The Masked Truth (23 page)

He wants to scream. Scream as loud as he can for someone, anyone, to get off their arse and help him.

Please, please, please help me. Help her. She’s dying.

No, she’s not. She’s just unconscious.

She’s dying and you bloody well know it, and if you pretend otherwise, well, then you’ve got no reason to light a fire under your own arse and get her help
.

That’s what he’s doing. Running faster than he’s ever run in his life as he searches for a light, a car, anything.

How can there be nothing?

There is, so just keep going
.

He
would
scream if he thought it would help, if he thought anyone would hear except Gray.

Then there’s a light. Is that really a—?

Yes!

He veers so sharply he stumbles, but he rights himself
fast and tears down the side street, and the car—the lovely and wonderful car—turns his way. Comes right for him. He runs into the road, waving his arms and saying, “Stop! Please stop! She’s hurt!”

And the car swerves … to go around him. To steer past the crazy barefoot boy covered in blood.

He throws himself at it. Doesn’t think. Just throws himself onto the bonnet as it slows to get around him. The car screeches to a stop, and he slides off, and there’s pain.

Don’t care about the pain. Really, really don’t.

He lies there, motionless in the street, his eyes cracked open just enough to watch a man get out of the driver’s seat—a chubby middle-aged man. He walks to Max and looks down. He gets out his mobile and then he stops. Pauses and looks around, as if considering whether he should call for help or drive away as fast as he can.

Here, old chap, let me help make up your mind
.

Max lunges, grabs the guy by the legs and wrenches. The man goes down, flailing. Max hits him. Doesn’t care where. Doesn’t care how hard. Just cares that he goes back down. Then Max grabs the mobile and limps off as he dials 911.

That’s not something Max had trouble with before the diagnosis. Whatever the jumble in his brain, when he opened his mouth, he was able to formulate his thoughts coherently. It was like standing in the eye of the storm, chaos all around but calm within, when he chose to find it.

Even during the shambolic year post-diagnosis, perspicuity was not a problem, not unless he was attempting to put into words how he felt about his new life, but that was emotion rather than thought or logic, and so it was a very different thing. A messy thing: emotion. Rather like a corner of his room that he allowed to get a little jumbled and soon the disorder was creeping outward, devouring everything, disrupting everything. Like schizophrenia itself. Terribly disorderly, rendering him susceptible to emotion in a way he’d never been before.

And so it is here, as the paramedics tend to Riley—one rushing back and forth to the lorry, the situation clearly critical—and this gormless police officer keeps hammering him with questions, and the words coming from Max’s mouth are not indicative of his usual perspicuity, not at all.

Kidnapping and masks and deaths and injuries, and bloody hell, just go there, help Brienne and whoever can be
helped and leave him with Riley. He needs to stay with her.

“Your friend is getting the best medical care,” the constable says, in his laconic way, as if Riley has twisted her ankle and, really, Max is making far too big a deal out of it.

“No, she’s getting
paramedic
care. The care of those with a fraction as much training as a medical doctor. However, I would still like their opinion on her condition. Just let me—”

“I need the whole story first. Start from the beginning, son.”

“I am not your son.” Max clips his words, allowing his proper accent to slip out. The upper-class toff accent. His mother’s accent, and one he’d learned from the cradle and then worked very hard to lose, because so many others worked hard to learn it.

Contrary as always, Max, old boy
.

But now it comes out, that better-than-thou tone.

“Here is what you need to know,” he says. “We were part of a supervised overnight gathering. There was a kidnapping, with no apparent attempt to contact our parents or to extort cash or influence. In the aftermath, eight people were shot, including Riley. Five are dead. Two were still alive when we last saw them. However, given that you seem in no rush to check on them, they may no longer be, and if that costs you your badge, I sincerely hope it is only the beginning of the price you’ll pay for your negligence.”

“We’ve sent a car and called for a second ambulance.”

“Excellent. Then we are done here. I am going to accompany my companion—”

“You’re going to accompany
me
, back to the police station, where we can settle this.”

“Settle what? I was the victim—”

“You seem very calm for a victim.”

