by Mia Marlowe
The killer just stood there, holding onto the overhead rail. He made no threatening moves, but his intense gaze held her fast. He was studying her, like an entomologist admiring a butterfly pinned in his bug collection.
What do I do? Sara’s mind raced furiously. He wasn’t likely to let her get away from him now. If she left the train, he’d follow.
Perhaps the people around her offered some slim protection. What could he do to her here?
When she glanced back up at him she decided she didn’t want to know.
He was smiling at her again, that same sick smile she’d seen on his face when he’d intended to push her under the train.
Gorge rose in the back of her throat, but she swallowed it down.
There was a T map on the far wall. Park Street was the next station.
Then she remembered something.
Is this part of my life flashing before my eyes?
There was a police kiosk on Washington, just a block off Park. The summer she and Matthew got married, he’d been a bicycle cop there. On days when she didn’t have class, Sara brought picnic lunches to him. They people-watched on Boston Common while they munched peanut butter sandwiches because that was all they could afford.
Matthew’s calves and thighs were rock hard after four months of eight hour shifts on a bike.
Sara shoved away that irrelevant tidbit and focused on the police kiosk. She’d have to make a run for it, over the uneven cobbles and down narrow little Winter Street.
But there might be help if she could somehow get off this train.
She glanced up at the man. He was still gazing down at her with that weirdly fond expression. Every hair on her body stood at full attention.
The train slowed, metal screeching on metal. Sara’s insides vibrated as the subway car jarred its way to a stop. Park Street Station slid into view.
The bi-fold doors opened and in compliance with T etiquette, passengers disembarked first. Shifting and shuffling, they moved around the killer, jostling him, pressing up against him as if he was one of them. He edged even closer to Sara, his waist at her eye level.
She felt sick.
The last of the riders hopped off and new passengers crowded onto the car. All the seats were full and people were forced to mill along the center of the car, looking for a handhold to steady themselves.
A big guy in a sweat suit who smelled like he’d been working out climbed on, flanked by two more similarly dressed young men. If they weren’t hockey players or linebackers, Sara decided they’d missed their calling.
“Hey, man,” Sweatsuit guy said to the killer. “Move in. We paid to ride same as you.”
Sweatsuit guy reached up to the handrail and turned his back on the killer. He leaned into him, muscling him further into the car so his friends could board as well.
The killer glared up at him for a moment, then shuffled back, reluctantly yielding space to the much bigger man.
Sara could have kissed the newcomer’s sweaty cheek, but instead, she leaned forward in her seat. She’d only have one shot. How long before the door closed?
The last rider waiting had wedged himself on the step.
“I’m going to be sick,” Sara said softly.
“What?” Sweatsuit guy edged back a few inches.
She rose shakily to her feet, the shattered pieces of her cell phone falling to the grime-encrusted floor. The door was still open.
“I’m going to be sick,” she said louder. “I’m going to be sick.”
It was even true.
Even though the subway car was crammed full, the passengers parted for her like the Red Sea before Moses. She scrambled between the bodies that leaned away from her.
“Stop!” the killer shouted.
Sara slipped out the doors just as they tremored and slapped shut behind her.
The tail of her coat caught in the folding doors. The killer struggled through the press, trying to reach the closed door. If the engineer of the train looked out his window and saw that her coat was caught, the doors would swing open again.
He’d be on her in a heartbeat.
She peeled out of her trench coat and stumbled past the yellow caution line. The train stuttered forward and then shot out of the station with her scarlet trench flapping like a banner.
Sara ran to the nearest trash can and emptied her stomach into it.
Chapter 17
People quickened their pace around her, shooting her looks of disgust and scurrying on with their business.
When she finished heaving, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve and sat on one of the benches to get her bearings. Sara wouldn’t have to outrun the man to the police kiosk after all. She could walk down Winter Street to find help.
If she could walk. Delayed panic threatened to send her into spasms, but she wrapped her arms around herself and willed herself to settle.
But what could the police do for her? Suppose they didn’t even find her credible.
So far, only Matthew had tried to protect her and now he’d turned his back on her. She had no money, no ID, and if she left the T station, she’d be on foot and coatless in a downpour.
How long would it take Valenti’s killer to reach the next T station and switch to the train that would bring him right back here?
If she stayed on the T, she had four choices. She could get on the northbound train and try to get home.
But her apartment didn’t feel safe, even with a deadbolt. The assassin must have been in her apartment in order to plant the transmitter in her phone. Who knew what else was there? Audio receivers? A tiny video feed hidden somewhere?
The thought that he might have been watching her in her bedroom or in the shower made her stomach roll again. She was reduced to dry heaves.
If she was both terribly clever and terribly brave, she might board the next southbound Green Line train. Dogging him into the dark, she’d be betting he was scurrying back toward Park Street as soon as possible and she’d slip past him in the tunnel going the opposite direction.
But she felt neither clever nor brave.
Part of her wanted to run to her parent’s home in Waltham, but the last thing she wanted to do was draw the killer’s attention to her family. She had no money for a light rail fare anyway.
