She looked pale, almost Janey’s color, but there seemed to be a faint bit of pink right around her cheeks. Her eyes were closed, but her breathing caused the blanket that covered her to rise and fall.
Then, there was a fluttering, and Mala’s eyes opened. She focused right on Janey, and a slight smile covered her face.
Janey felt like her heart was going to beat its way right out of her chest, as she went up and took Mala’s hand. Mala gave a small little pulse with her hand as well as a slight smile, and Janey knew that this wasn’t her imagination, or some weird dream she’d created in her own head.
Mala was alive. And she was going to be okay.
Janey gave Mala’s hand another squeeze, then shot her hand up next to her adoptive mother’s side. That was where someone had placed Popeye.
Taking back her bear in one swift motion, Janey refused to meet Mala’s gaze. Especially since her adoptive mother’s hand reached out, groping for the bear.
Okay. Janey probably should have left Popeye where he was, but Mala was out of surgery, so she didn’t need him anymore. Right?
Well, that’s what Janey was going with, anyway. She gave Popeye a big hug, and the bear complained that she was suffocating him. Just like he always did.
Sighing, Janey allowed herself a tiny smile.
She’d missed that bear.
* * *
Trey had been right, for once.
When he returned with the information that Mala was out of surgery and had woken up, things turned around for Maggie at once. Of course, he hadn’t said anything about the attempt on Mala’s life. That seemed like it would have been in bad form.
Getting past the nurses to talk to Maggie in the first place hadn’t been as tough as he’d thought it was going to be. He’d already planned out how he was going to say that there was a suspect on the loose and that he needed access to the room to search it.
How he would have been able to do that while not telling Maggie about the intruder, he hadn’t quite figured out yet.
But when he got to the room, one of the nurses… the one who had shoved Trey out of the room in the first place, in fact… called into Maggie. “I found him!”
Great. So she’d noticed he was gone, had she? Started some kind of man search for him? Trey couldn’t win tonight, apparently.
But before Maggie could launch into him, he held up a hand and told her about Mala. Even Trey, with his lack of medical training, could tell that the beepy machine thingy slowed down its screeching once he’d done that.
And now he was standing next to the doctor, waiting for his baby to come out. According to the on-call OB/GYN, it was going to be any second.
It better be. Because what Trey was seeing right now was going to scar him for life, if he had to stay there another minute.
Seriously. Miracle of birth, nothing. This was just wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
But then he heard the words from the doctor, “Okay, one more big push.”
There was a scream from Maggie, a sort of slippery slurping noise from between her legs, and then out came…
A freaking lizard.
Maggie had just given birth to an alien life form. That couldn’t possibly be the child they had created together, could it?
Trey blamed his father. The man had never been considered a classic beauty. But really, when you thought about it, it was just as much his mom’s fault. After all, she’d decided to marry the man. They both shared in this… whatever it was.
And yet, as soon as the lizard-alien-thing opened its mouth to take in a breath and then let out a mewling cry, Trey found that his heart completely melted. This reptilian creature covered in blood and mucus and all kinds of ungodliness had now become the point of focus for everything in Trey’s life.
He had no idea what this meant, or how this child was going to change things for him. All he knew was that he would do anything for…
Hold on. He didn’t even know what the sex was.
Looking over at the doctor, Trey raised his eyebrows. “Well?”
“Well, what?” the doctor asked.
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
The OB/GYN frowned. “You can’t see for yourself?”
“That seems a little… I don’t know… invasive, don’t you think?” Trey wasn’t sure of the protocol here, but peeking made him feel like he was treating his child like some kind of livestock or something.
“Oh, Trey, for crying out loud,” Maggie groaned from further up on the bed. “Just take a look. It’s a girl.”
A girl. He had a baby girl.
Wasn’t that something?
“Look at what we did, babe,” he said to the love of his life. “We made a girl.”
Maggie pulled a face. “Well, I would say the part you had to play in it was on the minimal side.”
But Trey refused to have her ruin this moment. “We have a girl. And she’s going to look like you.” He glanced at their baby, who was being cleaned off by a nurse. “Well, she will at some point, anyway.”
Maggie chuckled and then gave a deep sigh. “So now all we have to do is name her. Any thoughts?”
For a moment, Trey drew a blank. But then a thought came to him.
“What about Darcie?”
A smile grew on Maggie’s face, and Trey knew that their daughter had a name.
Now he just wondered what Darc would have to say about it.
CHAPTER 5
Darc processed the information that came in to his mind with superhuman speed and accuracy. All was filtered through a dark weave of anger that fueled every move made within the colored web of logic.
That darkness spread, infusing the entire network with the energy of his rage. Nothing escaped his attention. No one was immune from its probing.
He stepped back into Mala’s recovery room, taking in the fact that Janey was by the side of the bed and that the girl once more held her bear. The data streamed through the system, coming out on the other end with an analysis.
Mala had come out of the surgery well. If there were still a risk, Janey would not have recovered her stuffed animal.
The girl looked up at him, her eyes asking a question. But Darc had neither the time nor the inclination to turn away from his line of inquiry.
Here.
