Last Run

by Hilary Norman

  ‘How can I when you bring up my hormones every chance?’

  ‘I haven’t mentioned them. I wouldn’t dare.’

  Grace sank back on to the cushions again. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Sam said. ‘It’s part of it.’

  ‘Hormones again,’ Grace said, this time smiling.

  ‘Hush.’ Sam raised a finger to his lips. ‘The kid might hear.’

  ‘The kid’s a boy,’ Grace reminded him. ‘He’ll probably be on your side.’

  ‘Lord, I hope so,’ Sam said.

  This thing with Terri – this probably non-existent thing – was beginning to get to Grace despite her best intentions. She had grown so used to sharing even the smallest problems with Sam, had always thought that one of the most precious aspects of their partnership. But in this case her thoughts were so unclear, and even she had told herself it was hormones.

  The main issue for her right now was that the instant she raised her concerns with Sam there was a real risk that everything would spin right out of control, because as wise as he was, that wisdom tended to go clean out the window if he feared any of his family was under threat. And if Sam asked Terri a single question about that photograph and how she had come to be in possession of it, then Saul might end up hating him for ever.

  A dilemma or several in the making. Which was why Grace was planning to go on doing what she seldom did.

  Nothing.

  There was no sign of Terri back at the Cove Inn, but her clothes were still there, and Saul didn’t know if he was more angry now or worried.

  Worried enough to call her cell phone again and leave a brief message: ‘I need to know you’re OK. Please call.’

  No response as yet, and all Saul was increasingly certain of was that this situation needed to be resolved, and he hoped to God that would not mean ending their relationship; yet being in love with Teté was becoming ever more painful as time went on, and the last thing he wanted was for it to become destructive.

  He went out to the bar at the Boat House, sat on a stool drinking a Miller Lite and gazing up at some ball game, hardly taking it in, his eyes turning to the door each time it opened. And then it struck him that Terri might that very minute be back at the Cove Inn wanting to make up with him, and if he wasn’t there that might be the clincher, she might pick up her things and leave for keeps. So he paid for his drink and sprinted back to the inn, half convinced he was going to find her there in their room.

  Breathless when he got through the door.

  Empty room.

  He called her number again, left a second message, half wished he had not, realized abruptly that the gnawing sensation in his stomach was hunger, but knew that the only way he was going to be able to relax long enough to eat a sandwich would be to leave her a note.

  Terri, I’m over at The Dock having a snack – come find me, please.

  He stuck it right in the centre of the bed, a bottle of her shampoo weighing down one corner of the sheet of paper in case it blew away when she opened the door, went over to the bustling restaurant, ordered himself a grilled yellow fin tuna sandwich, downed it too fast with a Bud, and went back yet again to the inn.

  The note had not been touched.

  Crayton Cove, he decided, through no fault of its own, was swiftly losing its charms.

  It was the first Saturday evening Cathy had spent at home with Sam and Grace for a while, and she had enjoyed it, acknowledging privately that she had been ducking out on them too much lately.

  It was good to be with family, and just the three of them for once. Sure she loved Saul – found it hard sometimes to believe just how much. And David too, of course, she adored him for all his kindness and wisdom and incredibly generous heart. But it was a little different with these two.

  Her adoptive parents on paper, yet more than that, in her heart – her greatest friends in the world, willing to do anything for her, wanting to protect her, urging her on. She still thought about her real mom and Arnie, her first adoptive father, still loved and missed them, would have given anything to have them back, safe and happy – though then she’d never have known Grace and Sam and the others, and . . .

  The complexities of her life were still often too much to contemplate, bore down on her sometimes like great blanketing clouds. Easier, better for her, she had decided long ago, not to dwell on them, to take each day as it came, and she was a survivor these days rather than a victim, and lucky, so lucky, to be that.

  Kez was a new complexity. Out of her life now, as swiftly as she’d entered it, and maybe that was as well, maybe there would be less pain this way.

