Midnight Caller

by Leslie Tentler

  By the time the SUV came to a stop, Trevor’s breathing had grown increasingly labored. Brian dragged him from the vehicle into the waiting plane.

  “I’m afraid he’s going into shock.” Rain huddled in the nearly nonexistent space between the cockpit and the first row of passenger seats next to where Trevor was lying. She pressed her hands over the saturated towels covering his wound. Brian threw himself into the pilot’s chair and prepared for a dare-devil takeoff on the isolated stretch of road.

  “Damn it, Trev!” Brian swiveled in his seat as the plane’s propellers started. He felt the sting of tears behind his eyelids. “You stay with us, you hear me?”

  “Just go,” Rain pleaded. Her fingers, rusty with blood, stood out against the towels.

  A few moments later, they were headed up into the starless night. Brian contacted emergency services on the plane’s radio, requesting that an ambulance be waiting for them at the airport in New Orleans.

  47

  Rain flung open the Audi’s door and raced through the entrance of All Saints Hospital. Brian was close behind her. There hadn’t been room for either of them in the ambulance, so they’d been forced to follow in its wake from Lakefront Airport. As Brian went to the admitting desk and began tersely asking questions, Rain felt the blatant stares of others inside the E.R. She was aware of her appearance, including the blood staining her clothes. But she didn’t care. All she wanted was to know Trevor would be all right.

  He’d stopped breathing as the plane made its descent. Rain had performed mouth-to-mouth while Brian brought them down on the tarmac next to the glistening black waters of Lake Pontchartrain.

  So much blood. She thought of Trevor’s fading pulse under her fingers and covered her face with her hands. How anyone could survive such a trauma seemed out of the realm of possibility.

  When she looked up again, she saw Annabelle coming toward them.

  “What’s happening?” Brian asked, meeting his sister. “I can’t get the Nazi at the front desk to tell me a damn thing—”

  “They’ve got him stabilized. He just went up to surgery.” As soon as the plane was back in the range of cell towers, Brian had called Annabelle and alerted her to what had happened. She must have been waiting at the hospital when the ambulance carrying Trevor arrived.

  She laid her hand on Brian’s face, her eyes soft. “Go see Alex, okay? He’s lying upstairs in bed, crazy with worry.”

  Reluctantly, he nodded and walked down the corridor to the elevators. As soon as he’d gone, Annabelle’s gaze traveled over Rain’s cuts and bruises. “Rain? Shouldn’t you see someone? You look like you could use a doctor, honey.”

  “I’m okay.” But she winced when Annabelle touched her. Her wrist was stiff and throbbed dully.

  “Oh, God! Your arm is black and blue—”

  “I just need a shower and some coffee.” She refused to waste time sitting for an X-ray while Trevor was fighting for his life. “Did they tell you anything?”

  Emotion darkened Annabelle’s eyes. “Not really. I heard them mention a pneumothorax?”

  “A collapsed lung,” Rain said softly.

  “Dr. Sommers?” A tall, muscularly built man with wheat-colored hair approached. Despite the time of night, he was dressed in khaki trousers and a crisp button-down shirt. Somberly, Annabelle made the introductions.

  “Rain, this is Sawyer Compton. He’s with the D.A.’s office.”

  Rain knew who he was. She’d seen him on television, being interviewed on the parish courthouse steps on numerous occasions. Most recently, he’d taken part in the news conference held by the joint FBI and police task force relating to the serial murders. Sawyer Compton was known for his tough stance on crime, his disregard for the good ol’ boys’ network, and his reputation as one of the city’s most eligible bachelors.

  “I grew up in the same neighborhood with the Rivette family,” Sawyer explained. “Trevor and I are old friends. Don’t let him tell you otherwise.”

  Annabelle’s reddened eyes hadn’t escaped him. He turned to her. “You okay, chère? The doctor hasn’t been back down here?”

  “Nothing like that,” she replied. “I’m just feeling a bit weepy.”

