I love it when I actually sleep. I’ve had horrible insomnia for years, just a few hours helps me feel better. But this, it’s delicious. I feel like I’ve gotten a full night’s rest. I can’t remember the last time I slept this hard.
My eyes are open at last. Good grief, I must have left the blinds open, it’s incredibly bright in here. I shut them against the glare, trying to let them adjust to the light. When I open them again I see a ceiling, not my own. What is it called, when they have those pieces, and holes, like screwed-up cardboard? I have a ceiling like this in my office. Used to have a stain on it—damn, I can’t remember what it’s called.
There’s a television, too, high on the wall. This isn’t my bedroom at home. Oh, it’s a hotel. I start to swivel my head but something is holding me down. Great. Dream within a dream. I do that sometimes, dream I’ve woken up and snuggled back to sleep only to have never woken at all. I’ll just shut my eyes again, let myself go back into the dream.
That stupid cardinal is sitting on my chest. Loud, nasty bird. Go away. Go away, bird.
Mmmm, coffee. That smells good.
*
Baldwin searched out a cup of coffee from the nurse’s lounge, grabbed the morning’s paper. The nurses had seen him enough in the past couple of weeks to remember to leave it out for him. He had his new routine down pat—call the hospital before he left the house, just to see if there’d been any change. After the first week, when he’d refused to leave her room, they finally kicked him out. Bodily. It had taken two security guards. But he knew in his heart they were right. No one knew how long it would be until Taylor woke up. If she ever woke up.
The bullet had gone in at a funny angle. It entered her temporal lobe and lodged just inside her skull. It had been a tricky surgery, and she’d seized on the table. They’d kept her in a medically induced coma for a week, the halo in place to make sure she didn’t move her head and undo all their delicate repair work. After a week, they brought her off the drugs. She didn’t wake up.
There was no way to know when she would. If she would. Or what she would be like when she did.
He couldn’t think like that. He had to believe she’d wake up, that she’d be fine.
He dumped two packets of sugar in the coffee. He needed the extra energy these days. There was so much aftermath when a cop gets shot, explanations, excuses.
There was so much aftermath when an FBI agent who was supposed to be in Knoxville interviewing a suspect is instead found in a Nashville hospital, crying over his fiancée, and his gun is a match to the four bullets that were pulled from a corpse in an attic in Belle Meade. Decidedly not Knoxville.
He was feeling almost cheerful today. Taylor was a fighter. He had been exonerated, reinstated. They were calling him a hero. Saying he’d saved Taylor and Sam from the clutches of a madman.
He didn’t disabuse them of the notion. And when the autopsy of Ewan Copeland came back with multiple broken bones and contusions, a collapsed lung in addition to the four bullet holes, he told them Copeland had fought him hard. Marcus backed that story, too.
Taylor needed to be protected now, more than ever. He had no intention of letting anyone know she was the one who’d inflicted the damage on Copeland. He’d shot and killed him, yes, but before Copeland shot Taylor, she’d kicked the bejesus out of him.
That was his girl.
The information they had on Copeland grew exponentially with each passing day. They found his spare apartment, a town house he’d rented in east Nashville. It was bare except for his laptop, a chair and a battered teapot, with a matching china cup. Why he’d left his laptop behind was anybody’s guess. Baldwin figured he’d done it so he could show them just how prolific he’d really been. He knew he was going to die, probably welcomed the escape it would bring.
There was only one file on the computer, in Word. It was a journal of sorts, with daily entries. Copeland had discussions with himself, decisions to make. Charlaine Shultz had been right about the body dysmorphic disorder—the doctor had confirmed their theories. Copeland was dutiful about his entries. He’d documented almost five years on the computer—his kills, his surgeries, his plans. His growing disenchantment, his anger.
Baldwin assumed that before that, Copeland had kept handwritten journals. They hadn’t found those yet.
Copeland had detailed his displeasure with the pretty cop who’d dissed him four years before, right after he killed Tommy Keck. Every move, every detail was listed. It would take years to unravel, but there were already ten new murder cases that had been solved because Copeland had drawn maps showing where he’d left bodies.
A new ViCAP search linked seventeen rapes together, violent assaults, with one thing in common, cuts to the stomach. Copeland had had his own scars eradicated, but kept revisiting them, over and over, on the souls of others.
