Monahan 02 Artificial Intentions (41 page)

The voices were closer now and both were female. The louder of the two was definitely Belinda. I would recognize that foghorn timbre from a mile away.

The ripping noise started again and in a few moments the lid of the suitcase was moved aside.

“She’s fine,” Belinda was saying. “Her heart rate and BP were all within the normal range. Her blood-ox and respirations were fine. Nothing to worry about. She should be back to normal in a few minutes.”

The light was dim and I could see very little. As tempted as I was to start moving my limbs and get myself out of the suitcase, I played possum and stayed jammed-in like a street vendor’s pretzel.

“So long as the bitch stays alive for a little while longer, I could care less,” a very familiar voice was saying.

Rough hands grabbed me from behind and rolled me out of the suitcase onto the floor. From my new vantage point, I wasn’t surprised to see Nat Scott standing over me.

When we first met, I think I might have thought Natalie had attractive traits. Standing over me now, though, with her hands on her skinny hips, I took back my first impressions. Ugly, demented eyes glared at me. Her face was so taut with evil and hatred that her lips were virtually non-existent. Her hair was greasy, unkempt and matted.

I felt some relief in my ribcage as my legs straightened out, although pins and needles were stabbing at my feet as the circulation started coming back. I lay as feeble as a baby on the floor, looking up at Nat, meeting her eyes, daring her to do something.

“Put her on the table,” she ordered and I was picked up under my armpits and dragged across the room by Belinda. I made it as hard as possible on her, willing my body to be deadweight and uncooperative.

“Hurry up,” Natalie barked out. “We haven’t got all day.” Her voice faded and I was pretty sure she had left the room.

Belinda scooped me up like a toddler and plunked me on a table like a bag of groceries. We were in a room painted white, with a light coming from an old, overhead fixture. I darted my eyes around without moving my head, trying to get a fix on my surroundings.

“Don’t roll off,” Belinda told me in a distracted voice and she walked out of my vision.

Don’t worry, I thought, taking advantage of the situation and looking around.

What I saw scared me to the depths of my soul and made me more frantic.

Like a scene out of a Frankenstein movie.

On a table up against the wall, where Belinda stood with her back to me, surgical instruments were lined up.

Four large lamps with stainless steel shades stood against the other wall.

White linens were stacked on a cart.

I was in a fucking operating room.

They were
not
keeping me here, I quickly decided.

I was
not
waiting around.

Belinda stood about four feet away from me, sorting through the instruments on the table with her back to me.

The pins and needles sensation was now in my arms but I ignored the pain from that and pushed myself up on my elbows, trying to sit up.

My body protested but I ignored it, drawing on the strength I had gained working out with Frank and Jay.

I worked myself up, and swung my near useless legs over the side of the table.

My head swam.

My breath was short.

My vision was slightly blurred.

Belinda turned around and gasped.

Even through blurred vision, Belinda was just as ugly.

She started to open her mouth but I cut her off.

“You
fucking
traitor.”

chapter fifty-eight

Belinda stared at me. Momentarily speechless.

“Don’t you
fucking
come near me,” I told her as I slid off the table.

She opened her mouth again and yelled for Nat. I took that opportunity to close the gap between us.

And then I hit her. Hard. With the heel of my hand. At the bottom of her nose where I knew it would hurt the most.

Just like a couple of days ago when she sat in my office and spewed tears, now she was spewing blood. And she started to choke on it as she hyperventilated.

And I didn’t give a shit, hoping she died.

And just to make sure, I hit her again. This time with a jab. My fist connected with her jaw and the force of the punch knocked her back into the table of surgical instruments and she crumpled to the floor. Pain reverberated from my fist to my shoulder, and I gasped. My first time hitting flesh with a properly formed fist was a little different than hitting a sparring mitt.

Belinda was moaning like a tug boat in distress. Blood continued to pour from her nose.

Now what? I wondered. I was barefoot, in a stylish hospital gown which was gaping open in the back, completely nude underneath.