The killer had come here. To this room. To finish what he had started with Mala. Climbing up through the shaft in the ceiling, the attacker had managed to elude everyone in the hospital so far.
Something about that thread of color stood out in stark contrast to the rest of the logical flow. The exits from the ventilation system might be many, but the hospital had been placed on lockdown. The few vents that opened onto the outside of the building had been staffed with uniformed policemen, and no one had attempted egress.
Which meant that the killer still lurked inside the building.
The strands of reason slithered out, imbued with dark rivulets of rage. The intense non-heat of the black pockets kept Darc focused, pushing back the inertia of the white empathy that still attempted to pulse its way back into his awareness.
Mala stirred and opened her eyes, and for a moment, that white light inside surged forth, filling Darc up with its sweet warmth. He moved over to her side, and Mala slid her hand into his.
“Robi.”
Hearing his name on her lips, his given name, caused a thrill of pleasure to course down Darc’s spine. A sense of expansion filled his chest, and the silver chains began to sally forth from deep within him, pushing back the black that had taken their place.
Then Mala winced and her grip slackened.
The black rose up, a dark tide that swept aside any light or warmth it encountered. Mala had almost been murdered. Twice. And right when Darc had needed to be aware and present the most, his newfound empathy had abandoned him. Left him powerless.
“Darc, what’s happening to you?” Mala whispered, a thread of something negative running through her tone.
Fear, the blackness
inside of Darc whispered. Power, it murmured in an even lower tone.
The voice was the suspiration of a pocket of decay uncovered. The charnel breath of a sepulcher opened after decades of rot.
But he could also feel the strength that flowed through him. Fortification for the task that awaited him.
“Rest,” he commanded Mala.
“No, Darc,” she answered, the pressure she exerted on his hand increasing. “There’s something wrong. I can see it.”
He leaned in close, responding to her stronger grip with one of his own. “He tried to kill you. I cannot allow that.”
“Darc. Please.” A strong emotion radiated from Mala’s quiet tone, but the specifics of that feeling were lost on the black veins that ran through Darc’s awareness. “Don’t let this thing consume you. Robi.”
But his first name coming out of her mouth now sounded false to him. Not that her speaking it was false. The moniker itself was. That name had nothing to do with him in this moment.
He would not allow it to.
Removing his hand from Mala’s, Darc nodded once to Janey and left the room.
There was work to be done, and it demanded the dead of night to accomplish.
* * *
Trey wandered through the halls of the hospital, trying to find his way back down to Mala’s room. This had officially gotten ridiculous.
How many times had he gone back and forth? And he still couldn’t manage to do it without getting turned around at least twice.
Glaring at one of the useless signs that were posted up on the walls, Trey tried to decipher its cryptic messages. Did that arrow mean forward or left? Or did it mean he was going in the wrong direction entirely? There was no real way to know.
As he turned away from the wall, Trey almost ran into Laurel and Hardy, who were busy talking to a large figure behind them. Captain Merle.
Man. Trey wasn’t positive, but he was pretty sure that if he’d gotten shot, none of these gentlemen would have shown up at the hospital. Granted, Mala was a lot hotter than he was, but that didn’t seem all that fair.
“Ah, Detective Keane,” Commissioner Laurel… no, Laurent… said in his quiet voice. “So Dr. Charan is out of surgery and doing well?”
“She is?” Trey gushed, relieved. “That’s amazing!”
“We just got word from one of the unis assigned to protect her, ” Hardin added.
“Yeah,” Trey answered. “I mean… I’ve been a little distracted… My baby was being born, so…” He stopped himself. “Hold on a sec. You guys just came down to check on Mala?”
There was an awkward pause as the three men glanced at one another. Then Laurent stepped in to fill the gap.
“Yes. Yes. Just wanted to be a support to those who help out the police force.”
“Right,” Hardin chimed in. “We’ll just step in and drop off these.”
He held up a bouquet of flowers that must have been hiding behind his massive frame. Trey wasn’t one to worry all that much about his physique, but Hardin made him feel like a stick figure. Seriously, the guy was all kinds of jacked up.
Captain Merle waited, as the two other men headed off in the direction of what Trey assumed was Mala’s recovery room. What he really wanted to do was follow after, but it was clear that Merle was looking to stay behind for some reason.
When the two men had disappeared around the corner, the captain let out a huge sigh of relief. He muttered something under his breath. Something that sounded suspiciously like Laurel and Hardy.
“Did you…? Were you just referring to the Commish and the Chief of D’s as Laurel and Hardy?” Trey asked, trying not to let his eyes bug out in disbelief.
Merle’s face turned red, something Trey had never seen before. “Oh, come on, Keane,” he grumbled in his deep voice. “You can’t tell me that’s the first time you’ve heard that.”
“Well…”
“That’s what I thought,” the captain said, and then sighed, his attention seeming to drift off. “Those two assholes just dumped the whole deal in my lap, and then…”
Captain Merle seemed to come to himself. He shook his head, glanced at Trey and coughed. Trey held up a hand.
“Don’t worry, Oh-Captain-my-Captain. I didn’t hear a thing.”