Sam was a recipient of some of those scars. Baldwin had seen her two days before. She was getting back to her old self, sassy and bold, but there was a lingering sadness to her that he’d never seen before. Losing her child had been hell, losing her best friend, too, would make her cave in. Simon had taken her away on a small vacation, just them and the twins. To repair her outside. Inside, she’d never be the same. Copeland had taken care of that.
He walked down the corridor to Taylor’s room. He had a newspaper in his hands, and his new iPad in a backpack. He’d picked three books to read this week. He’d been reading them aloud to Taylor, the classics. They were going to do Emma today, one of her favorites. He thought briefly of Emma Brighton, a poor, frightened girl, a victim. That poor woman. He thought of Flynn, now an orphan. Like him.
He opened the door.
Something was different.
He saw gray. Twin flashes of gray. Jesus God in heaven, she had her eyes open.
He dropped the coffee and the paper on the floor, ignoring the pain in his leg where the hot liquid scalded through his pants. He leaned over the bed.
“Babe? Taylor? Can you hear me?”
The eyes swiveled to him, and he swore he saw recognition. Without looking away, he depressed the emergency button to summon the nurse. She answered through the intercom with an impatient, “What?”
“Get Dr. Benedict. She’s awake.”
“What?” All the annoyance was gone. “Is she really?”
“Yes, yes. Now get the doctor.” He licked his lips.
Taylor’s gray eyes crinkled, and her lip moved on the left side.
“Oh, God, Taylor. I knew you’d wake up. I knew you would. Welcome back, my love.”
She started to move, but he laid a hand gently on her chest. It was taking all his effort to hold back tears.
“No, no, don’t try to move, you’re in a halo. You got shot, sweetheart. Copeland shot you, in the head. You’ve been asleep for a while. But you’re okay, baby. You’re going to be okay.”
*
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my great team: my agent Scott Miller, my editor Adam Wilson, and all the rest who make these books come to life: MacKenzie Fraser-Bub, Megan Lorius, Deborah Kohan, Donna Hayes, Alex Osuszek, Loriana Sacilotto, Craig Swinwood, Valerie Gray, Margaret Marbury, Diane Moggy, Linda McFall, Giselle Regus, Heather Foy, Don Lucey, Michelle Renaud, Adrienne Macintosh, Maureen Stead, Nick Ursino, Tracey Langmuir, Kathy Lodge, Emily Ohanjanians, Karen Queme, Alana Burke, Tara Kelly and Gigi Lau.
Thanks also to friends and writers Laura Benedict, Jeff Abbott, Erica Spindler, Allison Brennan, Toni McGee Causey, Alex Kava, Jeanne Bowerman, Jill Thompson, Del Tinsley and Andy Levy for keeping me sane during the writing of this book. Special thanks to the writers of Murderati, and Detective David Achord, for support in all the right places. Lee Lofland and Ala-fair Burke provided help on the legal bits, Joan Huston and Jill Thompson cast their gimlet eyes on the writing bits. As always, any mistakes are mine, and mine alone.
The real Colleen Keck isn’t a true crime blogger, but a contest winner who kindly allowed me many liberties with her name. The same
goes for Preston Pylant, Richard Cooper and Bill Reiser. Thanks for letting me make you naughty, boys.
Extra love to my parents and family, who are my greatest supporters, and as always, to my husband, Randy, who makes my life complete.
ISBN-13: 9781488030369
So Close the Hand of Death
Copyright © 2011 by J.T. Ellison
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
www.MIRABooks.com
Read book seven in New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison’s heart-racing, fan-favorite Taylor Jackson series!
The headshot didn’t kill Nashville homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson.
But it will crack her psyche and take her to the very edge. In her showdown with the murderous Pretender, a bullet taken at close range severed the connection between Taylor’s thoughts and speech. Effectively mute, there’s no telling if her voice will ever come back. Trapped in silence, she is surrounded by ghosts—of the past, of friendships and trusts lost… of a lost faith in herself and her motives that night.
When Memphis Highsmythe offers Taylor his home in the Scottish Highlands to recuperate, her fiancé, John Baldwin, can’t refuse her excitement, no matter his distrust of the man. At first, Memphis’s drafty and singularly romantic castle seems the perfect place for healing. But shortly the house itself surrounds her like a menacing presence. As Taylor’s sense of isolation and vulnerability grows, so, too, does her grip on reality.
PTSD. Pills. Ghosts. Grudges. Someone or something is coming after Taylor. But is she being haunted by the dead…or hunted by the living?
