Marie Ferrarella

by A Doctor's Secret

  Jesse threw the door open and discovered the ringing came from her purse. The purse was hanging from a hook inside the closet. Tania would have never left her purse behind.

  Now it was official. Something was wrong.

  His next call was to Tony. The moment he heard the phone being answered, he started talking. “Tony, this is Jesse. Don’t repeat anything I say, just listen. I don’t want to upset her family. Is Tania there?”

  “No.” Tony lowered his voice and could only hope that the detective had withdrawn from the others in order to talk more freely. “We left her at the apartment, waiting for you.”

  “She’s not here.” Jesse dragged his hand through his hair, trying to think. “Her purse is here, but she’s not. Hold it,” Jesse said, suddenly becoming aware of something.

  Lowering the phone away from his ear, he took a deep breath. And then another one. There was a scent in the air, a very specific scent.

  A scent he recognized.

  Oh, God, how could he have been so stupid?

  He quickly put the phone against his ear again. “Tony, I think Tania’s been kidnapped and I know who has her.”

  “Palmer had an alibi,” Tony reminded him. “But it wasn’t airtight. I’m going to—”

  “It’s not Palmer,” Jesse cut in. “It’s not about Tania. This is about me.” The admission alone made him almost physically ill.

  “You? What are you talking about?” Tony wanted to know.

  He didn’t have time to go into detail, but he gave the other man just the bare bones. “About a year ago, I was being stalked by this woman from work. She had a few screws loose. Management fired her. I thought that it was all over six months ago.”

  There was no emotion in the voice on the other end. Tony required facts. “What makes you think it isn’t?”

  “The woman used to wear this one particular perfume. It had an almost sickeningly sweet scent. I’m catching a whiff of it in Tania’s apartment.”

  “Give me the woman’s name,” Tony instructed. “I’m going to call this in and I’ll be right there.”

  “Her name’s Ellen Sederholm.” To be on the safe side, Jesse spelled it out for him.

  “Got it. Sit tight,” Tony ordered. The line went dead.

  He couldn’t sit tight. He couldn’t sit at all.

  This was all his fault, Jesse thought, pacing restlessly. He’d been so focused on Tania’s pain after she’d told him about the date rape, it never occurred to him that Ellen might have come out of the woodwork to stalk him again. The woman was crazy. If she’d seen him with Tania…

  He didn’t want to go there.

  But he had to go somewhere, do something. Jesse clenched and unclenched his hands impotently at his sides. Every minute that went by was a minute Tania might not have to spare. But what could he—

  Jesse stopped pacing. He saw Natalya’s laptop on the coffee table. It was open. He sank onto the sofa. The laptop was still on.

  Hitting a key, he watched the screensaver slowly vanish. A Web site came on. Natalya was still logged on to the Internet.

  Bless you, Natalya.

  Opening up a search engine he was familiar with, Jesse pulled up what served as the white pages. He typed in Ellen’s name and then specified the city and state.

  Three choices popped up. He vaguely remembered Ellen telling him that she’d been named after someone in her family. “I’m the new, improved Ellen Sederholm,” she’d told him.

  The first Ellen Sederholm lived in Staten Island. The second was located all the way out in Wantagh. That was out on Long Island.

  The third lived two blocks away.

  That had to be the one.

  Jesse scribbled down the address and phone number on a napkin that was on the coffee table. Shoving it into his pocket, Jesse left the apartment and ran down all five flights to the ground level.

  He didn’t bother getting into Evan’s car. He could run the distance faster than he could drive. The fact that the vehicle stood a good chance of being ticketed and towed away was something he couldn’t stop to deal with right now.

  The only thing on his mind was Tania and this nagging feeling that he might already be too late.

  Tania came to.

  She was lying on something cool and hard. A roach skittered by inches from her face and she gasped.

  Or tried to.

  There was tape over her mouth. Her wrists were bound behind her, and she pulled so hard she thought her shoulder would pop. Her ankles were taped, as well.

  Fear slithered through her.

  “You woke up. Too bad,” Ellen said. She knelt beside her, a roll of duct tape in her hands. “I was hoping that you’d stay unconscious until I finished gift-wrapping you.” The laugh that followed was chilling. “It would have been better that way for both of us.”

  Tania began to buck and wriggle, trying to get free.

  Ellen reached for the taser, her eyes malevolent. “Don’t make me use this again,” she warned.

