by Leigh Tudor
“I will spend eternity fucking some sense into that stubborn head of yours. Do you get that? Are you listening to me?”
His arms banded around her back and powered into her as if to make a point. She could barely breathe, let alone respond as his thrusts turned punishing.
That was exactly what she wanted, to be punished. She wanted him to purge her of all her transgressions, release her from all of the regret and pain. Make her believe she was someone else entirely.
Without missing a thrust, she found herself on her back with him looking down at her, holding on to the headboard and slamming into her with single-minded intent.
She couldn’t take much more. More of him. Alec Wilder was everywhere. He burrowed his way into her head, was the blood racing inside her veins, and the staccato beat that lay claim to her heart.
And now he was scorching her skin everywhere he touched her. He was going to burn her alive. And she didn’t possess the willpower to stop him.
On a broken gasp, she came apart.
He went rigid over her, grunting against her breast as he came, the picture of agonized release.
Alec opened his eyes, his instincts on high alert.
He checked his phone. It was six in the morning, the door to the bathroom was open, and the only light was that of the sun peeking through the blinds covering the window.
Throwing the covers to the side, he sat up, shaking his head, and then cradled it in his palms. He dug his fingers through his hair in agitation.
They had spent the night having mindless, feral sex. Falling asleep around two in the morning, they were spent, and he thought they’d reconnected.
He switched on the lamp and noticed a hand-scrawled note on the nightstand sitting next to his phone.
He picked it up.
Alec,
It’s time we go our separate ways, but thanks for last night. It took the edge off.
Loren.
It took the edge off?
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.” He balled up the note and threw it into the trash next to the credenza. He grabbed his jeans from the floor not far from his shirt.
“This is fucking getting old, Loren,” he said to no one in the room as he shoved his legs into the jeans. “You are out of your fucking mind if you think we’re parting ways.”
He threw on his shirt, slid into his shoes, and shoved the ball cap on his head. Remembering the jacket he’d paid two hundred dollars for from the seventeen-year-old delivery boy—fucking little shyster—he picked it off the floor and threw open the door.
Agent Juarez bolted out of his chair from the commotion, looking the worse for wear. Alec had never seen this particular agent before. He must’ve been a newbie.
They stared at one another, Juarez listing a little bit to the right, his hand on his piece still in its holster.
Alec with his shirt untucked and unbuttoned.
The agent came to the realization he’d fucked up, letting the pizza delivery guy shack up with their witness.
“Where’s Ava?” Alec asked.
The agent did his best to straighten his spine. “That’s confidential information.”
Alec pulled out his credentials, and Juarez’s face went even more green, now realizing he’d fucked up far worse than he thought by allowing M2M Agent Alec Wilder not to only approach the witness but also spend the night with her. Both fireable offenses.
“Tell you what, Agent Juarez,” Alec said, buttoning up his shirt. “I’ll keep this to myself if you do. No one needs to be the wiser.”
Juarez looked unsure. “What about Miss Halstead?”
Alec bet money that the last thing she’d want was the feds to know she spent the night with the agent she had branded as persona non grata.
“Trust me, she won’t squeal. Any idea where she is?”
“She had a meeting with agency higher-ups this morning. She, uh, must have escorted herself to the second floor.”
Agent Juarez added as if he needed to further explain, “I’m not feeling too well. Must’ve eaten something bad last night.”
Alec wasn’t concerned. The small white pill was not that debilitating and relatively harmless as knock-out drugs go. The most Juarez would suffer from was grogginess, a headache, and a sucker punch to his federally induced alter-ego.
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s it. Can’t trust fast food these days.”
“That’s the last pizza I’m ever going to buy at Antonio’s.”
Chapter Twelve
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
— W. H. Murray
Mercy woke to the sound of nurses changing shifts outside her hospital room. She eyed the leather recliner next to her bed, the sheets folded neatly on one of the arms, the blanket on the other.
Madame Garmond must’ve left to grab herself her morning cup of hot tea.
Any minute now, she would be waltzing into the room with a grimace on her face spewing her repetitive complaints of how the tea tasted more like bilge water than anything resembling her beloved Earl Grey.
The elderly woman’s early morning grumblings were proof that Mercy’s health and brain activity were improving. If that had not been the case, Madame would’ve been summoning the nurses and verbally eviscerating the doctors over any possible misperceived malpractice.
Mercy had personally witnessed those terrifying scenes shortly after waking from a coma. The doctors had tried to explain what exactly occurred in her traitorous body, but it was difficult to follow, having been comatose for four days prior.
Sensing she was dazed and confused, Madame stepped in, informing the team of doctors that her granddaughter had just woke up from a horrific illness and that it was unconscionable to attempt any type of communication without giving her time to heal properly.
From what she could gather, prior to Madame’s tirade, they had immediately run tests when she arrived. Given the medical history shared by Loren, they fully expected to find lesions.
To everyone’s surprise, the CT scan of her brain indicated not a single blip or lesion. But what it did show was the meningeal lining of her brain dangerously inflamed.
