Possess

by Laura Marie Altom

  “Hey,” I said with a wave, even though she failed to even glance my way. Maybe she’d want to be my escape buddy?

  Nurse Alice noted, “She’s not much for small talk.” Nodding to a corner chair that held a middle-aged woman with a half-shaved head and upside-down crossword puzzle book, she said, “That’s Cora. She’s quite the wordsmith. Everyone else must be in their rooms, but you’ll meet them all at dinner. We’ll convene in the dining room at seven.”

  With Alice gone, and my stomach growling, I wasn’t in the mood for crafting. This elegant space with perfect conversational areas and designer lamps and bric-a-brac and leafy potted plants was supposed to have made me mellow. All it really did was remind me how terribly far from Liam I was. And how I desperate I was to get back.

  To Ivy, I said, “I know we just met, but do you know how to get out of here?”

  She said nothing.

  “I tried escaping,” Cora said without looking up from her puzzle. “But got caught in the bathroom.”

  I pressed my lips tight. And sighed. And wished I could close my eyes and make all of this go away, but I couldn’t, so I needed to stay strong. I needed to swallow the lump in my throat and figure out how to get the hell out of this awful place.

  17

  Liam

  I swear to God, every second I spent rotting in this fucking cell took a year off my life. Considering it was now Wednesday and my bail hearing still hadn’t been scheduled, I should have been long dead.

  Where was Ella? Was Blaine with her now? Hurting her? Punishing her?

  Sick, twisted images accosted my brain. I imagined him cutting her again. I heard her screams. Tasted her coppery spilled blood. If he’d hurt her so bad when they’d actually been in a committed relationship, how far would he go now that he was 100 percent clear that she wanted out?

  The night I’d proposed, she’d told me he was dangerous and I hadn’t believed it. My overinflated ego had not only underestimated my opponent, but ignored him. A week ago, Blaine had been a gnat. A flea.

  Now, he’d bested me in every way possible. That fact made me sick.

  What must Ella be thinking? That I’d abandoned her? I had no way of getting hold of her, or even knowing where she was—at least not definitively until I put feet on the ground in Tennessee. Garrett had compiled a short list of mental facilities where Blaine may have stashed her. We’d had him and Ella’s parents tailed from the moment their plane landed in Memphis, but our guy lost them in traffic, only to hours later find all parties snug in their respective beds—without Ella.

  It was just a matter of time before one of them led our guy straight to her, but I wasn’t exactly known for my patience. I wanted her back now.

  Still more hours passed.

  I tried reading, but my eyes wouldn’t focus on the page. All I saw was Ella. Since I knew she wasn’t with Blaine, I wanted to believe there was a chance she might be safe. But then my mind’s eye saw her in some straight-out-of-a-horror-flick asylum with wild-eyed freaks eating their own hair and shitting in dark corners. Being the only sane person in a place like that could drive Ella to insanity.

  Finally, around one thirty that afternoon, a guard showed up to take me to a conference room to speak with Garrett. I was being housed in the seventh-floor Hall of Justice facility.

  Justice, my ass.

  “What took you so long?” I asked him the second I entered the sterile beige conference room.

  He didn’t look up from his cellphone. “Suffice it to say, you’ve made a few enemies and they want you to serve time. TSA was all too happy to pass you up the food chain. Cops have a problem with guys hauling off and punching one of their own. Still, they can reasonably hold you without bail for only so long, so you’ve got a hearing today at four. In the meantime, I found Ella, but—”

  “Where is she?” I damn near leapt across the table.

  “That right there—you acting like an animal? It’s got to stop.” He adjusted his tie. “Reason number seventy-two why you need to dump this chick.”

  I was so fucking sick of him constantly telling me to cut Ella from my life as if she meant no more than an old sofa that I could tell the housekeeper to trash. “What don’t you get about the fact that I love her? I’m going to marry her. If you ever so much as hint at me leaving her again, you’re gone.”

