurse Summit talked in a soothing voice as Hale was led away. “You can air your grievances to the doctor.”
Captain Hale twisted in their hold, and she had a feeling if he’d tried a little harder, he could have escaped and killed her on the spot. Wild emotions assaulted her from all sides. He’d seemed so normal, so caring for those few moments when he’d tried to talk sense into Pepper. And now ... now he was the one being treated like a madman.
Maybe he was. Hale twisted again and almost broke free. One of the bruisers drew back and clonked Hale in the jaw with a sickening crack. Hale’s angry eyes glazed and he fell limp to the floor.
Annabelle gasped and started toward the injured man on pure instinct—something inside her she didn’t understand. After all, he would hurt her if he had a chance, wouldn’t he? The bruisers hauled Hale away, the soldier’s head lolling, his booted feet dragging.
The two nurses came up to Annabelle.
“Are you all right?” One nurse asked. “What was that about?”
Annabelle put her hand up again in defense, not wanting to explain. “I’m fine. I just ... I’ll go back to work.”
Sucking in a deep breath to regain her composure, she limped back down the hallway into the first ward.
* * *
Cade heard noises in the darkness. Furtive sounds. Squeaking. It was the machinations of rodents bent on feeding off the dead. The ground wasn’t hard or mushy with dirt, and his blanket was dry. He wasn’t lying on the God awful hard duckboard. He shivered with cold that went bone deep. Where was he?
For a moment he didn’t know. The panic threatened to slice him into bits, as hard and unforgiving as shrapnel from a German shell. His mind went there. It swallowed him whole, and drew him into the heart of hell.
The trench was deep—the engineers had seen to that. Wire above was thick, and the pitfalls were many. Captain Cade Hale had seen to that, too. Roads would be straight to make it easier for the Army to get where they needed to go. Nothing would stop him from doing his duty. Didn’t matter what the German’s did—the United States Army wouldn’t fail. So they repeated to themselves over and over until they believed it. At least they’d believed it at first. Until the shells came and then the snipers, and the ugly truth rained down on them all in the night—a night illuminated by war so bright and furious it turned into day.
Rattling at the single window. Cade returned to the present with a jerk and realized where he was—not in a muddy, stinking trench, but in a damned asylum for the loony. Both nights he’d been here, the nightmares had come from all sides. He couldn’t tell anymore if the ghosts he felt and saw were real, but he knew he couldn’t tell anyone he saw ghosts. Damned doctors would throw the key away if they ever got wind of that.
Jesus. Disgust soured his stomach as he looked around his room. He was lucky the doctor who’d talked to him on his first day here had believed he wasn’t insane. At least not in the conventional way. Yeah, he was damned fortunate the doctor hadn’t ordered him chained to the bed after the way he’d gone after Annabelle Dorrenti. When he’d realized the pretty woman was his sister’s killer—
No, not a killer. But someone who’d survived when his sister hadn’t. He didn’t regret helping her escape Pepper’s deadly grip. He didn’t condone men harming women in any way. Yet in that single moment when he’d understood who she was, he’d wanted to berate her. Scream at her. Make her feel the pain he’d experienced.
When he’d awakened, slumped on a couch in the doctor’s office, the anger was gone. Temporarily.
He had trouble with that these days. Understanding his feelings hadn’t mattered on the battlefield. Surviving war had mattered. Keeping his men safe had mattered. He swallowed hard and jammed his fury back where it belonged.
The doctor had said that he wouldn’t be allowed to harm Annabelle,
and if he went near the woman, he would be chained in this room like an animal. He’d stayed away from her all right. He’d seen her in the distance, and each time he’d wanted to talk to her again, to ask how she could walk around alive when his sister moldered in the cold, dark ground.
Christ, he’d acted like a madman that day, charging at her like a bull and growling into her face like a dog. Coming to an insane asylum had twisted him into a thousand thoughts, and had made him want his drug of choice. He could have drunk himself to death as so many men did. No he needed something neater. Something no one could blame him for taking. Especially not a soldier who’d lived through hell.
Yeah. You won’t get that here. You’ll have to dry out. Learn to live without it.
