by Erin Healy
The chill shocked her eyes open, and she saw him, hovering over her, grimacing and swearing, swiping at her furiously, kicking out his bony knees and feet. One of his arms lashed out like a striking snake. His fanglike fingernails missed her by inches.
Inside Lexi’s mouth, one of the tough shells split open and expelled something hard into the back of her throat. She couldn’t prevent the coughing then. Rolling onto her side, she heaved and sputtered, emptying the sharp contents onto the contrasting snow—tough shells, split open and covered in curling spines; small marbled seeds, black and beautiful. Her tongue tasted blood.
The man who’d attacked her was shrieking at a pitch that brought her hands to her ears.
And then he fell. From a mere five feet, he hit the ground as if he were a skydiver whose chute failed to open. His shrill cry stopped. Logic told Lexi he should have smashed her, and yet he crashed at her side, scattering a layer of dead pine needles. The bone-crushing impact might have killed him.
Might have killed her.
Her body reacted by snapping into a curled position, defensive, cowering. She heard him snarl and she looked.
He was, inexplicably, standing. Crouching, defensive. His skeleton fingers open and shut rhythmically. He paid her no attention.
She weighed whether to play dead or make an escape.
Her knees got themselves up under her. The balls of her feet pushed off the cold ground, and she was running, staggering blind away from the scene. A branch caught the corner of her eye as she weaved through, unbalanced. When her foot hit a thick pile of dead needles, the earth was pulled out from under her. Lexi grabbed a branch on the way down and prevented herself from collapsing completely, but in the swimming gray light, she was still disoriented.
There was cursing and yelling close by, the hissing of expletives sliding past teeth. Then the shrieking started again.
She heard heavy feet pounding, coming in her direction.
The tree she clung to, a crooked bristlecone with branches like bottlebrushes, began to tip.
At first she thought she was passing out, or falling, or dizzy. But when the branch was wrenched out of her hand and she found herself still upright, she scrambled to compute a different explanation. Her palms burned from the stabbing needles.
The tree groaned and the earth broke, giving up the roots. Clods of dirt and snow showered the ground, but the pine shuddered and stilled when it was only halfway over. Ten feet away, a figure dropped out of its bent form and crouched again. Lexi could feel the heat coming off his body.
She turned and ran back the way she had come.
Lexi might as well have been pickled drunk. She couldn’t see where she was going and couldn’t have followed a straight line if it glowed in the dark. So when she crashed into a solid mass, she was only half surprised.
But when the mass surrounded her with bulky arms and picked her up as if she weighed nothing, she put all her remaining strength into wriggling free. She hit and kicked and punched. She sank her teeth into what was in front of her mouth.
“Work with me, Lexi. Quit fighting.”
Angelo. Angelo.
She cried out, so frightened, so relieved. She threw her arms around his neck, smacking his chin in the process, and gripped his collar in her fists. He would have to cut it out of her hands if he wanted her off of him.
The piercing howls of Lexi’s stalker sliced the darkness in half.
“What’s happening?” she gasped. “Did he get out of the Residence?”
“Hold on,” Angelo said.
“Where’s security?”
There was no time for stupid questions.
She pressed her face against his shoulder. Angelo had one hand on her waist. She didn’t know what he was doing with the other one. Clearing tree branches as they plunged into the depths of the wooded property maybe. She didn’t care.
It seemed to her he ran for hours; it seemed only seconds. When they stopped, though, they were on a hill above the Residence. She recognized the spot.
A walking path snaked through the rolling glade at the bottom the slope. Her dad loved to be out on that path.
Angelo set her down and her old tennis shoes crunched into an icy layer of old snow.
She still clung to his flannel shirt.
“Let go,” he ordered.
She couldn’t disobey that tone.
His body was turned to the east, alert.
She didn’t ask what he was waiting for.
It came through the trees like a bullet, too fast to be seen as much as sensed—a snarling, leaping form that lunged for Angelo’s throat. They connected in a wrestling match that became unnaturally quiet.
Lexi dropped to the ground mere feet away, groping for rocks to throw, or a heavy branch to swing. Her hand closed around a stone as heavy as a paperweight, and she tore her gaze off the entangled fight to dig it out of the compressed dirt.
The silence of the fight gave way to brief shouting.
“Mine mine mine mine mine!” the man screamed.
“You don’t have any power here,” Angelo declared.
“Mine mine mine . . .”
The screech ended like a man falling off a cliff.
The tips of Lexi fingernails turned black as she dug into the cold earth. In three seconds, maybe four, she palmed the mass and hefted it over her shoulder to throw it. Her eyes locked onto her target.
But she let the rock fall to the ground behind her.
On the crystal slope, Angelo was bent at the waist, hands on knees, heaving, still standing but spent.
Fifty yards downhill, in the grassy depression between Angelo and the path, all that was left of the man who’d attacked her was a tattered army jacket, lying in a circle of melted snow and a cloud of rising steam.
