Always Watching (47 page)

Not red-faced and screaming.  Then
again, Dad was working a case the night I was born.  He hadn’t
arrived at the hospital until the next day.

Was it really a case that kept him away, or
were he and my mother out buying a child?

Uncertainty grew unbearable.  It clawed
at my raw emotions, a ruthless beast digging its way out of my
chest.  Of course I understood the necessity for the lie, and
if I ever believed that my father stole children to place them in
better homes, I would be a heavy mark in the column that validated
that action.

My heart ached for Crevan, growing up with
Aidan Conall as his father.  Intolerant, stubborn
bastard.  How would he have ever coped with a child like
me?  I grew up questioning everything.  Was that part of
who I innately am, or something that Wendell had nurtured until it
fully blossomed into abject skepticism of everything?

Johnny and I talked about the timing for my
first visit to Wendell since his arraignment hearing.  Not
that it had been a visit per se.  I’d merely seen him in court
when he communicated his very last message to me, the location of
the family’s ill-gotten gains.  The look in his eyes, telling
me to let him go and have a good life alone.

Why?  Why, why, why?  A billion
new questions formed, vied for dominance.  The predominant
winner in my mental battle was that I could not share what Gillette
revealed to anyone.  Getting a DNA sample from Crevan might be
tricky.  Could I do it?  Would I survive this nightmare
and ever have the opportunity to try, or would I be shuffled off in
chains to my “owner” and forced to live under some obscene rule
that stripped me of all human rights?

Fight or flight.  My heart knew the
answer and readily agreed with the head for once.  I’d rather
fight and die than go into slavery willingly.  If it was a
fight they wanted, then I would continue to kill every human
obstacle that stood in my way until none remained.

Muffled voices approached
in the corridor.  One was high pitched, Spanish still.  I
could make out the “
si,
si
” and “
el
Diablo
” indicating that it was Raul again,
perhaps coming back with reinforcements.  Maybe I wouldn’t
have the opportunity for another fight.  It could very well be
my execution approaching.

A sense of calm acceptance washed over
me.  It was a good life, even with those shining moments of
brilliant justice that some would call crimes.  I could die at
peace, knowing that a small group of corrupt bastards died at my
hand.  Or leg, as the case was in the man beneath my
feet. 

The lower voice, the one whose tone was
audible but words indistinct sounded agitated.  I held my
breath.  The door banged open.  The light from the
hallway pierced my skull like a hot dagger.  How long had I
been in complete darkness?  Long enough to become seriously
photosensitive.

Large shoulders filled the doorframe.

“
Jesus,” rasped followed
by a gagging cough and an arm that flew over the face I could not
see.

Decomposition aided by high humidity no
doubt.  My parched throat ached.  I held my tongue
instead of crying out, “I’m here!  Help me!”

“
Get the light, you son of
a bitch.  And don’t you dare play dumb about
English.”

My heart jumped in my
chest. 
Johnny
.

The glass bulb in the middle of the room
illuminated.  Shadows receded to the periphery of the room
where they swayed with the rocking motion of the ship.

Johnny’s eyes met mine.  “Helen,” he
rasped.

The stubble on his face had grown to the
point where it was indistinguishable from the goatee.  He
rushed forward and lifted my weight off Gillette’s body. 
Strong arms wrapped around me.  He buried his face in my
flesh.

“
You came for
me.”

Tears ran over my skin, trickled down my
belly to the cleft between my legs.  “Of course I came for
you.  Jesus Christ, I’ve been sick thinking about… ”

“
I’m okay.  Gillette
and Captain Umberto, not so much.”

He sniffled.  “Good girl.”

“
I don’t know what they
did with my clothes.  I need to get off this wall.  I
think my shoulders are dislocated.  I don’t know who has the
keys to the shackles.”  I’m pretty sure that my rapid-fire
thoughts were disorganized and nonsensical.

Johnny nodded.  “Okay, baby. 
We’ll get you down.”

“
We?”