  Sawyer’s hand lingered at Annabelle’s waist. He looked at Rain apologetically. “I came down here to give Annabelle moral support, not to conduct official business. But we’ve got an NOPD detective dead and an FBI agent wounded, so I need to ask you a few questions.”

  “I understand.”

  “I got a call from the FBI. A SWAT team went out to Vermilion Parish at Agent Rivette’s request. They said Dr. Carteris is dead. Agent Rivette shot him?”

  Rain’s eyes were unwavering. “No. I did.”

  She told him everything she knew about Carteris.

  Rain took a shower in Alex’s hospital room while Annabelle went in search of clean clothes for her to wear. As the hot spray kneaded her exhausted body, she stared down at the drain. Brownish water—a mixture of bayou dirt and Trevor’s blood—swirled at her feet and disappeared. Holding her stomach, Rain doubled over in the stall and retched. But there was nothing inside her to come out. She sank to her knees, hoping the noise of the running water muffled her quiet sobs. He had to live. Trevor had been in surgery for nearly two hours, and they’d been told next to nothing.

  Several minutes later, Rain turned off the shower. She stood in the collected steam and tried to regain control over herself. A knock sounded at the door.

  “Rain?” It was Annabelle. “I found some clothes. They’re medical scrubs, but at least they’re clean.”

  “Thanks,” she replied weakly, unsure if the other woman could even hear her. But the door opened a few inches and Annabelle placed the garments on the edge of the sink before closing it again.

  When she came out, Annabelle handed her a wax-paper cup filled with coffee and covered with a plastic lid.

  “Any word?” Rain asked, but Annabelle shook her head. Rain glanced at Brian, who sat in a chair next to Alex’s bed. But he looked away from her and focused his gaze on the television set bracketed to the wall.

  “We’re all praying for him,” Alex said as he grasped Brian’s hand.

  Nodding, she cupped her palms around the coffee’s warmth for a few moments. Then she placed it on a shelf, leaving it untouched.

  “I’m going back to the waiting room,” she murmured and walked out.

  She had to leave, before she fell apart in front of them. Rain kept on her path down the brightly lit corridor, despite Annabelle calling after her. She pushed the button in the elevator bay and looked out the plate-glass window. The darkness outside had never seemed more formidable, although she knew daybreak was only a short time away. Fear whispered to her that she might never see Trevor again.

  Annabelle caught up to her as the elevator doors opened. She stepped on beside her. “I’m coming with you.”

  Rain looked at the floor, unable to hide her tears.

  “No one blames you,” Annabelle said. “Brian’s just upset. He’s second-guessing himself about not taking Trevor to one of the parish clinics.”

  “It’s my fault he’s in surgery. He was trying to save me.”

  “You didn’t cause this,” Annabelle reasoned as the elevator began moving down. “Trevor has a dangerous job. We’re all aware of that.”

  Rain rubbed a hand over her eyes, unwilling to absolve herself of responsibility. “If it hadn’t been me who Carteris abducted, Trevor would never have done something as reckless as go out there alone.”

  “He couldn’t have lived with himself if anything happened to you. Call it a twin’s intuition, but I think Trevor loves you, Rain. He’d risk anything to protect the people he cares about. I’m proof of that.”

  Trevor loves you. Annabelle’s quiet assertion was more than Rain could handle. She fought another wave of tears. “Oliver was my patient. I should’ve known—”

  “Should’ve known what?” Annabelle asked gently. “That his father was some
deranged vampire freak obsessed with your mother? You had no reason to think anything except that Oliver Carteris was a troubled young man who’d been given too much money and too many freedoms. He never said anything to you that hinted at what he was involved in, did he?”

  “No.” The elevator doors opened again. Rain knew Annabelle had heard her conversation with Sawyer Compton. She released a breath. “The assistant D.A. probably thinks I’m insane.”

  “Sawyer’s having his staff dig into Carteris’s background. But he’s heard pretty much everything in his line of work.”

  They walked into an alcove near double doors marked Surgical Staff Only. The waiting area was lit by ceramic table lamps and the silvery glow of an aquarium, and couches were arranged around the room. Brian joined them a short time later. He sat next to Rain, pulling her to him as he whispered an apology.

