Grounds to Believe

by Shelley Bates

  The machine clicked and rewound as Michael hung up in midprayer.

  Owen was already clattering down the stairs. Julia jumped to her feet and knocked her own chair over. “Owen, wait for me!”

  “Julia, come back here!” Melchizedek ordered. “We’re waiting for your answer!”

  “I have to be with my family!” she shouted up the stairwell, defying the Shepherd to his face for the first time in her life, and slammed the door behind her.

  She doubted that Owen had even registered he had someone in the passenger seat as they tore down the highway toward the hospital. It didn’t matter. She needed time to think.

  His condition is going to go downhill fast, Ross had said. When that happens, you’ll know I’m right. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. This was just a horrible coincidence, the result of poor Ryan’s fragility. She tried not to think about what the book had said. Coma. She didn’t want Ross to be right. Because if he was, then her carefully constructed world of right and wrong was going to come tumbling down. And she wasn’t sure she could stand losing anything more.

  Michael met them at the door of the ward. “Julia, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to wait outside for now. Owen and Madeleine are the only ones I can allow in. I’ll be back in a moment, all right?”

  She nodded and sank onto the familiar vinyl couch while the swinging doors closed behind the two men. Resting her elbows on her knees, she awkwardly massaged the back of her neck with both hands.

  “Here, let me do that.” Two strong hands descended on her shoulders and began to knead her tense muscles. She gasped and jumped, whirling to look up at him. The impact hit her the way it always did. He was so beautiful, standing there in his jeans and white T-shirt, giving her that lazy smile. His eyes were guarded, though. Guarded and unreadable.

  “Hey,” he said gently, holding up both hands like a surgeon after scrubbing, “your muscles will never relax if you do that.”

  “Go away.” Crossing her arms, she hunched over as if protecting herself, her back to him.

  “No.” He gripped her shoulders again, and his fingers felt so good, massaging the pain out of her neck, that her will to resist began to melt away at the same rate as the tension. The circular motion between her shoulder blades stopped, then began again. “Ready to talk?”

  She had to let go of one world and leave it behind. Once again she was at the point where her next words would decide the rest of her life. What could she look forward to with the Elect? Love and approval? Sure, if she wanted to pay the price of a loveless marriage. What could she look forward to on the Outside? Ross’s approval, maybe. Certainly not his love. Her own family would be lost to her. Could she live the rest of her life alone with that knowledge?

  Maybe she should stop looking at it in terms of the love on each side of the scale. She’d taught herself to look for love from the community because she didn’t find it in her family. But as soon as she was Silenced, what kind of love could she look for from anyone?

  What she needed to do was to put this in God’s hands. Really trust, instead of using Him as an insurance policy when all else failed. Because with Him she wasn’t completely powerless. With Him, she could still give love. To Ryan. And for a short time, to Kailey.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He stopped massaging and came around the side of the couch to lower himself beside her. “You sure?”

  “You said he would go into a coma. Now he has.”

  “And you’re willing to help me?”

  “I don’t know what I can do. She’s my sister.” Julia’s lip began to tremble, and she willed the tears away. He made a movement as if to slide a little closer, then stopped himself. Her heart cracked. She craved his arms around her the way an addict must crave his drug. But thinking there was safety in his arms was just a fiction. Their whole relationship was based upon a fiction.

  “As soon as Archer comes back, we’ll talk about it,” he said.

  She lifted her head. “Michael knows?”

  Ross nodded grimly. “He does now. I got a fast analysis on Ryan’s blood. They did what they call a coma panel and it’s definitely isopropyl alcohol.”

  “I read about the symptoms.” Her voice was lifeless.

  “Did you?” He gave her an appraising look. “So did I. Do they fit with what you remember from his history?”

  She nodded, staring at her hands knotted in her lap. “I didn’t want to believe it. I refused to. But everything was there, in a list in a book. What does Michael say?”

  “He believed in Madeleine. But not enough to risk Ryan’s life.”

