Snake Skin (32 page)

Burroughs looked like he was going to say
something but instead just handed her his cell phone. Before she
could dial, the gracious and genteel Dr. Williams breezed in,
waving a X-ray aloft as if it were the shroud of Turin.

He took the stool Walden vacated and paraded
the film before her. Ribs and a white blob that was her heart she
could figure out. She wasn't too sure at first about his prattling
about pneumothorax and bleeding, but he finished by regretfully
declaring that they weren't there, thus negating any necessity for
major surgery.

The half a foot long jagged length of metal
was rather obvious even to her untrained eye. It showed up bright
white, sharp and looked utterly out of place anywhere near the soft
curves that shadowed the rest of the X-ray.

Burroughs and Walden leaned forward, trying
to get a glimpse as well. Williams stood and snapped the films onto
a X-ray view box, beaming like a proud father.

"Jeeesuh," Burroughs whistled in
appreciation. Walden was silent, but he moved to stand beside
Lucy.

"How long is this gonna take?" she
asked.

"Since you're not going to surgery, you
don't need me. I'll get an intern down here—"

"Don't think so, doc," Walden said in a low,
flat Dirty Harry tone. Lucy looked up, saw that he and Burroughs
had sandwiched the surgeon between them, both of them wearing their
best cop-glowers.

"I think you're going to fix her yourself."
Burroughs picked up the ball and ran with it. "Right now." He
squared off perpendicular to the surgeon, his hand resting on his
gun as if ready for a fast draw.

"Really, gentlemen—"

"You have kids, Williams?" Lucy chimed in on
the fun. The surgeon darted a glance in her direction as if he'd
forgotten she was there.

"Yes. Why?" The word slid up near to the
soprano range and he gulped it back down, tried again. "Look here,
I'm very busy—"

"I'm busy too," Lucy continued, holding his
gaze although it was making her head throb, stretching her neck up
like that. "I'm busy trying to save a little girl's life. And I
need to get patched up and out of here in order to do that. Think
you can help out?"

He scanned the room as if looking for an
escape. Given that his beeper hadn't gone off the entire time he'd
been with them, Lucy suspected he'd run out of excuses. He turned
back to the X-ray, one finger tracing the length of the piece of
metal impaling her.

"Probably should take care of this myself,"
he finally said with a nod as if it were his idea. "Might be
tricky."

Burroughs relaxed his posture and clapped
Williams on the shoulder. "Thanks, doc. We appreciate it."

"Get to work, you two," Lucy said as
Williams shrugged free of his lab coat and began to assemble an
assortment of bright, shiny instruments of torture.

"It's going to hurt like a bastard when I
take it out, even with the local. And that'll hurt a bit, too, sad
to say."

Williams sounded anything but sad. He held
up a syringe with a very large, very long needle on it and flicked
an air bubble free. Lucy's head went woozy and she rested her
forehead against the mattress, closing her eyes.

"I can knock you out if you want." His tone
implied she'd be a wimp if she said yes.

Any other circumstances, she would have
begged for the pain meds. She could care less what Williams thought
of her. Raising her head, she ignored the rushing feeling that had
commandeered her stomach. Good thing she'd already barfed in the
ambulance. "No. I need to keep my head clear, get back to work as
soon as you're done."

"Your call." He sounded almost gleeful.

Payback for their earlier power games. Hell,
why couldn't men just grow up and focus on getting the job
done?

She flipped Burroughs' phone open and saw a
text message displayed. From one "tvgirl" who apparently "luv'd the
way u f'd me all nite long, when are u cuming again?"

Lucy swore. It had nothing to do with the
needle Williams used to stab her in the back.

Chapter 27

Sunday, 2:31 pm

A very long hour later, Lucy was shuffling
down the hallway, wearing scrubs with no bra, her own underwear,
shoes and socks, and Walden's windbreaker. She'd almost made her
escape to freedom when the nurse chased her down, a clipboard and
metal tray in her hands.

Walden and Burroughs stood on either side of
her, watching as the nurse rattled off Lucy's discharge
instructions, made her sign twenty-three different forms in
triplicate, handed her a small bottle of Tylenol with codeine and a
prescription for antibiotics. Finally, she unveiled the contents of
the tray.