  Garrett laughed. “Lucky for me, you don’t have the authority—especially not after your latest stunt. The board isn’t pleased.”

  “Whatever.” I rolled my eyes and kicked back in my chair. “Where is she?”

  “A small, private Disneyland of a psychiatric hospital where the mega-elite send family members whom they’d rather were seen and not heard. The cost per day is what some folks pay per semester to send their kiddos to college.”

  “Where’s our friend, Blaine, getting that kind of money? I thought he was a small-time judge.”

  “At his present salary of $139k, plus bullshit money from a few income properties, that’s just it—he’s not. There’s no way he should be able to afford to keep Ella in that place for even ten minutes. You, on the other hand…”

  “Knock it off. So what’s his story?”

  “On paper, he’s the proverbial Mr. Clean, but I’m still digging. I’ve got a man hired to search his house, and we’re already deep into his financials. If he’s got a secret, we’ll find it. Regardless, your girl’s locked up tighter than a virgin on prom night. She’s not getting out anytime soon. The place doesn’t even acknowledge she’s there.”

  “So how did you confirm she is?”

  Garrett shot me a look. “Plausible deniability is your best friend. Remember that. Now, after I get you sprung, I need your most solemn promise—and I’m dead fucking serious—that you’re not going to run off locked and loaded to gallop in to the rescue. With the current charges you’re facing, I need you purer than driven snow—not like some dirty snow with cat piss in it, okay?”

  “Fuck you. Just get me out of here and let me handle the rest.”

  “Liam,” he said, leaning in, “hear me like you’ve never heard before. You and I have a different methodology on pretty near everything we do, but together we’ve managed to do damn well by each other. I’m saying this not as your lawyer, but as a guy who’s been your friend since the start of this whole crazy ride. I’ll help you in any way I can to get her back, but please, don’t chase after her yourself. As long as I’ve known you, you’ve gone after women who need saving, but this one…” He shook his head. “My Spidey sense is screaming for you to watch yourself.”

  —

  By that night, I was back in my Palo Alto house, making a turkey sandwich.

  Staying here hurt even worse than being in that cell, because now I faced the added pressure of knowing I could have the jet readied in an hour. Trouble was, as much as it pained me to admit, Garrett had been right. A condition of my bail was that I not leave the state. If I did and got caught, Ella and I would both be screwed, because even after this crisis was over, I’d still be trapped behind bars.

  The thing is, if I were smart about it, I wouldn’t get caught.

  I pondered the risk versus reward overnight.

  Come morning, it was a no-brainer that no risk was great enough to keep me from saving the woman I loved.

  Garrett was less than thrilled about my decision but realized there was no stopping me, so I enlisted his help. As long as I played this smart, there was no way I’d get caught. Ripping a page from Ella’s past, I adopted an alter ego. John Smith—I thought he’d be a great match for Julie.

  Turns out, it’s fucking amazing what money can buy. A fake driver’s license, passport and credit cards. In forty-eight hours, I was a new man. I buzzed my hair, outfitted myself with a new wardrobe consisting of cargo pants, hiking boots and T-shirts, then crammed it all into a duffel and took a cab to a bus station. From there, Greyhound drove me to Sacramento, where John Smith bought a one-way airline ticket to Memphis.

  A few hours l
ater, John rented a car, and then aimed it toward Ella.

  18

  Ella

  “How did that make you feel?”

  Thursday morning, after a highly civilized and overmedicated meal with my fellow inmates, I occupied the chaise longue of honor in Dr. Carthage’s office. One thing I had to say in his favor was that I believed he had my best interests at heart. On Tuesday, when Alice had announced that my parents and Blaine had come for a visit and I said I didn’t want to see them, she’d politely turned them away. On doctor’s orders, she’d explained, I didn’t have to see anyone from the outside world until I was ready. I’d asked about calling people I especially wanted to see, but she’d just smiled and shook her head.

