Caskets & Conspiracies

by Nellie K Neves

  Ryder’s cologne surrounded me, and I let myself turn back into him. Even in his sleep, he wrapped his arms around me. I didn’t deserve him, and yet he wanted me, the damaged, broken, flawed me. My face rested against the small space of skin that was exposed at his neckline. The warmth of his body and the strength of his touch comforted me to the core and eased my anxiety. Whatever the next day would bring, I was happy to spend the night in his arms.

  **********

  There was no calming my nerves when the morning came. I was a wreck as we waited around the lighthouse for the afternoon to come. Ryder had explained that Pharmaco’s security team in the afternoon was considerably more relaxed, and in the hours before most people went home, the patrols were nonexistent in the building. So I waited, and I watched Ryder weld metal for as long as I could bear before I slipped outside again.

  With Ryder engrossed in his work, I exited the lighthouse in search of fresh air and peace. It was not that he didn’t give me peace but rather that I felt trapped by the four walls of every room. I was quick to remind myself that it had hardly been twenty-four hours since my ordeal, and I was allowed some idiosyncrasies because of it. But then a thought plagued the back of my mind, a worry that I might never be the same again.

  I did not make it far. The edge of the bluff called to me, and I sat a few feet from the drop-off. Midmorning held an unusually blue sky and puffy white clouds, a trick played by Mother Nature, as if the day’s work might not be too ominous. But I knew better.

  I allowed my mind to wander for a moment to childhood memories and happier times. Before the night that had scarred my family, I could remember a lot of laughter. Jackie was the silly one. At least that’s the memory I had of her. She was spontaneous and a bit of a trickster, and though I doubted my memories, that one rang true in my mind. The ache spread within my chest as I thought of her. How could I miss someone so much when I hardly knew her at all? Blood had a way of doing that, I suppose. It connected us beyond the years of physical separation. We were sisters. Did she know me? I doubted it. If she did, wouldn’t she have found us? What had she been told? How had she been raised?

  “Am I intruding?” Ryder asked from a short distance off.

  Considering everything he had done for me, I could not tell him that he was. “Of course not. I didn’t want to disturb you, so I came out here.”

  “Well, I burned myself enough for one day. I’m still not used to welding.” He pushed back the long sleeves that covered his arms, and I could see tiny burns where sparks and metal had scorched his skin.

  A funny thought occurred to me, and I voiced it before I could stop myself.

  “You need my disease, and then you wouldn’t feel any of that.”

  I regretted it the second it came out of my mouth. Tension gripped the air between us and held him back from speaking. I had to live with multiple sclerosis. I tended to joke about it or even make light of it from time to time, but the jokes always fell flat. The truth was not funny to anyone but me, and really, it was not even funny to me.

  I stared over the bay, watching the birds dip and swirl in the unseen wind channels. There weren’t waves in the bay, at least not the crashing ones I had seen as a child on trips to the Pacific Ocean with my family. The tide was steady, more vigorous than a lapping lake, and the rhythm was soothing, assuring me that even after I was gone, the tide would press forward.

  A slight tickling at my wrist brought my head around. Ryder’s fingers were tracing the length of my exposed skin on my right side. As I flashed him a questioning look, he almost blushed.

  “Sorry. Old habits. I was checking for sensitivity in your skin.” When I did not scold him, he ran his fingers over my wrist and asked, “Can you feel that?”

  Before I looked, I thought the feeling had been caused by a bug or a spider, and I had barely felt it at all. Once I knew it was Ryder, the skin remained desensitized, but his touch lit fires in my chest and belly.

  “Barely,” I admitted, only partially truthful.

  “Both sides or just your right?”

  He sounded like a doctor. At least the words were familiar, but the tone was soft, breathy, as if it were all an excuse just to touch my arm.

  “Mostly my right, and it’s not persistent.”

  “What treatment plan do you follow?”