“
I’ve got a whole team of
people securing the ship.  Crevan, David, Mackenzie, hell,
half of Darkwater Bay PD signed up to help overtake this ship and
get you back.”

I groaned.  “Johnny, I don’t want
people to see me this way.”  What the hell happened to my
voice?  I knew my tongue felt like leather.

“
Shh,” he soothed. 
“Don’t try to talk.”

“
What day is
this?”

“
Friday.”

Shit.  Panic gripped me.  My
fingers curled around the chains numbly.  I jerked at the them
and fractured nails clawing at the restraint.  “I’ve got to
get free!”

“
It’s all right,
honey.  You’re safe now.  I have to let you go for a
minute to search Gillette’s body for a key.”

“
No!  No,
Johnny!  You don’t understand!  They’re meeting the man
who is buying me today.  Friday, that’s the day.  I’ve
got to get out of here!”

Another notion invaded my head, a corkscrew
worm of a virus.  What if this was a hallucination, some
dehydration induced delusion that made me believe Johnny had
arrived in the nick of time to save me?  The border between
sanity and psychosis evaporated in my mind.  How would I ever
know the difference between hell and the real world again? 
How could I trust anyone or anything?

“
Honey, you are
safe.”  Johnny eased my aching body lower without jolting my
sockets from the increased pressure of supporting my body
weight.  “We found you off Cleveland Island in Alaska. 
There’s a Coast Guard ship right next to
The Celeste
.  There was another
ship in the area, but they left when they saw the Coast Guard
–”

“
You’re lying,” I
rasped.  “Tell me something I don’t already know.  Tell
me something that will prove you’re real, that I’m not dying and
only seeing what I want to see.”

Johnny leaned into me.  His lips grazed
my dry skin.  “We arrested Destiny Gerard at Datello’s
penthouse.  She was trying to abduct the baby again.”

I snorted.  “Nice try.  I already
knew they would try to do that, as well as spring Melissa Sherman
from county jail.”

Johnny’s laughter tickled my desensitized
flesh in a vague sort of dissociative way.  “Now why doesn’t
that surprise me?  You’re always ten steps ahead of the rest
of us.  Let me look through Gillette’s pockets for the keys,
hmm?  If I get you down, maybe that’ll convince you that this
is real.”

“
There’s someone else
involved in this Johnny, another conspirator.  I think I know
who it is.”

The warmth pressed against my body
vanished.  Johnny knelt at my feet and gingerly picked through
the mess.  Occasional coughs floated upward.

“
Sorry about the
smell.”

Johnny chuckled.  “You’re alive. 
I think I can deal with this.”

“
Please tell me this is
real.”

“
Shh, stop talking,
Doc.  You’ve barely got a voice left.”

More voices drifted from the corridor.

“
No.  Don’t let them
come in here, Johnny.  I don’t want people to see me like
this.”

“
It’s just
David.”

“
No.”

“
Honey, I need him to find
some clothes for you and apparently the keys to your
shackles.”

I was too dry to shed tears, but they were
there in spirit.  Visions of dying and rotting on the wall
danced through my head.  Only when my remains were skeletal
would I finally escape my prison.

David’s gasp drew my weary gaze. 
“Don’t look at me.”

“
See if you can coerce
Raul into giving you the location of the keys that’ll unlock her,”
Johnny said.  “I’m not having any luck finding them on
Gillette.”

“
Then he’s really
dead?”

Johnny glanced up at me.  “Uh, yeah,
not sure how it happened yet.  We need some clothing for
Helen.  See if the Coast Guard has a spare jumpsuit.”

My eyes fluttered shut.  It was too
surreal to be believed.  I was certain that my eyes would open
to pitch blackness and more isolation.  What were a few more
minutes, hours, days?  Everything bled into one never ending
ball of torment.

Fight or flight. 
Fight or flight.
  I had neither the
energy or will for either one. 

“
Shoot me,” I
whispered.  “If you’re real, shoot me and put me out of my
misery.  I can’t take it anymore, Gillette.  You
win.  You’ve broken me.”