From outside the room, I heard a voice which made me turn around and back up against the wall. Belinda continued to moan and spit blood on the floor beside me.

Nat Scott hurried into the room.

She glanced at Belinda on the floor and then drilled her eyes on me where I had backed up against the wall. Getting as much distance between the two of us as possible.

Nat’s hands hung by her sides, clenched in fists. Her body shook with rage. I didn’t wait for her to find a weapon, or for her to attack me. With Belinda out of the game for the moment, I knew I had to make a move and make it fast. Frank had drilled into me that if I found myself in a life threatening situation, act as quickly as possible to save myself.

Nat Scott had about six inches on me in height and she probably weighed thirty pounds more than me, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. My body was still whacky and pins and needles were shooting all over my legs. My brain was screaming about survival. So I let my instincts kick in.

My useless body stumbled towards her, as quickly as I could make it move. She stood about twelve feet away from me but I closed the distance between us.

I put my hands out in front of me and I pushed her. As hard as I could. She screamed in anger and stumbled backwards, hitting the door frame.

As soon as her back hit the door frame, my body prepared itself instinctively. My right foot was slightly forward, my left foot back a bit. My weight was forward, my back heel off the ground. My right fist was up, in front of my face, my left fist up as well, closer to my jaw. I was in my fighting stance, and Frank would be proud. My body was screaming in pain but I used the pain to keep me focused.

Belinda cried out from the floor.

Nat bounced off the door frame, screaming like a banshee. She came right back at me. Screaming. Screaming from the depths of her soul. She was out of her mind. I swear her eyes turned red.

My hours of practising foot drills paid off as I sidestepped her and slammed my fist up into her chin. My fist shut her up and stunned her. But she was still standing and I wasn’t finished. I stepped behind her and put my right arm around her neck. Standing on my tiptoes, I tried to squeeze the life out of her. Now who was enraged? I felt her body going limp and I threw her on the floor.

Nat lay there for a moment and looked up at me. Surprisingly, she appeared just as angry. I shook my head in disgust and stomped. On her head.

I would have kicked her but I was barefoot and didn’t want to break a toe. She lay there, motionless, unconscious, and I didn’t give a shit whether she was dead or alive.

My brain hadn’t had time to compute what her presence here meant, but my gut told me she was definitely a player in all the mayhem that had been going on.

Belinda was still crying and moaning in the corner.

“Who else is here?” I demanded of her.

She coughed and spit more blood on the floor and didn’t answer me. I nudged her not too gently with my foot and she looked up at me, with pain-filled eyes. While she decided whether or not she was going to answer me, I hog-tied her with a large roll of gauze bandage. I wrapped it around her ankles and her hands which were behind her back.

I was panting and gulping air, and every muscle and bone in my body was on fire.

For good measure, in case she came to, I tied up Nat Scott as well. And then I tried to find my way out of this hell-hole.

I cautiously peered out of the doorway into a small hall, with several doors. The hallway was wallpapered in a flowered, old fashioned print. There were crown moldings around the high ceiling, foot high baseboards, and ornate, glass knobs on the doors. The only sounds I could hear were coming from Belinda. I crept out of the room I was in, down the short hallway and into a large, sparsely furnished, living room. An old fashioned Princess phone sat on one of the end tables and I dashed for it.

It was dead. No dial tone.

Where the hell am I?

A three-sixty review of the room gave me no clues. An old sofa, with saggy, threadbare cushions sat under three windows. In front of the sofa was a coffee table, laden with prescription pill bottles, old National Geographic magazines, pens, balled-up Kleenexes. A door on the left side of the room led to a closet, holding musty-smelling coats and dirt covered shoes.

I need to get out of here!

Another door on the far side of the room led into a kitchen. There didn’t appear to be an exit from there either. I headed back down the hallway and opened the first door that I came to. Inside the door was total darkness. I groped for a light switch on the wall and flooded the room with light.