  It was strange to have someone other than my doctor ask questions of that nature. No one ever wanted to hear about my disease. It immediately made them uncomfortable, and the pity would not be far off. Yet, with Ryder, he actually wanted to know. He understood the need for preventive treatment, and I felt his concern.

  “Daily injections,” I answered, only wincing slightly as his fingertips found one of the welts an injection had left.

  “Don’t you need them now?”

  Before the case, I had been a machine, never missing a single injection, tracking them with rigid accuracy, but somewhere between the masquerade and Stella’s death, I had lost it. Was it just the interruption of my daily rhythm? Had the grief of my aunt’s death made a crack in my perfectly controlled sphere? Or was it something bigger?

  Ryder waited for my answer with questioning eyes. I quickly gave him the answer he was looking for and buried the rest of my fears in a dark hole where they belonged.

  “It’s a matter of consistency. I’ve been flawless for nearly five years. Two nights will not break me. It’s worth the risk so that they will think I’m dead.”

  It was an answer, but not all truth. I had missed far more than two nights over the last month, and the thought worried me. The injections kept the monster’s lock in place. What would happen if the cage came loose, and the disease was able to ravage my mind once more?

  Ryder stopped to study the lump on the back of my arm, his medical training apparent as he scrutinized the skin. I did not mind the attention. His hands were warm and tender. I had not spent much time with his father, but I imagined he had learned his gentle touch from his mother or maybe the nannies who had raised him. Either way, I was willing to allow him the nearness he needed, if only just so I could drink in his comfort before my darkest hour.

  “Do they hurt?” His gaze found mine again. I did not want to analyze his dark brown eyes or the emotions they held. I only wanted to dive into their depths and surrender myself.

  “Every single time,” I replied.

  The edges of my words pushed on the silence between us, consonants that made little jarring sounds that dispelled whatever had pressed into the space. Even though it was not prudent, I wanted to know what would happen if we let the silence slip in, if I let the fire in my chest consume us both.

  Ryder’s hand slipped under mine, and the pressure of his fingertips straightened my fingers as he pushed them up with his own. Before they could twist and lace, he paused, watching the vision of our hands, pressed together, finger for finger, palm for palm, as if it were the most perplexing sight in the world.

  “What is this,” he asked softly, “this thing we have between us? What would you call it?”

  I had to look away from our hands, as if they held the same pressure as his eyes. I could feel the weight of his palm, warm and strong on mine, but I did not pull away. I only stared at the grass by my legs, light yellow and tinged with green in some places.

  “Do we have to label it?” I finally replied.

  I suppose it was a victory in his eyes that I had even acknowledged the question to begin with, but he had learned to persist to get answers from me.

  “Would it be so bad to put a title on it? Would we be so terrible together? We keep finding each other, don’t we?”

  He had a point, but I did not believe in fate. Granted, I did not believe in coincidence either. His fingers twisted slightly and slipped between the gaps of my own, interlocking them as if he might never let me go, but I did not feel trapped.

  “I don’t even know whether I’ll be alive tomorrow night, Ryder. A relationship seems even more ill-advised than usual,” I admitted. I had not t
old him the extent of my plan, afraid that the danger might cause him to object or refuse to help.

  His thumb ran over the knuckle of mine idly, as if it were a reflex.

  “You’re just looking through his files. You’ll be in and out in a few minutes.” Ryder’s head leaned into mine as if he might kiss me. But he saw it in my eyes. He saw that I had hidden part of my plan from him. His lips parted, and the happy tension in his cheeks dropped away.

  “What are you really planning?”

  His grip on my hand tightened as if he could keep me there in that moment, safe from everything by his strength alone. My voice was weak, afraid to admit it all out loud.

  “I have to talk to him. I have to get the answers from Richard directly.” I watched Ryder’s eyes pinch shut as the truth pulsed out of me. “I’ll get him to confess, and I’ll record it.”

