by Dinah McCall
She tried to answer, but her mouth was so dry. She licked her lips, then moaned.
“Hurt…”
Someone touched her hand, then her forehead. She felt the warmth of breath near her cheek.
“I know, Livvie. I’m sorry.”
Trey…is that you?
He answered, almost as if he’d read her mind. “It’s me, Trey.”
The image of a man pointing a gun at her face jumped into Olivia’s mind so quickly that she flinched. The motion caused such pain that tears poured out from beneath her eyelids.
“Trey…hurts,” she whispered.
Trey had never felt so helpless in his life. He wanted to hold her, protect her, take away the pain—and all he could do was mumble platitudes that solved nothing.
“I know, honey. I’m so sorry, but the doctor said you’re going to be fine.”
Fine. He said she was going to be fine. The knowledge was comforting. Trey didn’t lie. Then she remembered, Trey was a cop. She needed to tell him that she’d been shot.
“Shot me.”
Trey frowned. “We know. The police are looking for him now.”
She’d always been able to trust Trey. She should have known he would take care of this, too. She sighed.
“Sleep…”
Marcus stepped forward and kissed Olivia’s cheek.
“Yes, darling, you get some rest. We won’t be far.”
Anna said her goodbye with a tender touch to Olivia’s forehead.
“Darling, it’s your Nanna. Don’t you worry about a thing. When you get to go home, I’ll take care of you, just like I did when you were small.”
Nanna? Nanna! Olivia flinched. That’s what she’d been trying to remember.
“Grampy? Grampy.”
“I’m here, dear.”
She licked her lips again, trying to shift her thoughts into words.
“Take care…Nanna…lost. Losing focus on…”
Olivia sighed. There was more she meant to say, but the painkillers made her thoughts as heavy as her limbs. She lost her hold on reality and fell back into the hole in her mind.
Olivia’s words made Anna nervous. She scooted sideways without looking at the men, then pushed the hair away from her face. She didn’t understand why Olivia had said that, but she didn’t like it. Everyone was looking at her, and she didn’t want to be looked at. She knew she wasn’t pretty anymore. What people didn’t know was that she just didn’t care. She’d already lived the part of her life that had value. As far as she was concerned, her life now was just a matter of marking time.
“I’m not lost,” she muttered. “I’m not lost. I’m right here.”
It had been obvious to Marcus that Anna had come to the hospital quite disheveled, but he hadn’t thought anything of it. It had been an emergency call. At times like that, her appearance would have been the last thing on her mind. But now he was seeing Anna anew, and for the first time he wondered if the blank expression in her eyes mirrored more than fear for Olivia. Was there a measure of fear for herself in there, as well?
He cupped her elbow. “Anna, why don’t you—”
“You see me…don’t you?” Anna asked.
Trey looked at Marcus, then looked away, as if he’d stumbled on something too private to share.
Marcus frowned. Something was wrong with Anna. Olivia had obviously seen it. It had bothered her enough to remember it even in the midst of her own pain and fear.
“Yes, dear, we all see you. Now, here’s what I think we should do. Let’s get you home so you can pack a bag or two.”
“Oh…no…I can’t leave. I already told Olivia I can’t leave.”
Marcus slid an arm around her shoulder in a gesture of comfort.
“You won’t be leaving your home, dear. You’ll just be coming home to help take care of Olivia, remember? You said you’d help take care of her.”
Anna frowned. “Yes. Yes…take care of Olivia. But she’s here.”
“Yes, she is. But you’ll need to get settled in before she gets home, don’t you think? Rose is still cooking for us. You remember Rose. She’ll love having the company.”
“Rose makes good meat loaf,” Anna added.
Marcus sighed. Lord. He hadn’t known this was happening to her. He didn’t know what was wrong, but he suspected she’d either suffered a stroke, which had obviously affected her memory, or possibly had the beginnings of Alzheimer’s disease. He would have his doctor take a look at her, but for now, taking her home with him seemed the best thing to do.