  The doors swung open and Michael Archer walked over to them. “Julia,” he said. He looked at Ross. “Have you been talking to her about—”

  “Yes. She knows.”

  “How can we bear it?” Michael asked her, as if Ross wasn’t there. His face was pale and rough with stubble. Perspiration matted the normally faultlessly groomed hair falling on his forehead. “She used me. All these years, she’s been playing cat and mouse with me, destroying my credibility, my faith in myself, my reputation…I can hardly believe it. And yet…how can we do this?”

  “I don’t know,” Julia said dully. “But Ryan’s life comes first.”

  “What are you asking us to do?” Michael asked Ross, settling on the arm of the adjoining couch with a sigh of resignation.

  Ross didn’t waste any time. His tone was businesslike. “First of all, it isn’t enough that we can confirm the alcohol in his blood. We have to tie it to Madeleine. Otherwise, it’s too easy for someone else to be blamed.”

  “Someone else? Like a nurse? Or…even Michael?” Julia asked.

  Ross gave her an approving glance. “Yes. Put bluntly, we have to catch her in the act.”

  “But—but that might kill him!” Michael protested. “He’s hemodynamically unstable as it is. His heart is in danger of failing.”

  “The timing has to be perfect. We need a way to watch her with him, yet stop her before she does any more damage. That’s why I need your help, Doctor.”

  “You need access to the surveillance system,” he said.

  “You have one here?” The last word rose on a note of incredulity.

  Michael’s lips twitched in a tired smile. “Even out here in the sticks. But only in the ICU, which is where Ryan is right now. The things are designed to look like smoke detectors. There’s one over every bed.”

  “Are you telling me we might already have her on tape? When can I review them?”

  “No, no. These are only in ICU. Ryan was only moved in here when his condition deteriorated. Up until last night he was in his usual bed in pediatrics.”

  Ross fought against the disappointment. “Who monitors the cameras?”

  “The nurses.”

  “Not good enough. I can’t hang around the nurses’ station for hours on end. Neither can you. Madeleine will know something’s up, and she’s so chummy with them there’s no telling what they’ll spill. Can you have the feed moved to a monitor somewhere else?”

  Michael thought for a moment. “That isn’t really my area of expertise, but I’ll go talk to the director of security and see what he can do.”

  “What can I do?” Julia whispered. All this talk of security and cameras was too real—more real even than reading about Ryan’s symptoms in a book. She needed to go home and hide. But she couldn’t. Ryan couldn’t fight for himself. He needed every bit of help he could get.

  “Come with me,” Ross said, and took her hand.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Ross and Julia sat knee to knee in an office no bigger than a closet, at the end of the hallway bisecting the intensive care unit. Banks of television monitors loomed over them on both sides. Once every thirty minutes the security officer moved from screen to screen, doing his rounds. Movement flickered all around them as the night-shift nurses entered and left through the various doors and stairwells observed by the security cameras, but Ross’s attention was divide
d between the woman beside him and the single screen containing an overhead view of Ryan’s bed. Security hadn’t let him down. They’d split and rerouted the video feed so that Ross could watch Ryan from above like a guardian angel.

  Madeleine just had to make one move and Ross would be down that hallway so fast the doors wouldn’t even have time to shut behind him.

  He leaned toward the monitor. Julia shifted uncomfortably, and he caught a whiff of her scent, that intoxicating compound of shampoo and clean cotton that made him want to pull her into his arms and keep her there forever.

  “Is she asleep?” he asked in a low voice.

  The shadowy black-and-white figure on the screen had slumped bonelessly in the chair next to the bed. Her head tipped back, and her mouth fell open, making her look childlike and vulnerable.

  “She must be,” Julia replied, watching her sister.

  “You don’t quite believe she’s doing it, do you?”