  Muscles along Ryder’s jaw clenched, and I could see the strain in his neck as he surmised my plan. “The only way he will tell you everything is if he thinks you won’t live to tell anyone else.” His dark eyes turned almost black with disapproval. “This is suicidal.”

  “I’ll be okay. I need to do this for Stella and for the others who were killed.”

  He moved closer, or maybe he pulled me closer. I could not be sure.

  “I’ll record from the basement. There’s equipment down there. Then when you have what you need, I’ll get you out.”

  It was not a bad idea, and it still kept Ryder out of danger.

  “When I have what I need, you call the cops. Don’t come after me,” I corrected. “I know how to fight. I can hold him off if I need to. It’s not suicide.”

  His head dropped, chin almost to his chest as he whispered, “I hate this plan.”

  Unable to remove my left hand from his grip, I touched my right fingertips to his jaw and lifted his chin until his eyes met mine. “It’ll be okay. I always figure it out.”

  We got lost there in that moment. The fire in my chest crackled and roared, consuming the butterflies and replacing them with a desire that danced within the flames. I wondered if he could feel the heat as it emanated from me or was it contained to my sphere, cooled by the glass walls I had built to keep myself safe. As his opposite hand pressed over mine, crushing my palm against his jaw, I could feel the warmth of a fire beneath his skin as well.

  “Do you ever think about it?” he asked slowly as if each word had a careful weight that had to be balanced on a scale. “Our kiss, I mean. Do you think about it?”

  My lips burned as the fire spread into my face, illuminating my cheeks and pulsating through my fingertips. I could not answer. I could not tell the truth, and yet I refused to lie to him again.

  “Do you?” I asked, deflecting his question.

  I did not need his words to confirm that he had.

  “More often than I should.”

  The space between us became smaller, as if the earth itself had shifted us closer. Was I moving? Was he?

  His whisper that sneaked from his mouth was hardly above the volume of a breath. “All I can think about is getting back there again.”

  Both my hands were trapped in his, but I had no urge to leave or pull away. My objections were trap doors that were meant to keep invaders at a distance.

  “Ryder, we can’t.”

  His forehead rested against mine, almost clammy with perspiration. It was not hot outside. The fire within us cooked from the inside out.

  “You said you might not see tomorrow. That means all I have is now.”

  His lips bumped mine, and my entire vertebrae and spinal cord burst into a tingling, burning inferno.

  “This is a bad idea,” I urged, but the words were hardly believable, just hallow reflexes meant to keep me safe.

  I could feel his breath against my skin, like the white hot breath of a dragon. “I keep thinking you’re right, that I’m crazy to try, but…” his lips brushed over my cheek like little coals set to burn, “the problem is, the fact I keep coming back to is,” those dark eyes locked with mine, “you kissed me back, Huckleberry.”

  One more trap door. One more objection. But it was weak, a simple word, like a thimble of water against an unchecked forest fire.

  “Ryder…”

  He did not wait for the rest of my objection, though there was nothing else to follow. His hand released mine but only long enough to scoop around my waist and eliminate the space between our lips and bodies.

  Once again, I flew. Under the insistent pull of his lips, I soared above the pain, above my disease, and above the task that might take my life if I was not careful. His arms enveloped me, unwilling to free me, as if he knew this moment was all he had, all we might ever have, and he had a lifetime of emotion to pour into it. My fingers tangled up into his hair, gripped his collar, clutched his shirt. Anything I could do to feel, to keep him close to me and keep the rest of the day away from us.

  His lips explored my cheek, my forehead, quick bursts as he admitted his fears. “I thought I lost you that night.”

  I could hear the pain and the fear in his voice, secrets he had ferreted away to show how calm and controlled he had been so that I could become strong again.

  “I saw you lying there, and for a second I thought you were gone.”

  His grip tightened on my waist as I kissed his cheek, his jaw, and the tiny space below his earlobe. Strong arms pressed me back, the distance between us painful as if we were never meant to be separate. Ryder’s warm palms cradled my face as our chests rose and fell in sync.