The Red Line bisected Park Street Station. She could be far away in Braintree in less than an hour. But she knew no one there. No one would help her.
That left going west to Cambridge on the Red Line. At least Waltham and her family were in that direction.
She straggled over to the T map to study the stops.
“Charles/MGH, Kendall/MIT, Central,” she mumbled, tracing the route on the map with her forefinger. Then her gaze was riveted back to the first stop. MGH. Massachusetts General Hospital.
“Ryan,” she whispered.
He was working at MGH, helping stroke patients and head trauma victims dealing with aphasia. It was a frustrating disorder, one in which the sufferer believed he was speaking clearly, but only gibberish passed his lips. Ryan would need infinite patience. But he said he wanted to help people.
Would he help her?
“Outbound train approaching on the Green Line,” the MBTA computer voice squawked. “Final destination of this train is Lechmere.”
Could the killer have made the switch this quickly? Was he barreling back toward Park Street on the incoming train?
Sara didn’t wait to see. She ran to the stairs that led down to the Red Line platform. She found the tracks that terminate at Alewife and paced along the platform, watching the stairwell to make sure the man in the trench coat didn’t reappear.
“Thank God,” Sara whispered when the Red Line thundered into the station. She scrambled onto the subway car and kept terrified watch until the doors slid closed and the train pulled away from Park Street at a crawl.
~
Ryan’s pager beeped and he glanced at it with a frown. He didn’t recognize the number.
“All right, Mrs. Kamins
ki,” he told the stroke patient. “Keep practicing. Tomorrow when I visit, I want you to stick your tongue out at me. Practice up and give me the biggest, wettest raspberry you can. All right?”
The elderly woman in the bed nodded with difficulty. One side of her face hung slack, but she tried to smile with the other side. Her tongue rolled in her mouth, but she couldn’t control it well enough to perform the simple task he’d assigned her.
“That’s it,” he encouraged. “You’ll be insulting me in no time.”
He flashed her a grin and stepped out of the room. Then his smile faded. It was important he keep a positive attitude for his patients’ sake, but sometimes it was hard when the losses were so staggering. Still, no one could predict how far a stroke victim could come back. Already in his short career, he’d seen some remarkable recoveries from others just like Mrs. Kaminski who couldn’t form a coherent word at first.
Often, the trick was keeping the family from despair long enough for the patient’s own will to kick in. No one could make Mrs. K’s tongue work for her. She had to will herself to complete the frustrating task of building a new neural pathway to gain control of it again.
Some days, Ryan felt more like a coach than anything else. This branch of his field was such a head game. Success was dependent on the patient’s level of “want to.”
If Mrs. K. greeted him with a raspberry tomorrow, he’d have an immense sense of accomplishment. She’d have taken the first step and shown him she was willing to do the work. The octogenarian would still have a long row to hoe, but she’d be on her way to recovery.
His beeper sounded again. Same number.
He punched it into his cell phone and was surprised to find someone who identified himself as an ER nurse on the other end of the line. Speech pathologists rarely dealt with the kind of trauma seen in Emergency Rooms. One of the reasons he chose the discipline. He’d seen enough blood during his stint with the Seals to last a lifetime.
“Ryan Knight? There’s someone here who says she has to see you and no one else,” the nurse said. “Do you know a Sara Kelley?”
His gut lurched. “Yes, I know her. Is she all right?”
There was silence on the other end of the receiver for a few heartbeats. “I don’t know. She’s presenting with symptoms of shock, but she won’t allow an examination for injury. She insists on speaking to you, but you’ll have to come down here because she says she can’t use a phone.” The nurse lowered his voice. “Should I call the psych unit?”
A wry smile crossed Ryan’s face. Sara had achieved her goal. The ER nurse couldn’t tell she was hearing impaired. She’d passed for hearing.
Too bad she didn’t pass for sane at the same time.
“No, I’ll be right there.” Ryan broke into a dog-trot.
So many days had gone by since he’d given her that stupid ultimatum, he’d despaired of ever hearing from her again. There’d been several times when his phone was in his hand, the text punched in asking to see her. But he’d deleted it instead of hitting send. He didn’t want to be her rebound fling. There was no point in seeing her if she was still hung up on her ex.
But just because his head knew it, didn’t mean his heart and body did. There was as much disconnect in him as between Mrs. Kaminski and her tongue.
When he rounded the last corner into the ER, he was unprepared for the sight of Sara. She was drenched, her cotton skirt and pale tank top clinging to her shivering form. Her hair hung in sopping locks and a faint mascara trail left runnels down her cheeks.
“Sara, what—“
He didn’t get to finish the rest of his sentence. She ran toward him and nearly bowled him over with a hug.
“Oh, Ryan,” she said as he wrapped his arms around her. “I don’t what to do. You’ve got to help me.”
“Of course, I will.” He pulled her head to his chest, signaling to the concerned ER nurse that he had the matter well in hand. She was trembling and soaking wet, but she felt so good in his arms, he didn’t care. “Now what’s wrong?”