  Tania stopped moving.

  Jesse ran all the way to Ellen’s building. He took the six concrete steps leading to the front door two at a time. A small, elderly woman unlocked the wrought-iron door leading into the building. It was his way in.

  “Let me get that for you,” he offered.

  The woman smiled her thanks and didn’t challenge his presence. “Thank you, young man. Are you new here? I’m Margaret Gallagher. I like to meet the new people,” she told him as she entered the foyer ahead of him. “Been here going on thirty years. Seen so many come and go.”

  Jesse was about to start hunting for Ellen’s apartment number. There was a wall of mailboxes on the far side of the foyer, some with apartment numbers beside the names, some not.

  He crossed his fingers mentally as he looked at the woman.

  “Do you know an Ellen Sederholm?”

  The woman instantly beamed, a squadron of wrinkles appearing at both sides of her mouth. “Yes, I do. Lovely girl. Talks about her husband all the time, although I’ve never met him. Jesse is his name. Always thought that was a girl’s name,” Margaret told him.

  Ellen was fantasizing about him as her husband. He tried not to think about how far gone she had to be. Or how dangerous. He was positive now that she had to be the one behind the gas leak.

  “Would you know her apartment number, Mrs. Gallagher?” In order to coax her, he added, “I’m an old friend of Ellen’s from college.”

  “Oh, she’ll like that. She lives in apartment 6-D.” Jesse started up the stairs. “But I don’t think you’ll find her there,” she called after him. He stopped and turned around to look at her. “I saw her going down to the basement a little while ago. She had a friend with her. Poor thing was leaning all over her. Looked rather peaked.”

  That had to be Tania. He couldn’t picture her submitting willingly. Had Ellen drugged her? “What’s in the basement?” he asked Mr. Gallagher.

  “Storage spaces.” She sighed. “Mine’s so full I’m going to have to go through it someday, start throwing things out. Hard to part with memories,” she murmured. “Well, here’s the elevator.”

  Jesse sailed down the stairs. He was at the elderly woman’s side in an instant, just as the elevator door opened.

  “Would you mind if I go down to the basement first?” Not waiting for Margaret’s answer, he reached over to the row of buttons and pressed “B.”

  The woman scrutinized him. “Awfully anxious to see her, aren’t you?”

  He faced forward as the door closed again. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Well, take my advice and don’t let her husband get the wrong idea,” she chuckled. “Ellen says he’s very jealous of her.”

  They’d reached the basement. Jesse’s blood ran cold. Getting out, he paused, his hand on the door, keeping it from closing again. “Are the storage spaces arranged in any order?”

  “How clever of you,” Margaret beamed. “First row, first floor, second row, second floor, and so on. I�
�m 3-C,” she told him. “Come by and visit me sometime. I love to talk to young people.”

  Jesse drew back his hand. The door began to close. “I’ll do that,” he promised, already turning away.

  The basement smelled musty and the artificial overhead illumination was of a low wattage, casting a mournful light about the area.

  Remembering what Margaret had said, Jesse counted off five rows, then stopped at the sixth. There were ten compartments, all with their doors shut. The numbers on them meant nothing to him. He began to try the doors one by one.

  The first five were locked. Approaching the sixth, he saw the light seeping out from beneath the door. Had someone left it on, or was there someone inside?

  Holding his breath, he turned the knob, and it gave. Heart pounding, Jesse opened the door very slowly, praying it wouldn’t creak and give him away.

  The storage area was filled with boxes piled on top of each other, forming towers taller than he was. Jesse inched his way in, careful not to knock over any of the boxes. His eyes grew accustomed to the poor lighting.

  And then he saw her.

  Ellen.

  Her back was to him. On her knees, she was busy ripping a length of silver duct tape from an all but depleted roll. She was wrapping something.

  And then, to his horror, he realized it wasn’t something, it was someone.

  Tania.

  Tania was bound with duct tape. Not just her mouth, hands and feet, but her chest, her stomach, her throat. It looked as if Ellen was intent on wrapping all of her, including her face.

  “Ellen,” he said sharply, “get away from her.”

  Ellen wasn’t startled. She didn’t even turn around to look at him. Instead she continued pulling another length of tape from the roll.

  “I knew you’d come back to me,” she told him in a singsong voice. “Knew you’d realize that you missed me. That we belonged together. I made it easy for you to find me.”