"Almost forgot your tetanus booster, Agent
Guardino."

The black spots in Lucy's vision returned
along with a thundering in her ears. If the guys hadn't been there
she would have treated herself to a nice case of the vapors—her
usual reaction to needles. Damn it, why couldn't they have done it
while she was out cold when they stuck her with the IV's?

"Wouldn't want to forget that," she mumbled.
Her face was cold and clammy. From the looks on Burroughs and
Walden's faces, they were in total sympathy.

She handed the papers and bottles to Walden,
painfully slid one arm free of the windbreaker, swallowed hard and
vowed not to faint.

The nurse didn't even move them into a
patient space, instead she briskly dabbed some alcohol on Lucy's
upper arm and jabbed the needle in before anyone could say "boo".
Even smiled while she did it, Lucy saw as her vision swam out of
focus for a moment. Both of the men looked away. Scaredy cats.

It was over fast and before she knew it,
Lucy was boasting a Bugs Bunny band-aid and the nurse had helped
her back into the jacket. "There. You're good to go."

"Where's Taylor? I want to see him before we
leave."

Walden answered. "Over here."

She followed the men across the hall to the
orthopedics room. Her back felt bruised and tight and swollen, like
it was being held together by fishing line. Which, the surgeon had
explained, was basically the truth of the matter. Nylon on the top
of the skin and something called chromic, which he said was like
old fashioned cat gut only better, in a few layers of muscle and
connective tissue below the surface. One wrong move and his sewing
project could pop wide open again.

Her skin felt stretched so tight that she
wondered if it might not have been better just to let the metal
remain. Weld it closed or something.

Then she saw Taylor and counted herself
lucky.

"Hi, LT, did they get you too?" he said, his
pupils constricted and dancing as he held a black rubber mask to
his face and sucked on it greedily. His arm looked awful, fingers
caught tight in a cage-like contraption straight out of a Fu Manchu
movie, a weight pulling his elbow down, the "S" shaped curve of his
broken arm bones slowly being straightened out by a surgeon covered
with flecks of plaster and frayed bits of fibreglass.

"Wow, Taylor," she said, taking his good
hand in hers. "You'll do anything for a few days off."

"Can't feel a thing. They numbed my whole
arm up and gave me lotsa drugs. Goooood drugs."

"Nitrous oxide," the surgeon corrected as he
re-aligned the bones with a grating noise that made Lucy's eyes bug
wide in sympathy. "He wouldn't let us give him anything
long-acting. Said he needed to get back to work."

"You catch the bastard yet?" Taylor's words
were slurred and his eyelids drooped.

"Not yet. We're headed out now. You going to
be okay?"

"Oh sure. I'm fine," he sang the last, his
eyes now completely shut.

Lucy squeezed his hand and backed away. "He
really going to be all right?" she asked the surgeon.

"Yeah, this looks awful, but they usually
heal with no problems. He'll have a cast for the next two months.
In fact, soon as I'm finished and get a follow-up X-ray, he'll be
ready to go."

Satisfied that Taylor was in good hands, she
followed Burroughs to where his car was parked in the no-parking
zone closest to the ER doors. He'd left his wig-wags going, the
blue and red lights flashing from behind the Impala's grille,
bathing the brick wall in color.

"You sure you don't want me to take you
home?" he asked, holding the passenger door open for her. "You
should get some rest."

Resentment flared through her. No one would
ever question one of the guys returning to work. Why did they
assume she was any different? She'd rest when they found
Ashley.

"Get me back to the office." She eased her
weight down into the seat, wincing as she twisted to pull the
seatbelt tight.

Burroughs pulled out of the hospital drive
and turned onto Penn. He drove just like yesterday, relaxed, one
wrist draped over the wheel, exuding confidence.

"That reporter, Ames. She broke up your
marriage, didn't she?"

He slid one hand to fist the wheel at the
eleven o'clock position as he slanted his gaze at her. "After that
stunt with Danny and Mitch, yeah. She still hassling your daughter?
I can handle that if you want."

