Fear

by Adrianne Lemke

  “RIEVER!” A voice shouted from his main room. “COME OUT OF THE ROOM AND KEEP YOUR HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!”

  “STAY AWAY!” he yelled in warning. “I HAVE RYAN IN HERE WITH ME. IF YOU WANT HIM TO STAY ALIVE, YOU’LL LEAVE.”

  “We can’t do that, Riever. You’re under arrest, and Ryan is coming with us. If you care about him in the least bit, you’ll want him to get help for whatever injuries he has,” a man’s calm voice said through the door.

  “Levi, that you?” Riever asked.

  “Yeah, Cap, it’s me,” he answered. “You don’t want to go down as the villain, do you? Let Ryan go. His friends are worried about him.”

  “I’m THE ONLY FRIEND HE NEEDS!” Riever yelled in anger.

  Levi stepped back from the door when he heard the desperation in his former captain’s voice. “CAP!” he yelled, trying to get his attention. The man had degraded into yelling about Ryan only needing him, and there was no one else who could really love Ryan. “CAPTAIN RIEVER!” he yelled again.

  “I’LL KILL HIM!” Riever yelled. There was a short silence. “You need to leave, Officer Travers. You’re going to get this young rookie killed.”

  Levi was struck with fear at the calm way that Riever spoke about killing Ryan. “Cap, don’t kill him. If you kill him we’ll have no choice but to break the door down and shoot you. He needs help that you can’t provide right now. I’m sure he appreciates everything you’ve done for him, but he needs to be checked out by a doctor,” Levi wanted to gag as the words passed his lips. They had the desired effect as Riever didn’t yell back about killing Ryan.

  Levi winced as he heard the hoarse yells that were coming from Ryan, and he knew the younger man had received another dose of whatever drug Riever had given him.

  “Cap, you know we can’t leave,” he said. “You were part of the training that told us we can’t leave in a hostage situation.”

  “I know, son,” Riever said. And in that moment of lucidity, he knew what he had to do.

  Traci and the other officers stood silently, prepared to act whenever they were needed. Mike and Bronswick stood on either side of the door, ready to break it down if they were ordered to. Mike carried a battering ram that he and Chad would use if the situation called for it.

  All of them tensed as they listened to the exchange. “It’s going bad, Levi,” Traci whispered. “He’s not rational. You can’t reason with an irrational person.”

  Levi nodded at her. “I know,” he whispered back. “Wait a few more seconds. I’m going to try again.” Levi raised his voice. “Cap, what’s going on in there?”

  “Ryan’s on a little trip,” was the answer. “I may not let him come back. I’m done talking to you. Goodbye, Levi.”

  “Goodbye, Cap,” Levi said softly as he motioned for Mike and Chad to break down the door.

  The door flew open and they rushed in to find Riever kneeling behind the cot that Ryan was on, holding the gun to Ryan’s head as the young man struggled with invisible demons.

  “Drop the gun, Riever,” Traci said in a low voice.

  “Stay back!” Riever said, cocking the gun and preparing to shoot.

  “If you don’t step away from Ryan, I will shoot you, Captain,” Traci warned.

  Riever shrugged and started to pull the trigger. Several bullets rang through the room and knocked him down. His gun went off as he fell against the wall, the bullet harmlessly embedding in the ceiling. Bronswick and Mike went to check Riever and kick the gun away while Traci ran to Ryan.

  “Ryan? Can you hear me?” Ryan just pulled at his restraints trying to get away, and he yelled angrily when he realized he couldn’t. “Someone get the paramedics down here!” she called. “We need to get him out of here!”

  Ryan leaned back on the cot and started muttering, his eyes flying back and forth between Traci and Levi who stood over him. “What’s he saying?” Levi asked as he leaned in closer to Ryan.

  The muttering continued and Ryan’s eyes closed as his entire body clenched and pulled at the restraints again. “Ryan, what are you saying? Can you hear me?” Traci asked her voice coming out calmer than she felt.