  “Ella…”

  “Lousy, okay? I felt lousy. God, we’ve been over this like a million times. When you and Blaine showed up at Liam’s I was pissed—still am. You had no right to just take me like that. It was barbaric.”

  He wrote notes in his leather-bound journal. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. But your husband saw it as—”

  “Don’t call him that—ever! He mutilated and tortured me for sport. He even filmed it.”

  The room’s only sound was the scratch of the doctor’s pen against paper. His office was white—like my room. I hated it. When I got out of here—and I would—I never wanted to see a white room again. If Liam wanted me to go to his stupid, giant white house, I’d refuse!

  “Ella, let’s touch a bit on that scenario—I don’t want to get too deep. Just stay on the fringe. You say Blaine caused your scarring, yet by his account—even your parents’—you caused those scars yourself. What can you tell me about that?”

  “That it’s bullshit. He duct-taped me to a fucking chair, then carved me like a turkey! Wanna see?” Because my time with Liam had taught me to be brave and unashamed of the scars I’d had no control over, I proudly raised my ugly pink sweatshirt and bra. It was about damned time the doctor had a firsthand view of what my bastard husband had done. “Does this look like something any sane woman would do to herself? Right here is all the proof needed. I think Blaine’s message of U R Mine reads pretty clear.”

  His initial reaction was to blanch, but he all too soon slipped back into his professional calm. “Regardless of how it happened, I’m deeply sorry.”

  “But still not convinced my hubby is the psycho?”

  He consulted a file. “According to hospital reports, the night you went in for treatment, your husband reported that your home had been invaded, with many items of jewelry and electronics stolen, and that you’d also been raped. He stated that he’d found you in the kitchen of your home—unconscious, with the instrument used for mutilation still gripped in your right hand. The presence of third-party DNA in the form of semen was found inside you. Every trace of your husband’s story has been corroborated by a mountain of evidence.” He set down the damning file and leaned forward. “Ella, what you went through was too much for anyone to handle, let alone a woman who’d no doubt been in that happy glow stemming from expecting your first child.”

  “Don’t speak of that. Ever.” My baby was sacred.

  Not even Liam knew.

  At the time, not even Blaine had known. I never revisited that particular pain. If I were truthful with myself, it’s because I knew that if I ever took that precious infant’s soul out of the beautiful memory box I’d forever cradled him in for safekeeping, I might truly go mad. The rape was another issue I had to forget, because self-preservation told me I had no other choice.

  “Of course.” The doctor’s voice had softened. His pen scratch, scratch, scratched on the yellow legal pad. “I think you’ve had enough for today, but there is one thing I’d like you to ponder. Just suppose—and I genuinely mean that. We’re just playing a game of what-if—after the rape you were so outraged, so horribly afraid of losing your baby, that on a level so deep your conscious mind still refuses to accept it, you did carve that message yourself? And it wasn’t about Blaine claiming you, but you claiming your sweet, innocent unborn son? Telling him that he would forever belong to you by carving the message into the very breasts that would have given him sustenance.”

  My rage at this ridiculous theory was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.

  For a moment, my vision went dark and I struggled for air, and when I found it, I couldn’t be responsible for my actions. I hit and screamed and broke and kicked and clawed.

  I knew the syringe was coming.

  And I welcomed it.

  I wanted—needed—to dream of Liam.

  19

  Liam

  Garrett might have agreed to help my cause, but not without terms of his own.

  One of which was that he wanted Carol with me to not only provide backup, but keep me on task with Zoogle business to provide proof of my having been a good boy, hard at work.

  It was probably a wise call, as the situation with Ella was dicier than I’d anticipated, and Carol had proven herself invaluable when it came to supporting my cover. Just to land my crap job at the clinic, I’d needed a dummy food-handler’s permit, dummy references attached to legit phones and a crash course on working in a commercial kitchen.

