The Mia Quinn Collection

by Lis Wiehl

  Now she shuffled down the hall to the laundry closet. It seemed oddly empty. Shouldn’t there be more sheets and blankets? Were they stuffed in one of the laundry room’s baskets? Or had Brooke built a fort someplace that she hadn’t noticed? But that didn’t explain the shelf that was normally stacked with toilet paper. Half of it was missing.

  Was Gabe sneaking out to TP people’s houses? Did kids even do that anymore? And if they did, and he did, how was he getting out without waking her? Her bedroom was on the other end of the hall, but these days it seemed like she slept as lightly as if she’d drunk two cups of coffee before going to bed. Which sometimes she had.

  Mia remade Brooke’s bed while Brooke curled up on the carpeted floor. It only took a few minutes, but still her daughter was asleep by the time she finished. She picked her up and laid her down, pulled the quilt over her shoulders. Too tired to carry the soiled sheets down to the basement laundry room, Mia compromised by tossing them down onto the tile floor of the first-floor foyer.

  She meant to return to her room, but when she went back to check on Brooke, the temptation proved too much. She curled up beside her on the toddler bed. Brooke was usually a restless sleeper, flinging her arms and legs about as if she were performing jumping jacks in her dreams, but for once she was still. And oh, how Mia missed the warmth and companionship of another body in bed. She curled around her daughter and held her close.

  She closed her eyes, but sleep eluded her. The day ran through her head again in a series of frightening images. Young’s contorted face as he ran toward her. The squad cars outside her house. The cops with their guns drawn. Charlie talking about the unexplained injuries to Scott’s head. Betty’s beautiful, complacent face. The glittering diamond ring bouncing across the floor. Scott drowning.

  What secrets had he taken to his grave?

  And what would happen once she started to uncover them?

  CHAPTER 16

  TUESDAY

  Vin opened the closet door to get his coat. He paid no attention to the figure lying on the floor, jackknifed at the waist, dark hair covering its face. Its right leg stuck out at an odd angle.

  He had bought the girl on Craigslist. You could get anything there. Even girls made of plaster, girls who had once been painstakingly dressed in the fashions of the day, posed to entice customers to buy what they wore. Girls who had eventually been discarded to make room for newer, lighter models made of plastic.

  Up close, she didn’t look that real, what with the chip missing from the tip of her nose and her oddly pink skin. But if you laid her out at night in front of a car that you had skewed across the road, a car with its hood up and its flashers on, she looked real enough.

  Real enough to make a man’s heart stutter in his chest when he rounded a corner and saw her lying there. Especially if his drink had been spiked.

  Real enough to make him jerk his car to the right to avoid running her over.

  Real enough to make him plow into a line of trees.

  Real enough to kill him. With a little help from Vin.

  CHAPTER 17

  Where was she? Mia’s eyes flew open. Her panicked breathing echoed in her ears. Her heart was beating like a windup toy. She scrambled back until her shoulder blades were against the wall, her teeth bared, ready to fight.

  Then she blinked, finally absorbing where she was. She wasn’t on the floor of the courtroom with a razor blade at her throat. She wasn’t fighting off Scott’s killer or saving Gabe from an armed intruder or trying to rescue Scott from the waves. She was in Brooke’s toddler bed. From the wall, stenciled images of bunnies and puppies smiled down at her. Brooke was still asleep, the deep sleep that only a small child was capable of, one undisturbed by Mia’s panic.

  It was early in the morning, early enough that the sky outside Brooke’s window was still dark.

  With a groan Mia got to her feet. Her back ached as if she had slept like a contortionist. The bathroom mirror revealed scattered bruises on her neck and torso, from both Bernard Young and the men who had tried to save her from him. A few were shaped like fingerprints, and one faint mark on her throat was the half-moon shape of a fingernail. Mia shivered as she thought of how close she had come to dying.