  Holding her injured wrist, Rain fell into an uneasy sleep against him. But it wasn’t long before Brian’s movements brought her back to consciousness. She rose to her feet with the others as a fatherly-looking man walked into the waiting area.

  “Rivette family?”

  His scrubs bore the telltale stains of blood.

  48

  She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Rain held Trevor’s hand, which felt cold and still within her own.

  The surgeon forewarned he’d been placed on a ventilator to allow his injured lung to heal more easily. But she now realized she hadn’t been prepared for the reality. A tube ran into his mouth, connecting him to the equipment next to the bed. Its rhythmic whooshing accompanied the beep of the heart monitor. Rain thought of Trevor’s confession to her, about his terror when he’d awoken with a machine controlling him all those years ago.

  His chest was bare, and another tube had been inserted between his ribs to drain fluid that had collected in the space around his lungs. She brushed her fingers over the ugly bruise where the vest had stopped the bullet. The first time she thought Carteris had killed him.

  More tubes went into his forearm, channels for IV drips that hung from poles, and still more traveled under the blue hospital blanket and into bags draped along the bed’s frame. The surgery had repaired his nicked spleen, as well as the tear in the paper-thin tissue of his lung. But the biggest threat was the hypovolemic shock that had set in from the severe blood loss. Even with transfusions, Trevor’s blood pressure remained low, and medication was necessary to increase it.

  Sitting in a chair at his bedside, Rain lowered her head to the sheets. She wanted to fall asleep next to him and let sweet oblivion drown out the hospital noise and antiseptic smells. But the ICU had a visitation policy of fifteen minutes every two hours, limited to family. She wasn’t even supposed to be here, but Annabelle and Brian had insisted she go in first.

  Rain stayed a few more minutes. Then she reluctantly rose to leave. Placing a kiss on Trevor’s forehead, she turned to see Brian standing outside the door of the ICU bay. He touched her shoulder as she walked past.

  In the waiting room, Annabelle and Sawyer sat together in quiet conversation. Sawyer’s arm rested intimately on the back of the couch behind Annabelle’s head. Cognizant they were no longer alone, Sawyer stood and offered to get a round of coffee from the vending machine, then excused himself.

  “How does he look?” Annabelle asked as Rain sat down.

  “Not good. I know they told us to expect that, but…”

  “He’s going to get through this.” Annabelle spoke with conviction. “I’m sending Brian home to get some sleep. You should go, too. If anything changes, I’ll call.”

  Rain shook her head. “I’m staying.”

  “You’ve had a horrible experience yourself. Now that Trevor’s out of surgery, don’t you think you should see an E.R. doctor?”

  Her wrist was swollen and painful, but that seemed trivial compared to what Trevor was going through.

  “Rain,” Annabelle said quietly. “Did that man hurt you?”

  She focused her gaze on the carpet. Carteris hadn’t raped her, although what he’d done had made her feel violated. Her stomach clenched at the recollection of his scalpel cutting into her. He’d held her down and lapped at the blood flowing over her skin. Had he been reenergizing himself for the night ahead? She’d pushed those memories aside, but now everything was beginning to resurface. Carteris had planned to re-create the night of Desiree’s death, and Rain was aware of just how close he’d come to succeeding.

  “There was a room…in back of the cabin,” she said, needing to give voice to the nightmare. “Carteris made it look like my mother’s old bedroom. I remembered it from my childhood—it had the same furniture, the same bedspread. Even the stuffed animal on the bed was identical.”

  Rain ran her hands over the thighs of the hospital scrubs she wore, avoiding Annabelle’s eyes. “Carteris was going to kill me in that room. He was only waiting for Trevor to arrive. He wanted him to die knowing what was happening to me, but being unable to stop it. If Brian hadn’t shown up when he did, that’s exactly what would’ve happened.”

