outweighed the emotional upset. Panic overtook me. Was I dying? I felt as if I were. My fingernails dug into the dirt around me trying to reach out to grasp something, anything to take away what was happening. But I found no relief from my anguish.
Chapter 17
The pain surging up my leg was almost unbearable. I realized instantly that I had been viciously thrown down stairs that led to a basement area. The floor was merely dirty but compacted down so much that it felt like cold cement underneath me. There were no real walls as all the electrical wiring was exposed, and the ceiling was pretty much the same way. It stunk of mold and dampness. There were a few old crates sitting in a pile in the corner and a coal furnace adjacent to these. There was a single window at the top of the far wall that looked smaller than my head allowing a sliver of sunlight through. There was also a wooden door with a huge metal lock shining in front of it as if it were brand new. I didn’t know what my chances of escape were at the moment, my head frantically trying to process the amount of pain I was in, but I didn’t think my chances were that great.
I pulled away the palm of my hand that had been covering up my wounded ankle. The shock from the sight hit me intensely as a puddle of blood surrounded my foot, and the jagged edges of a redtinged bone protruded from my leg surrounded by pink meaty flesh that had been split wide open from the sharp bone.
My stomach churned. I wasn’t sure what was nauseating me more, the intensity of the pain or the revolting sight of the wound before me. I twisted over on my side and vomited in the dirt. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Vomiting had given me little relief. I started to feel the panic settling in. What was I going to do? What could I do? I was crippled in Mrs. Anderson’s basement, locked up, and no one knew I was here except for whoever threw me down the stairs. I was going to bleed to death. No one would find me, and this would be my tomb.
The realization was too much to handle. This was all my fault. They were after Emry, and I was the only one trying to save him. Me against them, and they were too powerful. I should’ve expected something like this. I had acted without thinking about the consequences of breaking into someone’s home, especially someone like her. She was dangerous and I knew that, but somehow I thought I was unstoppable, probably because I had gotten away with so much before. My father would come to save me. Or maybe not. Maybe this would push him over the edge, an unforgivable act of one too many, and he’d finally abandon me. I wasn’t his real daughter. It would be easier to rid himself emotionally of me knowing that fact. He thought I had changed things around, that we had all been back to normal over the course of these last few months and that Emry Logan had been ripped from my mind and my heart forever. Knowing I’d been snooping around Mrs. Anderson’s house would be too much disappointment for one man to bear, even that of Pastor John James himself.
The tears started to flow. The feeling of entrapment combined with being so physically injured tore at my heart. I took a deep breath. My ribs throbbed and a headache was quickly forming as I felt around on my head and a large lump was growing on the top of my skull. The fire radiating up from my punctured skin burned intensely. I closed my eyes for fear that I might accidentally look down and see the bone again. Closing my eyes would make me unable to see the gruesome sight. I put both hands behind me and felt the bloody wetness on the cold dirt and brought up both hands horrified. Death would soon conquer me.
Emry wouldn’t want things to have ended like this for me. He had warned me to be careful, and I had been such an idiot this time. I was messing with the wrong people who couldn't care less about what happened to me. They only wanted one thing, Emry Logan destroyed, and if it meant destroying me too, then so be it. I had proven loyal to the wrong side in their eyes. I was just as much a criminal and threat as he.
What I was thinking? I scolded myself for even thinking that Emry would still be caring about what happened to me. Whatever had happened between us had been hopeless. He was a smart man. He would have given up. Only I had become the foolish one, had put myself in this situation and now I was in too deep. There was no way to get myself out of this one.
I was so pathetic. I deserved to die down here like a worthless thing. My life was meaningless. I had no purpose, no one to believe in me, nowhere to turn. I felt the same despairing emotions rush over me similar to those that I had felt after the realization that me and Emry Logan would never be, only this depressed feeling was even worse.