  Last night Charlie had given her copies of the accident report and the external examination report, but she hadn’t looked at them yet. She didn’t have the emotional strength. Today Charlie planned to ask Puyallup County to reopen the investigation into Scott’s accident. And when the detectives came to talk to her, she would show them everything they had found. Even the photo of Betty. Even the diamond ring.

  She stayed in the shower for a long time, trying to wash off the residue of her dreams, the memories of yesterday. Twenty-four hours ago she would have said she had known Scott, had known even his flaws. Now she wondered how much one person could ever know another.

  Downstairs she put Brooke’s sheets in the wash. It was still early, so she didn’t need to get the kids up yet. Weekday mornings were usually a stressful blur. If she wasn’t careful, all her kids’ memories would be of her barking at them to get up, hurry up, clean up.

  In this new reality Mia was always running late, catching up, taking shortcuts, forgetting something, making do. Juggling a half dozen cases, worrying about Gabe and Brooke, trying to put more or less healthy meals on the table, overseeing homework, doing laundry. Keeping to a budget while she slowly repaid the debts. Every night she fell into bed thinking of all the things she hadn’t accomplished during the day.

  Now she checked the flour canister. The envelope she had put the ring box in was still buried in the bottom, a temporary hiding place until she could figure out what to do next.

  For right now, she decided that next meant making pancakes.

  Fifteen minutes later Gabe shambled into the kitchen, alternating yawns with sniffs of the air. “Pancakes? Is it somebody’s birthday?” Since she had gone back to work, breakfast meant cold cereal for the kids. Mia was lucky if she remembered to grab a granola bar to eat in the car.

  “No. I just felt like making them.” She sprinkled chocolate chips over the batter she had just poured on the griddle.

  Deftly avoiding a swat from her spatula, Gabe grabbed the top pancake off the finished stack. “I’m sorry I went inside yesterday after the alarm went off,” he said with a full mouth. “That was kind of stupid.”

  It was a rare apology.

  “We’re just lucky it all turned out okay. Next time, though—well, I hope there isn’t a next time—but if there is, and you feel like something’s not right, stop. And then talk to an adult about it. Me, Charlie, or at least one of the neighbors . . . even if you think you can handle it by yourself.”

  “I wish Dad were still alive.” Gabe reached for another pancake, and this time she didn’t try to stop him.

  “You and me both, buddy.” Although if Scott were to appear before her now, her first instinct would be to slap him. The second? That . . . she still wasn’t sure of.

  Gabe cut his eyes sideways at her and then away. “What were you and Charlie really doing downstairs last night?”

  Had he overheard them? Mia had to tread carefully. She didn’t want Gabe to know about Betty.

  “There’s some stuff about your dad’s old business that I need to clear up.”

  He nodded, but she wondered if he believed her.

  “Can you get your sister up? I want to make sure she has enough time to eat.” Brooke was a dawdler.

  “Sure.” He looked at the clock on the stove. “Maybe you can even eat with us today?”

  Something squeezed her heart. How many fourteen-year-old boys would ask their mom that? And how many studies showed that a family sitting down to eat together was better for kids? These days Mia ate most of her meals on her feet as she tried to keep one step ahead of the chaos.

  “I’d love to.”

  Mia was one of the first people into work. When she opened the door to her office, she smelled the flower arrangement before
she saw it. Surrounded by a cloud of pink cellophane, it sat in the middle of her small conference table. Pink roses and mini carnations provided the backdrop for showy stargazer lilies. Each pastel petal was outlined in white and dappled with red.

  What was wrong with Mia that when she leaned over to sniff and saw the red dots, the first thought she had was of blood splatter?

  She opened the card. It was signed by Judge Rivas, as well as everyone who had been working in the courtroom yesterday, including Rolf Dockins, Young’s defense attorney. They all wished her well, praised her for being a trouper, and complimented her on her strength. The lid on the box where she had put the experience threatened to pop off, but she pushed it back down. Someday she would have time to process what had happened, but not now.

  Knuckles rapped on her open door. She turned to see Frank.