“Two minutes ago you were telling me to calm down, because I was clearly distraught. Now I’ve done as you asked, and you’re faulting me for it?”

“People don’t switch that fast.”

Max glances at Riley being loaded into the ambulance. They have her on an IV. That’s good. But the looks on their faces are not nearly as reassuring.

He starts toward her, completely forgetting the constable.

The officer grabs his arm. “I said people don’t do that, boy. You can’t go from flipping out one second to acting like you’re the freaking king of England the next.”

“That would be the king of the United Kingdom,” Max says. “There hasn’t been a king of England since 1700.”

The man screws up his face. “What?”

“Correcting your ignorance, which, yes, I can do, only minutes after being nearly incoherent with worry. It’s a special talent. It does not mean I’m any less worried, but simply that I can rein it in to tell you what you need to know. Which I have done. If you require more, you may follow me to the hospital.”

“May I, your lordship? No, you’ll follow
me
, into the back of my cruiser, and you’ll—”

Max collapses. He times it so one of the paramedics just happens to be glancing his way. The woman races over as he sits up with one hand to the side of his head.

“Wh-what just happened?” he says.

“That’s what I was going to ask,” she says, shining a light in his eyes.

“I-I don’t know. I’ve been feeling woozy, but I didn’t want to take you away from Riley.” He starts pushing to his feet. “I hit my head when we were inside. I should probably see a doctor. But you go on with Riley. She’s the …” He staggers and the paramedic catches him. “She’s the important one. I’ll be fine.”

The constable snorts. “Of course you will be. Once you recover from that pratfall.”

Not so gormless after all. Good show, old chap
.

It doesn’t change anything, though. Max fakes disorientation well enough that the paramedic insists he ride along so she can check him out. The constable protests. She snaps at him that he can follow if he wants, but she’s taking Max. She helps him to the ambulance. He resists all urges to smirk back at the constable.

Big of you, Maximus
.

It is, isn’t it?

As they reach the ambulance, though, any surge of self-satisfaction ebbs fast, because that’s when he sees Riley. She’s pale and still, hooked up to the IV, with an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. He scrambles into the back to get beside her, ignoring the male paramedic’s “Whoa, slow down there.” He sits beside her and takes her hand. It’s cool to the touch, and his gaze flies to the monitors, and he reassures himself with their steady blips.

“How is she?” he says. “How deep did the knife go? Did it hit anything? It didn’t seem that bad and then—”

“Slow down,” the male paramedic says again.

“Just … is she all right? Will she
be
all right?”

“She’s stable,” the woman says. “That’s all we can say. Now let’s take a look at you.”

He shakes his head. “I’m fine.”

She eyes him. “So you
were
faking it to catch a ride?”

He glances at the window, judging how far they are from the scene. Not far enough.

“I did feel woozy, and I did hit my head. It’s just not critical.
She
is.”

He waits for them to say Riley isn’t critical. When they don’t, his heart hammers louder than her bleeping monitor. He adjusts his grip on her hand so his thumb is on her pulse.
It’s strong enough. He keeps it there, for added reassurance.

“The oxygen mask,” he says. “Is that just a precaution or did it nick her lung? Is she breathing all right?”

“She is for now.”

Max shifts. Not the answer he wants.

Tell me she’s fine. Just fine. I’m overreacting
.

They say nothing more.

He leans forward and frees strands of her hair caught under the mask.

“She’s stable,” the woman says finally. “We really can’t say more, but so far she’s fighting and holding on. That’s what counts. You’ve got a tough girlfriend.”

“She’s just a friend.”

You’re holding that hand pretty tight, Max
.

For support.

And you kissed her, didn’t you?

Her eyelids flutter. He holds his breath, certain he’s imagining it, but the paramedics both move, the woman saying, “Riley? Can you hear me?”

Riley’s eyes half open. Her gaze swings around, passing the woman bending over her and coming to rest on Max. She smiles and squeezes his hand, and that smile is for him, only for him, as if there’s no one else there. She looks for him, and she smiles for him, and it’s as if he’s been wound tight enough to snap, and now that cord is cut and he wants to just collapse there, with her.