  She knelt by the cot to try to hear him better. She was finally able to understand what he was saying. "Makeitstop make it stop make it stop.”

  “We’re here with you now. You’ll be okay,” she said gently.

  As the paramedics entered the room, Ryan’s muttering stopped and he flew into a full panic. He fought the restraints with every ounce of his strength, and was heartened when they began to loosen. There were hands holding him down…Traci? She was holding him in place; he was trapped!

  “Lemme go!” he yelled. Two shapes descended on him, and he fought, trying to get away.

  “NO!” he yelled. He pulled one arm free and swung at the shapes surrounding him. To his dismay, they were able to gain control again, and they trapped him on a different surface with stronger restraints. He screamed when he felt as his hard won freedom was taken away from him.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The paramedics, with help from the police officers on the scene, managed to transfer an increasingly panicked Ryan from the cot to the stretcher. They fastened the restraints across Ryan’s arms and chest, on his wrists, over his thighs, and on his ankles. The young cop was in bad shape, and they didn’t want to restrain him, but his increasing violence forced the issue.

  “You okay?” one of the paramedics asked Levi who was nursing a bloody nose.

  “Yeah I’m fine. Kid’s got a heck of a punch,” he answered lightly. He winced as Ryan screamed again and continued fighting the restraints. “Can’t you give him something?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Without knowing what he was given, we can’t be sure that anything we give him would be safe. Find out what he was given, and we should be able to do something about it,” he continued as he and his partner rolled the stretcher out of the room and to the stairs. Mike offered assistance to make the trip as easy on Ryan as possible, considering the situation.

  Levi winced as he probed his nose to see if it was broken. It had been lucky that there were people holding Ryan down, or he could have seriously hurt someone.

  He couldn’t see the injuries on Ryan’s chest, but there was blood soaked through the T-shirt he was wearing. When Ryan’s arms were freed briefly from the restraints, Levi had also noticed bandages covering his wrists that had blood soaking through them. “Traci?” he asked, noticing for the first time that the woman was still kneeling by the cot.

  “What did the bastard give him?” she asked in a low tone. “He was scared out of his mind, and obviously hallucinating something. He didn’t recognize us for more than two seconds.”

  “We should see if Riever had any more of that drug around so we can test it. If we find out what it is, they might be able to sedate him so he’d ride out the rest of the trip in peace.”

  Traci looked up at Levi for the first time since she’d started talking and noticed the look of sympathy etched in the man’s finely chiseled face. She agreed to the search for the drugs, and the two split up wordlessly to search.

  “In here!” she called about ten minutes later. She had found the kitchen, and in the refrigerator were several vials and syringes filled with a clear liquid. She grabbed one of the vials to take to the hospital to be tested, and left the rest to be gathered by the crime lab.

  Levi joined her and was surprised that Riever had such a large amount of drugs. “Look at that,” he said, pointing to some syringes in the back of the refrigerator that were clearly marked as evidence. “He stole drugs from the evidence locker.”

  “Probably managed to make a deal of some kind with a dealer too,” Traci added. “Check the bag; it might say what kind of drug they were busted for.”

  Levi reached in with a gloved hand and pulled out the evidence bag. “Uh…” he grunted as he scrolled down the writing on the bag. “It’s rohypnol; so depending on when Ryan was dosed, and what the other drug in here is, he’s in
for a long day.”

  Traci snapped herself out of the daze she’d been in since Ryan had been taken to the hospital. “We need to get to the hospital. We need to tell them what it is, and have them test it to make sure nobody messed with it to make it more potent.”

  “Let’s go,” Levi said, taking Traci’s arm and leading the way out of the dismal building. Traci pulled out her cell phone to call Captain Tonika, both to tell him they had found Ryan, and to tell him to inform the hospital of the kind of drug used on Ryan.

  “Is he okay?”

  Traci hesitated to answer the question. “He’s under the influence of something, and he’s sustained some injuries, though the paramedics were unable to check them on the scene. Ryan was hysterical because of the drugs, and fought us every step of the way.” “You’re on the way to the hospital now?” Tonika asked.

