by CJ Lyons
He glanced at his phone, saw he’d missed a message from her earlier. Wait. He still had no idea why she’d left the school in the middle of the night. He stood, grabbed his coat. “What happened?”
“We’re not done—” Devon shushed the detective with an impatient gesture as he walked out of the interview room, his full focus on Flynn.
“Esme. She can’t sleep and has been having these spells. The doctors up there couldn’t figure them out, but I know Dr. Rossi can.” Flynn paused. Uncharacteristic for her. She usually never began a conversation without already having weighed and measured her words. “You know she’s sick, right? I think Esme has the same thing. She’s having spells like Dr. Rossi.”
Devon froze in the middle of the detective squad, dozens of overworked police officers watching him, sensing something was wrong.
Esme? Having fugues like Angela? He’d halfway convinced himself that she’d be fine, that it was just a coincidence. No, no, no…this couldn’t…This can’t be happening.
He forced himself to walk at a normal pace, the detectives relaxing as he passed through the squad doors and headed to the elevators. “I’m on my way.”
* * *
Waves of music thundered over me as my body froze. Tympani and cymbals and ponderous bass notes crashed, stirring every molecule of air surrounding me. I could sense them all, dissect each individual note. Here, a stray organophosphate molecule, garlic in tone, viridian green in color. The pesticide Littleton used at work. Despite him being in jail for months, it still seeped from his clothing. There, a whiff of too-bright artificial lemon, remnants of the soap mixed in with the water puddled on the wood floor.
And the water, oh, the water…I could see each beautiful crystal rainbow drop as it reached toward Heaven and was consumed, evaporating. I’m not sure how long I lay there, my head resting on Littleton’s chest, staring transfixed and unblinking as the world pulverized into the elemental stuff life was built of. Time in a fugue was elastic, impossible to measure without some fixed point.
Littleton’s breathing, rocking my head, had grown slow, erratic. The thundering echoing through my body was his heartbeat, I finally realized. I pulled my focus inward, assessing the sound like a clinician. No stethoscope necessary, not with my every sense stretched to its max.
His heart was roaring. I could feel the blood rushing through his arteries. Too fast, too hard, his blood pressure spiking. In my hyperacute state, it wasn’t a difficult diagnosis to make: hypertensive crisis brought on by the PXA, leading to bleeding in his brain.
What was I thinking, giving a man with a head injury, no matter how minor, a drug like PXA? I’d as good as killed him. Recriminations roiled through me. I’d done it to save lives, but instead I’d taken one.
I could feel life slipping from him…and suddenly, I was inside him, with him, in his mind. At least I thought I was.
It wasn’t at all like the other times. Then, I’d been able to reach a person, have a conversation, connect with their consciousness. Inside Littleton, I wandered in a thick fog, each tendril smoky and thick with blood, women’s screams swirling the mist. I fought through the spider web of confusion, searching for something coherent.
Eugene Littleton! I called out in my mind as my body lay frozen on top of his.
No answer. But the fog around me filled with images. Horrific, brutal visions of women being raped and tortured. I recognized Tymara, Gena Kravitz, even myself among the many. Littleton’s lurid fantasies.
Thunder surrounded me as I waded through the blood and screams. I lost track of the women, fought to escape, terror spiking through me as I felt him grow weaker.
Eugene! I shouted in a last effort to reach him and gain the answers I sought. Tell me about your brothers. Who are you working with? Laughter mixed with the crackle of fire, the mists devoured by flames that scorched everything black. A black that burned and choked and threatened to consume me in its oily stench.
She loves me best. A man’s voice seared my brain. Littleton’s? Or another man’s? Maybe I wasn’t inside Littleton at all. Maybe my fugue had allowed Leo to take control of my mind.
The thought was as frightening as the black void that surrounded me. I was trapped. Alone.
And I had no path out…
Terror spiked through me. I had no idea how long I wandered in that never-ending absence of light, sound, smell…sheer nothingness.