Her eyes close again. The paramedic tries to rouse her, to ask questions, but she’s faded back to sleep. Max checks the monitor. Her pulse and her heartbeat continue as before. Still strong. Or strong enough.

“Let’s check you out,” the woman says to Max.

He nods and lets her shine her light in his eyes as he points out the spot where he supposedly bumped his head. She asks about any medication he’s on. He almost says,
“None,” because he’s spent his life answering that question with “None.”

No health issues. No medication save the occasional round of antibiotics, and even that was rare, he being an only child, not subject to those round-robin infections and viruses that plagued his sibling-cursed friends.

No issues. No medication.

But that isn’t true anymore. Never will be again, and this is, perhaps, the longest he’s gone in the past year without thinking of his condition. An entire hour that he’s forgotten he has schizophrenia, forgotten he’s in rather desperate need of his meds.

He tells the woman what he’s taking. She frowns.

“Are you sure?” she asks. “That’s usually prescribed for …” She glances at her partner, as if she might be mistaken.

“Schizophrenia,” Max says. “Yes.” And that’s another first. The first time he’s been forced to admit to his condition and hasn’t cringed as he said it. Hasn’t wanted to throw it like a bomb and run before he sees their reaction. He says it matter-of-factly.
Yes, I have schizophrenia. Deal with it. I certainly need to
.

“I’ll need my medication once we reach the hospital,” he says, rhyming off the dosage. “I was due to take it at ten, but obviously circumstances prevented that.”

“You’re overdue for your meds?” the man asks.

“Yes,” Max says. “Roughly three hours overdue, which only means I should take them as soon as possible, not that I’m in imminent danger of a full-blown psychotic break, so you can stop looking at me like that.”

Hmm, can you blame him, Max? Isn’t that what you yourself were worried about a few hours ago? That the clock would slip past ten and you’d be like Dr. Jekyll downing his potion?

No, he was understandably stressed, and he overreacted.

Good. I’m glad you see that
.

Unfortunately, the paramedics—who one really thought would have known better—did not seem to agree. The woman looked concerned. The man seemed ready to reach for the nearest hypodermic to put Max down if he made any sudden moves.

“I’m fine,” Max says. “I escaped murderous kidnappers, got Riley to safety and called 911. I believe those are not the actions of someone experiencing a schizophrenic episode. Call ahead, have my meds ready, and we’ll all rest easier when I’ve taken them. But until then, like Riley, I can hold on.”

“You said you were held captive, but no ransom demands were made?” the man says, carefully.

It takes Max a second to get his meaning, but only a second, before he rolls his eyes and says, “Yes, I’m sorry. I was mistaken. I actually stabbed Riley. We were making out behind the building, having snuck out of therapy because, well, therapy is boring and making out is not. But then the next thing I know, I’m holding a knife and covered in blood, and she’s dying, but no worries, mate, I’ll just make up a story about kidnappers. I’m sure everyone will believe that.”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic,” the woman says.

“Yes, actually, there is.”

“You knew what I was implying, though,” the man says, his hand sliding to the side as if he’s wondering where the closest weapon might be.

“Yes, because I have schizophrenia and am well aware of exactly what the average person expects of me, and while I’d hope for better from medical professionals, you are merely paramedics. Couldn’t quite get the grades for med school, I presume?”

The man’s eyes narrow.

“You don’t appreciate the insult? After you suspected me
of stabbing Riley? I’m not sure which is more egregious—the presumption that by dint of having schizophrenia, I clearly did this, or the presumption that I’m not bright enough to come up with a better story if I did. You did notice Riley open her eyes, right? She saw me and screamed in terror as she woke looking into the face of her would-be killer.”

“You can cut the sarcasm, kid.”

“Can I? Excellent. You stop looking at me as if I’m about to lop off your head, and I’ll stop being cheeky about it.” Max lifts his other hand to take Riley’s. “There. You can now see both my hands. If I make any sudden move, you have my permission to use that hypodermic you keep eyeing.”