Then again, if he acted like a loony they would give him something. Maybe just not what he craved.
He’d gotten a room on the second ward with a window facing the back of the property, and plenty of sunshine during October. Snow hadn’t come to Simple, Colorado yet. He’d heard plenty about the asylum in the game room with some of the mangy soldiers shooting off their mouths. At one point, close to seven hundred patients had populated these walls. After the war had started, most of the loonies had been moved to a larger facility near Pueblo so the asylum would be free to take in soldiers. Back when the place first opened in 1888, women, men, and even children had lived here. The three stories were divided up depending on how insane you were. Bottom floors for the less insane, like him. The higher you went, the nuttier you got apparently.
He hadn’t liked this damned place the moment he’d walked inside. No, there was something wrong here. Ugly. It left a nasty taste in his mouth right off. It was more than ghosts. More insidious.
“You’re a damned fool for coming here, Hale,” he said into the darkness. Staying in Denver might have made more sense. No. Then he’d have to speak with his father, and see the bastard on a regular basis. He wasn’t ready for that.
More furtive noises, and Cade knew then he couldn’t be awake after all. Nightmares always started this way for him, with the scraping sounds—the chirp and scratch and bite of rodents. Bombardment started, the whistle of shells overhead.
He sat up in bed, his heart thudding loudly in his ears as his body broke out in a sweat. Fear marched upward into his throat. What was he afraid of? Get a hold on yourself soldier. His admonition didn’t work. His breathing came too fast. Confusion battled with a strong desire to return to normalcy. Escape wasn’t an option. He couldn’t escape from the pounding, the bright flashes, the relentless sound—
He threw off the blanket and stood. His men needed him. No time for weakness. His booted feet sank into mud. He kept sinking. Time to drown and flail against the rising tide of noise and the earth shaking. The mud went over his boots. He moved, taking one labored step at a time. Another flash as a shell exploded nearby, and that’s when he saw the four walls surrounding him.
Just a dream Hale. Just a dream. Wake up. Wake up. He staggered to the door, turned on the light switch. Illumination brought him to earth, to full wakefulness with a crash. He looked down at his feet. He wasn’t wearing boots, but was naked to the waist and wearing pajama bottoms. No mud. No rats nibbling at his feet.
Thunder rumbled outside. A thunderstorm crossed over the mountains as one brilliant flash and then another illuminated the area. Odd. Winter had already come to the mountains. Relief mixed with disappointment. He wasn’t in France. He looked at his hands; they trembled, and his breath came hard.
A male scream came from somewhere down the hallway. He turned to the door, one hand on the knob and the other one on the wood. He stopped as the scream rose in pitch, a cry of torment and fear he’d heard before. Cade closed his eyes as trembling broke over his body in a wave. He wanted relief. He needed the drug that had kept him going for so long. But there wasn’t any here in this lonely room. He’d have to wait out the craving, and waves of shaking and sweating.
And there he stood until the screaming stopped.
* * *
“Damn funny ward, don’t you think?” Private Robert “Ziggy” Fields asked Hale the next morning as they sat in the games room on Ward Two watching men play cards, billiards, and read.
“What’s funny about it?” Cade asked.
Ziggy, as he preferred to be called, scrubbed one hand over his short, wheat-blond hair. “The men ain’t so loony here. I mean, everyone on this ward has problems with their thinkin’. Or they got the shakes, you know.”
“Shell shock.”
“Yeah, that’s what they’re calling it now, I hear. Doctor Prever told me that when he explained what is wrong with me. The shakes. The tremors. The bad thoughts.”
Bad thoughts. Cade understood that like he understood the back of his hand. “You don’t shake.”
“Did when I first came here last month. Doctor Prever helped fix that. Pretty fast fix from what I see of the men around here. Damn, there was this guy in here last month that shook so bad I’m surprised his bones didn’t break.”
“What happened to him?”
Ziggy didn’t take a pause, his expression steady. “Somehow he got out on the road outside the asylum. Team of horses ran him down. Before anyone could get to him, he’d gone west.”
“That seems to happen a lot around here.”
“People getting run over by horses?”
“People out of hand. How did he escape?”