The dizziness came over me then, integrating its way throughout my entire body. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t move. I felt my consciousness fade in and out, in and out. I felt my body fall over onto my side, my hair caked in vomit and blood, as the cold, damp earth beneath me engulfed me until all I could see was black.
The sound of voices awoke me partially. I had no sense of how long I had been down here. I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. My wounds still throbbed uncontrollably.
“This is what I needed to drive the whole way down here to see? What did you do to her?”
“I caught her upstairs in the room nosing around.”
“So just to get this straight, you snap, lose your temper and need me to get you out of this mess, does that about sum it up, Lauren?” “Who else was I going to call?”
“You could’ve killed her. Just look at her. I’m surprised you even called. Why not just let her die?” “I couldn’t.”
“Really, Lauren? You mean you actually have a heart thumping around somewhere in there? Who is she?” “Anna James.”
“Why does that name sound familiar? Wait. The pastor’s daughter?”
“Yeah.”
“Just great, Lauren.”
I felt my eyes flitter open slightly. They immediately snapped shut again as the bright light from a flashlight was being shined directly on me. “What a mess. What’s mom going to say about this? Does she know?”
“Not yet. It’s her own fault. She was supposed to stay out of it.”
“It?”
There was a long silent pause between them.
“Never mind. I can only guess what she’s been up to. I told you all long ago I want no part in any of this. I mean it. Don’t tell me one thing more.” The flashlight moved out of my face and off to the side. I tried to open my eyes again. There was just enough light in the room for me to see the faces of two men. One was Lauren Anderson, the one who had just confessed to finding me upstairs and who had caused me this cruel misery, and the other looked familiar. I tried to squeeze out the pain for a moment so I could concentrate and think. It was another one of Mrs. Anderson’s sons. I believed he may have been the oldest, but it had been a long, long time since I had seen him. He had moved away.
“Can you fix her?” Lauren asked his brother.
The man let out an overly irritated sigh. “I don’t know. I can’t do anything down here. These conditions aren’t exactly sanitary.” Oh, that’s right. I remembered that Mrs. Anderson’s oldest son had moved away, because he had gotten a job out of town in a nearby city as a physician. A little hope fluttered through me. I wasn’t dead yet. Perhaps he’d be able to help me.
“Do whatever you can.”
“She’s lost a lot of blood. You didn’t have to be so violent.”
Another pause. Then I heard footsteps walk closer toward me and the flashlight shining again in my face.
“Anna? Anna James? Are you able to open your eyes? Are you able to speak?” the man asked me.
I felt my lips part slightly, but a wave of pain swept over me again. My eyes squinted from the light as I tried to open them as well. I felt the light touch of his fingers on my neck as he checked the rate of my pulse.
“She’s bad, Lauren. Real bad. We have to move her and quick. She has a fever. She’s in shock. Here, take this. Anna? Anna, listen to me. You’re going to feel a pinch in your arm.”
I felt the needle go into my arm but barely. It was nothing compared to all the other things I was feeling right now.
“She’s not
stable enough to go back up those stairs. We’ll have to take her out that door. Go open it.”
I prayed for some sort of relief. Then all at once, the light of the flashlight began to dim, and I saw blackness once again.
When I opened my eyes, I was still in the damp basement. I no longer felt the cold dirt beneath me and realized that I was in some sort of a cot. I tried to sit up but winced. My ribcage was bandaged, and there was an IV in my arm. I remembered how badly my ankle had hurt but couldn’t feel the pain as much now. Looking down, my leg was casted. He must have helped me. Mrs. Anderson’s son must have somehow repaired the injured ankle and given me pain medication. I was a little groggy but overall much improved. I reached up and touched my hair. It was damp. Someone had cleaned me up as well. But why had they brought me back to this place?
The door at the top of the basement stairs creaked open, and I could hear multiple footsteps stomping down the stairs toward where I was. I laid back down on the cot. I wondered if I should pretend to be sleeping, but before I could think it through properly, I looked up and saw them gawking at me.
