by Rae, Nikita
Chloe tugs off her loose black shirt to reveal her police uniform underneath. She tucks the knife into her waistband and shoots me a warning glare. “I’ll kill him,” she hisses, and then she’s off up the stairs. “Luke!” she calls. “It’s Chloe! We got a break in call up ‘bout half an hour ago, but there’s no one here!”
Clever bitch.
“Chloe? Iris tried calling me, too. When I rang back, the line was dead.”
Chloe cut the line? Relief and horror races through me. If she hadn’t done that, Luke probably wouldn’t have come. But now that he’s here, he’s in very grave danger. I need to see up the stairs into the kitchen. I need to see what the hell is going on. I shuffle my feet as far forward as I can, a mere two inches from the chair legs, and shunt myself forward. The chair makes a scraping against the tiles, and my heart explodes in my chest. She said not to make a sound, and that definitely qualified. I sure as shit don’t want to die but my need to keep Luke safe outweighs my own desire for self-preservation. I don’t try it again. Instead, I lean as far forward as I can, bending double at the waist. From that position, I can see a bolt of yellow light up in the kitchen—along with a pair of black police issue boots and a pair of scruffy Chuck Taylors with the bottoms of wet jeans cuffed up around them.
“Was the door like that when you got here?” Luke asks. He sounds perplexed, worried. Panic tinges his voice, although I can tell he’s trying to rein it in.
“Yeah, there were footprints in the snow. Signs of a struggle. Did anyone know she was up here alone?” Chloe asks.
Only you knew, you crazy bitch! I pull on the zip ties binding my hands behind my back but there’s barely any point. Chloe has had years of practice in making sure people don’t escape from these things. I’m not going anywhere.
“No. No, I didn’t even know until she called from here. We…we had a fight.”
Silence fills the kitchen. And then, “She find out about your dad?”
“No.” Luke lets out a long, heavy sigh. His feet turn around and then turn back again. I can picture the look on his face as he anxiously surveys the kitchen. “I was going to tell her, but...”
“S’okay, I understand. No sense in adding another body to the list, right?”
“It’s not that. I just—” he breaks off abruptly. “The dead should stay dead.” He pauses. One breath. Two. There’s an edge to his voice when he asks, “Why were you in the basement?”
Chloe takes a step backwards and a pulse of adrenalin floods through my body. This is it. He’s figured something out. He knows. Is she going to kill him? The world tips sideways.
“Lights were on down there. Don’t think anyone’s been down there, though.”
More silence. Oh, come on, Luke! Work it out, work it out! I screw my eyes shut and hold my breath, waiting, praying, hoping that everything snaps together inside his head and he rushes down the stairs. But he doesn’t.
“Okay, I’ll run a sweep upstairs. You take the downstairs?” Luke says, his voice firm. Determined. Like his confidence has been bolstered now that he thinks he’s got help. That Chloe is his backup and not the psychotic bitch who orchestrated this whole thing. My hopes plummet when Chloe agrees.
“Sure thing. Holler if you find anything.”
Luke’s Chucks squeak as he turns and leaves the kitchen, and I hear him racing up the stairs, calling out my name. I want to scream out for him, but by the time he reaches me, even if he hears me two floors down, Chloe will have charged down here and slit my throat. I keep quiet, the taste of blood fresh in my mouth from where I’ve bitten my lip so hard. Chloe’s boots pause at the top of the stairs before she hurries back down into the basement, the knife back in her hand. She looks crazy. Crazier than before.
“We don’t have time for pleasantries anymore, Miss Breslin. I’m afraid we’re going to have to rush through procedures. I hope you don’t mind.”
“You can’t be serious? You can’t honestly think you’re going to be able to kill me and get away with it when Luke’s upstairs?”
A twisted smile develops on Chloe’s face. She calmly walks to the small stool where she left her syringe and the poison and carefully withdraws the needle again. “Luke isn’t the brightest of boys, Iris. He’s been spending more time singing in cafes than he has concentrating on his work recently, or so I hear. And this will only take a second. Besides, it’s about time I received some recognition for my work.”
Bile bubbles in my throat. Recognition for her work? Luke’s words replay in my mind, and I finally realize that I’m doomed. Serial killers usually want to get caught. Typically they’re proud of their handiwork. They want to claim responsibility in the end.
There is no way out of this for me.
Chloe paces forward, a small smirk playing over her lips, and goose bumps burst out over my skin. There’s no point in keeping quiet now. I tug with all my might against the zip ties, the narrow plastic biting angrily into my skin, and I scream.
“Luke! In the basement! LUKE!”
Chloe tuts, standing right in front of me. “Pathetic. Really pathetic.” She roughly pulls up the sleeve on my shirt, exposing my arm. I try to shy away from her touch but there is nowhere for me to go. She brings the tip of the needle to my arm, bending in concentration as she searches for a vein. And that’s when I notice Luke running down the stairs behind her.