After what felt like infinity, gentle hands raised my body. My body! I had a body again, could feel him. It was a man, he smelled of pine and citrus. I heard the rustle of his breathing, steady and healthy. Not Ryder, I knew that instinctively.
Panic parched my mouth, burning like acid. Littleton’s partners? I was helpless. They could do anything they wanted. Screams shredded my mind, but I was powerless to utter a sound. Tymara’s body filled my vision.
I felt as if I was floating, my mind and body still strangely out of sync, as he carried me and then settled me, sitting up, on a leather seat. My couch.
My eyes stared straight ahead, unable to shift left or right. I couldn’t see the man—couldn’t see anything except my bookcases and TV, all blurred because my corneas were hopelessly dry from not blinking for so long. My mouth tasted of salt, lips and tongue parched. I stank of urine and the acrid sweat of terror.
The man caressed my hair, pulling it back from my face. My scalp itched, a strange sensation, but one I couldn’t fully process, my mind reeling, the world around me collapsing and expanding as if I was trapped in a kaleidoscope.
Then he left me there. What the hell?
Behind me, I heard the man lift Littleton’s body with an exhaled grunt. There was the snick of a knife blade, the scrape of duct tape being removed. More thuds as he worked on Littleton—saving him? Maybe he wasn’t dead?
Finally, the man’s footsteps vibrated through the floorboards. He touched my hair once more, a feathery tickle against the back of my neck, then remained out of my sight as the door creaked open and closed once more, the click echoing with finality.
I sat, still frozen in my fugue, counting dust motes as they drifted before my blurred vision, and waited. What had he done? Why leave? Had he taken Littleton with him? Why not call for help?
Who was he?
Could it be Devon? He understood my fugues. Devon would send help.
I waited and waited, still not sure how much time had passed, the world a blur around me.
Disposing of a body, destroying evidence. Things Devon also understood. He’d never abandon me.
Except…What if the man hadn’t been Devon?
Chapter Thirty-Six
Ryder glanced at the clock as he worked alone in the Major Case squad. Almost three thirty in the morning, and the detectives working Manny’s case had finally left for the night. Not because they’d given up, simply because they were at that eye-of-the-storm stage where they’d talked to everyone they could talk to and accessed all the information they could. Now, they had to wait until the evidence at the scene was processed and business hours gave them access to more, such as private security cameras and Manny’s files for the cases he was prosecuting.
Homicide investigations were like wildfires. They’d burn intense early on, stall out, then blaze again in a new direction as the wind shifted. Homicide investigators learned to get what little rest they could, when they could, because when things heated back up, they’d be running on caffeine and adrenaline.
Ryder watched them leave and felt a strange sense of ennui settle over him. He wasn’t part of Manny’s case, other than being a witness. He wasn’t part of the team anymore. Hell, with Rossi safely tucked into her place for the night, he didn’t have anyone to go home to, not even the dog. Tired, yet also too keyed up to sleep, he’d borrowed a desk and continued to ferret into Littleton’s life.
Finally, he had to admit defeat. Littleton had never been arrested with anyone else. What little Ryder could access of Littleton’s foster care record revealed a kid shuttled from group home to
group home. The only things of interest were notations from the home administrators that, while Littleton had not shown any violent tendencies, he’d repeatedly started fires, so he was removed because of the threat to his safety and the other children at each home. That, and a stray note dated eighteen years ago from a social worker who’d been trying to locate any remaining family. She’d listed an address but no names. Ryder looked it up in the computer’s reverse directory: a residence just outside of the city, no longer belonging to the Littletons. Maybe the social worker still remembered something about Littleton.
Bleary-eyed, he glanced at the clock: twelve after four. Too late to go home. Too early to call the social worker tonight, not for such a remote lead. He’d follow up later in the morning. In the meantime, the couch in the lounge was calling his name.
His phone woke him several hours later. He answered it as he wiped sleep from his eyes and inhaled the glorious scent of industrial-strength coffee. “Ryder.”
“It’s Louise. I need your help.”