“Yes, she does,” Marcus said. “So you’ll come stay for a while?”
Anna looked down at Olivia, then nodded.
“Yes. Until she’s better. Then I have to go home, okay?”
“Okay,” Marcus said, then glanced at Trey.
Trey caught the look and understood.
“I’ll be here,” Trey said. “Go do what you have to do.”
“You have my number,” Marcus said.
Trey patted his pocket, where he’d put the business card Marcus had given him.
“Yes, and you know how to contact me.”
Marcus was reluctant to leave Olivia so soon, but it was obvious Anna couldn’t stay.
“Will she be all right?” Marcus asked. “I mean…they haven’t found the man who shot her yet. What if he—”
“I’ll have a guard put on her door,” Trey said.
Marcus nodded, then held out his hand.
“I’m sorry that we’ve met under these circumstances, but it’s a pleasure to know you.”
Trey shook his hand. “And you, too, sir.”
Olivia moaned in her sleep.
Trey turned to the bed as Marcus led Anna from the room.
He pulled up a chair, then sat down. For the time being, he was going to leave chasing the bad guys up to someone else. His first priority was making sure that the bad guys didn’t come here.
Dennis Rawlins had crossed a line. He’d become a part of the violence he claimed to abhor and, to his surprise, he’d been quite good at it. Setting bombs was anonymous. There was no one-on-one involved in the procedure. But what he’d just done had been confrontational. He’d made a plan, stared the enemy in the face and destroyed her. It felt good, but there were loose ends that had to be tied up.
After the shooting, he’d taken the next exit off the freeway, driven straight to a junkyard that he knew about, circled around to the back side, slipped in through a gate with a broken lock and parked the van in the midst of a graveyard of rusting metal. The van was old enough not to stand out among the junked vehicles. No one would ever know it was here.
He emptied the van of every scrap of paper with his name on it, wiped it down of prints, pocketed the keys and the gun, and started back the same way he’d come in. On the way out, he passed the hulk of a black 1952 Chevrolet. On impulse, he dropped to the ground, took the gun out of his pocket and shoved it up under what was left of the padding in the back seat, dislodging an old pack-rat nest in the process.
He glanced around as he got up, brushed the dust off his clothes and slipped out of the yard, pushing the rusted gate back into place as he did. Within the hour he was a mile away. He hailed a cab back to his house, locked the door behind him as he went in and stripped out of his clothes on the way to his bedroom.
He had a shower, put on a pair of sweats, and then went into the kitchen and made himself a bologna and cheese sandwich. He poured a glass of milk, humming as he went, then tossed a handful of chips onto the plate next to his sandwich. The cuckoo clock above the phone struck 6:00 p.m. He paused, watching intently as the clock did its thing—smiling fondly as the little man came out of the clock and ran from the woman who chased him from behind. The clock had belonged to his mother. He’d watched the tableau all of his life, and the old familiarity of the moment gave him a false sense of peace, as if his mother was in the other room and might appear at any moment, when in truth, she’d been dead for years. When the chase was over, he carri
ed his food into the living room to eat while he watched the evening news.
He picked up the remote, turned on the television, then sat back to enjoy his meal. Two bites into the second half of his sandwich, he heard Olivia Sealy’s name. He quickly upped the sound, anxious to hear the gory details of his success.
“…this afternoon. Witnesses claim it was a dark older-model van or SUV. The driver was reported to be a Caucasian man from thirty-five to forty years old, possibly wearing a white baseball cap. If you have any information regarding this crime, please call the Dallas Police Department. Calls will be confidential.
As for Miss Sealy, she is reported to be in serious but stable condition in Dallas Memorial.”
Dennis choked.
She wasn’t dead? How in hell could that be? He’d been less than five feet away when he’d pulled the trigger. He’d emptied the gun into the car before speeding away. He’d seen the car rolling down the embankment, end over end. It had been a brutal wreck.
