The Syndicate (Timewaves Book 1) (43 page)

“Is that who he plays chess with?” I asked hesitantly, jumping as Winston slammed his knight defiantly from one square to another.

“No. Diago is his opponent’s name,” Renault replied with a small smile. “Diago usually wins, but every so often Winston will prevail.”

A dishwater blonde with big blue eyes and drool leaking from one corner of his mouth ambled over. He stopped only a foot in front of me and began to rock back and forth. I took a step backwards, but the wall behind me didn’t allow for more than that. Just as I mustered a small smile through my unease, he began to chant in a cadence similar to a nursery rhyme.

“Leave it to me. Three times three. A tree is just a tree. Birds, not bees. Leave it to me. Three times three,” he sang in accented English, continuing to rock.

“Theo Three,” Renault told me quietly. “It’s not his real name, of course. But he’s an unknown.”

“Leave it to me. Three times three. A tree is just a tree,” Theo Three repeated.

“Does he ever say anything else?” I asked Renault.

The orderly shook his head sadly. “I am afraid not.”

Theo Three lifted an arm and pointed his index finger at me. “Jump, jump, jump, fast as you can. Dance, dance, dance, out of the pan. Sing, sing, sing, for the damned.”

Renault laughed uneasily. “You have inspired him, it seems.”

“Is everything okay?” Clara asked me in that overly cheerful voice of hers.

While I’d been talking to Renault and rousing verse, Cyrus had given Lachlan’s old-fashioned photograph to Clara. She’d paused in her purveyance of the room when she notice Theo standing right in front of me.

“Yes, of course,” I said easily, taking a step to the side. Turning to Cyrus, I asked, “Do you see him?”

My boss shook his head.

“Oh, Janna,” Clara called to a nurse passing by. “Have you seen this man?”

Janna sauntered over to us, appearing as if to have all the time in the world, and plucked the photo from Clara’s hand.  The bright red polish on the second nurse’s fingernails glinted under the light as she studied the picture of Lachlan.

“It might be him,” Janna announced, flipping long brown hair over her shoulder and giving Cyrus a come-hither look. “Who is asking?”

“
Who
might be him?” my boss asked.

“There is a man who arrived about a week ago,” she replied shortly, quickly losing interest in our group. “He enjoys the fresh air, you will probably find him on the terrace.”

Without another word, Janna returned the photograph and walked away.

Stifling a laugh behind my hand, I followed Clara and the others across the recreation room to a pair of French doors. Two male orderlies stood on either side of them, feet shoulder-width apart and hands clasped behind their backs. Clara greeted them by name. They each nodded in acknowledgement, and then opened the doors for our little group.

A stone veranda that had seen much better days lay before us, with steps leading down to what was once a garden. The overgrown weeds and dry, dead plants served as a vista that was fitting for its cheerless location. Rickety rocking chairs were scattered across the fractured stones of the patio, the wood black in spots from exposure to the elements. All in all, it didn’t seem like a suitable place to let mental patients have free rein.

“Not to worry, only patients we consider to be placid are permitted outside,” Clara explained, as if she’d read my mind. “The violent ones, and those who might attempt escape, are not.” She pointed to a tall fence topped by barbed wire that stood around the perimeter of the lawn area. “Even so, we do take proper precautions for the safety of all our patients.”

Tearing my eyes from the fence—a visible reminder that I was locked in with mentally unstable people—I focused on the task at hand and surveyed the patients outside. A few men were enjoying the morning air, along with a couple of women who must’ve come from an adjoining ward. Though most sat in the rocking chairs, clustered in small groups, one man sat in a wheelchair apart from the rest with his back to us. Oily black hair hung in lank clumps past his ears, almost long enough to brush the moth-eaten cardigan resting over his rounded shoulders.

Cyrus and I exchanged pointed glances.

“Is that the young man the other nurse was referring to?” my boss asked Clara.

“It must be,” she agreed. “I recognize all of the other patients out here.”