He stood up, at full alert. “Is it Rossi?”
“No. Yes.” She paused, lowered her voice as if someone was listening. “It’s her friend, Devon Price. Do you know him?”
“I do. What’s he done now?” He pulled the phone away long enough to check the time. Only a quarter after eight. How much trouble could Price have gotten himself into in just a few hours? Answer: a helluva lot.
“He’s here, at the clinic. Brought at least a dozen children with him and their parents. Said Angie was supposed to meet him here, that the children are all sick and that I’m to take care of them. He says Angie diagnosed them all with fatal insomnia.”
“What? I thought you said it was hereditary.”
“It is. I have my fellow Tommaso dealing with them. It’s actually fortuitous. He could use more research subjects for his new nasal epithelial cell analysis—”
“Louise,” he interrupted, trying to bring her back from the realms of academia, “what’s this have to do with Rossi?”
“I can’t find her. Mr. Price says she was supposed to be here, but she’s not. She’s not answering her phone. Matthew, I’m worried.”
“Did you check Jacob’s room? She probably held vigil at his bedside.”
“No. She hasn’t been back since she left the ER. Have you heard from her?”
He looked longingly at the pot of coffee before turning his back on it and grabbing his coat. “I’m headed there now. I’ll call you when I hear anything.”
* * *
Ryder had never stepped foot inside Rossi’s place. That pretty much summed up their relationship, didn’t it? Sex every day in every way, but no trespassing into her safe hold. The thought added frustration and anger to the panic he already felt. He’d gone into battle with less apprehension than he had now, racing to his lover’s home.
She’s dead.
As he drove to her place, breaking most of the traffic laws, the thought grabbed hold of him with an iron fist, refusing to let go, filling his mind with memories of the worst death scenes he’d witnessed. He was going to kick in the door, smell the decomp, hear the flies buzzing like a black cloud over her, see her body bloated and ugly.
He braked hard, scraping a tire against the curb in front of her building.
No. She wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be.
He ran inside and up the stairs to her apartment. Pounded on the door so hard it shook in its frame. No response. His hand on his Glock, he found himself experiencing the same tunnel vision he’d felt during a firefight. The ambient noise receded into a dim blur. The light seemed brighter as he focused on the brass doorknob in his grip. The target zone.
He opened the unlocked door. That fact alone revved him into high alert. Rossi would have locked it. He peered inside without exposing himself. No lights on. Across the length of the apartment, a sliver of light from the open refrigerator door illuminated the space. He stopped before crossing inside. That open refrigerator bothered him. A lot.
No way in hell would Rossi have left it open. She despised waste in any form. Which meant…
The Glock was in his hand, leading him as he entered the room. “Rossi!”
His voice echoed from the timbered ceiling, taunting him. The place stank of sour sweat, urine, and blood.
The light from the hall spilled into the apartment, revealing a figure on the couch, her features sunken, relaxed like a corpse already past rigor. Her skin was ashen, her eyes open but glazed. Dried spittle caked the corner of her mouth. Her hands lay folded neatly in her lap. Not moving. God, she’s dead. The words hammered in time with his pulse. No one living would put up with that rank odor.
He flicked the lights on. The place was trashed. He checked his urge to rush to Rossi’s side when he spotted a man’s foot on the floor behind the kitchen island. Weapon at the ready, he sidled over, taking aim. Littleton. Dead or near to it. He bent, checked for a pulse. No. Dead.
What the hell had happened here?
It took him only twenty-two seconds to clear the rest of the apartment and call for backup, but he couldn’t help but fear those were twenty-two seconds too many.
As he raced back to Rossi, he passed the assortment of pills and tablets on the dining table. Rossi…no…No, she couldn’t have, she wouldn’t, not without saying good-bye.
Would she?
He sank to his knees at her side, feeling crushed.
Then he saw her chest rise.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ryder rode in the ambulance with Rossi. The medics had tried to keep him out, but he hadn’t even bothered arguing, had merely pushed past them, moving only enough to give them room to work. Between his feet sat a shopping bag filled with pills. He’d grabbed everything he could find, astonished by the array of prescriptions, vitamins, and even half a bottle of PXA.