{ chapter 25 }
Grant was leaving his shift late, thanks to a flooded laundry room, and making his exit through the kitchen delivery dock when Angelo came up the outer stairs with Lexi. His wife was holding Angelo’s hand. Clinging to his hand with both of hers. Her eyes were wide under her frowning brows.
She didn’t seem to notice Grant standing there. Her temple bulged under her hairline, and her clothes were filthy, her pretty brown hair tangled. There was blood on her lips.
Grant reached back to keep the door open.
“What happened?”
Lexi registered the sound of his voice and turned her face toward him, looking stunned. It occurred to Grant that he’d forgotten to mention where he was employed as a janitor.
“Can you get her some ice?” Angelo asked.
“How bad is it?”
“I’m fine.”
“She’s not fine.”
Grant moved quickly to the freezer in the back. When he returned to the kitchen, Lexi was leaning against a stainless-steel table while Angelo examined the gash on her head.
“Some maniac attacked me.”
Angelo stepped away and let Grant apply the ice pack he’d made out of a dishtowel. The fear that ripped through him was unfamiliar. What if Lexi had been killed? What would that have done to Molly?
What would that have done to him?
Grant supported the back of her head with one hand and applied the pack with the other. Her head was warm, her hair as silky as ever. He could smell the scent of lotion on her skin, the same cheap drugstore brand that she’d asked him to pick up for her once with a pack of diapers.
She smelled like almonds. Their sweetness brought back good memories. Newlywed happiness.
Her shoulders relaxed.
Grant cleared his throat. “Someone from the Residence?”
She and Angelo exchanged a look he couldn’t interpret. “It seemed that way,” she finally said.
“I’ll drive you to the hospital.” Grant said.
“No.”
Angelo took his side. “Yes.” The huge orderly opened his hand above the shiny table and upended several objects that looked like sci-fi models of viruses enlarged to a million times
their actual size.
“What’s that?” Grant leaned over them while keeping pressure on Lexi’s head. A few of the hard, nutshell-like things were whole. A couple had split in two. Mixed among them were three black beans.
“These were in her mouth,” Angelo said. He pushed them around with an index finger.
Grant grimaced and looked at Lexi again. She was wiping the blood off her lips. “They cut you? The inside of your cheek?” He tried to look.
“It’s not a big deal,” she said, twisting her neck away.
“It’s a huge deal,” Angelo said, fingering one of the black beans. He held it up for her to see. “Castor beans.”
“Castor beans.” Her smile was weak. “So he thought he was a doctor— about a hundred years behind the times.”
“Or a killer,” Angelo said. “The oil’s a decent remedy for some things, but these beans are one of the deadliest plant poisons around.”
Lexi paled. “How deadly?”
“How many did you swallow?” he asked.
“None. I didn’t swallow anything.” Her tongue traced the insides of her mouth.
“The pods burst when they warm up,” Angelo said. “Usually in summertime. One or two is deadly enough.”
He seemed to be talking to himself, examining the hulls. He inserted his thumb into the hollow of one, then broke off the spines on its outer side.
“There must be more efficient ways to kill someone,” Grant said, then wished he hadn’t.
“There are faster ways,” Angelo said.
“I didn’t swallow anything,” Lexi repeated, maybe to convince herself.
“Open your mouth,” Grant ordered. He directed her yawn toward an overhead light and this time she complied. It was hard to see anything. After a second she jerked her chin out of his hands and wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“You ought to see a doctor,” Grant said.
“No. No hospitals.” She walked toward the door, but when Angelo and Grant didn’t follow her, she paused and crossed her arms. Then she stared at the black rubber mat under her feet.
“Can we clean it somehow?” Grant asked Angelo. “A saltwater rinse or something?’
Angelo’s eyebrows went up and Lexi clapped her hand over her mouth.
“Right. Dumb idea.”
“Sterile saline might work,” Angelo said. “I know where I can get some. Stay with her.”
He left the kitchen, carrying the freaky little castor beans and their pods away with him. A brief flash of annoyance came over Grant. How could a man like him compete with a sunshine boy like that? It was Hades versus Hercules.
Lexi continued to avoid his eyes, her hand still over her mouth. Grant put his hands in his pockets. A warming ice cube cracked in the bundle that had been abandoned on the table.
He spoke first, out of desperation to connect with her. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt. Worse than you are.”
She nodded.
The old analog clock over the sink ticked.
He said, “Did you notify security? About the—”
“Not yet. It just happened.”
“Where’s the guy?”
Lexi shook her head.
“What if he’s still—”
“He’s not,” she said. Grant waited for an explanation. She didn’t offer one.
“Lexi—”
“You didn’t tell me you worked here.” It was an accusation that rubbed Grant the wrong way.
“You didn’t tell me your dad was a patient.”
She glared at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He sighed. The refrigerator hummed. “You come to visit him tonight?”
Lexi looked at the door Angelo had exited. Grant understood in an instant. It seemed he was going to have to stand there and take one hit after another.
But then, he deserved each strike.
She said, “I saw Norman Von Ruden today.”
Norman Von Ruden. Norman Von Ruden? The only man in the world Lexi probably hated more than Grant.