“Finally she’s awake. Ms. James, how do you feel?”
I recognized Mrs. Anderson’s oldest son, the one who I presumed had saved my life, as he stood directly over me, his eyes intently staring at my face. “Better,” I managed to whisper, although my voice sounded a little muffled and raspy. “Good, good.” He put a cuff over my arm and took my blood pressure. “This is the last time I’m
checking on her and then I’m out of here.” He shined a pen light in my pupils. “I suppose I can’t talk you out of what I’ve already told you.”
“No.” Mrs. Anderson stood from a distance looking harshly at me. She had her hands clasped together in front of her.
“She needs to be in a hospital,” her son told her.
She quickly shook her head as her mind was already made up. “Why, so they can just release her? Absolutely not. Not until this whole thing is over and done with.”
He frowned, his face illuminated by the glow of a small lantern at the bottom of the stairs. “If there
are any signs of infection, another fever, yellow drainage from the wounds ...”
“Yes, we understand,” Mrs. Anderson whispered.
I didn’t like the way she spoke. She seemed overly calm all the time when there was this treacherous storm really going on underneath the surface. And the way she talked about me, as if I weren’t in the room or a child or something, was so irritating.
“I don’t want called if that happens,” her son went on, being persistent in the way he spoke to them. “Take her to Seneca General, but I am done here.”
“You don’t have to repeat yourself ten hundred times,” Lauren grumbled.
A loud knock echoed all the way down to the basement from the front door upstairs. Within only a few moments, the knock repeated, even louder. Everyone stared at each other uncomfortably. I was hopeful for whoever it was, anyone but this grisly family in front of me.
“Don’t just stand there. Go see who it is,” Mrs. Anderson snapped only allowing her tone of voice to rise slightly.
Lauren rushed up the basement stairs taking two at a time. I could hear the front door open and another pair of feet anxiously shuffling inside the house.
“Where is she? What’s going on?”
It was my father. He was panicked.
“Down there.”
“What? Why is she down there?”
And then he made his way down into the dully-lit basement, his eyes locked on mine and the condition I was in. He looked pale even in the shadows.
“Anna!” he said horrified. “What happened?”
He rushed over to my side and took my hand in his, his eyes scanning frantically over the various bandages and my cast, the IV plugged into the vein in my arm. I opened my mouth to speak but no words would come out. Tears flowed freely down both cheeks, and I could do nothing more but sob and bury my face into his chest trying to mumble how sorry I was for everything.
He turned around and glared at the Anderson clan, demanding an answer from them. “She fell,” Lauren lied.
His mother gave him a stern look and took a step closer to my father. “There was an incident in which Ms. James was found meddling with my affairs upstairs.” “Was found?” he asked. “What exactly does that mean?” He glanced back down at me. “It means we weren’t home and she broke in,” Lauren said bluntly.
Mrs. Anderson held up her hand motioning for her son to keep quiet.
“Is that true?” His eyebrows furrowed. It was the look of disappointment I was dreading, though inevitable, to see. “Anna? Please tell me there’s a better explanation than that.”
I closed my eyes and squeezed his hand. I opened my mouth and cleared my throat. “I’m sorry.” “But why? What were you doing? What were you thinking?” he demanded from me, his tone no longer holding even a twinge of sympathy.
“John, you know exactly why she was here,” Mrs. Anderson told him, giving him just an extra nudge to confirm his suspicion.
He released his grasp from my hand and stood, backing up as he did so, so that he was a few steps away from me now. “No. It can’t be that. You’re done with him. I thought this whole thing was over.” “Love is such a difficult thing to turn on and off.” Mrs. Anderson smirked at me. Anger burned within me at her mockery. I absolutely abhorred her.
