The Selkie Spell (Seal Island Trilogy) (18 page)

The selkie’s voice.  Tara’s voice.  The voice of the women of the sea.

Carol Johnson hooked her heavy purse over her shoulder and winced when the leather strap bit into the fresh bruise forming under her scrubs.

“You okay?”  Sally Cunningham asked, her brows knitting in concern.

“I’m fine,” Carol said.  “I just need to take some Aspirin.”

“All right,” she said, her Texas drawl strung out in worry.  “You take care of yourself tonight, okay?”

“I will,” Carol said and, forcing a smile, she waved goodbye to the other nurses working the night shift in St. Joseph’s ICU.  Slipping out into the hallway she let out a long sigh.

“How are you holding up?” Stacey Price asked, walking out of the nurse’s unit across the hall and falling into step beside her to the elevators.

“It looks worse than it feels,” Carol admitted.

“I still can’t believe the guards left you alone with that guy,” Stacey said, taking in Carol’s busted lip and black eye.

“I asked them to,” Carol confessed.  “I tested the restraints.  They seemed secure enough.”  She shook her head as they turned down another hallway, their sneakers squeaking on the freshly waxed tiles.  “He was screaming so loud I thought my ears would burst.  And even with his arms tied down he wasn’t going to let me get the syringe into his arm with those two scary guys standing there.”

“Still,” Stacey argued.  “It’s their job to protect us from people like that.  Where’d they bring him in from anyway?”

“Shady Grove Mental Institution.  They found him in a bathroom stall this morning, trying to cut into his wrists with a butter knife from the cafeteria.”

“Ugh,” Stacey shuddered, stealing another glance at Carol’s bruised face.  “How come you always get stuck with the crazy ones?”

Carol counted to three in her head and then pressed the up button for the elevator.  “It’s not his fault he’s crazy.  If he’d been medicated early enough to catch the illness or monitored properly to prevent the episodes that put him in the institution in the first place he might not be that crazy.”

“I don’t know,” Stacey said, stepping into the elevator when the doors opened.  “He sounds pretty crazy to me.”

Following Stacey into the elevator, Carol pressed the button for the top floor of the garage.  The vision in her left eye was starting to blur and she pressed the heel of her hand to it, praying the concussion would hold off until she made it home.  “You know what they say,” Carol murmured.  “Treat a man like a prisoner and he acts like a prisoner.  Treat a man like a man and—”

“Yeah, yeah.  I know.  He acts like a man.”  Stacey flipped out her phone, started texting her husband that she was leaving the hospital and on her way home.  “You’re a better person than me if you believe that after everything you’ve been through.  And speaking of that,” Stacey flipped her phone closed, looked back up at Carol.  “What’s Jacob going to say when he sees you?”

“I’m counting on him being asleep when I get there.”

“You’re not going to wake him up?”

“I’d rather tell him in the morning.  After I’ve had my coffee.”

“He’s going to flip.”

“I know.”

“You know what Tommy would do if he saw me like that?  I’d have to put restraints on him to stop him from coming down here to find those guards.  And you know how small Tommy is.”  Stacey sent her a wry smile.  “He’d get his butt kicked and then we’d both be black and blue.”

Carol managed a thin smile, imagining Stacey’s wiry but over-protective husband trying to take on the burly guards that had pulled the patient off her earlier.  “I don’t have to worry about Jacob coming down here.”  Gingerly, she reached up fingering her swollen eye.  “But he isn’t one to take a black eye lightly on a woman.”

“No,” Stacey said, softly.  “I know he isn’t.  Thank god that judge had enough sense to let him out on bail.”

Carol nodded.  “One of the top attorney’s in the state picked up his case.  I’m praying he can do a lot more than just get him out on bail.”

“Me too,” Stacey said, voicing her support.

The elevator doors eased open on Stacey’s floor and she checked her watch, saw it was after three in the morning.  “You want me to drive you up to your car?”

“No, I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?  It’s only one floor up.”

“No.  You go on ahead.  I’m fine.”

“Alright.”  Stacey stepped out of the elevator.  “I’ll see you tomorrow night?”

Carol nodded.  “See you then.”

The elevator doors closed.  Carol rode up to the top floor and stepped out into the humid spring night.  She scanned the parking lot and saw there was only one other car on this level.  She didn’t like to park on this level, when there were no lights.  But she’d arrived late today and all the good parking spots were gone.

She clutched her purse close to her side and walked quickly through the dark lot, glancing back over her shoulder.  When she got to the car, she slid the key in the lock, lifting the handle, letting out a breath of relief when she was almost inside the safety of the car.

A shadow slid over the pavement and her hand froze on the handle.

“Hello, Carol.”

Her heart jumped into her throat as she turned and stared into the surgeon’s cold eyes.  “Dr. Carter.”

“It’s nice to see you again,” he said, his voice smooth as glass.

He smiled and Carol dug in her purse for her pepper spray.

“Did you have a nice day today, Carol?”

“Not really.  No.”

“Well it’s about to get a lot worse.”  He lifted his hand, shook the syringe.

All the blood drained from Carol’s face.

“Get in the car,” Philip ordered.

“Wh-what?”

“Get in the car.”

Carol tried to scream.

But the sound caught, strangled in her throat, as he jammed the needle into the back of her neck.

***

Philip Carter added a dollop of cream to his coffee and switched on the local news station.  A perky blond journalist—
did they hire them right out of college these days?
—glanced up from her notes and began to recount the first headline stories of the day.

“A nurse was found dead in her car early this morning in one of the lots behind St. Joseph’s Hospital.  Preliminary investigations are linking the woman to Jacob Cohen—the man arrested in the alleged trafficking of hundreds of forged identities for battered women.  Neighbors confirmed that the two were spotted together on numerous occasions and that there may have been a romantic involvement...”