Merle glared at him a moment… probably a result of the oh-captain-my-captain thing… and then grunted something like an assent. He began heading in the direction of the recovery room with Trey about to follow him, when the big man turned back around.
“Trey?” he said.
Trey couldn’t remember the last time the captain had called him by his first name. To be honest, he wasn’t sure it had ever happened. Not once.
“Yes, sir?”
“I just got some troubling information from… Well, let’s just say from higher up.” Merle coughed, nodding toward the space recently occupied by Laurel and Hardy. “I was going to tell Darc, but… Well…”
The captain trailed off. Trey had no idea what to make of this. Never in his entire career as a detective had Merle talked to him about anything serious. Those conversations had always been reserved for Darc.
“There’s been some news that surfaced recently,” the captain continued, then paused, rubbing his hand over his face. “Red flags have been raised about… well… about someone specific.”
Whatever Merle had to say, it was clear that it was not easy for him.
“It’s okay, Cap. I can handle it.”
“I’m not sure you can, Keane.”
But Trey waited, unable to turn away, while still trying to get rid of the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. The sensation remained, persistent in its discomfort. Then Merle cleared his throat.
“How well do any of you really know Carly?”
* * *
Mala swam toward the surface of a blurry sea of strange noises and odd shapes. The closer she got, the clearer everything became, resolving into recognizable forms and sounds that her brain could wrap itself around.
One of them was Darc. And he was yelling.
Mala tried to remember the last time she had heard Darc yell. Her mind came up empty. Had it ever happened before?
Janey was close to the side of Mala’s bed, clutching her bear and apparently paying close attention to everything that Darc said and did. The frown on the girl’s face seemed to echo the concern Mala felt building up in her own heart.
Where was Carly? Janey’s half-sister was missing. Mala tried to speak, to ask the question, but could manage nothing more than a heavy sigh.
Another outburst from Darc drew her attention back to her almost-husband.
“No level of mental handicap could defer responsibility for Mala’s safety becoming compromised,” the bald detective was shouting into the face of what looked like an inexperienced uniformed cop. “You were one of the men who was supposed to be standing guard.”
“But… I… We… the hospital hadn’t told us she was out of surgery--” the poor young man sputtered.
“Officer Paulsen,” came a quiet voice from near the door to the room. “Why don’t you take a walk?”
“Yes, Commissioner Laurent,” the cop answered, hanging his head and rushing out as fast as it seemed his feet would take him.
Mala stirred and moaned as she felt her body reject her mind’s command to sit up, and Janey moved closer to her, stroking Mala’s arm with a soft hand.
What was Mala doing here? She remembered being in the chapel, the man barging in from the back, raising his arm…
Other memories, hazier and disjointed, fell into place. Darc standing by her bedside, his eyes harder than she had ever seen them before. A look there she had only seen in the past with people whose lives had been hardened over years by tragedy.
The same look she saw right now as Darc swiveled about to address this new intrusion. His jaw clenched at the same time he cocked his head to one side and pulled his hand into a fist. None of those were good signs.
“Detective Darcmel,” th
e Commissioner said before Darc could open his mouth. “I wonder if we could speak to you outside for a moment?”
Darc turned to look down at Mala, and his jaw muscle seemed to somehow tighten even further. Then he faced off with the Commissioner once more.
“I will not leave this room until proper protection has been provided.”
Commissioner Laurent raised an eyebrow and looked around the room. “If we are standing right outside the door, I don’t see how anyone could threaten the safety of Dr. Charan.”
Darc did not respond. Instead, he turned his gaze up to the ceiling, staring at the loose cover to the air conditioning vent.
“I see,” Laurent said after a moment and a long sigh. “Would having Chief of Detectives Hardin remain here in the room be satisfactory?”
Again, there was a lack of immediate response. Mala had no idea what had happened to cause Darc’s apparent animosity, but she wanted to do something about it.
Reaching out a hand, Mala managed to latch onto Darc’s forearm. “Darc, it’s okay. I’ll be all right in here. If something happens, I promise I’ll scream.”
The gaze that Darc directed at her seemed to both penetrate to the depths of her and dismiss her at the same time. Never in all of her experiences with Darc had she felt violated by him, even at first when his autistic affect had taken some getting used to.
What was happening with her fiancé?
* * *
Janey could feel the tension in the room. The lines of color radiated out from all three men, getting tangled up with one another.
The strongest lines came from Darc, and their colors seemed tainted. Something was happening with her favorite detective, and whatever it was, Janey didn’t like it.
Popeye said something about how he had told her the same thing back when they first met Darc, but Janey ignored him. He was just being jealous again. Maybe letting him stay with Mala hadn’t been such a good idea, after all.
The hues kept whispering to her, speaking of what they found. The anger radiating off Darc was clear, but something else lurked underneath.
And then Janey saw it. Darc was afraid.
The tall detective moved out of the room with the thin man… what was his name? Laurent? Whoever he was, Janey wasn’t sure she liked him. There was something odd in the way he had eyed everyone in the room before he had left.
The 2nd Cycle of the Darc Murders Omnibus (the acclaimed series from #1 Police Procedural and Hard Boiled authors Carolyn McCray and Ben Hopkin) Page 57