  “How could he have known what your mother’s bedroom looked like? You don’t really think it’s possible he was involved with her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Annabelle leaned forward and lowered her tone, although the waiting room was otherwise unoccupied. “Christian Carteris was on the board of directors at this hospital. I’ve seen him—his photo’s in the lobby. That man couldn’t have been more than forty or so, could he?”

  Rain sighed. A rational answer eluded her. Not even plastic surgery could have turned back the clock for Carteris to that degree. And it went beyond his face—he’d been strong and quick, able to manhandle her as if she was a child. She thought of the human remains in the swamp. She’d told Sawyer about that, too.

  “There was something about him that seemed…” But Rain couldn’t find the right word. Superhuman? Unwilling to say it aloud, she let the thought slip away as Sawyer returned balancing two coffees. He gave one to Annabelle and the other to her. He was a handsome man, with even features and thick, blond hair cut military short.

  “As soon as you finish that, Annabelle says I’m taking you home.”

  Annabelle sipped from her cup. “She needs to go to the E.R. first to get herself examined. Her wrist needs X-raying, and some of those cuts look pretty bad.”

  “We’ll take care of that, too,” he agreed. Annabelle gave her a look that dared her to argue, and Rain relented. The pain in her wrist was persistent, and her body shook with fatigue. She’d be no good to any of them if she collapsed on the waiting-room floor.

  “You promise you’ll call?”

  “He won’t be awake for hours. Go home and sleep. Have something to eat. You can come back in the afternoon.”

  A little over an hour later, Sawyer held the door open for Rain as they walked outside. She carried a filled antibiotic prescription and wore a brace on her fractured wrist. Above them, darkness was giving way to the glow of early morning.

  Television-news crews had set up in the hospital parking lot. Sawyer maneuvered her through the crowd, stopping only long enough to make it clear there was no official comment at this time. He shielded Rain with his arm, propelling her toward his green Ford Explorer as reporters called after them.

  “This is big news—it’s not every day a top cardiac surgeon turns out to be a serial killer,” Sawyer said as he helped her climb into the vehicle. Once he’d gotten in on the driver’s side, he continued, “The D.A.’s office is conducting a press conference with the FBI and police this afternoon. The Bureau’s VCU director is also flying in from D.C. Trevor should be getting the glory—instead, he’s probably going to get his ass handed to him for breaking protocol and going out there without proper backup, not to mention taking a civilian with him to assist in the rescue.”

  He gave her a serious glance. “Things could’ve gone very wrong out there, Dr. Sommers.”

  Rain fastened her seat belt. Her heart ached for Trevo
r. “I just want him to be okay.”

  “Don’t worry. Trev will pull through.” He smiled faintly and started the engine. “He’s too stubborn not to.”

  “How long have you been seeing Annabelle?” Rain asked.

  “I’ve been seeing her for a long time.” Sawyer appeared thoughtful as he pulled from the parking lot. “Thing is, it’s only lately she’s started to see me.”

  At home, after she’d had dry toast and a cup of tea, Rain wandered into her office. Dahlia rubbed against her ankles as she stood at the window overlooking the small courtyard garden. Celeste’s delicate tea roses were in bloom, and a pair of mourning doves perched on the birdbath at the edge of the brick patio. Purple wisteria hung from the tree boughs. It would have been a peaceful scene, if not for the worry clutching her heart. Annabelle had been right to send her home, she admitted. But she’d nap for only an hour or two and then go right back to the hospital.

  Turning, she noticed her computer was on. Its screen held notes from her sessions with Oliver Carteris. Trevor must have gone through them, looking for clues to her whereabouts. Searching her memory of her conversations with Oliver, she wondered if there’d been some sign she’d missed. Regardless, she had an inescapable feeling that she’d somehow failed to do her job.

  Rain tried to will away her anxiety. She’d told the E.R. doctor what Carteris had done to her, but he’d assured her any risk of HIV transmission through saliva was low. Thankfully, she’d been inoculated against hepatitis B as a precaution during her doctoral program, when she’d spent time working in a facility for troubled adolescents. Still, he’d given her a booster shot to put her mind at ease.