My father was starting to fall apart. He stood there rocking back and forth on his heels as if he could barely take it. His mind was going a million miles an hour, and I couldn’t tell which direction he was taking as he processed all the information. I had betrayed him. He had trusted me to have been me again, the me he had always liked, always thought I was. He trusted that Emry Logan was out of the picture entirely and that it would never come down to this again, this vicious cycle of disillusionment that twisted all of our lives uncomfortably upside down, forcing us to have to reevaluate who we were, what we’ve become. I could feel the instant strangeness between my father and I as I had once felt in Seneca County Prison after Buck had caught me and Emry in a moment of brief passion. It was as if my father didn’t recognize the child he had watched grow up before him, nor did I recognize my father, my pastor standing there whose eyes had grown as black as the shadows surrounding him.
“So you found her, Lauren?” he asked, his voice just as jittery as his body language. Lauren nodded.
“And then what?” he questioned him. “You beat her up? You taught her a lesson?” “Not exactly,” Mrs. Anderson answered for him.
My father was on the verge of losing all control. You could hear the edge to his voice. It was still undetermined though if he’d lose it on them or me. “Then please, enlighten me.”
“I already told you she fell.” The gruffness in Lauren’s voice grew as if he were ready to defend any accusations thrown his way.
“That’s not true,” I quickly said. “He threw me down the stairs.” My father bit his fingernail anxiously. Then he closed his eyes. I could tell he was trying to fight the emotions writhing within him. He was fighting to remain as calm as possible.
“Don’t strain yourself, child. You’d better just rest and be silent,” Mrs. Anderson told me.
I glared at her, trying to project the hatred from within my eyes. “I won’t be silent. He tried to kill me. You want rid of me like you want rid of Emry.”
She scowled back at me. I had said his name. I had struck a nerve. It was written all over her face, but she didn’t reply. She simply took my father by both hands and turned him around to make him give her his total attention. “John, listen to me. She’s fine.”
“She doesn’t look fine to me.”
“Of course not, but it’s all been taken care of. My Richard has performed surgery on the girl.”
“Surgery?” He tore his hands away from hers and then backed away, moving closer to me. His eyes searched the shadows, searched to see Richard Anderson’s face in the darkness. “Is he here?” �
�He’s here.”
The oldest son stepped out of the darkness and near the lantern, a worried expression on his face.
“She’s stable. She had a good bump on the head, a few fractured bones, and her ankle needed the most work, but it’s been pinned and casted, and I’ve given her IV fluids and some pain medication.” My father turned around to look at me again, realizing what I had just gone through, his face pained with the thought of it all. “Now, if there’s nothing else needed, I must be on my way.” Richard gave his mother and brother a stern look. “Remember what I said.” Then he faced my father for a brief moment and gave him an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Pastor.”
I watched him walk slowly but steadily up the basement stairs. He probably hadn’t wished to be as involved as he was, nor had he wanted to see my father face to face. He was in a big hurry to get out of here and far away from Seneca and the drama his family was deriving here.
“Why are you keeping her here? I’m taking her to the hospital,” my father shouted out in a demanding tone. Lauren stepped in between him and me in a bullying manner. “She’s not going anywhere.” “Are you going to throw me down the stairs, too?” The two men eyed each other warily. “If I have to,” Lauren threatened.
A soft chuckle escaped from Mrs. Anderson’s throat. She smiled as she now stood beside the two of them. “Now, now, let’s not do anything drastic here. This can be discussed rationally. Shall we go upstairs and talk over tea?” she suggested.
“No,” my father snapped. “We can’t just leave her here all alone.” Lauren sighed as if my father were being totally unreasonable. His mother gave him a look of disapproval.
“That’s fine, John. You just have to understand the situation she’s put us in.”
“There’s no excuse for what she’s done by breaking into your house and all,” my father stated. “But if Lauren tried to kill her …” “If I’d wanted her dead, she’d be dead.” Lauren put his hands on his hips.
“That’s enough, Lauren. Maybe you should go upstairs and take some time to cool down.” “Fat chance of that happening,” Lauren said, his eyes still focused on my father.
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