The sights in that room sickened me. My eyes saw things that my brain could not compute. My nose was scorched with the rotten smell of death and putrefaction. The cadaver of an old woman, curled on her side, lay on a steel table. What used to be her back was now a gaping hole, full of black, dried blood. Her gray hair hung stringy and limp, pieces covering her face. Wrinkled, saggy skin hung from her buttocks, her calves and her arms. Thank God her eyes were closed. My breath came in short gasps and with each outward breath I bawled and with each inward breath I gasped.

Who is she?

I turned around and ran to the next door which opened to a small bedroom, with a neatly made single bed pushed up against the wall. The last door in the hall was my salvation. I opened it and stood amazed, in an area that looked familiar.

I stumbled across the carpeted floor and banged on a door. And the sweetest face I had seen in a while peered up at me when the door opened.

Constance Everwood leaned on her cane and craned her neck up at me.

“Miss Monahan,” she said. “
Why
are we in our nightdress?”

“It’s not my nightdress, it’s a hospital gown, and I need to call the police.”

“Then step in, young lady. You’ll find the telephone on a small table in my living room. That way,” she motioned with her head.

chapter fifty-nine

A week later, on a Saturday morning, I watched the sun rise on Georgian Bay. My parent’s cottage was on a point in the Bay facing south, so we were graced with beautiful sunrises and sunsets. A light, early morning mist covered the still water, which at this time of day was dark green, almost black. The temperature was cool and I was cocooned inside a quilt on my Muskoka chair. The heat would come in a few hours and it would be sweltering by noon, and likely humid and muggy by mid-afternoon. Early mornings were my favourite time at the cottage.

Peace and quiet and time alone. Time to think and sort things through.

I wasn’t missing Manhattan in the least and was so thankful when the police had finally wrapped things up on Thursday.

Sunday morning I was on a flight from LaGuardia to Toronto. Three hours after landing I arrived in my rental car at my parent’s cottage. The key to the front door of the cottage was in its usual place, hung on a nail inside the unlocked shed. I took my time unloading the groceries I had picked up at the IGA in Orillia. As soon as they were unpacked and put away, I opened all the windows, loaded my few clothes into a dresser, put on my bathing suit and wandered down to the dock. I opted not to take my usual running dive off the end of the dock, in deference to my still broken ribs. Rather, I lowered myself into the lake from the wooden ladder nailed to the end of the dock. And then I floated on my back for an eternity and pretended I was ten years old again.

The police had come quickly, within minutes it seemed. By the time they had arrived, I was presentable in one of Miss Everwood’s chenille bathrobes and a pair of fake fur slippers.

About two cups of tea and a half an hour later, Jay and Kelly had arrived from the hospital, where they had been frantically trying to find me.

Jay sat beside me on the divan - that’s what Miss Everwood called it - holding my hand. I had given him a bit of smile when he arrived but hadn’t said much. Frankly, I was shell-shocked. Not one normally at a loss for words, I just plain had nothing to say. I had directed the police to Nat Scott’s apartment, warning them what they would find.

“I want to go home,” I finally whispered to Jay. The clock on the wall read six thirty. I was bone tired and wanted to go to bed. Jay got up and said he’d find Kelly and clear it with the police.

Miss Everwood, who had been pacing up and down the hallway, peering through the peephole, watching all the action next door came into the room when Jay went out.

“Tell me again how you escaped,” she urged me. “It’s thrilling. Absolutely thrilling, better than any action movie with Bruce Willis.” She was loving this and I was hating it. I hadn’t told her about the cadaver, who I was pretty sure was Nat Scott’s mother.

We got the okay from the police and I thanked Miss Everwood profusely before I let Jay take me home. Kelly rode down in the elevator with us.

“I’ll stay with you until one of the bodyguards arrives,” he advised us. “Until we close this up and until we find Ben Tucker, we’re still going to be guarding you twenty-four seven.”

Kelly was feeling overly protective and responsible for me since I had been kidnapped while under the protection of one of his guys. The hospital security staff had found Jason, drugged and unconscious, on the floor under my hospital bed.