  “I heard about what happened yesterday, Mia. I wish you would have told me. Should you even be here today?” His brown eyes were filled with concern.

  Still, she was sure that right above those eyes his brain was busy calculating what her taking off a day or two would do to the shopping cart case. Frank knew her home and cell phone numbers. If he had really wanted her to stay home, he would have called.

  “I’m okay. Just a little banged up. It all happened so fast, I didn’t really have time to be scared.” She pushed her memories of screaming in terror, barely pausing to draw breath, out of her head and back into storage.

  How was she going to have the energy to work today and then teach? Fake it until you make it, she told herself. She was an actress playing Mia. The Mia everyone needed her to be.

  CHAPTER 18

  In a glass-walled ICU room, Tamsin Merritt lay surrounded by a tangle of tubes, wires, and machines. Mia stepped lightly across the threshold, unconsciously holding her breath, as if she might waken her. In part she had come here to escape the parade of concerned co-workers, but now that she was here she found herself even more off balance.

  Tamsin’s face was swollen and discolored, her eyes shallow, purple slits. White gauze was wrapped around the top of her head. The edges of the gauze were marked with a brownish ooze of bloody fluid. The air smelled of disinfectant mingled with other, deeper scents that Mia couldn’t name.

  A narrow foam pad was wrapped around the back of Tamsin’s neck, cushioning her from the tie that held in place the flexible white breathing tube inserted into the hollow of her throat. Two more large flexible tubes were joined to it, one white and one blue, and they were connected to an accordion-like pump on a stand by the bed. The room was filled with the sound of its rhythmic wheezing. The machine’s pace was much slower than normal breathing, so it seemed to Mia as if Tamsin were holding each breath. The long pause before the air was released in a whoosh heightened Mia’s anxiety.

  From a pole, three IV bags dripped into Tamsin’s arm. At the far end of the bed hung another bag half filled with pale urine. Above her head, a monitor showed various numbers and graphs that constantly changed. The woman at the center of it all, the one being kept alive by the beeping and whooshing machines, lay as still as if she were already in her grave.

  When Mia thought of the two boys who had done this, her heart hardened. Anyone who was capable of inflicting this kind of terrible injury certainly deserved to be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

  She stepped closer. Tamsin was covered by a doubled sheet. A folded blue blanket, splotched with dried blood, rested under her head and on top of the pillow. Half her dark hair had been shaved, and the remnants were matted together with more blood. Large black stitches ran across her forehead and then back along the stubbled part of her skull.

  A doctor entered the room. He was in his midthirties, with a muscular physique that loose blue scrubs couldn’t hide. A stethoscope was draped over his neck, and under his blue cloth cap his head was shaved. He frowned at her. “Are you a family member?”

  “I’m from the King County prosecutor’s office,” Mia said. “We’ll be handling her case.”

  “You do know she can’t talk to you?” he asked as he leaned over to check Tamsin’s IVs.

  “I just wanted to see her for myself. So I can fully understand what they did to her.”

  He turned toward Mia and his upper lip curled back. “They dropped a shopping cart on her from four stories up. And why? For fun? Even animals don’t do that to each other.”

  Mia didn’t say anything, but she wondered if the doctor was right. When she was growing up, their cat, Applesauce, had liked to play with his prey. He would let a mouse run off a few inches, squeaking desperately, then pounce on it again and idly bat it about or carry it in his mouth for a few yards. Then he would drop the mouse and start the game all over again, turning with a hiss on any human who tried to intervene. And when the poor thing was finally dead, half the time he wouldn’t even eat it.

  Mia gathered up her courage and stepped closer to Tamsin. It was hard to look at her and think of the woman she had been only a few days ago. Just heading to the store with her son to do some shopping. How many times had Mia been in her shoes? Now she was a seemingly lifeless body on a bed.

  “So that’s where the shopping cart hit her?” Mia said in a near whisper, pointing at the stitches.