Right. He'd love nothing more than to handle
"tvgirl" again. "No, I meant your affair with her. That's what
broke up your marriage, right?"

Now both hands gripped the wheel tight. But
his face was expressionless as he stared at her. "You're kidding
me. You think I—"

She was too tired to play this game.
Flipping his phone open, she waved the text message in front of
him. "Answer me one question, Burroughs. How badly have you fucked
my case?"

The car swerved slightly. He started to
smile, a phony, hey-this-is-all-a-joke, right? smile. She merely
glared at him, refusing to look away. Then he gave a one-shouldered
shrug of surrender and the boyish grin vanished.

"Cindy and I, we hooked up about a year ago,
when the Olsen case came along and I was primary. I didn't give her
what she wanted, so she pulled that stunt with my kids."

"Answer my question, Burroughs."

"I didn't tell her anything. That's what I'm
trying to explain. This thing between us, it's some kind of warped
chemistry, I don't know what—but I would never, ever jeopardize a
case."

"You'd jeopardize your marriage but not the
job?" She didn't try to bother to keep the scorn from her
voice.

"Yes—no. Kim and I were having trouble long
before I met Cindy. Look, this doesn't have to be a bad thing. We
could use it to our advantage, leak a story to Cindy, use it to
bait Fletcher."

Lucy was already way ahead of him there. "It
might come to that. In the meantime, I'm going to ask one thing
from you. If you can't do it, tell me now."

His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed.
"What is it?"

"You don't talk with Ames, you don't go near
her, you don't fuck her again until we have Ashley safe."

Ignoring traffic for a moment, he swiveled
his head to meet her eyes with an altar-boy-innocent gaze. He
nodded solemnly. "Sure. The kid comes first."

She couldn't help but notice he had stopped
using Ashley's name.

"Hey, wake up. You're safe now. Everything is
going to be all right."

The worlds circled around her consciousness
like fluffy summer clouds, thin and wispy and impossible to grasp.
It was a man's voice, that much penetrated. He was holding her,
rocking her like she was a baby.

"Here, drink this. Slowly now, slowly."

A trickle of fluid ran down her chin. More
sloshed down her throat, gagging her. She jerked up, coughing, her
eyes springing open. Dark spots danced before her eyes, everything
was shadowy.

The man held her in his lap, she couldn't
see his face. He held a water bottle back up to her lips and she
drank. He started to pull it away and she grabbed it.

"No. Don't drink too fast, you'll get
sick."

She didn't fight, instead lowered her hand
to her lap. Waited for him to make the next move.

"I need to get some tools from my truck. To
cut you loose." He slid her from his lap onto the hard ground. In
the distance she saw a mound of snakes, dark, hovering around the
periphery of her vision. Terrified, she grabbed his pant leg, not
looking up at him, her gaze focused on the snakes.

"Don't worry, they won't hurt you. I'll be
right back." She wrapped her arm around his leg, anchoring herself.
He crouched low, gently loosening her grip. "It's all right. You're
safe now. Trust me."

Then he was gone and she was alone
again.

Trust him? The words were meaningless. The
only things that had meaning in her universe were the threat of the
snakes, the impending horror of being left in the darkness again,
the headlong terror she felt with every breath. She drew her knees
up, hugging her legs to her, making herself the smallest target
possible.

Without moving her head, she glanced around
her prison. It was a barn. Overturned buckets hung from hooks in
the rafters above her—the source of the snakes, she guessed. But
where was the man who had put them there? Who had brought her
here?

Snakes slithered around bales of hay stacked
to make walls. The only light came from a door open at one end of
the small barn. More bales obscured it, all she could see was the
bright light framed at the top of the opening. On the other side of
the barn the hay bales were stacked to make seats.

Her fingers spread out into claws, fighting
terror as she saw her "audience". Three vaguely human forms sat
there, snakes crawling over them, making the plastic they were
encased in rustle as if they were alive.

They weren't alive.

Panic seized her, her heart speeding into a
furious rhythm that threatened to strangle her. She scuttled back
as far as the chain would stretch, kept going, not caring about the
snakes or anything except getting far away from the three
bodies.