by Jody Klaire
“Well, that’s fine for us,” the older man said. Now that she looked at him, his deputy badge caught her eye. “But what about the other people Aeron helped? What about little Zack?”
Ursula’s mood darkened. “Aeron helped . . . Zack?”
Ewan was pushing her out of the cells before the officers could answer as the CIG medics came to help with the wounded.
“I’ll deal with it,” Ewan whispered to her. “Go be with Renee. Aeron will need your help.”
Ursula put her hands on her hips. “Who is little Zack?”
“Ma’am,” Ewan repeated. “Renee . . . please?”
She sighed. It would take a long time for Aeron to process the extent of Renee’s injuries and longer for her to come to terms with the fact that they had probably lost Renee by now.
It stung, it stung like hell and she glared at Yannick. She should take him out right now. Her hand dropped to her gun.
“Ma’am,” Ewan said. “Renee.”
Ursula snapped from her thoughts and nodded. She needed to get out of the station before she did do something stupid.
“Or sane,” she muttered as she walked out of the station.
I HAD PUT Renee down on the couch. Blob sat beside her as I gathered water and sponges to bathe the wounds on her face.
“You know, you shouldn’t heal her,”Nan said from behind me. “She’s not asking you for your help.”
“You think she wouldn’t want me to fix up her face?”
Nan’s presence lingered beside me. “I think that unless she comes back to you, Shorty, you need to let her make the decision.”
“Why would she want to be trapped in her mind?” I asked. It was unthinkable. No. She was right in front of me and I could fix her. “Why wouldn’t she want to live?”
“She’s been through more than you will ever understand.” Nan sighed. “Aeron, it’s her choice, just remember that. It’s what is best for her.”
She was gone before I could ask what she meant but when the door opened behind me, I understood why.
“Thought you’d be dealing with him,” I said.
My voice sounded so odd to my own ears, so detached. I realized I was angry at Frei for stopping me from wringing his neck.
She stood in the doorway like she didn’t know if she was allowed in. “There are a lot of questions you might want answered.”
“Damn right there are.”
Instead of glaring at her like I wanted to, I reached into the warm water and started to dab at the wounds. They needed stitches or something.
“I have a kit,” Frei offered.
I moved out of the way and watched her set up on the coffee table. I dragged over a bean bag to sit on.
“I am a bitch. I know you’re aware of that,” she glanced up at me, her piercing blue eyes echoing the pain I felt, “but I do care about Renee.”
Her hands worked like she had stitched people up a million times. “And about you too.”
I tried not to pull a face but failed. Yeah, right.
She smiled at my reaction. “When I met Renee, I didn’t care about anyone.” She sighed. “Actually, that’s not really true but . . . I was so . . . different.”
The truth glimmered around her and I couldn’t help but be transfixed by it. Frei was always so guarded that it was like there was fifty feet of steel around her.
“She pulled me out of myself.” Her hands were gentle but efficient as she tended the wounds. I’d never figured her for gentle, ever. “I guess you don’t need me to tell you that she is a hero.”
“But you’re her boss,” I said. “How did that work?”
“I’m her boss now,” Frei replied. “Back then I was . . . We started off on a different standing.”
The shield rose up with her response and I sighed. I was sick and tired of CIG politics and secrets. “So what happened with Yannick? If you can tell me that?”
Frei concentrated on the stitching but something cold oozed from her, making me shiver. “She was sent in to watch him. Lilia had a vision about a serial killer and his name was the only one she could really decipher.”
Her eyes focused but I could see that she was struggling with the emotions. They started to snake up into her normally unreadable aura.
“They met in Paris. Renee came to the opinion that he was a good man.”
“And she was wrong?”
Frei sighed. “She was played.”
Her blue eyes met mine again, and I saw the full depth of the sorrow she was feeling inside. It made my throat constrict with the sight. “Yannick is a true psychopath. Have you met one before?”
“In the institution but they weren’t hiding.” No, they were like uncaged hyenas. “You could really feel something . . . creepy . . . from them, you know.” It was like a whole part of their brain was dormant. “Then there was Sam.” Was that what he was? I wasn’t sure.
Frei looked back to her task. “He is claiming insanity, you know that, right?”
My stomach knotted up tighter. “So another vicious killer gets a shot at out?”
Her blonde eyebrow quirked. “You don’t believe he’s insane?”
I shook my head. “Scum . . . that’s it.” Watching her administer to Renee with such care made me feel even more helpless and I got to my feet, not knowing what to do. “Yannick is the same. More . . . pronounced.”
Frei remained silent and I stared out at the falling snow. One question really circled in my head. I could feel that he thought he owned her.
“Did he hurt her . . . you know . . . in that way?”
“No. The game was to make her watch the suffering of those she couldn’t save from him. To prove the victory had been won.” Frei’s own anger bubbled unmasked. “He wanted her to fall in love with him . . . so he could own her.”
I wrapped my arms around myself. The pain of it was too unbearable to think about. It sounded way too much like Sam. That’s what he’d wanted from me.
“He made her watch . . . every last one.” She sighed. “But you know that feeling.”