Dr. Goody, the neurosurgeon who had flown down from the northeast as part of the deal Loren negotiated for her part in bringing down Amado, called an infectious disease specialist who advised him to order a lumbar puncture to check for infection.
Madame conveyed that when they wheeled the tray closer to the gurney, Mercy’s entire body raised as if struck by lightning.
Dr. Goody explained that when bacteria attacks, the body goes into defense mode. It took six attendants to hold her down so the doctor could inject a sedative and complete the procedure.
Only to discover that her spinal fluid was full of pus and the infection had most probably reached her brain.
As Dr. Goody, who Madame later proclaimed to Mercy as quite the looker and therefore aptly named, explained that rather than suffering lesions, she had somehow contracted bacterial meningitis, or an extremely rare case of Escherichia Coli, better known as E. coli. The infection had spread at such an alarming rate that the doctors had assigned her a ten percent chance of survival.
She then drifted into a coma.
Two days after being admitted, Mercy’s body still wasn’t responding to the triple intravenous antibiotics.
By day three, they had informed Madame that she would more than likely not survive the illness, and it was time to call in her relatives. Madame scoffed and told them they had no idea the fantastical fortitude of the young woman of whom they were tending.
On day four, she woke.
And Madame said, “It’s about time you stopped lollygagging.”
To which Mercy simply replied, “I missed you.”
Mercy didn’t remember much of anything while in her unconscious state. Other than a peaceful slumber where she drifted on what seemed like dark clouds.
There were voices. Voices whose i
ntent seemed to be to comfort her. To let her know she would be okay. Nothing alarming.
Save for one voice.
One single distinct voice she heard praying. Asking her to please wake up.
Nate.
After coming back, it took a good week of some truly psychedelic-worthy delusions to subside, which the doctor assured her was normal. A sign of her body doing its best to realign her beleaguered brain and recover its bearings.
As the doctors shared more and more information as she recovered, Mercy did her best to absorb the details imparted to her under Madame's watchful glare. Later, while watching a rousing episode of Downton Abbey, Mercy asked Madame how she might have contracted E. coli.
Something the doctors had never addressed.
Madame hesitated, clicked off the monitor, and advised that the doctors were unable to ascertain the actual cause but did make some assumptions. They mentioned a new bacterial strain that could create an antibiotic resistance on its host bacterium. Basically, this new strain of bacteria could render another contracted bacteria that absorbed it resistant not just to some current antibiotics but to all of them.
After much deliberation, the team of doctors determined there was the slight probability, after filtering through medical files confiscated from the Center, that the infection was caused by a contaminated deep brain stimulator used by Dr. Vielle during Mercy’s brain surgery.
Dr. Vile.
That dipshit of a mind fuck.
It came as no shock to Mercy when she learned that Dr. Vielle was nowhere to be found and that he more than likely left town shortly before Amado arrived.
Well, that didn’t seem at all suspicious.
What did shock her was when one of the doctors advised that a reverse tubal ligation had been ordered. He added that her sister, Ms. Loren Ingalls, had requested the procedure, but they needed her signature before proceeding.
The handsome but clueless gynecologist stood patiently at her bedside. And Mercy wondered at his timing as he had popped in her room just as Madame left for her morning cup of bilge water.
But a reverse tubal ligation? Repair her baby-makers?
Her thoughts shifted to the memory of an erratic Loren pointing a gun at Jasper, saying, “For three hundred, these women are no longer able to have children . . .”
Blinking at the vague memory, she searched the room for clarity while the gynecologist continued to wait, holding out the clipboard and pen, his eyes darting toward the door.
She worked through her muddled brain, thinking that Loren never underwent the brain-altering surgeries that she and Cara, then Charlotte had suffered.
Rather, it was the car accident with their parents that caused Loren’s brain trauma.
So, it was she and Cara who Loren was referring to during her bloody and maniacal game-playing with Jasper.
And although they exited the room with a bullet-riddled but still breathing Jasper Bancroft, she had been informed by Madame that he was dead. An apparent victim of the crossfire between the M2M, the feds, and Amado’s men.
Slowly more memories erupted. One of which was the single gunshot she, Loren, and Trevor had heard while making their way back to the Center’s parking area.
She knew how Jasper died. And held not a smidge of sympathy for his grisly death.
But now, Alec was involved in their familial plight. Now, he too, held life-altering secrets, depending on others to keep their mouths firmly shut.
It was a long day of recalling recent events. Events that caused her more pain than satisfaction. But the one unanswered question was about Loren, who had yet to visit her and check up on her progress. Totally uncharacteristic of her overprotective sister.
And although Madame assured her she was providing Loren updates each evening, something seemed weird. Off.
The elderly woman came off as dodgy whenever Mercy asked about Loren, telling her to drink more water or eat her vegetables and then moving on to another subject.
Offhandedly, during one line of questioning, she mentioned something about Loren being temporarily indisposed while providing state’s evidence to the FBI and that it shouldn’t be much longer. And then she used her stern matronly voice, instructing her to finish her dinner.