  “I don’t know what this is that we have, but I can’t lose you.”

  It was as if he wanted me to assure him that everything was going to be fine, that it would work exactly how I had planned, but I could not make that promise. It would be a lie, because nothing was sure. Everything in my life stood on tenuous ground. Even a relationship that could only last for the few minutes I gave it.

  So instead of an answer, I gave my kiss, nothing held back, no walls, no bars, just the true feelings of affection I felt for the man I never knew I needed. I let myself forget for a moment that I had an expiration date, that even if I survived my encounter with a man who killed with no remorse, there was still a monster inside of me that threatened to take away everything that made me who I was. I forgot it, and in that brief space of time, I was just Lindy, a girl who was crazy about a boy named Ryder.

  Chapter 24

  When the morning did finally fade away and afternoon came, I wished I could go back to waiting. In the parking garage outside Pharmaco, Ryder gave me a cap to hide my hair and a large collared shirt to hide my figure. I had lost my gun and most of my equipment the night I was stuffed into a casket, and I felt exposed without it.

  The glass doors gave us entrance, and though it was the same building that I had been in not long ago, I recognized nothing. Gone were the tables, the drapes, the masks, the tuxes, and the glittering gowns. In their place there were suits, pencil skirts, and tight smiles that told me nothing.

  Ryder stepped into an elevator and pulled me inside. He swiped his card and pressed the button marked 35, the top floor. His office adjoined the office of the CEO, Richard Wagnor, a man who also called himself Trevor Cripley, a man who facilitated the theft of thousands of dollars from elderly victims just before their deaths. The elevator chime rang, and my heart hit the floor. Ryder’s hand found mine.

  “You don’t have to do this.” His words took me back to our moment on the bluff, to the open sea and the fires that I had squelched underfoot so that I could focus again.

  My fate was set. Stella would have justice. I did not say a word. I stepped forward and Ryder followed. With his card in hand, he swiped entrance into his office but clung to my hand. He hated every part of it, but he knew there was no stopping me. Just as so many times before, I could see the words kept at bay just beyond his eyes, but all he said was, “Be careful, Huckleberry.”

  I watched him walk away and disappear into the elevator. He was headed for the b
asement to find the files we needed to show the Pharmaco connection to the secret society called The Hope Allegiance. Once I was in position, he would record the confession I planned to pull from Richard Wagnor.

  I closed the door and moved to Ryder’s desk. The files were right where he had said they would be. I removed the cap and worked quickly, faxing the copies to Chief Saunders as swiftly as I could. Without the real test results, they were nothing, but if the chief could get a warrant for the church, then we stood a chance. If I could get the confession, the warrant would be easy. It all came down to me.

  The fax beeped when the transmission was complete, and when I checked my cell phone, the message from Ryder told me he was ready. The buzzer on Ryder’s phone sounded, and a voice came over the line.

  “Ryder, are you in today? Come in here for a moment.”

  I looked at the door that separated me from the CEO of Pharmaco. It might as well have been a walk to the execution room. My hand gripped the handle. The steel was cold in my right hand. For once my entire body was functional. Either I was stronger than I thought or even the monster was too scared to rattle its cage. The knob twisted under my touch, and I pushed through the door.

  The leather chair across the room was turned away from me, Wagnor’s face hidden. I heard his voice.

  “About time, Ryder. I don’t like to ask twice. You know that, don’t you?” I recognized the voice, but from where? Why did it scare me? Why did it trigger panic in my chest?

  The chair spun, and he saw me for the first time. I don’t know what I expected as I stared at him, seeing him for the first time across an immense office lined floor to ceiling with windows and adorned with leather furniture. Maybe I expected some sort of surprise. Maybe anger and demands for my identity. In the least I suspected he might try for security. But what I did not suspect was a smile, almost warm, like seeing an old friend for the first time in years.