My tears tasted salty, the warm streaks trickled down silently. Yes, I knew. I’d felt every blow and lived every moment with Sam’s victims. God, Renee was brave sticking with me through that. She’d stuck by me even when others told her I could be the one who was doing it. Her belief in me soared above her own fear. What a woman.
“Why a year?” I asked. I didn’t want to know, but I did. I couldn’t bear it but I needed to hear it. “How did you find him?”
“Renee,” Frei said. Her voice was as level and calm as ever but torment lay underneath, I could hear it now. “She got hurt in the process but she saved the remaining hostages.”
“Hurt?”
I tensed, waiting for the answer. When I didn’t get it, I turned to look at Frei.
She had finished sewing and was staring down at her hands. “She has trouble with the left side of her peripheral vision.”
“And the claustrophobia?” I asked, remembering her pacing back in Oppidum, how anything dark or enclosed made her edgy.
“They were locked in a tiny cellar.” Frei shook her head. “I should have cut her loose after it. Lilia pleaded with me to let her stay on but with her vision problem, she should have been retired.”
I stared up at the ceiling. What a surprise. “Yet my mother wouldn’t let her have a life.”
Frei placed the kit away. “You’re a lot like her.”
I glared at her but she nodded.
“Renee wouldn’t have coped if she’d been sent home broken.”
“I don’t understand.” Why would she want to be in the line of fire?
Frei wandered down the hallway. I knew she was gathering her thoughts. I heard the water run in the bathroom and I stared at Renee’s stitched-up face.
I went to her and knelt down. Blob was still keeping her company. Careful not to touch her, careful to heed Nan’s warning, I fought desperately not to bury my head in her and plead like a child.
; He’d hurt her in ways I could never understand. He’d hurt her and I wasn’t allowed to fix it. I couldn’t cope without her around. What would I do if she stayed locked in her mind? Was I just meant to watch her fade?
I lifted my hand up, I couldn’t do that. I wasn’t brave like her. I couldn’t just stand back and watch her slip away.
“Renee burned to be like her father,” Frei whispered. I could hear how much guilt poured through. “To have sent her home having watched so many people die and tell her that she was useless to us—”
“She wouldn’t have survived it.” Now, Frei was blaming herself for the whole thing.
“Instead Lilia called in a personal favor.” I heard her approach. She touched my shoulder and gestured for me to leave Renee. “We made a show of investigating Serenity Hills while she protected you.” She smiled. “Lilia knew you were good . . . and Renee needed to learn she could do her job still.”
“She did, she was amazing.”
Frei looked at me like I’d said snow was white. “Of course she was. I was just thankful that she didn’t have anyone come at her from her weak side.”
I bit my lip. Frei needed the truth, she was the boss after all. “I fixed her.”
Blue eyes were steady, waiting. No doubt she already knew.
“Sam rammed her into a pole and she nearly drowned. Her head injuries were . . . well . . . I just couldn’t let her die.”
Frei shoved her hands in her pockets. “Aeron. I know better than to dismiss your claims but if she comes out from this, and that is unlikely, I’ll be retiring her.”
That felt like a hammer blow, one too many, and I hugged myself so tight my nails dug in.
“She will come back to us,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “She can’t leave.”
“Existentialism is a survival tool we use,” Frei said. “Thing is, she was injured and, judging by her vital signs, she’s fading. The shock of seeing him must have triggered something.”
Frei looked like I felt, like she wanted to pick Renee up and shake the life back into her or bawl like a child.
“We can’t give up.” The tears burst out. My sobs shook my shoulders. I couldn’t do this without her. “I won’t give up.”
Frei looked away. I saw the glimmer of tears. She walked to the cabinet and pulled out a bottle of liquor. “Neither will I.”
She took the bottle and two glasses to the table. “You don’t get to hear the full story much of the time,” she said, tapping the seat next to her, “but . . . I need you to understand the full picture.”
She motioned to the bottle but I shook my head. “You drink too much.”
“I know.”
“Renee really respects you.”
Pouring a glass, she nodded. “I know.”
“So do I.” I slumped down into the chair. “Right now I need you to tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
“I know.” My confession made her aura warm for a few seconds and she sipped at her shot. “For the moment. You are going to have a drink.” She poured a second glass and shoved it my way. “Then I’ll put your shoulder back in.”
I frowned, not knowing how she could tell.
She just smiled. A gentle smile. A smile that I needed to see. “Then we do the only thing we can, wait . . . and pray.”
Chapter 29
FREI AND I kept a constant vigil day and night but two days passed and Renee was no better. I mean we tried everything. I sat and told her all that was going on in the town. How Hal had two operations to save his leg but he was doing good and Marie had already agreed to marry him. I thought it would make her smile to tell her that Marie had loved the dumb fool all along but it was such a surprise to him that when she agreed, he fainted.
Frei told her how things had been in CIG and that if she didn’t come to, she was gonna be shipped back to her mom, who was safe and well, and then she’d have to face her sorrow. The threat would have worked if she’d been in there at all, I was sure, but nothing, not even a flicker.