Sara looked back over her shoulder at the doorway that whirred open to admit a trauma team with a patient on a gurney. “Not here. No windows. I need to get away from the windows. And the door, I need to get away from the door.”
“Sure, whatever you want,” he said, leading her away from the apparently menacing windows and doors. Concern fizzed in his chest. She wasn’t sounding like herself. “What happened?”
“You need to take me s-someplace where he can’t get in,” she said.
The psych unit idea was beginning to make more sense.
Instead, he unlocked the door to the residents’ lounge and pulled her into it. There was usually an exhausted third year flopped on one of the sagging couches trying to grab fifteen minutes of sleep during a thirty-six hour marathon shift, but this time Ryan was in luck. He and Sara had the space to themselves.
“Who is it you’re afraid will ‘get in’?” Ryan frowned. “Is your ex giving you trouble?”
“No, no, it’s not Matthew. I wish to God it were,” she said as she sank gratefully onto the couch. ”It’s Anthony Valenti’s killer.”
She might be frazzled and disoriented, but her eyes were perfectly sane. Ryan sat down next to her and took one of her hands. “Tell me.”
She squeezed the life out of Ryan’s knuckles as she told him of the chilling encounter with the assassin under the streets of Boston.
“And now I’m sure he must have been the one who pushed us into the ocean too,” she finished.
“Did you text the police?”
She scoffed. “I thought you didn’t like to involve the authorities.”
“That was a mistake. I’m sorry.”
“Well, I don’t think the cops will do anything. Even Matthew won’t.” Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them back. “I’m sorry to drag you into this, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You did the right thing.” Ryan put his arm around her. Jumping in front of a train. God, she was braver than some men he knew. But now he’d take over. If the cops wouldn’t protect her, he damn well would.
And maybe Uncle Nicky might be good for something, after all.
Chapter 18
“I said, what are you doing here?” Matthew narrowed his eyes at Brittany.
A smile trembled on her lips. Then she sat down and crossed her legs. She wasn’t wearing anything under that glorified belt of a skirt. Once, a stolen glimpse of her furry little crotch would have lit him up like a Christmas tree, but now it only reminded him how badly his cock had led him astray.
“Do I need a reason to come see you, lover?” she purred.
“We haven’t been lovers for a while and you know it. Just cellmates,” he said wearily. “What were you doing with my phone?”
“You weren’t here, so I…I thought I’d use it to make an appointment to get my nails done,” she said.
He strode over and pulled the phone from his jacket pocket.
“No, Matthew, I—”
“Something you want to tell me before I check the call log?”
“Oh, all right!” Brittany snapped. “She texted you again. There! Are you happy?”
“Not even close.” He fought back the urge to hit something. Instead he thumbed back through the phone’s log and pulled up Sara’s text. He scanned the message and his heart sank to his toes.
“She’s in trouble.”
“She’s always in trouble.”
“Damn it, Brittany. Would you stop and think about somebody else for just once?” he said, bringing his fist down so hard on the desk, pain shot up his arm. He didn’t care. Several heads raised and looked in the direction of his windowed office, but once they saw who was in there with him, they settled back to their own work. Matthew turned his attention back to the phone and pulled up the sent messages to see if Brittany—
“What the hell—why did you send that? Couldn’t you see she needed help?” Matthew grabbed Brittany’s arms a
nd brought her to her feet.
“I thought she was making things up. You know how she is.”
“Yeah, I know how she is,” Matthew said. “And I know how you are. And you know what? I’m done.”
“Oh, baby, you don’t mean that.” She reached for him, but he straight-armed her.
“It was a mistake from the first, but I was too stupid to know it.” Matthew shrugged on his jacket. “I’ll be over to get my things.”
“Come on, Matthew. I know you don’t mean it. You love me, I know you do.” She pursed her lips into a pout. “Who does you like me, baby, huh?”
When he looked at her, he felt nothing. Not desire. Not regret. Not a thing. It was as if Brittany was an empty hole in the air. That or all his emotions had shut down like a nuclear reactor in overload mode.
“I don’t know how late I’ll be,” he said woodenly as he texted Sara’s number. If he could get a message to her now, find out where she was and let her know it wasn’t him who’d sent that last scathing text to her. A delivery error message told him Sara’s number was not in cell range.
“Don’t wait up,” he told Brittany.
“Where are you going?”
“To find Sara,” he said. A smoldering in his chest flared suddenly into full-blown rage. He’d never felt such white-hot fury. He didn’t know if it was directed at Brittany or himself. Both, probably. “I have no idea where she is, but you better hope to hell that when I find her, she’s ok.”
~
Ryan stepped onto his penthouse balcony and looked out over the Mystic River. As night fell, the last gasp of the sun streaked the winding strip of water golden. Commuters jammed the bridge spanning the river below in their nightly fight to make it home but up here, Ryan barely heard a rumble from the traffic. He’d bought the place for the sense of peace and the view.
That and the fact that this building was so much taller than those immediately around it the chance of a sniper shot was virtually nil. And a 24/7 concierge and electronic key fob entries didn’t hurt either.