Previously published in 2011
WHERE ALL THE DEAD LIE
J.T. ELLISON
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Beginnings
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Middles
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Ends
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Epilogue
CHAPTER ONE
Scotland
The Highlands
Dulsie Castle
December 22
Dear Sam,
There is a moment in every life that defines, shapes, transcends your previous spirit, molding you as if from newborn clay. It’s come for me. I have changed, and that change is irreversible.
Sam, there’s no doubt anymore. I’m losing my mind. The shooting is haunting me. The horror of your loss, of who I’ve become, all of it is too much. I’m not sure how much longer I can stand to go on like this, trapped under glass, trapped away from everyone. I’m lost.
The walls here speak. Disconcerting at times, but at others, it’s a comfort. The ceilings dance in the candlelight, and the floors shimmer and ripple with my every step. I escape out of doors, and when I do, all I find is fog, and mist, and lumbering sheep. Cows with gentle, inquisitive eyes. The dogs have a sense of humor. But you can tell they’d turn on you in a second. I’ve known people like that. The deer are patient, and sad, resigned to their captive lives. The crows are aggressive. The seagulls act foolish, and there’s something so wrong about seeing a soaring gull against the mountainous backdrop. The chickens are huge and fretful, the grouse are in a hurry. The mist settles like a cold shawl across the mountain’s shoulders, and the road I walk grows close, like it’s planning to share a secret.
Above all, there is no one. And everyone. I feel them all around me. All the missing and the gone. I can’t see them, except for late at night, when I’m supposed to be asleep. Then they push in on me from all sides, stealing my breath. The room grows cold and the warnings begin.
It strikes me that I’m surrounded by doctors, yet no one can help. I have to find the strength from within to heal. Isn’t that what they always say, Physician, heal thyself? I shall amend it: Lieutenant, command thyself.
Sam, please, forgive me. It’s all my fault. I know that now.
In moments of true peace: outside by the statue of Athena, looking over the gardens, watching the animals on the grounds, I feel your sorrow. I finally understand what you’ve lost. I’ve lost it, too. I don’t think there’s any coming back. I don’t think there’s any room for me in our world anymore.
There’s something wrong with this place. Memphis’s ancestors are haunting me. They don’t like me here.
I did the best I could. I messed everything up, and I don’t know if I can fix it.
Hug the twins. Their Fairy Godmother loves them. And I love you. I’m all done.
Taylor
Taylor slammed the laptop shut. Nauseous again. Pain built behind her eyes. A demon’s hammering. Her only recourse was to lie down, lids screwed shut, praying for the hurt to pass. Percocet. Another. The pills they provided had stopped working. Nightfall signaled her brain to collapse in on itself, to allow the doubt and pain to rule. Weakness. Mornings brought safety, and courage.
Her mind was made of hinges, pieces that held imaginings she didn’t want to acknowledge. If she did, the demons overtook her thoughts.
Defying the headache, she stumbled to the window, stared out at the mountains. Darkness enveloped their gentle curves. Bitter snow reflected the outline of the massive Douglas firs. Completely desolate. Private. Perfect for her to hide away, in the wilds of Scotland, pretending to the world that she was fine, just visiting for a time, on holiday, as the Brits around her liked to say.
She’d run away from the people who knew the truth about her situation—Dr. Sam Loughley, her best friend, and Dr. John Baldwin, her fiancé. She’d even managed to push away Memphis Highsmythe, a friend who wanted more from her than she was willing to give.
She brushed her hair off her shoulders and leaned against the window. The cool glass felt good on her temple. The small, puckered scar, another battle wound, nearly healed. Even the pinkish discoloration was beginning to fade. She no longer bore the blatant stigma of the killer known as the Pretender, at least on the outside. He’d stolen something from within her though. Something precious she didn’t know how to retrieve.
Now she was only half a woman, half herself. A crazy little girl shut up in a castle, too tired to play princess anymore.
Movement over the mountains. The storm was changing. Gray clouds billowed down into the valley, nestled up against the loch, and opened. Stinging ice beat a merciless tattoo on the ground.
Her heart beat in time with the sleet, the pounding as insistent as a knock on the door—over and over and over—and the grip of the pain became too much to bear. The migraine overwhelmed her. The heavy Victorian-era furniture in her room was coruscating, beginning its nightly danse macabre.
Lieutenant Taylor Jackson Collection, Volume 2 Page 96