  “How can I?” Julia asked. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”

  He sat back. Loyal to the very last. And maybe beyond. He might as well face it. Once this operation was over, it was stupid to hope he and Julia could ever be together. He’d destroyed her trust, and now he was working hard at destroying her family. Despite her affection for Kailey, he had to admit that life with him would hold very little appeal for her.

  “What do you believe about me?” he blurted, and then cursed himself. Why couldn’t he keep his mouth shut and leave dead romances to lie?

  She seemed to flinch, then schooled her body into its previous calm. Watching the monitor in front of her, she said, “What do your finks usually think about you?”

  The breath whooshed out of him in astonishment. “What?”

  “That’s what you call us, right? Finks? People who get you information so you can arrest other people?”

  “Julia, you are not a fink.”

  “And you’re not a heavy equipment mechanic.”

  Ouch. “Touché.”

  “It must have been fun, getting what you wanted out of me. Information and some rolling around in the grass. Two for the price of one.” He had never heard such a bitter tone from those sweet lips, thinned now with suppressed disappointment and hurt.

  “Please don’t do this.” He’d give anything to stop her inflicting this kind of pain on herself. Especially when every word hurt him twice as much.

  She gave him a cold look over her shoulder, and turned her gaze back to the monitor. “I’m not afraid of the truth.”

  “It isn’t the truth. Not entirely.”

  “Oh? Which was the lie?” She huffed a sardonic laugh. “It couldn’t have been the information. Must’ve been the rolling around.”

  “That wasn’t a lie, either.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Give me credit for some intelligence. Or are you always so enthusiastic about your undercover jobs?” She gave a particularly nasty emphasis to undercover.

  “I wanted that to happen. I wanted you. I’ve been fighting how I felt about you since the beginning.”

  He didn’t know what he expected as an answer, but anything would be better than this silent rejection. Julia watched her sister’s sleeping image on the screen. Her eyes were dry. She didn’t even blink.

  May as well get it all out into the silent intimacy of this little room while he still could. The chances of seeing her and explaining anything after he arrested Madeleine were nil.

  “I believed you were in a cult,” he began, his voice quiet and matter-of-fact. “So the fact that I was attracted to you—well, I hated it. I hate cults, period. I’ve been tracking them down and doing whatever the law allows to break them for years. But that was just an excuse so I could search for Kailey.”

  He glanced at the video screen. No change there. The changes were all in the atmosphere between them, thick with emotion and words that must be said.

  “Two kids have died in the Elect since February. Then there was Ryan. In my line of work, that’s enough to get a file opened. We believed you were doing some kind of sacrifice.”

  Julia said slowly, “Going through the ice isn’t what I’d call a sacrifice. Neither is crib death.”

  “I know. A little investigation discounted that theory almost right away. But the thing I couldn’t discount was Ryan and his history of illness. Evidence just kept piling up until finally I knew I had a case. A different one than the one I’d started with, but a case.”

  “But why me?” she asked, her voice so low it was almost a whisper.

  He took her hand, and when she would have pulled it away, gripped it tighter. “When I first saw you, I thought you were Ryan’s mother.”

  “Me?”

  “You were crying. Grieving. Because you loved him. I knew then that between your love and my work, we might have a chance to save him.”

  “And you needed someone close to my family.”

  He paused, then forced the truth past his teeth. “Right.”

  “Someone you could get close to.”

  “Right.” He could see where she was going with this. “And like I said, the closer I got, the more I wished circumstances were different. That we weren’t together because of my job, but because we cared about each other. You’re not going to forgive me for this, are you?”

  “I don’t know yet.” She held his penitent gaze with her own honest one. “Let’s take one thing at a time.”

  He gave her a crooked smile and turned back to study the monitor, the tightness easing from his shoulders. One thing at a time. There was still hope. He felt strangely at peace in one way, and on edge with tension in another.

  Madeleine stirred. Yawned. Then slid to her knees, templing her hands under her chin. He fought down a spurt of anger that she could do what she was doing and still believe that God was listening to any of her prayers. Then he stopped himself. It wasn’t his place to judge her relationship with God. It was his place to get her into a position where the justice system could judge her actions. That was all.