  We’d been in Tennessee for over two weeks, living in a crap apartment and eating crap take-out. I could have rented a comfortable house, but that would raise questions. John Smith was a drifter, and security at Longhurst was beyond tight. Different keycards and codes for each level, elevator and door. Employees were well compensated and loyal. Bribe offers had been met with flat-out laughter or blank stares. With bribes off the table, I figured why not just grab Ella and run, but even that had been a bust. Her emotional state was so delicate that the situation called for finesse. And patience—far more than I’d even known I possessed.

  The worst part—and if I dwelled upon it, I’d fucking lose it—was that Ella was so doped up, she didn’t recognize me. When I caught glimpses of her while delivering meals to her floor’s dining room, she could hardly even stay upright in her chair.

  I mean, it would be one thing sneaking out my fiancée who wanted to be with me, but I didn’t know this woman. And that scared me. But it didn’t in any way lessen my drive. Ella’s condition, her confinement, was temporary. My love for her was forever.

  “Were you talking to me?” With a Sam Adams in hand, I’d just left the apartment’s kitchen on my way to the sofa to dig into my nightly mountain of Zoogle correspondence when I poked my head through Carol’s partially open bedroom door.

  “No. I’ve been on the phone with Nathan. He wanted a progress report.”

  “What did you tell him?” It irked me that the kid was in my business. But I guess to be fair, as Ella’s friend, she was also his business. I needed to be the bigger person and appreciate the fact that Ella needed every available ball in her court. Recognizing the fact was one thing. Following through would be a bitch.

  “Only the basics. That you’re working on getting her out, and that with luck, it shouldn’t be much longer.”

  “Good. Thanks.” Crazy how after the funeral, in those precious few hours Ella and I had shared at the beach house, we’d been solid. Now, the only thing I knew for sure was that if it took the rest of my life trying, I’d make her love me all over again.

  “All right, well…” She yawned. “I’m going to bed. See you in the morning.”

  “Stay. I want to run something by you.”

  She sighed. “Can it wait? I’m tired.”

  “No. Sleep when you’re dead.” I landed on the sofa. “You had so much crap for me to sift through this afternoon, I forgot to mention that I’m pushing for extra shifts. This other guy who washes dishes—Jimmy—is a major dopehead, and works nights. He says a few late-shift nurses are too lazy to wake up patients for their meds, so they leave pills on the nightstands until they wake up. Jimmy delivers late-night snacks, but scores a shit-ton of meds that he then turns around and sells for major bank.”

  Instead of being p
syched, Carol’s only reaction was another yawn. “Was that tale intended to wow me with your druggie prowess or is there eventually going to be a moral to this story?”

  I swigged the last of my beer. “Do you have to be such a bitch?”

  “Sorry. I don’t mean to be—sometimes.” She winked.

  I shook my head. “Anyway, Jimmy’s routine has me thinking. What if I add a few late shifts, then see if I can follow his routine? Only instead of taking pills, I take Ella?”

  Turning serious, she toyed with her ponytail. “That’s actually not a half-bad plan. I’m all for any move that fast-tracks us out of the ghetto. But playing devil’s advocate, let’s say you manage to get into Ella’s room and wake her. Then what? You’ve already established that she doesn’t know you, and you’ve told me how her new habit of screaming at the slightest provocation has become legendary, which is why they keep her so sedated. So how are you going to work around that?”

  “I’m still thinking.” Tonight, I’d for sure need an Ambien. Lately, my mind refused to shut down. I just kept seeing Ella’s hollow expression. “You should’ve seen her today. She looked so pale. Fragile—nothing like the woman I know. She was always on the thin side, but strong, you know? Like she wouldn’t take shit from anyone. Now, the breeze from a passing butterfly could send her toppling.”

  “A butterfly?”

  Heat rose in my cheeks. Christ, I missed my Ella. “You know what I mean.”

  “Not really.”

  “When’s the last time you dated someone?”

  “On that note…” She turned toward her room. “This time, I really am going to bed.”