Later that day, Mercy signed the paperwork and went back into surgery to repair her Fallopian tubes.
Ironically, she found herself looking forward to being sedated. Felt the pull of finding herself back inside that deep dark place where she could shut down and turn off. A place where she could languish, free from an uncertain future and anxiety.
A place where she could just be.
Mercy fidgeted and turned so she could lay on her side.
Something wasn’t right. It was as if she were under a microscope. As if someone were staring into the deepest crevices of her soul.
Slowly, she opened one eye.
A familiar set of dark brown eyes, wise beyond their years, peered back.
She rationalized the possibility of who seemingly stood before her and concluded that she must be experiencing a one-off delusional episode instead of a moment based on reality.
A worthwhile exercise, as prior to the antibiotics kicking in, she had difficulty discerning reality from a full-on hallucination.
She decided to run with the delusional episode theory as they seemed to be the common outcome after doctors repeatedly assured her that there wasn’t a miniature pony whizzing on her blanket and she wasn’t skydiving from thirty thousand feet.
“Nate?”
“Hey, Mom.”
She blinked. “Am I still in the hospital, or is this hell and you’re here to show me the ropes?”
The boy shrugged. “Can’t say what alternate lifetimes you experienced while in a coma, but for now, you’re still in your hospital room. What’s it feel like to have a brain full of pus?”
Well informed as usual.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember much.” Which was a lie, but he didn’t need to know the part he played in her delirium. “How do you know about the whole pus-in-the-brain situation?”
“My foster parent, pro-temp,” he added the last part with inflection, “kept me up-to-date on your condition.”
“Well then, you probably know more about it than I do.”
“Probably, I heard you had a brief stint with ICU psychosis.”
“Is that when you come out of the coma talking as if you’re one clown short of a circus?”
“It’s where you experience extreme delusions and paranoia upon re-entry of your current state of consciousness.”
“Oh well, since you put it that way, yes. At one point, I thought I was flying over the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“Is that a metaphor?”
“If it was, I failed to interpret it.” She yawned. “How do you know about ICU psychosis?”
“I’m a genius. And I have access to your medical files. But you might want to keep that to yourself.”
She looked around the room. “Uh, how did you get here?”
“Bus, a common mode of transportation. Rather plebeian for someone of my intellect, but I survived an elderly woman who kept pinching my cheeks and her grandson who farted in twenty-minute increments.”
“You clocked them?”
He shrugged. “It passed the time while he passed the gas.”
She chuckled. Despite a higher-than-normal IQ, he was still just a little boy.
“So where is your foster parent, pro-temp? Hiding in the hallway and spiking their coffee with pure grain alcohol?”
“Funny, not sure where he is at the moment,” he said, looking around the room as if his foster parent might jump out from behind the IV stand.
She pushed herself to a sitting position and pressed the button that moved her bed upright. “Can’t wait to hear this one. What did you do? Throw them down the cellar steps and hotwire their car?”
Just as she settled in, Madame G wafted into the room, smelling like vanilla and burnt coffee grounds. In one h
and, she carried a white Styrofoam cup, and in the other, she held a burner phone to her ear, her eyes narrowing on Nate.
“Ah, yes. I see our culprit now. He must have arrived while I gathered myself a perfectly atrocious cup of coffee. To be honest, I find the taste nostalgic, much like the sewer waters in London.” She set the cup on the table and turned toward a dodgy Nate. “Yes, I will keep an eye on your charge. How long before you arrive? He’s a bit of a card shark, and I’m living off a fixed income, so time is money.”
With a wink and a smirk at Madame, Nate pulled out a pack of cards from his coat pocket.
“Less than ten minutes?” Madame continued with a sigh. “I’ll do my best to keep him within the parameters of the facility and my savings account intact, but as you know, he’s quite stealthy . . . and ruthless.”
Laying the phone next to her coffee cup, she turned to Nate with a look of dissatisfaction. “Well, Master Nathaniel, what do you have to say for yourself?”
He held the deck of cards up with a cheeky grin. “Care for a quick game of Whist? Aces high, twos low?”
“You have caused quite a stir, young man.”
He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “Had to see Mommsy here. Make sure she was okay. This is a rare case, and we can’t afford to waste our time with hacks or quacks. She needs and deserves the best care, and I’m going to make sure she gets it.”
Mercy couldn’t help it. Her heart warmed at this skinny little kid with a 1950s haircut sporting a healthy cowlick at the crown, thinking he was the answer to her medical prayers.
She looked him over for any signs of neglect from his foster parents. His fleece coat looked new, as well as his jeans and Converse shoes. She was relieved to see he appeared well cared for, whomever the poor soul was that made the decision to become this boy’s foster parent. Assuming they were still breathing. And sober.
She stretched to pour herself a cup of water from her bedside tray, and Nate instantly took over the task, filling it to the rim and spilling half of it as he handed it to her.