And she hadn’t died?
What did that mean?
He looked down at his food and set it aside. His guts were rumbling, and his hands were shaking.
“Oh Lord…I tried,” he mumbled, then dropped to his knees and started to pray.
The moment he closed his eyes, he saw dead children scattered across a lawn, their broken and bleeding bodies a marker to his mistake.
“I tried,” he said again. “God forgive me,” he moaned, and threw himself facedown upon the floor, lying prostrate before the God who lived in his head. “Give me another chance, Lord, give me another chance. I won’t mess up this time, I promise.”
Either God wasn’t talking, or he just wasn’t home, because Dennis heard nothing but the sound of his own sobs. There was little left to do but close his eyes and pray, once again, to be cleansed of his sins.
It was sometime after midnight when Trey came out into the hall. He knew without looking at his watch because the nursing shift had changed. He had been banished to the hallway long enough for the nurses to change Olivia’s bandages and assess her condition. He’d left reluctantly, but he wouldn’t go farther. Marcus had called Trey hourly ever since his departure. Trey felt sorry for the old man. He was obviously torn between his desire to be with Olivia and the responsibility of tending to a woman who was now having difficulties tending to herself.
Trey sympathized with him but was secretly glad that he’d been allowed the freedom to be with her alone. She’d awakened a couple of times, but not enough to know much of what was going on. Still, just seeing the blue of her eyes now and then, and knowing that she was stable and steadily improving, was all he needed.
He’d already made points at the nurses’ station when they’d found out that he and Olivia had been childhood sweethearts. The knowledge had elicited a collective sigh and access to the coffee in their break room. But what he wanted was news that the shooter had been identified and taken into custody. Unfortunately, that hadn’t come. Knowing that the man who’d tried to kill Livvie was still on the loose made him eye every passing male warily. The only male he allowed in her room was her doctor, and Trey already knew him on sight. For now, it was the best he could do. The rest had to be left up to his peers in the department.
He was standing at a window at the end of the hall that overlooked the parking lot when a nurse called his name.
“Detective Bonney…Detective Bonney.”
He turned around.
“You can go back inside now,” she added.
Trey waved a thanks and turned away from the window just as a cab pulled into the parking lot and let out a fare.
It was past visiting hours, but Dennis knew his way around the hospital. His mother had spent her last eight weeks in this place while the tumor in her belly slowly ate up her life. One night, several weeks before the cancer was diagnosed, in a fit of drunken remorse, Dennis had confessed to his guilt in the botched abortion bombing. His mother had been horrified and refused him access to the house he’d considered his home. In the ensuing days, she’d prayed to God for deliverance from her part in the shame of having given birth to such a creature. When the tumor had appeared in her belly, she’d considered it a sign from God that she was being punished for having given birth to such evil and refused medical treatment or surgery.
When the pain had gotten to the point of maddening, Dennis had overridden her wishes and taken her to the hospital. The doctors had begged her to let them treat her, but without explanation, she’d patently refused—taking death as both punishment for and release from her guilt.
Even though it had been nine years since her death, the skin still crawled on Dennis’s back as he walked into the E.R. As he’d expected, the place was teeming. The waiting room was full, and the medical personnel were up to their ears in patients. He sat down near the door, losing himself in the noise and the crowd until he’d discovered a pattern in the movements of the staff.
When an ambulance suddenly wheeled into the lot with two police cars right behind it, he stood. As the EMTs came rushing in with an obviously injured man, he walked right past the door marked Employees Only, took a right into a utility closet he’d noticed from his seat, closed the door, then turned on the lights.
After a quick look around, he saw a pair of cover-alls hanging on a peg. He slipped them on, found a wheeled bucket and mop and a handful of cleaning rags, hung a spray bottle of disinfectant on the side of the bucket and wheeled the gear out into the hall.
