by CJ Lyons
“What about all this?” He gestured to the IV and monitor.
“Don’t need it. I feel fine.” Better than fine. The enforced rest had invigorated me. I removed the monitor leads and the IV, climbed out of bed, and headed to the bathroom. After a quick shower, I changed into clean clothing someone had brought and felt worlds better. Almost human, even.
Ryder appeared in the doorway as I combed my hair, trying to avoid the bruises from where Littleton had punched me and banged my head against the floor. The left side of my face was a gorgeous palette of green, yellow, and purple, but no permanent damage. I was lucky.
I turned to Ryder, half-tempted to ask the nurses for a razor for him, but what he really needed was sleep. Ironic that I, for once, was well rested while he was exhausted.
He took me by the waist, his palms resting on my hips. “These fugues, Louise tried to explain, but I’m not sure I understand. Tell me more about them.”
I hesitated, torn between wanting to share and remembering how Louise had dismissed my fugues as delusions born of seizure activity in my brain. She was the smartest person I knew. If she couldn’t find a way to believe me, would Ryder?
“No more secrets,” he urged.
I exhaled, pulled back, just far enough so I could meet his gaze, watch his expression. “You’ve read the info about fatal insomnia—”
“What little there is available. Even the case reports Louise shared sound too bizarre for words. And each patient is so radically different.”
“Welcome to my world. Each symptom seems radically different—in me.” I shrugged, trying to lighten the mood. “Guess I never was one for following the rules. Not even in how I die.”
A wince flitted across his features at the word. “What are these fugues like for you, then?”
“They vary. I can tell they’re coming. I’ll get really hot, like a fever, see colors and shimmers, hear music. Oh, Ryder, the music…I could get lost in it. It’s so beautiful and terrible and awe-inspiring. It fills my soul. And then I freeze. My entire body. Can’t blink, can’t move. But most of the time I know everything that’s going on around me. I mean everything. One of my early ones happened last month when we were down in the tunnels searching for Esme. I could see the molecules of dust as they moved past me.”
He frowned at that—not condemning me, trying to understand. “Like time slows down?”
“Exactly. But all my senses are taken to the Xth degree. Smells, sights, sounds. And I can rewind time, examine it for things I missed the first time around.”
“That’s how you found Esme.”
I nodded. He seemed to accept my newfound abilities. Devon had as well, but he really had no choice since he’d witnessed them firsthand when they saved his daughter.
“These fugues, they’re painful?”
“Not the kind where time slows. Except when I come out of it. Then my body feels like centuries have passed, all cramped from not moving.”
“Wait. There’s another kind?”
I hesitated. This was the part that could get tricky. “Yeah. The kind where I can talk with not-quite-dead people.”
Chapter Forty
One of the reasons why Ryder was good at his job was his ability to see beyond appearances while maintaining a healthy skepticism. He could empathize with victim or perpetrator, see their point of view, how their lives had spiraled out of control, yet also look past the self-involved picture they painted to piece together an objective reality of a crime.
From the moment he’d met her, everything about Rossi had strained those abilities to the max. “Not-quite-dead people?”
“Thanks for not laughing. Because, yes, I know how crazy it sounds. It started last month with Sister Patrice, that first night we met.”
“After she’d been shot. You cracked her chest right there in the ER, tried to get her heart started.”
“I was holding her heart in my hand when I heard her voice. Telling me to ‘Find the girl. Save the girl.’”
“Esme…” It had been strange how Rossi had known about her being missing, seemed to know so much more about Patrice’s death than she’d had any right to.
“I didn’t just hear Patrice. I saw her—I was her, inside her mind, reliving her memories of being shot, of sending Esme to hide in the tunnels.” She stopped, giving him a chance to catch up—or walk out. Her expression turned guarded; she expected him not to believe.
Ryder wanted desperately to defy those expectations. “How does it work? Has it happened with others?”
“There’s a certain type of brain wave that some dying people and people who have taken PXA exhibit. Somehow, my disease, with its altered brain chemistry, responds to people with those same brain waves. PXA seems to amplify things. Both kinds of fugues, the hypersensory one where I can slow time, and the one where I can…” She searched for words. “Where I can connect with other minds.”
“When you saved my life last month, shoved me out of the path of the bullet—”
“The bullet aimed at me. You threw yourself in front of me. Because of the PXA Leo gave me and my fugue, I realized where the bullet was going before it got there and was able to push you so that you only got grazed.”
“But it should have hit me full-on? Your…” Now it was his turn to stumble over his words. “Your gift, it saved me. Saved Esme. Without you and what you were able to do—” He thought about it. Did it really matter how or why she’d been able to do what she did?
No. It didn’t. “It is a gift. Rossi, how far can this go? Could you read my mind? Like when I’m sleeping or something? What about someone like Littleton, if they take PXA, could you find the truth?” God, wouldn’t that be something? How many predators could he get off the street? Wouldn’t be admissible in court. Hell, he could finesse his way around that.