Had it all been a bout of wishful
thinking?  Had I really killed Umberto and Andy
Gillette?  Or was I still drifting through the Pacific on a
destination I neither wanted nor could escape?

Blessedly, when consciousness slipped away
this time, it would not soon return.  I only hoped it didn’t,
for fear that the answer to my soul-drained questions would shatter
what was left of my spirit.

Chapter 41

I woke with scratchy linens under my
skin.  The shoulder joints throbbed with unrelenting
pain.  Along with the awareness of pain came the knowledge
that my tongue was no longer parched, nor did my lips have the
turgor of autumn leaves. 

A sliver of light gleamed across a tiled
floor.  It wasn’t much, but was enough for me to see that the
room was not only absent the odor of death, it was replaced with
the sickening scent of hospital disinfectant.  Great effort
hoisted my frame to the edge of the bed.  A tube was attached
to an IV catheter in my arm.  My eyes followed it to the pump
beside the bed.  One-hundred milliliters per hour.

How long had I been here?  Was I really
here?  If so, where was Johnny?

I stood on wobbly feet and grabbed the IV
pole for balance.  A peek out the window might at least orient
me to day or night.  My fingers slipped between light-blocking
drapes.  They parted a crack, enough for the murky and
ever-caliginous Darkwater Bay atmosphere to filter through.

The spire of Saint Angelo’s Cathedral was
visible in the distance. 

“
All right,” I
whispered.  “I’m at Metro State University Hospital, that’s
west, and it must be shortly after dawn.”  That didn’t answer
the question that lodged in the back of my throat.  How long
had I been here?

Self-preservation instinct warred with
paranoia.  I could tear the IV out of my arm and vanish into
the mist outside.  I should haul my sickly ass back to the bed
and let the hospital personnel continue to feed me
intravenously. 

I pressed my lips together, surprised that
they were slick with oily lubrication.  What to do. 
Events of the past however long were never far.  I prayed that
I hadn’t been so delirious that I blabbed everything Gillette
insinuated or outright admitted to Johnny when he found me.

Then again, if any of the end memory was
correct, why wasn’t Johnny with me now?  Was it because of our
abrupt parting of the minds before Gillette abducted me?

Another thought, one that hadn’t stopped
lingering, emerged.  I could still be trapped on that ship,
lost in a delusional state that found the fantasy of rescue
preferable to any reality.  How would I ever know for
sure? 

Is this what insanity feels like? 
Psychosis?  Logic fled.  I couldn’t come up with a single
test that would adequately convince me of reality or
delusion.  My eyes burned with frustration, and I seriously
cursed the day that empathy was awakened in my psyche.  Look
where it got me.

A soft voice cut into my thoughts. 

“
Dr. Eriksson?”

Slowly, I turned and glanced at the tiny
nurse next to my bed.

“
If you need help with
something, you can press the call button.  Did you forget
where it is again?”

I blinked slowly.  Again?  How
many times had I cycled this loop of awareness?  I cleared my
throat.  “I’ve done this before, I suppose.”

“
Do you know where you
are?”

I nodded, barely.  “I think so. 
MSUH.”

“
That’s right.  Do
you know what day this is?”

“
Not the first
clue.”

“
Can you tell me the last
thing you recall clearly?”

The surrealism of my life was a
breath-stealing punch.  Was I sure any of this was real? 
What if…?

“
Dr. Eriksson?”

“
Was I shot?”

Damned nurse and her unreadable mask. 
She gave away nothing.  “You tell me.”  Her arms crossed
over her chest.  I was tempted to lecture on the impact of
negative body language.

“
I don’t want to talk
right now.”  My feet shuffled toward the bed.  “Please
leave me alone.”

“
I’m afraid I can’t do
that.”

She approached the bed and adjusted pillows
before I laid down.  “Eventually, you’re going to have to
talk.  I’d think you’d be eager to put this behind you.”

“
Put exactly what behind
me?”