  ‘I don’t like that kind of pain,’ Kez had said.

  The last thing she’d said to her, right after she’d told Cathy to go away and think. Except that what Kez had really meant – Cathy could see that now – was that she should just go altogether because she was too young, too inexperienced, too uncertain. Maybe Kez was right.

  If only, Cathy thought, she really believed that.

  By eleven o’clock Saul had become seriously worried about Terri.

  Storming out had been just like her, as had going off on her own, staying out, making him sweat, he guessed. But it had been too many hours now, and even if she didn’t care about the few clothes and personal possessions she’d brought from home, Terri had also left her laptop behind – presumably with her precious work loaded. Even if she’d been trying to score points, perhaps leaving it there to see if he could resist taking a look – which he had no intention of doing – surely enough time, almost nine hours, had passed.

  Something could have happened to her – he was becoming increasingly afraid that something had happened, and was increasingly agitated too, because there wasn’t a single thing he could do about finding her. The Naples police weren’t going to be concerned about a grown woman – not to mention a fellow officer – who’d walked out after a fight with her boyfriend. And if Terri ever got to hear about his making that kind of a report, she would most certainly never forgive him.

  Calm down.

  He went out again, no real purpose in mind now other than to try ridding himself of some of the tension that had built up in him, not even looking for Terri now because there was no point. In all likelihood nothing had happened to her, and she was probably not even in Naples any more, had just decided to make him suffer, had known he would take care of her belongings and take them back to Miami. And for all he knew, she might have gone to call on some cop colleagues – people who might understand what made her tick more than he did – maybe she’d even gotten a ride back to Miami with one of them.

  His walk was taking him along quiet affluent streets lined with large and lovely residences, exemplary homes with nothing to hide, no high walls to shield them from scrutiny, only perfectly tidy front gardens. Saul had seen similar houses driving into town with Terri, and they had been happy then, looking forward to checking in and sharing a little vacation time and making love and . . .

  Cut that out.

  Saul shook his head, irritated by his own self-pity, and turned a corner, heading towards the beach, and that was the best idea he’d had all day, getting some sand under his toes and a stiff ocean breeze in his face. And after that he thought he’d buy himself a nightcap back at the inn and get some rest and then, first thing, if Terri still wasn’t making contact, he’d check out and head back home.

  It was wonderful.

  Stars littering the black sky, a half moon silvering the already white sand, and Saul had taken off his sneakers and was gripping them by their laces, swinging them a little as he walked, the feel of the sand as good as he’d known it would be.

  A few people around, not many, but still too many for his mood.

  Couples, almost all of them, hand in hand or arms around each other, one pair laughing with pure joy as he passed them.

  He went on walking, wanting to escape the lovers, all those happy, normal people, and Saul knew, of course, that in reality at least half of t
hose people were probably nowhere near completely happy, and that there was no such thing as normal. In any case, what he and Terri were going through was nothing so special, just a case of two people who’d been crazy about each other coming to the slow, painful realization that things might not be going to work out for them, after all, and it was no big deal. Except it felt, right this minute, like the biggest damned deal on earth.

  Suddenly, the people were all gone. He was, as he had wished, all alone.

  Saul sat down facing the ocean, knees drawn up, arms hugging them, hands still holding on to the sneakers which knocked gently against his shins, blown by the wind. There was a little sand in the air, mixed in with the salt from the ocean, and it stung his eyes, but it didn’t matter because there were tears in them already.

  He dug his toes into the sand, thought back to how it had been after lunch, in bed with Teté, allowed himself to think about her beautiful breasts and wonderful skin, about the way she always wrapped herself so close to him.

  He said her name, not shouting it or whispering it, just said it, into the wind.

  ‘Teté.’

  And then he heard the sound from behind, footsteps hurrying over the sand towards him.

  Saul turned, too late, saw it coming a split second before the first blow struck his right shoulder, sending spears of agony through him and knocking him on to his back.

  He started to cry out. . .