But, there was a greater issue. He examined her face. Despite the day of rest, her skin was virtually transparent, her eyes sunken. As if she were vanishing before his eyes, eaten from the inside out by the predator prions consuming her brain. He sucked in his breath. “It’s killing you, isn’t it?”
She swallowed and looked away. A little nod, something she could deny if pressed. “I don’t simply communicate with them. Their entire lives, all their memories, flood into me. I’m not aware of them, not all at once—seems like the dying have a focus, maybe their last wish? But after, I still have to live with them inside me.” Her voice broke. “All of them.”
“How many?” He was having a hard time understanding the immensity of what she was trying to describe. It was hard enough keeping track of his own thoughts and memories; he couldn’t imagine having someone else inside your mind. “You said Sister Patrice. Who else?”
“Leo Kingston. Before he died. And one of his victims.”
His hands balled into fists at the thought. “That savage, insane brute is living inside your head?”
“Not his consciousness. But his memories. Sometimes, they pop to the surface. It’s like looking at a movie from behind the screen, trying to figure out what’s my reality and what was his.”
He had no words. What could he offer her? How could he spare her that burden? All he could do was circle his arms around her and bring her to him, as close as humanly possible.
Because, despite how crazy she sounded, he believed her.
“If you want to run, now’s your chance,” she said as she pushed back from him.
Run? Did she really think he scared that easily? Or that he would abandon her to this Hell on earth she’d found herself in? She thought she was so tough, so self-contained, so inscrutable. Not to him. He knew her, better than she knew herself. Even if only now was she finally sharing the whole truth with him.
“Where do you go when I fall asleep?” It wasn’t the next question he’d intended to ask her. Wasn’t even in the top one hundred. But somehow it tumbled out before he could stop it.
She jerked, a guilty look crossing her face
“We’d make love—”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.” Her eyes went wide. “No, you don’t understand. I did. I could. Being with you was the only sleep I’ve had in weeks. I’m not sure why, but somehow, when I’m with you, not only can I sleep—and you have no idea what a precious gift that is—but all my symptoms improve. I don’t stumble and shake. I’ve never had a fugue episode when it’s just me and you. Everything is just…better. Lying there in your arms, able to actually shut my mind off and sleep…” Her smile turned wicked. “It was almost as good as the sex.”
“But you’d leave. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, and you weren’t there. I kept expecting to find a note on your pillow. Something like, it’s been fun, don’t call me, I’ll call you, type of thing. Kind of hard on a man’s ego.” Except this had nothing to do with his ego—and they both knew it.
“This disease, the only way I can fight it is with endorphins.”
“You mean like a runner’s high? Is that where you went all those nights? Out running, alone in the dark?”
She nodded. He was aghast. The risk. But that was probably part of the high as well. And what did she really have to lose? That thought was more frightening than the idea of her running alone at night. Because if you started thinking like that, you could justify almost anything.
Then she looked away and asked, “Why me?”
The question startled him. “What?”
She met his gaze once more, her expression serious. “The truth. I can’t stand being the damsel in distress to your Prince Charming.”
“The damsel who saved my life last month—and the lives of all those other people.”
“Seriously, Ryder. I’m pretty much the definition of damaged goods. Or is that it? A relationship with me is in a warped way totally risk-free. After all, you know exactly how it will end. And it won’t be your fault.”
“Wow, way to put the sexy into dying.”
“The truth. Why me?”
He considered his words carefully. He could not afford to make a mistake. There was too much on the line. For both of them. “After the war, hell, even during the war, I guess, I lost…something. I cared about my guys, I cared about my job and doing it the best I could, but I just didn’t have enough energy to really give a shit about anything else.”
She nodded her understanding, and he continued. “Women came and went, but it was only sex. They’d all complain I was emotionally numb or kept my feelings walled up or bullshit like that. I’d get into trouble at work because I just didn’t care about the dumbass politics. They made me see a counselor. That didn’t work. It was like there was nothing left inside me to reach. And then I met this ER doctor—” He gave her a wry smile.
She returned it. “Who was just as emotionally numb. Who walls off and compartmentalizes her feelings. So we’re two of a kind?”
“God, no. Excuse me, have you met yourself? Sure, you can compartmentalize when you need to. How else could you do your job or put up with your mother? But, Rossi, you are so passionate, the way you refuse to bow to anything or anyone. Not this damn disease, not a fucking serial killer.”
He cupped her chin in his palm, wanting to make certain she heard every single word. “It’s like you take those emotions and harness them, set them loose in the world. In your music, in the patients you care for, in the way you make love. When you refused to tell me about your illness, sure, I was frustrated, but I realized you chose me. Because you knew you could trust me and I will never, ever let you down. You don’t need me because you’re weak or dying. You need me because together we are so much stronger than either of us alone. Together we can get through this. Can’t you see that?”
She squinted at him suspiciously. “I can’t stand being someone’s lost cause. There won’t be any fairytale ending. Not with me.”