“Why?”
“He asked me to.”
“Why?”
“He had . . . news for me. About you.”
“Did he, now?”
Her eyes were knives.
“He says the meds you sold to him back before the incident were blanks.”
“What?”
“Don’t play deaf.”
He wasn’t playing deaf. His question was a reaction to the past sneaking up on him from behind and taking a bite out of his neck.
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Grant mumbled.
“He’s blaming you for . . . for Tara.”
“You can’t believe him.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because he was found guilty! He was on tape, for crying out loud! The jury took less than an hour to reach their verdict!”
“I don’t mean he didn’t . . . that he wasn’t the one who . . .” She huffed. “His head wasn’t right, and that was your fault!”
“How could it be my fault?”
“What did you sell him?”
“Exactly what he paid for.”
“What does that mean? That he paid for sugar pills?”
Grant realized then that he had been sucked into an argument he’d been making for ages: that he wasn’t to blame for anything, that others’ lives weren’t his responsibility. His whole point in coming back to Riverbend had been to prove he could quit this way of thinking. Her very question begged him to live up to his self-promise that he would find a way to make things right. So when Lexi stood there looking pained and beaten and disbelieving of his worn-out lines, all smug defenses drained out of his heels.
“Yes,” he said.
She blinked, and her lips parted.
“I sold him fakes.”
“Why? What did you think? That he wouldn’t know? That he didn’t really need them?”
Grant couldn’t remember what he thought back then. What he thought now was that everyone medicated themselves with things that didn’t cure their sicknesses. A man who went to the street to find help he could have gotten from a doctor’s office was probably looking for something no one could give him. In that sense, no, Grant would say Norman didn’t need those pills.
But Lexi would misunderstand him if he said that.
“This is why I left.”
“What?”
“When the manic-depressive thing came out in court . . . when they said he’d failed to be diagnosed or treated . . . I figured he’d point the figure at me. At us.”
“There was no us in your schemes.”
“No, there wasn’t. But if I’d stayed . . . you and Molly . . . it’s a small town.”
Her arms dropped to her sides.
“You left us for something that never happened?”
Grant cleared his throat.
Lexi’s steeliness returned. “You could have taken us with you.”
“You wouldn’t have come.”
“I wou—”
“Lexi, we shouldn’t lie to each other any more.”
Tears coated her eyes and she looked away.
“I was the one doing the lying,” Grant confessed. “You don’t know half of what I was into. When your sister died, everything I’d told myself about how my ventures with Ward were harmless, good money . . . I was the fool. I thought, what if it had been you he’d run into? What if you’d seen him and stopped to be friendly, and he snapped? Tara was a complete stranger to him. It was such a freak coincidence.”
Lexi stood in profile to Grant with her head bent and both hands clutching the back of her neck. Her eyes were closed. He shouldn’t have brought up her sister, but he didn’t know how he could have avoided it. Grant rushed to say everything before he chickened out.
“Everything seems wrong now. Leaving was wrong. Staying was wrong. At least, staying while dealing was, but I didn’t know how to get out. It’s taken me years. I did some time, which was a backhanded gift. Lots of time to stare my
mistakes in the face. Your mom probably told you.”
Lexi didn’t move.
“I don’t expect you to excuse me from being an idiot. But at the time I honestly believed I was protecting you and Molly. I did. I’m sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am, how badly I want to make it up to you.”
She shook her head. Grant didn’t know how to interpret that.
“I’m totally clean, Lexi. Going on two years.” He sounded pathetic, so he shut up.
A long minute ticked by over the sink.
“You can make it up to us,” she finally said.
“How? Tell me. Anything.”
“Ward wants his money.”
Grant didn’t see the connection but said, “I’m working on that.”
“He wants it by Friday.”
“Well, he’ll have to wait.”
“He won’t wait.”
“What does that mean? I don’t have it. It takes a while to save up ten grand when you’re working at minimum wage.”
“Ten?”
“I owe him ten thousand dollars. That might not seem like much, considering how much money used to pass through our hands every day, but legally earned cash is hard to—”
“He says twenty-five.”
Five years ago, Grant would have laughed at that and cursed. In the face of Lexi’s expression, though, his stomach flipped.
“That’s twice what—why is he talking to you about what I owe him?”
“He wants Molly.”
Grant shook his head. It was impossible to follow the turn of this discussion.
“He wants me to get the money from you in exchange for Molly’s safety.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Who cares about sense?” The volume of her voice rose. “I’ve raised my daughter in spite of you; I’ve been her mother and father for seven years, and we are still paying for your stupid, stupid choices! Tell me that makes sense, Grant.”
“Why would he want Molly?”
Lexi threw up her hands. “The question is, do you really want her? Or if that means you have to pay up, is your daddy-dearest plan going to turn out to be a farce?”
“Hey!”
“Don’t pretend to be offended.”
“Look, I screwed up. I’ve been trying to apologize. I don’t know how many more ways to say I’m sorry. But if I didn’t care about you and Molly I wouldn’t be here. You’ve got to know how hard this is for me.”