No one paid any attention to him as he moved through the hospital, then up to the third floor. He knew which floor she would be on because he remembered where surgery patients were sent, and he moved with purpose, pushing the mop bucket along as he went.
The floor was busy with nurses coming and going. He’d counted on the recent shift change to give him some cover, and waited until the nurses’desk was momentarily unattended. It took less than thirty seconds for him to find out what room Olivia Sealy was in, and then he headed for another utility closet.
A nurse passed him with a medicine tray, glancing only briefly at him before hurrying by. He slipped into the closet, grabbed a roll of paper towels from the shelf, pulled part of them loose, wadded them up and then dropped them into the bucket. He struck a match, staying only long enough to make sure that the paper had caught, then stepped out of the closet. Olivia’s room was third from the end, and he moved in that direction while keeping an eye on the door.
Within seconds, smoke began seeping from beneath the door. It never occurred to him that he might be setting off another disaster. He wasn’t thinking about the fire getting out of control, of more innocent people suffering because of him. His focus was on redeeming himself in the eyes of his God.
A minute passed. He watched a nurse come out into the hall, but she turned in the other direction and missed seeing the smoke. It grew in size and substance, billowing slowly upward. Suddenly the shriek of a smoke alarm sounded, the strident, repetitive squawk bringing everyone who could walk out into the hall.
Someone screamed. Someone else shouted. And the sprinklers began to shower water down onto the floors.
When the door beside Dennis swung inward, he stepped back against the wall. A big man came out of Olivia Sealy’s room on the run.
Dennis flinched. The man was unexpected. The thought crossed his mind that this plan might have some flaws, but he was too far in to pull back.
The moment the man cleared the doorway, Dennis slipped in, closing the door behind him. Almost instantly, the peace Dennis felt made him cry. Despite the water coming down on him like rain, he saw her—the conduit that would alleviate his sins. He took a deep breath and moved forward.
Almost instantly, Trey saw the source of the smoke. He yanked the door open, saw the fire in the bucket, and pulled it out of the closet and dragged it into the hall before the cleaning solvents exploded. A nurse appeared from behind him with a fire extinguisher and quickly put out the fire, while Trey stared at the bucket in disbelief.
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“Kill the sprinklers,” he said quickly. “It’s out.”
A nurse ran to call maintenance as others began running for mops and towels.
Someone had set fire to a roll of paper towels. But why? The smoke was already dissipating. An orderly was shutting off the alarm as nurses raced from room to room. Trey frowned. What could someone possibly gain by—
His heart stuttered to a stop as he pivoted quickly. The door to Livvie’s room was closed, and he distinctly remembered leaving it open.
“Has anyone been in Olivia Sealy’s room?” he asked sharply.
The nurses stared at each other, then shook their heads.
“Call security,” Trey said, and bolted for the door.
Water rained down on the back of Dennis’s head and hands as he leaned over Olivia Sealy’s bed. His fingers were around her throat. He could feel the warmth of her flesh and the throb of her heartbeat against his palms. He shuddered. The power of life and death was, literally, in his hands.
This must be how God feels.
He exhaled softly, his heart pounding as he leaned forward, beating out the rhythm of absolution in his ears.
“In the name of the Father and the—”
Dennis’s neck suddenly popped backward, and the water began pounding on his face. His knees buckled as a low, angry voice growled near his ear.
“Take your hands off her or you’re dead.”
Dennis froze, blinking rapidly to clear his vision, but the water in his eyes made it impossible to see. The thought of resistance never entered his mind. What he did realize was that he’d been waiting for this day for the last nine years. Justice had caught up with him before redemption was gained, and he was vaguely surprised to be feeling relief.
“The Lord told me to do it. I am only doing what he—”
“Shut the hell up and do what you’re told!” Trey shouted as he grabbed the man by his shoulders and yanked.
Dennis started to lift his hands in the air and found himself being dragged backward, out of the room. Within seconds, the sprinkler system was off, and he was able to focus on the man who’d foiled his plan.