I’d brought Zack around, he’d signed for her and Martha and Earl had translated as he’d been teaching them how to read his gestures. He’d drawn some pictures of superheroes for her and we’d told her all about how he’d given her a cape because all heroes flew.
Nothing.
I was catching some morning air on the porch when Blob appeared beside me and I smiled at the floating smudge.
“Sorry I ain’t been much use to you so far,” I said to him. “With everythin’ . . . I just . . .”
Blob yawned. “I am missing something . . . but your friend, she needs your help more.”
“That’s real honorable,” I told him. “How did it go with Seth Jewel after.”
If floating blobs could smile, I swore he was smiling. “You’ll see soon enough. If you don’t find my name . . .” I waited while Blob grappled with what he wanted to say. “Can I come with you?”
“Who said I was goin’ anywhere?”
Blob hissed his derision at my answer.
“Okay, okay . . . but you ain’t allowed to spook Renee.”
“Deal.”
Martha waved to me as she headed up the path and I stretched out my back. I’d been hunched over for so many hours, too many hours.
“Martha, could you watch Renee for a while?” I asked. “I just want to get a change in perspective.”
“Course. I have her breakfast so you’ll only be in the way.”
I headed down the steps only for a whoosh of air to hit me in the side of the face. “Hey, Nan.”
“Oh, Shorty. I hate seein’ you this way.”
I shrugged. What could I say to that? I didn’t want to be miserable, I just wanted Renee back. I wanted her fixed.
“She still silent?”
I nodded, tears brimming all over again. I swear I’d cried myself stupid over the last two days.
“Want to do something nice?”
“Like what?” I asked. “Nan, I’m not in the mood for riddles.”
Nan breezed through me, making my insides feel like I’d swallowed ice.
“Hey, quit it.”
“Stop your whining and head over to that outhouse over there.”
To stop her icing up any more of my organs, I followed the order and found myself in a ramshackle hut with holes in the floorboards. “What now?”
“Can you feel where I am?” she asked.
I nodded and headed over to the spot she was hovering in. “Rip up the board.”
Her voice was full of mischief and normally it would make me smile but all I’d done for two days was worry and cry like I had overactive hormones. Nothing seemed to calm me. I’d even thought about joining Frei in drinking a few times. Well, until I smelled the stuff and remembered the one shot she’d made me drink. It nearly knocked me clean off my chair. The woman drank paint stripper, I swear.
“Hey, sleepy,”Nan said, knocking over something behind me and I jumped. “Floorboard.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, taking the board in one hand and ripping it upward with ease. There was nothing I enjoyed more than dismantling and I half wanted to keep going till there was no floor at all. “You got a reason for this?”
“Look down,” Nan muttered.
I did so and saw a battered . . . something. “You’re gonna make me pick it up, ain’t you?”
“Darn shooting, I am.”
I sighed and picked up the battered plastic. “Are you going to explain why I have a decrepit toy mouse in my hand?”
“Out to the oak tree . . . the one you like so much.”
“I do?”
Nan breezed through me again. “Walk and talk, Shorty, let’s get you in good spirits.” She chuckled at her own joke as I shuddered and followed her out of the building.
“Nan, What do you mean I like the oak tree? What oak tree?”
I stood, looking at a magnificent guardian. Its gnarled knots twisted up its mighty thick trunk. A meandering maze of bare branches stretched up to the crystal bl
ue heavens. I had stared at it countless times without realizing and when I got to the weathered wood, I grounded myself, feeling its life beating below the bark.
“Bury the little fella right where you’re standing,” Nan instructed.
“The ground is solid.”
Nan chuckled. “Then it will take longer.”
Groaning, I left the mouse and went to a small shed to retrieve a shovel. It took nearly half an hour to dig any kind of sizable hole but Nan chatted to me the whole while. I took comfort from her babbling on about how my grandpa was a card shark. I could hear how much she adored him in her voice.
“Is he where I get my height from?” I asked between my grunts.
“Oh no,” Nan said, chuckling. “He was only a nose taller than me.”I could feel her glowing with love. “When we met, he was a skinny little thing, long black hair and skin like redwood.”
“Ah, so he’s where the Native roots come in?”
“Yup,” Nan said. She sounded like a teenager. “His folks understood about my gifts . . . good people his folks.”
“They play cards too?”
Nan laughed again. Her bright mood lifted me. “Sure do. Your grandpa learned some tricks from them!”
“Nan,” I said, finishing digging and leaning on the handle. “Why am I so tall?”
“You ate your veggies.”
“Funny,” I muttered. “I’m serious, why am I so tall?”
“My family,” she said. “They were all giants. I was just a tiny thing compared to my brothers. You get it from them.”
Brothers? Why did I know nothing of my family? “What happened to them?”
Nan sighed. “War, Shorty . . . war.”
“Well, I for one, think that violence sucks.”
Nan made a mumble of agreement and I popped the mouse into the hole. “Rest well, little friend.”
I filled in the hole and patted the top. Blob appeared next to where Nan was sitting. I blinked a couple of times as a shape not much like a nineteen-year-old boy came into view.
“You’re a cat?”
Blob licked his paws and a set of yellow eyes peered up at me. “Guess so.”