  ‘Why?’

  Cut off by the foot coming down, stamping hard and viciously on his Adam’s apple, destroying his voice and wiping out his breath.

  The last thing he heard as he sank into oblivion was the scream.

  Chapter Seventeen

  September 4

  They travelled together in the darkness, one silent carload skimming Interstate 75 – aka Alligator Alley: Sam driving, Grace beside him, David and Cathy in the rear.

  David had got the call, Saul’s wallet, intact, having given the Naples police and People’s Hospital the information they needed.

  Not many details given on the phone; just the bare essentials.

  Saul was badly injured, had been attacked on the beach.

  Get here fast.

  No one was speaking. Sam sat rigidly, hands clenched around the wheel. Cathy wept softly, wiping her eyes occasionally with a saturated tissue. David was praying, silently for the most part, his lips moving now and again.

  Grace, her hands clasped over the child in her womb, her eyes focused straight ahead, kept stealing glances at Sam, felt as if her private thoughts and fears were drilling holes in her head; and she knew she had no choice now but to tell Sam without further delay about her suspicions of Terri.

  Not while he’s driving, you can wait till you get there.

  Yet having waited this long, surely she would have to wait a little longer than that, until she saw Terri’s face, her expression, her eyes, before she said anything so damaging, so potentially shattering. She owed it to Saul to wait till then, now that she’d held on to it for so long, had to try and get it right.

  As to the greatest, the most terrifying of her fears . . .

  That if her suspicions were not unfounded, then this terrible thing might not have happened to Saul if she had spoken up before now. Grace could not bear even to contemplate that.

  On the beach.

  Like the others. The ones Terri had been so obsessed by.

  No!

  A silent cry in Grace’s head.

  Please, God, no.

  Terri was pacing outside the ICU, visible from the far end of the long fifth floor corridor, vivid in her strawberry blouse and white jeans.

  ‘The surgery went OK,’ she told them hoarsely as they approached.

  ‘And now?’ Sam’s voice was a lash in the quiet air as his eyes went to the glass window, strained to see his brother, saw two beds occupied by strangers, Saul – if he was in there – out of view. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Far end.’ She looked wrecked, mascara streaked, hair messed up. ‘I don’t know how he is. He’s unconscious and hooked up to machines, and he looks so bad . . .’

  Sam turned on his heel, disappeared into the ICU, and David, with a swift, despairing look at Grace, went after him.

  Grace waited another moment, composing herself, then faced Terri.

  ‘Tell us,’ she said.

  ‘How much do you know?’

  ‘Very little.’ Grace kept her eyes on the younger woman’s. ‘We know Saul was attacked, and that it’s bad.’

  ‘They – someone – battered him.’ Terri’s mouth worked for an instant or two, but she brought herself back under control. ‘They broke his shoulder and beat him around the head.’ She took a juddering breath. ‘A doctor told me he thought they might have stamped on his throat, Grace.’

  Cathy gave a gasp of pure horror.

  Terri looked at her with sympathy, then back at Grace.

  ‘His larynx is smashed.’ A whisper now. ‘That’s how hard they stamped on him.’

  Cathy made a brief, shrill, terrible sound, and Grace, her own heart pounding so hard she feared she might pass out, looked away from Terri for a moment to check that her daughter was not about to collapse. Then, struggling for self-control, she returned her gaze to the other young woman, searched the red-rimmed, distraught eyes. The anguish looked true, it looked real – and suddenly pure instinct took over, propelled Grace’s arms up and out, and Terri all but fell into them, allowed herself to be held for a moment before she pulled away again, trembling violently.

  ‘You need to sit.’ Grace nodded at a bench to their right.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You should,’ Cathy said. ‘You look like hell.’

  ‘I have to keep moving.’

  Grace asked the dread question. ‘What about his head?’

  Terri shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ She looked from Cathy to Grace again. ‘You two should sit, especially you, Grace.’