  “There?” the doctor answered, making no effort to keep his voice down. “Yes, but we also had to remove a piece of her skull.” Mia must have made a face, because he said, “If your brain starts to swell, it has no place to go. So we do what’s called a hemicraniectomy. We removed a portion of her skull to allow her brain to swell beyond the confines of the bone without causing further elevations in brain pressure.” One of the numbers on the monitor went higher, to ninety-five.

  It wasn’t so long ago that Mia had nursed Brooke, watched her heartbeat pulsing on the soft spot of her skull. But eventually her fontanel had knit together, as it was designed to do. How could you go out into the world with only a stretch of skin protecting your brain?

  Mia shivered. “So she’s always going to be missing part of her skull?”

  He shook his head. “No, no. We froze it. Once the swelling has resolved, we can suture it back onto its original place.”

  She had no desire to learn how you sewed bone to bone. “And she’s still in a coma?”

  “Yes, but remember we put her in it. So it’s a medically induced coma, not one caused by the trauma to her brain. We did it to slow things down. While she’s in the coma, her brain doesn’t need as much energy. So hopefully it’s less likely that parts of it will die.” He sighed. “Still, even if she recovers, anyone surviving a cranial injury of this magnitude should expect to contend with some degree of permanent disability. There could be memory problems, difficulty with solving problems or planning actions, changes in personality, physical impairment—it’s a wide range, and hard to predict. She’s going to need extensive physical therapy at a minimum, and probably some type of long-term care.”

  Mia wondered if they should be talking about Tamsin like this right in front of her. Wasn’t it true that hearing was the last sense to go?

  The doctor was looking up at something, and Mia followed his gaze. The numbers on the monitor kept going up even as she watched: 99, 102, 108, 115. An alarm began to sound. He reached up to turn it down and then leaned over Tamsin. “I don’t like this tachycardia. It can cause blood clots, and she could have a heart attack or a stroke. I need you to leave. Now.”

  Mia hurried out of the room as a half dozen people in scrubs ran toward it.

  CHAPTER 19

  Why didn’t you tell me?” Charlie demanded as soon as Mia climbed into his car. Part of him wanted to throttle her. They were going to meet with Tamsin’s husband, Wade, and their son, Luke, but right now his focus was only on Mia. “Someone tries to cut your throat with a razor blade in court yesterday and you don’t even think to mention it?”

  When another detective asked Charlie this morning if he had heard what happened to Mia, everything had stopped for him. He hadn’t bee
n able to move or even think until he learned that (a) she was unhurt and (b) the attack had occurred the day before.

  “A few other things happened after that. As you might remember.” Mia managed a faint smile, but her face was so pale her skin appeared nearly translucent. “It didn’t come up.”

  “Were you hurt at all?” Charlie’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

  “Just a few bruises, but I think most of them came from everybody piling on, trying to get that guy off me. Trevor Gosden knocked the razor blade out of his hand before he could do any damage. I just don’t know where it came from.”

  “It’s possible to tuck a razor blade between your cheek and gum.” Charlie poked his tongue into his cheek.

  “Like chewing tobacco?”

  “Only more deadly. Then you just put your hand up to your mouth, like you’re coughing, and spit it out.” If Trevor hadn’t been there, Young might have slit Mia’s throat from ear to ear. Charlie made a mental note to buy the guy a beer.

  “The only good thing about yesterday was it was all so stressful,” Mia said. “I couldn’t really take any one part of it in. There was no time to think about what had just happened because something new and equally bad was happening. In a way, maybe that was actually better.” She scrubbed her face with her hands. “I did have a lot of nightmares last night. Only they were all about Scott. He was drowning in the ocean. And I tried and tried, but I couldn’t save him.”

  If Charlie had been in her dream, he would have thrown that jerk a cement block.

  “When I was a kid, some nights I couldn’t go to sleep for thinking about what it would be like to drown.” Mia looked over at him. “Did you know that parts of the ocean are over seven miles deep? I used to lie in bed thinking about sinking down, down, down.” One hand touched her neck. “And no air.”