Together, Cyrus and I walked slowly around to the front of the wheelchair. My first look at the man’s face caused me to inhale sharply. Dark irises ringed in red stared dead ahead at some unknown fixed point. His lips were dry and cracked, tinged an unnatural shade of indigo. A chipped front tooth compulsively tugged at his bottom lip as the man muttered inaudibly. Ashen skin hung on a too-thin face, as though all of the air had been let out of the balloon that was Lachlan. Only the faintest trace of resemblance to the handsome man in his syndicate profile picture still lingered.

Cyrus squatted in front of the wheelchair, bringing him to eye-level with Lachlan. The man’s hands were resting on top of the starch white blanket draped over his lap. Cyrus carefully took them in his own and squeezed gently, rubbing his thumbs over the rogue runner’s wrists. To Clara and Renault, the gesture probably seemed nurturing and reassuring. But I knew better.

Just seeing the man was not enough. Cyrus was feeling for the ridges and valleys of a runner tattoo. A quick flit of my boss’s eyes in my direction told me that he’d found it. He turned one wrist over, then gently set it back in Lachlan’s lap. When Cyrus stood up again, the tightening around his mouth said he was upset. Possibly
really
upset.

A moment later, I understood why.

“Is this your Lachlan?” Clara asked, clueless to the shift in my boss. The nurse was smiling so widely that looking at her made my cheeks hurt.

“What happened to his arm?” Cyrus demanded.

“Pardon?” Clara asked, smile dimming from manic merriment to cheerful concern.

“His arm,” Cyrus growled. He yanked back the right sleeve of Lachlan’s shirt.

I gasped, covering my mouth to hide my revulsion.

Wrapped around his wrist was a worn, dirty cloth, like a makeshift bandage. The skin peeking out from beneath it was a mess of seeping, swollen scabs. Thin streams of dried blood ran up his forearm to the elbow, with smears that appeared fresher down closer to his palm. Lachlan’s fingertips on the opposite hand were also tinged crimson, and his torn and chewed fingernails had more dried blood caked beneath them.

“As a government facility—” Clara began.

“You can’t manage basic first aid?” Cyrus snapped.

“I will go fetch fresh bandages,” Renault said quietly, then hurried away.

Smart man
, I thought. Cyrus was about to blow a gasket.

With a gentleness that belied his rage, Cyrus rested Lachlan’s arm across his lap. But his compassion instantly disappeared as he rounded on the nurse, pinning her in place with emerald daggers. I did not envy her in the least.

“How long did you say my son has been here?” Cyrus asked evenly.

Clara relaxed visibly when she heard his calm tone.

Big mistake.
Yelling and screaming were one thing. This eerily calm version of Cyrus was far more dangerous.

“Just over a week, Mr. Shepard,” the nurse replied automatically.

“And how long have his wounds gone untreated?”

“Sir, the patients are monitored very—”

“There is dried blood and scabbing. Not to mention that his hair has not been washed in quite some time,” Cyrus said, disapproval and derision creeping into his scary calm tone. “This tells me that no, you do not monitor your patients. At all.”

Renault returned with a small first aid kit. He knelt in front of Lachlan’s wheelchair and began cleaning the wounds. I joined him, wanting to stay inconspicuous while Cyrus verbally assaulted the nurse.

“Can I help?” I quietly asked the orderly.

Renault smiled. “Thank you.”

He handed me a warm, damp cloth, and I took the runner’s right arm while Renault took the left. Thankfully, mine was the side without the grotesque wound. I began gently removing the blood from Lachlan’s hand. As Renault carefully rubbed another wet cloth over Lachlan’s arm, the runner became agitated. His lips pulled back in a snarl, revealing even more cracked and broken teeth. Saliva, tinged red with blood, flew from his mouth as he hissed angrily.

“Is this how he came in?” I asked incredulously. “With all of these broken teeth? It appears as though he was in a fight.”