Philips lips curved.  It was like the icing on the cake.  Adding another touch of cream to his coffee, he flipped to a new station, watched another report on the same story, then another.  They’d caught it.  All of them.  And they were all reporting the same story.  Police were investigating.  A link to Jacob was suspected.  The autopsy would present a challenge because of the earlier struggle with the patient, and the marks he had left on her skin.  Philip’s quiet laughter filled the empty room and he switched off the television, staring out the wide glass window at the city just beginning to wake up.

He’d been afraid for a moment, in the middle of the night, that he might have gotten a little carried away.  But when he found the missing link in his wife’s escape, he’d snapped.

Strolling over to the window, Philip pressed a hand to the early morning condensation dripping off the glass.  He wasn’t worried about Holt saying anything.  It wasn’t his job to judge his clients.  It was his job to find who they were paying him to find.  He had no doubt Holt understood their arrangement.  And what would happen if he didn’t.

The same thing that happened to Carol Johnson.

He gazed out at the blinding ball of sunlight, edging up over the horizon.  Death, for some, came sooner than others.  Death, in some cases, special cases, had to be hurried along.  Like when they deserved it.  Like when they asked for it.

Carol Johnson had asked for it when she slipped that secret package to his wife.

How many others were there?
  Philip pushed back, away from the glass pacing the wide expanse of the living room he used to share with his wife. 
How many women were whoring themselves out to other men while their husbands searched for their bodies, sought to reclaim what belonged to them?

Sydney belonged to him.  She had sworn her life to him when she’d pledged her marriage vows.  When she’d put on that white dress and walked down the aisle.  When she’d accepted his ring.

And then the little bitch had run from him.  Because of what a nurse said.  She was so easily persuaded.  It was what had attracted him to her in the first place.  That weak spirit.  That malleable personality, so easy to shape, so easy to form.  So easy to convince that she needed him.  That she was nothing without him.  And a few words from a nurse reversed everything he’d done.  Every lesson he’d taught her.

Carol must have thought she was so clever.  She probably went back to her boyfriend’s house at the end of each shift and told him she’d seen Dr. Carter in the halls again today, that he still had no idea.  That he was so stupid.  That they’d fooled him.

She and her boyfriend probably laughed at him while they fucked.

Hot coffee sloshed over his fingers, sloshed onto the white carpet.  If he hadn’t been so angry last night, so consumed with rage for her, he’d have made her suffer.  He’d have made her beg.

But it happened so quickly.

And it had been so easy.  So simple.  Watching her gasp for air in those last breaths, her body lurching as he choked her, her eyes bulging as he held her down.

It was over almost before it started.

What a shame.  What a pity that it hadn’t lasted longer, that he’d had to be so quiet.  He hadn’t even needed the suture thread he’d been looking forward to wrapping around her throat.

He’d watched her collapse, sinking limp against the seat, picturing Sydney laughing when she got on the plane.  Laughing when she landed in Rome.  Laughing when she stripped naked in front of the man she found to whore herself to.

He pictured all of them.  All the women who had run from their husbands, forsaking their marriage vows and humiliating the men who’d done nothing but help them to understand their duty.

He thought of the fear, the terror frozen in Carol’s eyes when she finally stopped struggling, when she finally collapsed.    He only wished it had lasted longer.  He only wished he’d been able to hear her scream.

***

“I’m never going to finish prepping for dinner if you keep this up,” Tara warned when Dominic brushed her hair aside and trailed kisses along the back of her neck.

“Come upstairs,” he murmured.

“Kelsey will be home any minute,” she protested, but her blood was already starting to hum and when he ran his hands down her arms, pulling her back against this hard chest, she had to bat at this hands with a spatula to keep from turning and melting into his arms.

“We’ve time,” Dominic whispered, pulling her away from the stove.

“Not enough,” Tara protested weakly, the stubble along his jaw tickling her neck, sending shivers of pleasure dancing over her skin.

“
Just
enough,” Dominic teased, pulling her farther away.

“Dominic.”

“Tara,” he laughed softly, slipping his hand under the hem of her shirt.

She twisted away from him.  “Someone could walk in!”

“I don’t care,” he said, tugging her back against him and branding her mouth with a searing kiss.

She pulled back, breathless.  “I do!”

“Well, my goodness,” Caitlin said, fanning herself in the doorway.  “If I’d known you could kiss like that, Dominic O’Sullivan, I might have made a go at you myself a few years ago.”

Tara jerked out of his arms, her face flaming.

When Dominic laughed, Caitlin sauntered into the kitchen, grinning devilishly.  “Now, don’t let me disturb you.  I’ll just be working over here in the corner, minding my own business.”

Tara glared at Dominic.  “You are
not
disturbing us.”

Still laughing, he caught her wrist and pulled her back in for another quick kiss.  “We’ll finish this later,” he murmured suggestively against her mouth and then pulled back, grinning at her blazing eyes and turned, strolling out of the kitchen.

Tara glared at the door as it swung shut behind him, huffing out a breath.

“Is he that good in bed?”

“Caitlin!”

“What?”  Caitlin glanced over her shoulder, her smile wide and wicked.  “It’s a simple question between friends.”

Tara turned back to the stove.  “I am not answering that.”

“Come on,” Caitlin coaxed.

“No.”

“Just one teeny tiny detail?”

Tara dropped the spatula onto the counter and untied her apron.  “I’m going over to the market.”

Caitlin laughed.  “I’ll still be here when you get back.  Still wanting to know.”