  “Yes. We need to give them a vial of drugs that we found on the scene.”

  “Good. Miss Hendrix and I will meet you at the hospital. What happened to Riever?”

  “His body was left on the scene to be processed by the crime lab people.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment before she heard the captain say softly, “Good,” and he hung up.

  Traci slowly lowered her cell phone from her ear, the softly spoken word still ringing. Good. Was it? They had killed a man. He was psychotic and homicidal, but he was still a man.

  Levi glanced at Traci, his face softening and eyes wide with concern when she held the still-open cell phone on her lap for several minutes after finishing her conversation with Tonika. She stared unseeingly at the phone. “Did we do the right thing?” she asked softly.

  “With what? Shooting Riever?” Levi asked, glancing from the road to Traci’s face. She nodded. “The man was going to shoot Ryan. He had his finger on the trigger and would have done it.”

  Levi sighed as Traci nodded, and he continued. “That’s not to say I don’t feel guilty. We’ve worked with Riever for years, and in that time I would have never suspected how crooked he actually was. He’s been to my house and met my family…” Levi’s voice trailed off as he felt guilt at exposing his child to a psycho, even if he hadn’t known it at the time.

  “We saved Ryan though,” Traci said, sounding more certain than she had a moment before. “Tonika was right. It was good.”

  They fell silent for the rest of the trip, and when Levi pulled into the hospital parking lot fifteen minutes later he felt better prepared to see Ryan. They asked at the emergency room desk where Ryan had been taken, and were directed to the waiting room. When they walked into the room, Traci could see that Captain Tonika was holding Kerry’s hand while leaning down and whispering something to the distraught young woman.

  Kerry’s face was an interesting blend of relief and despair, and Traci understood perfectly. The younger woman looked up as Traci and Levi entered and they noticed that her face was tear-streaked and pale.

  “Traci…” Kerry sounded lost and desperate for something to hold on to. Her left hand gripped Tonika’s right hand tightly as if she were afraid to let go.

  “Kerry,” she said, sitting in the chair on her other side and taking her right hand. “We have him back. He will be fine. He spoke to me for a short time when we found him.”

  “They didn’t tell us anything about how he’s doing. They’ll only say that it’s going to take some time before they’re able to do anything for him because of the drugs,” Kerry said in a rush, eager to share information with Traci.

  “Speaking of which, Captain, where do I turn this in?” Levi asked holding up the vial. Tonika gently pulled his hand away from Kerry’s death grip and he and Levi left the two women in the waiting room while they went to give the drugs to the lab to be tested.

  “Kerry, we need to be strong for Ryan. It will take some time for him to get over what happened. We’re not sure how much of the drug he was dosed with while Riever had him, so he may go through some withdrawal. Hopefully we got to him before his body became used to the drugs.”

  “Riever is… he’s gone, right?” Kerry asked.

  “Yes. He can’t hurt Ryan anymore,” Traci said.

  “But, there was an accomplice,” Kerry said. “The cop who took his picture on his first night at the station. Riever wasn’t there; we still don’t know who it was that took the picture.”

  Traci shrugged uneasily. “We may never know. All we can do is hope that with Riever gone, the other cop will ignore Ryan and leave him alone. He definitely doesn’t need that kind of stress.”

  There was a warning tone to Traci’s voice that Kerry picked up on. “Don’t worry. I won’t mention it to Ryan.” She swiped at her eyes with a Kleenex. “I need to get cleaned up, but I don’t want to leave.”

  “I’ll stay here and come get you if I hear anything. Go wash up.” Kerry nodded and squeezed Traci’s hand before she stood and walked quickly down the hall to a bathroom, leaving Traci by herself in the waiting room.

  ***

  Why are they doing this? Who are these people? Make it stop! Ryan grew increasingly panicked as people walked in and out of his vision. He was strapped down to a bed, and nobody was making a move to help him. His struggles weakened as the drug coursed through his veins, and he called out weakly, “Help!”