What the hell was going on? Some kind of overdose? Was it because of Littleton? A man like that wasn’t worth trying to kill yourself over.
Unless you were the doctor who’d just killed him. Especially if Littleton hadn’t told her who his partners were. That would have about destroyed Rossi, the idea that because of her, more people might die at the hands of his unknown partners.
“Never seen anything like it,” one of the medics was saying. He’d stabbed Rossi’s arms three times, trying for a line, and had finally gotten one started in her neck. She looked like the Bride of Frankenstein, wires on her chest measuring her heartbeat, the IV in her neck with fluid rushing in, the oxygen sensor glowing red on her finger. She hadn’t stirred, just lay there, not blinking…
“Can’t you do something?” Ryder asked. He’d called Louise as soon as he called for the ambulance, knew she’d been in contact with them. But whatever they were doing, it wasn’t working. Rossi wasn’t waking up.
“Dr. Mehta said to wait,” the medic said. He nodded to the bag between Ryder’s feet. “Any combo of that stuff—we give her the wrong meds, and…”
Ryder grimaced. Hated how helpless he felt. Was this how Rossi felt every day, facing a disease so rare it barely had a name, much less any hope of a treatment?
They rolled into the ambulance bay, backing up to the ER entrance. Minutes later, he found himself shoved aside, even more useless once he gave up the bag of medication, while the ER staff swarmed over Rossi’s body. Poking, prodding, stripping her naked, more needles, more fluids, X-rays, debates about labs, finally a big, honking tube shoved down her nose with black gunk—charcoal—poured in. Then another tube, this time in her bladder.
They kept asking him to leave. He ignored them.
Finally, Louise Mehta arrived. Most of the ER staff left. She had a nurse pull out the nasogastric tube, and at last, Ryder was able to get close enough to touch Rossi. He stroked his fingers along her arm. Her skin felt cooler now, her color less pale. They’d poured ointment in her eyes and taped her eyelids shut so she no longer gazed at him with that dead-fish stare. He squeezed her hand. It lay flaccid in his.
“She’
d never kill herself. I’m sure of it.” His voice betrayed him. It sounded more like he was asking Louise to convince him instead of the other way around. Maybe he was.
She flipped to the last page of the chart, nodded, then finally looked up at him. “She listed you as her emergency contact under next-of-kin.”
He jerked his head up. “What? No, that’s wrong. She’s got a mother, a sister. I’m not related to her, I’m—” What was he? Damn sure he was closer than family, at least her family, but…
“No. It’s right here. Matthew Ryder. Which means I finally have the right to discuss her case with you. I’m afraid this episode is consistent with her entering the second phase of the illness.”
He stared down at Rossi. Her features were peaceful, at rest for the first time since he’d met her. “But she’s sleeping now.”
“No. That’s the problem. This isn’t sleep. More like a medically induced trance. If I attached her to an EEG, her brain waves would reveal that she’s quite awake, merely unable to respond to stimuli. So her brain is going full speed, nonstop, without any of the restorative effects of sleep. In fact, in the final stage of the disease, it will literally burn itself out.”
Ryder felt as if unseen bullets had ripped through him. He squinted, searching the room for a touchstone as his vision swam for an instant. Finally, he focused on Rossi’s face, marred with black streaks of charcoal, red marks from tape. “You’re saying her brain’s fried?”
“No. Not yet. But soon. Yes. It’s inevitable.”
“Inevitable? You mean there’s nothing you can do? You’re just going to sit back and watch her die?”
Louise’s smile was grim. She lowered her head, patted Rossi’s hair smooth with the reflexes of a mother. “There’s nothing to do. At least, nothing to stop it. We’ve been experimenting with a variety of vitamins, antioxidants, trying to balance stimulants and benzodiazepines, as well as some other modalities, including an experimental formulation of PXA.”