  What Grace desperately wanted was to be with Sam and David in the ICU, to be with poor, poor Saul, but she also needed, she knew, to stay here with Terri and go on observing her for just a little longer, to be certain that she was what she appeared: Saul’s traumatized, horrified girlfriend.

  ‘What about you, Terri?’ she asked quietly. ‘They didn’t hurt you?’

  Terri shook her head. ‘I wasn’t there.’

  ‘How come?’ Cathy was bewildered. ‘Where did it happen?’

  Finally Terri moved over to the bench, sank down. ‘Saul was walking on the beach.’ Her voice was almost a whisper again. ‘I wasn’t with him.’

  ‘Why weren’t you?’ Something inside Grace began to chill.

  ‘We had another fight,’ Terri said.

  ‘A man found him on the beach near the pier,’ David reported to Sam after he’d talked with one of the ICU team. ‘The paramedics came fast, thank God, got his airway open, saved his life. The CT scan showed a blood clot, but they got him into surgery, dealt with that.’

  ‘But all this.’ Sam was staring down at Saul, at the bandages and the plastered shoulder and upper right arm and the awful bruising, at all the tubes and wires, the catheters and electrode pads on his chest, the ventilator and monitors, the bags of blood and fluid, administering and taking away; the blessed horrors of modern medicine. ‘He looks as if he’s on life support.’

  ‘All there to help him through,’ David reassured. ‘The monitors are his friends right now, son. If the machines report a problem, the team can jump on it right away.’ He didn’t know how he was managing to speak so calmly, didn’t know how he was still upright. ‘They’ve done some preliminary fixing up, too, in his throat. Fragments of cartilage had to be removed, tiny plates and wires put in to stabilize the area.’

  ‘And now?’ Sam’s own throat felt constricted, his chest tight.

  The emotional agony spreading through him as he looked down at his brother was all too sickeningly familiar. He had experienced it three other times, the first when Sampson had died, the
next when his dad had been in the ICU at Miami General after someone had stabbed him six years back; the third when he’d heard the death knell of Judy’s terminal cancer prognosis.

  Not the same, he told himself, and tried in vain to shove it away. Tried, but failed, to put away the greatest of his fears.

  ‘How long was it, before they got his airway open?’

  One part of the fear. Sam did not, could not, look at his father.

  David knew what he was really asking: how long Saul’s brain might have been deprived of oxygen. Two bites of the poisoned cherry, he thought, with a new, silent rush of agony: head trauma and suffocation.

  ‘No way of knowing how long.’ He paused. ‘The EEG looks OK.’

  Finally Sam dared to look at him, feeling like a boy again, craving reassurance from the man he trusted most in the world.

  ‘But it’s early days, son.’ David needed to be honest, for all their sakes. ‘He took a hell of a beating. More than a single impact.’

  ‘Is he in a coma?’

  His father shook his head. ‘But they’re going to keep him under heavy sedation for quite a while, to give everything a chance to settle.’ He struggled for a few more crumbs to throw to his older son. ‘I know it doesn’t seem that way, but we’ve actually been very lucky.’

  ‘Lucky.’ Sam’s face twisted.

  ‘He’s alive,’ David said simply. ‘Another few minutes, maybe less, he’d have been gone if the paramedics hadn’t done such a great job. The procedure they used can be risky, a hollow needle in the perfect spot, but they had no choice, and they got it right, thank God.’

  ‘So all in all, he could be OK?’ Still like a kid, begging for good news.

  ‘It’s early, Sam,’ his father told him again. ‘There’s no cervical spine injury—’

  ‘Jesus.’ That horror hadn’t even occurred to Sam.

  ‘But however it goes, they’re going to have to do a lot more work on him.’ David’s face was a mass of lines, each seeming more deeply etched than it had been a few hours ago. ‘More surgery to repair and rebuild, then physio for his shoulder, and speech therapy.’ He looked at his older son’s face. ‘This minute, though, he’s out of danger.’