  Almost immediately a woman wearing scrubs entered. “How can I help you?” she asked kindly.

  “Who… who are you?”

  “My name is Linda, I’m a nurse here.”

  Ryan looked around the room. “Where is here?” he asked, gaining strength with each moment.

  “You’re at St. Francis hospital. How are you feeling?” she asked.

  Ryan considered the question. “Better. Where’s Kerry?”

  “Is she your girlfriend?” Ryan nodded. “I’m not sure where she is. I’ll see if I can find her, and I’ll send your doctor in,” she added, noticing the tremors that shook Ryan’s body as an effect of the drugs he had been forced to take. “It seems like the drug is mostly out of your system.”

  “How long have I been here?” he asked, wincing as all the pains from his injuries made themselves known.

  “You’ve been here for about eight hours.” Linda noticed the pain Ryan was in and continued. “I need to get your doctor.” Ryan nodded and closed his eyes, which Linda took as her cue to leave. She called for Ryan’s doctor over the PA and went to check the waiting room for Kerry.

  When she reached the waiting room she saw two women. “Are you here for Ryan Parker?”

  Both women looked up, startled at the sudden intrusion into their quiet corner of the waiting room. The policewoman responded first. “Yes. I’m his partner. How is he? No one has told us anything yet,” she said, sounding strained.

  “He’s coherent, which is a good indication that the drugs are wearing off. He asked for ‘Kerry’ is that one of you?”

  “That’s me,” the brown haired young woman said. “Can we see him?”

  The woman sounded like a scared child, and she almost seemed ashamed to ask to see her boyfriend. “I can take you to his room, but I’m not sure if the doctor will allow anyone in just yet.”

  Kerry’s eyes filled with tears as she sank down into a chair. Linda watched as Ryan’s partner sat next to her and wrapped her arm around the crying woman. “I’m sorry, Traci. I’m just so worried about him.”

  Linda allowed the women to collect themselves before again offering to take them to Ryan’s room. They agreed eagerly and followed.

  A doctor was in with Ryan and the restraints had been removed, a fact that both Traci and Kerry were happy with. Linda knocked on the door, “Doctor?”

  “Yes, Linda?”

  “Officer Parker’s partner and his girlfriend would like to see him. Would that be okay?”

  The doctor smiled kindly. “Are you up for visitors, Ryan?” Ryan nodded despite his pain. He had to see Kerry before he was given medications that would take his control away again. “You can send them in, Linda
.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” she said as she ushered Kerry and Traci into the room.

  “Hey, Ry,” Kerry said giving Ryan a gentle hug as she entered the room. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better now,” he said, his voice breaking as he started to cry. “‘M sorry,” he mumbled.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” Kerry said. “You’ve been through a lot. No one will think less of you for crying. I promise.”

  Ryan took her at her word and used his good arm to hold Kerry as tightly as possible as he cried. She held him as much as she dared, knowing that he was in pain, but not knowing the extent of his injuries. She made soft noises to calm him and kept reminding him that he was safe and that nothing would happen to him.

  Traci allowed Kerry and Ryan the private moment, she had looked over her partner and when he started crying she left the room quietly to give Kerry the opportunity to calm him.

  “Are you okay, officer?” the doctor asked as she leaned wearily against the wall by Ryan’s door.

  “Will he be?” she asked nodding toward the room.

  “He may need surgery on his arm, and he has stitches in some of the cuts. Other than that, he has bruising and he’s going through muscle tremors because of the last of the drugs that are in his system. He’ll probably need physical therapy on his shoulder before he’ll be able to return to work.”

  “But he will return to work, right?”

  The doctor shrugged. “Of course, that’s up to him, but if he wants to return to work, he will be physically capable of it. It will just take some time.” He checked his watch. “Speaking of, it’s time for him to be taken to be prepped for some x-rays. Did you want to talk to him briefly?”

  Traci nodded. “He just needed the time with Kerry, and she needed to be able to be there for him. I wanted to give them a moment.”

  TWENTY-FIVE