  “Are we going to sit here all night?” Julia said. “It’s past midnight.”

  “I am. You can go home whenever you want to, you know.”

  “I don’t want to. There’d just be—” She stopped.

  He looked quickly at the screen, but Madeleine hadn’t moved. “What?” She took a deep, shuddering breath, and let it out slowly. He squeezed her hand.

  “There’d just be a phone message from Melchizedek telling me they want my answer. And I’m not ready to give them one.”

  “About what?”

  She told him, in a voice so low he could hardly hear. What he did hear appalled him. “You mean that because we went to recover Kailey, you either get excommunicated or you have to marry Derrick Wilkinson? Are these people crazy?”

  Her eyes were bleak. “It doesn’t matter if they are or not. Either way I lose. I give up my family and friends, or I give up my independence and a chance at happiness with someone else.” She gave him a wistful glance through strands of hair that were beginning to come down. “For Kailey it was worth it. But for me? I don’t know.”

  Pain and guilt twisted deep within his gut, and he dropped her hand reluctantly. He’d done this to her. He’d allowed his disregard for the rules and his needs to override everything, and this was the result. And it wasn’t even finished. The price had escalated even higher than he had imagined.

  “There must be something we can do.”

  “One thing at a time,” she repeated. “That’s the only way we can get through this. You have a job to do. Maybe we should concentrate on that. Ryan is more important right now, then Kailey, then ourselves.”

  Always the giver, always putting someone else before herself. Admiration for her courage rose through the pain. He wasn’t going to let them throw her to the wolves. Once this was behind them, he would—

  “Ross! What’s she doing?”

  He leaned in toward the monitor. The shadowy figure that was Madeleine rose and went to the machine that
administered the cardiac drip that was practically all that was keeping Ryan stable.

  She looked around, then reached up and pressed the buttons. Ross was no expert on these things, but he did know that messing with those numbers was bad.

  He leaped to his feet. “Call Archer! Get Security up there too,” he ordered, and dashed down the corridor.

  An alarm bell went off with a suddenness that made him jump, and a nurse pushed by him shouting, “Emergency in 137B!”

  An emergency team ran down the hall and burst into the room, with Ross right behind them. Madeleine screamed at them to help.

  “I was sitting here praying for him when the alarm went off,” she wept, and one of the nurses put an arm around her and led her to the other side of the room, making soothing noises while the team worked.

  Ross gripped Madeleine’s arm, and she raised huge, beautiful eyes to him. “Mr. Malcolm,” she said. “Are you here to help, too?”

  “What did you do to that dial, Madeleine?” he asked.

  “What?” The nurse glared at him. “Get out of here. Don’t you see we have an emergency with this woman’s child? How did you get in here?”

  He pointed at the cardiac drip. “She changed the IV drip. I was monitoring the video feed. Check it.”

  The nurse hovered between anger and incredulity. “Who are you?”

  He yanked his ID out of his pocket and flashed it at her. “Investigator Malcolm, Organized Crime Task Force. Check the system. Now.”

  Without another word, the nurse went and checked it, then grabbed Michael Archer, who had just joined the crash team.

  “The rate is tripled! I swear I checked him just a little while ago, and it was fine.”

  “Leave that alone!” Madeleine exclaimed. “My son will die if you touch it!”

  Ross tightened his grip on Madeleine’s arm. “He’ll die if you don’t keep away from him. We’ve got you on camera, Mrs. Blanchard. I have grounds to believe you attempted to murder your son. You have the right to remain silent….”

  Julia slipped into the visitors’ room as quietly as she could, and to her intense relief, no one looked up. Everyone was there…her parents, Owen, Derrick. Oh, no. Even Melchizedek, despite the fact that it was painfully early in the morning. She hadn’t slept at all. She doubted anyone had.