“Sadly, yes. I was on-duty when he arrived, and he was in bad shape. I didn’t even connect this man with the photo you showed us of your cousin—he was unrecognizable. The wounds appeared to be pretty recent at the time. As for his teeth,” Renault tapped his own front teeth, “these ones are loose and will likely fall out.” The orderly then gestured to Lachlan’s jaw, which was swollen on the right side. “Farther in the back, several more are loose, as well.”

Instead of answering Renault, I thought about his words as I continued cleaning the blood off the runner’s arm, glancing every so often at Lachlan’s face to assess the damage there. Who would he have been fighting? Who in this era could possibly hate him enough to inflict such brutal injuries?

I was still lost in my thoughts several minutes later, when I realized that I was running the cloth over skin that was already clean.

Sitting back on my heels, I watched Renault finish wiping up Lachlan’s other arm. With the dirty bandage gone and the blood wiped away, bruises in varying stages of the healing process were visible. The ones closer to his elbow appeared to be the oldest, where only faint yellow and sickly green discoloration marred the runner’s olive skin. Around his wrist, the skin was tender and red beneath stacked bracelets of purple and blue contusions, as if he’d been struggling against a tight grip.

But, more so than any of the bruises or other injuries, the underside of his right wrist was the most alarming. It was as though something had rubbed or chafed the skin to the point it was missing in some places. Scabs in various sizes and stages of healing ran in a horizontal line nearly half-an-inch thick. In between those were pockets of fresh, open wounds, almost like he’d been compulsively digging for something within the mess.

Renault finished applying ointment all the way around Lachlan’s wrist, then traded me the tube of medicine for fresh dressings.

“Merci,” he said with a small smile, flushing when our hands brushed.

“You’re welcome,” I replied, mirroring his expression.

As he carefully wrapped Lachlan’s wounded arm in the gauze, the runner began to rock back and forth in his chair. The muttering grew steadily louder. I was just about to lean closer to him, to see if I could make out the words, when Lachlan’s voice rose another decibel.

“Not my name. Not my blame,” he said clearly. “Not my name. Not my blame.”

Lachlan shook his head from side to side in emphatic jerks, causing his greasy strands of black hair to stick to his slick skin. An emotion I couldn’t immediately decipher flashed in his dark eyes, then they began flicking back and forth between my face and the wounds Renault was bandaging.

“Not my name.
Not
my
name
.” His tone was more insistent this time.

“Hang on,” I said to Renault. “Can I have a look at his wrist again?”

“If you like.” The orderly unwound the dressing.

Off to the side, Cyrus and Clara were still arguing about acceptable care standards for institutions. His full attention was on the nurse, so my attempts to inconspicuously catch his eye failed.

I reached for Lachlan’s injured arm. Like trying to avoid startling a horse that had been spooked, I kept my movements slow and deliberate. The other runner flinched when my fingers touched the skin near his wrist, but he didn’t pull away. Fighting the urge to look away, I gently pulled his arm closer to examine the scabs on his wrist.

Though it was difficult to see much of the original wound through all of the bruising and infection, not to mention where Lachlan had clearly scratched and picked at the scabs as they healed, the edges looked like they’d initially been precise. Two straight, horizontal lines were still visible among the ravaged flesh.

“Self-inflicted,” Renault said softly when he saw me looking. “Your cousin likely tried to take his life.”

“Not my name. Not my name. Not my name. Not my name,” Lachlan hissed angrily at the orderly.

Is he trying to tell us that he wasn’t attempting suicide?
I wondered.

Leaning in even farther, I examined the wound more closely. The incisions were shallow. Almost as if—oh shant. No, no, no, no. This was
so
not good.

The incisions were shallow because Lachlan’s skin had not merely been cut; it had been excised.

“Not my name. Not my name. Not my name. Not my name.”

According to his personnel file, Lachlan was right handed. The skin removal was too exact, the lines too straight to have been made by a non-dominant hand. There was no way that Lachlan could have possibly held the knife in his right hand to make the incisions staring up at me.