Ziggy shrugged. “Don’t know. Never did hear. Not the truth anyway. Rumors always running rampant around here. Don’t know what to believe.”
“Sounds like the Army.”
Ziggy laughed. “Damn fool guy should have stayed in the war if he was just coming home to get killed.”
Even Cade had to laugh at that. He glanced around at the room. About twenty men occupied the second floor ward. Sometimes a few men on the ward did shake, their whole bodies moving so much, and jerking so violently, they couldn’t walk properly.
“You’ve been here longer than me,” Cade said. “Any cases of the flu around here?”
Ziggy grunted. “No. We’ve been lucky. Maybe it’s because Simple is so damned small and boring. Nobody wants to come to this town up in the mountains. Keeps the cooties away, you know. I figure any of us that escaped the damn war ... maybe we are better off dead.”
Cade frowned at his fellow soldier. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I hear dying from the flu that’s killing people right and left is almost as bad as getting your fool head shot off.”
Cade couldn’t argue with that. “That’s what I hear, too.”
“And it’s strange as hell, sir. Babies and kids and young adults die more often. Why the hell aren’t more old people dying?”
“Ain’t true anymore,” One of the older soldiers—a guy at least fifty—held up a paper. “Damn flu is making a resurge and killing older people, too.”
Ziggy wiped his forehead. “Jesus save us.”
Cade saw the fear in Ziggy’s eyes and made a decision to curtail the subject for the moment. “What does this doctor do to help the soldiers stop shaking? Dr. Prever, I mean.”
“Well, he doesn’t do the same for every man. Seems to make the other doctors mad. They want a method. He said it depends on the soldier. The doc said all I needed was rest and relaxation. It’s been damned cushiony I’ll tell you. I get three square meals a day, plenty of fresh water and coffee to drink. And I get these hot baths where I soak for a half hour. Not to wash off either, but just to soak.” Ziggy held up his right hand, which shook slightly. “This is a hell of a lot better than it was, Captain. I’m so relaxed I’m like butter.”
“Call me Cade. Or Hale. I’m not Captain in here.”
Ziggy’s eyebrows rose high. “That wouldn’t be right, sir. I mean you’re certainly more than most of the pipsqueaks around here. There isn’t one officer on this ward other than you. And rank deserves it. If you don’t mind asking, how did you get to be a Captain so young?”
“Attri
tion. Powers that be slapped the rank on me out of necessity because so many officers were killed. And I suppose they thought I deserved it. I’d kept a lot of men from getting killed, they said. Damned fools.”
Ziggy looked surprised. Even Cade didn’t know where his animosity toward the upper ranks came from. He respected many of the officers above him, but there had been as many that he hadn’t.
“Sorry sir. I mean, that you had to go through that. Dumb question here, but did you see a lot of men die?”
It was a strange question, but one he could answer honestly. “So many I lost count.”
Ziggy sighed, his expression vacant as he spoke. “At least you can’t count them. I can’t stop counting them.”
The man’s statement sank in. Deep. Cade swallowed hard and switched subjects.
“I’m ordering you, then. Don’t call me Captain or sir.”
Ziggy’s thick, slightly out of control eyebrows twitched upwards. “You got something against rank?”
Cade grunted. “Depends on the rank.”
Ziggy’s thin face cracked into a smile as he burst out laughing. Some of the more stodgy soldiers, who wore corporal or sergeant on their sleeves despite their circumstances and mental state, eyeballed Cade and Ziggy like they might be bugs in the soup. One of them had asked Cade point blank the other day if he was a Doughboy. Cade had answered truthfully. An engineer in the Third Infantry. That makes me an infantryman.
How many people didn’t understand that in this war, every man might find himself acting the infantry whether he wanted to or not.
“Who’s that bastard over there wearing that Navy issue cap with his robe?” Cade asked.
“Pajama man. Corporal MacRay O’Bannon of the Fighting Irish. He’s loonier than most here. Thinks if he wears his real uniform the Huns will find him. First time I saw him I thought he was blotto.”
Cade didn’t laugh. “He wasn’t in the Navy.”
“Nope. His brother was. Died when he went down with a ship torpedoed by the Germans a few months back.”
Shadows Rise Page 2