  “Get away from her, Ellen,” he retorted. When she went on tearing the length of tape off the roll, he pushed her aside. Dropping to his knees, he grabbed an end and began ripping away the duct tape. Tania winced, but there was relief in her eyes.

  “She’s evil,” Ellen cried, her calmness shattering like a fragile spider’s web. She tried to pull him away, but couldn’t. “Don’t you see?” she screamed. “She turned you against me. We belong together. You love me, not her. She cast some kind of a spell over you, that’s why I have to get rid of her,” she cried frantically. “To save you. Stop it!” Ellen beat on his back, trying to get him to stop removing the duct tape.

  He didn’t waste time looking at her. “Ellen, you need help. I promise I’ll see that you get it, people who’ll help you,” he said as he quickly pulled off strip after strip. “I’m sorry, this is going to really hurt,” he told Tania just before he yanked away the strip over her mouth.

  “Jesse, look out,” Tania cried.

  Jesse turned just in time to see the taser coming at him. He ducked, then moving quickly, he grabbed Ellen’s wrist and twisted it.

  Ellen shrieked like a wounded animal as the taser hit her chest. And then she slid bonelessly to the concrete floor, unconscious.

  Losing no time, Jesse tore off two strips of the remaining duct tape, using one to bind her hands, the other to bind her feet. Secure that Ellen no longer posed an immediate threat, he resumed removing the tape from Tania’s body.

  She sat up, working with him. “Look at the back wall,” she told him.

  Turning, Jesse looked and then his mouth dropped open. The wall was covered with photographs of him, some garnered from various newspapers, the rest digital photographs that Ellen had to have taken herself while stalking him.

  “Damn,” he muttered incredulously under his breath.

  “That’s one hell of a groupie you have there, Jesse,” Tania said, pulling off the last of the tape. Throwing it aside, she took in a deep breath to calm herself. It was over, thank God. Over. “She was just going to leave me down here to die, like some giant caterpillar in a duct tape cocoon.”

  “I’m sorry, baby, I’m so sorry,” he said over and over again.

  Tania threw her arms around him. “Sorry? You saved me.” She buried her face against his chest. “I knew you’d come for me, I just knew it.” Lifting her head, she looked at him as she blinked back tears. A half smile played on her lips. “I knew you couldn’t resist playing a hero again.”

  “Are you all right?” he asked her. His eyes swept over her face, her body, to assure himself that she was in one piece. “Did she hurt you?”

  Tania tried to muster a smile. “Well, the taser was no picnic, but otherwise, I’m okay.” She blew out a long, emotional breath. “Boy, loving you has some really heavy consequences, doesn’t it?”

  For the second time in as many minutes, his mouth dropped open. “Loving me?” he repeated, stunned. “You love me?”

  She caught her lip between her teeth. Okay, she blew it. The man just had a stalker after him. A pushy woman was the last thing he’d welcome. “Wasn’t supposed to say that, was I? Sorry, it was an emotional minute.”

  She continued talking, trying to backpedal. Jesse wasn’t listening. Instead he framed her face with his hands and looked at her, looked at what he had almost lost. It made his head spin.

  Cutting through the flow of her rhetoric, he said, “I love you.”

  Tania stopped talking. And then he saw a smile enter her eyes. “Really.”

  “Really.” He said it as if it was an oath. Because it was. An oath and a pledge. He intended to love her as long as he lived. As long as he lived.

  The rush of joy that surged through her almost made Tania dizzy. It took her a long moment to get her bearings.

  “Okay,” she said slowly, “I can live with that.”

  He grinned. “Can you live with being my wife?”

  The brightness of her smile made up for the dim illumination in the storage area.

  “Even better.” And then her eyebrows rose a little as a grain of skepticism entered. “You’re not just saying that because your groupie there almost turned me into a silver doorstop—”

  “Shut up,” Jesse told her, bringing his mouth down on hers.

  “Just like a hero, throwing his weight around,” she murmured.

  Jesse tasted Tania’s smile on his lips just before he deepened his kiss.

  The sound of approaching sirens echoed in the background.

  It looked like he was going to be paying Isaac Epstein a visit in the near future after all. As he recalled, the man had some beautiful diamonds. One would make a perfect engagement ring for the perfect woman, Jesse thought, just before he stopped thinking at all.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-1413-6

  A DOCTOR’S SECRET

  Copyright © 2008 by Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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