Ahhh. Now they were finally at the heart of things. He wrapped his arms around her, drawing her so close her heartbeat resonated through his chest. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a control freak, Rossi?”
She gave a small chuckle. “Only every man I’ve ever dated.”
He sobered. “You brought me back to life, all of me. That’s more than most men get in this world. For however long we have.” God, that sounded like something from a damned soap opera. He fumbled for new words, better words, and found nothing.
Instead, he left her side and turned to his coat hanging on the back of the chair beside her bed. He’d gone home for the gift yesterday when Louise kicked him out while she did one of her tests. He should have used the time to shower, change, eat. Instead, he’d spent it checking in with the detectives handling Littleton’s case. Then he called the ME’s office and stopped home to get his gift for Rossi.
It was a plain cardboard box that fit into the palm of his hand, its edges worn by years and thousands of miles.
He offered it to her, wishing he’d found time to wrap it properly. “I know you have some difficult choices to make. But, whatever you decide, I want you to know I’m with you, you have a piece of me with you…” Oh hell, that sounded like a bad breakup line, which was the opposite of what he’d intended. He wanted to rewind this entire conversation, regroup, but it was too late.
She opened the box and raised the delicate silver chain with its small, circular pendant, holding it so the light shone through the amber, making it glow and bringing the silver filigree tree embedded inside the resin to life. “This didn’t come from the hospital gift shop.”
“It’s an antique,” he answered, much more comfortable with facts than feelings. “Pashtun. They drill hot needles into the amber to form the design, then fill it with silver. A tribal chief gave it to me after we saved him and his family from an ambush. Said it represented eternity. The tree of life. That no matter what a man does in this life, there is always more yet to come in the next.”
He watched as she stroked the polished gold of the amber with one finger. Shifting his weight, he suddenly remembered the first time he’d asked a girl out on a date. How was it that, so many years and women later, this felt much more terrifying?
“I love it,” she finally said, pulling it over her head. “Thank you.”
“Have you decided?” He was pushing it, he knew. But it wasn’t as if they had much time—she had much time. “If you’ll be sticking around? Here, I mean?”
“Am I going to go off to some gorgeous tropical island to kill myself?”
The way she said the words, so frank and matter-of-fact, made him cringe. She’d obviously been thinking about doing exactly that. “Yes.”
She stroked the pendant as she pursed her lips. “I was planning to. But now…” She met his gaze. “Now, I’m not so sure.”
“You don’t have to go alone.”
“I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You’re not. I’m volunteering. I don’t need you to protect me.” She buried her head against his shoulder. He drew back, just far enough to cup her chin in his palm and tilt her face up to his. “You don’t need to keep running away.”
“I always came back.” She paused, considering, and her smile became shy, tentative. He had the feeling she and Jacob had never had talks like this. That he was the first to see how vulnerable she really was. “I always will come back.”
Her words were an offering.
He accepted her promise with a kiss.
Chapter Forty-One
“All of them?” Devon Price asked Louise Mehta’s assistant, Tommaso. “They all tested positive? Even Esme?” Especially Esme.
They were in Louise’s private office, a windowless room on the second floor of the hospital. Her diplomas and honors were framed, covering the walls, but he cared nothing about her pedigree or credentials. All he cared about was how reliable this test was that had just condemned twent
y children.
“I’m afraid so, yes,” Tommaso said in a deferential tone.
“The test is wrong. You said yourself it’s experimental.”
“We’ll confirm with the DNA testing, of course, but—”
“Devon,” Louise interrupted, moving from her chair behind the desk to join him where he stood in front of it, “the test is only experimental because there are so few patients alive to try it on. I’m afraid it’s quite accurate.”
“Ninety-seven-point-six percent,” Tommaso put in. “For the presence of prion disease. It’s virtually one hundred percent accurate if it’s absent.”
Louise shushed him with a glance, and he took a step back, waiting in her shadow. “Which means it’s virtually certain that these children, your daughter included, have a form of prion disease. What we need to focus on is treatment and identifying the cause.”
“Angela told me her disease is inherited. That can’t be what Esme has.” He shied away from using the words fatal insomnia, some buried superstition that saying it aloud would make it so. If Esme didn’t have what Angela had, then maybe it wasn’t fatal. Maybe there was a cure. Maybe she still had hope.
“Angie’s genetic testing confirmed that her father had fatal insomnia, but her own results were indeterminate. Which may indicate a new variant, or perhaps a hereditary predisposition—”
“Meaning you don’t know what the hell is going on!”
“Meaning we don’t know what kind of prion disease she and the children have. There are different forms, some that cross species. Scrapie in sheep, mad cow disease, chronic wasting disease in deer—they all have occasionally affected humans as well. But it’s certain that, whatever they have, it is caused by prions. Tommaso’s tests prove that.”
“To have an outbreak like this is unheard of,” Tommaso added, sounding eager at the prospect of more lab rats for his research. Devon wheeled on him, fists bunched and ready, but the younger man dipped his head in apology. “I’m sorry. I know how frustrating this must be—”