“Chloe, what the fuck! Chloe, no!” Our eyes meet for a second and the emotions pouring out of him are overwhelming. Fear. Panic. Anger. His terror hits me hard—makes me see how bad the situation looks. He doesn’t think he’s going to reach me in time. And he doesn’t.
The sharp burn of the needle tears through me, forcing its way upwards, cold and unstoppable. The pain that follows is worse. Far, far worse. It’s instant, like a bomb going off inside my head. The crippling sensation spreads through me, polluting me, and an uncontrollable trembling follows behind it. Luke crashes into Chloe, sending her sideways and ripping at the needle, tearing my skin. Their bodies hit the ground hard, but the needle remains hanging out of my arm. I watch as Luke reaches back and swings, punching Chloe in the face as hard as he can. The utter despair on his face destroys me, but pretty quickly I’m not worrying about his despair. I’m worrying about my own. My head snaps back as every single muscle in my body tightens and I start convulsing. The spasms that wrack through my body are so strong I can hardly breathe, the force pushing down on my body refusing to let my diaphragm contract enough to pull in a single draw of oxygen.
My eyes roll back into my head, and another kind of pain lances through my body as something hits my leg. Instead of a spiraling, deep pain, this new pain is a bright stinging, burning pain, rAveryting up my leg. A terrifying scream builds inside me but I have no means of letting it out. My body is now convulsing so hard that I can feel where the zip ties have cut all the way through my skin, the wet sensation of my blood running over my hands and dripping from my fingers.
A loud, echoing bang fills the basement, along with Luke’s shouts, and the chair I’m sitting on takes a heavy impact. I want to open my eyes to see what’s going on, but I can’t. My body is no longer my own; it won’t respond to my will. A pressure starts to build in my chest, my heart laboring, beating way too fast. The pressure builds, builds, builds until my heart pauses and then hiccups in my ribcage, beating once really hard and then racing away again. The pressure starts rising again, and I know the poison is doing its work, trying to tighten its chokehold around my vital organs so they can no longer function. I don’t have long left.
Another huge impact rocks the chair beneath me, more shouts and screams ringing off the tiled walls of the basement, and the world starts to tip all over again. But this time it’s real. The sick sensation of the ground coming up to reach me floods my stomach, and suddenly I’m back in my room in my apartment. I’m falling backwards onto my bed, but this time it’s not Noah standing over me; it’s Luke. He’s laughing as I squeal, and I’m laughing, too. I’m safe, I’m warm, I
’m protected. When the fall ends, my bed cushions me, softening my landing, and for a moment everything is normal as Luke looks down on me, smiling, warmth and adoration in his eyes.
“Love you,” he whispers.
I smile back. When I open my mouth, words forming on my lips, water fills my mouth. Cold, rushing, persistent. I can’t figure out why water would be rushing into my mouth, but I make sure I finish telling him how I feel. Somehow, I know this is the last time I’ll be able to.
“I love you, too, Luke. I’m so sorry.”
MY EXISTENCE is a dream. Time has no real meaning for a while—I drift and fade from a world where everything is too bright, too loud, into something less tangible, something less painful, until I can’t really tell the difference between what’s real and what isn’t anymore. The beeping sound at my head is the only means of counting time. Eventually, I don’t even notice the beeping. Sometimes a rough hand in mine brings me back to the soft bed I lay in, and sometimes it’s gentle words from familiar voices that tempt me back into my body. For a long time, the pain of returning is just too much to bear and so I flee from it, preferring the abyssal peace of the dark places inside my mind. It’s comforting there.
But I can only hide for so long. My body wants me back, wants me to move, to confront the pain so I can heal. And no matter how hard I try to ignore it, it becomes more persistent each day. And then, one day, I don’t have a choice anymore.
I wake up.
“Avery? Look, she’s waking up. Somebody get a nurse.”
A throbbing ache punches through my head as I open my eyes. Everything is white for a second as my eyes struggle to focus, remembering how to process colors and shapes. And then Morgan is sitting on the edge of my bed, brushing her hand slowly up and down my arm. Her lip is wobbling like crazy as tears race down her face.
“Morgan?” My throat feels like someone took a sandblaster to it. I wheeze painfully, and she reaches forward and helps me sip some water out of a white, ridged, plastic cup. I choke on most of it, but the water feels good running down my skin, pooling at the hollow of my throat.
“Oh my God, Ave. I never thought you’d come back. I never thought—” her voice catches and she can’t speak anymore. Her face crumples into a half smile half grimace and she leans forward and buries her face into my hair, hugging me tight. The pressure of her skin against mine hurts like crazy.
“Morgan? Morgan,” I rasp, “I can’t breathe.”
She lets go immediately. “Oh, sorry. I just… I can’t…” she starts crying and shaking her head, holding her hands up to hide her face. I reach up and brush my fingers against the back of her hand, and the effort of the movement nearly kills me. She pulls in a deep breath. “I’m sorry.” She sniffs, wiping her face with the sleeve of her black shirt. “Your uncle’s here.” Her voice is still wobbly. “He ran to get the nurse. He’s gonna be right back, Ave. We’ve all been so worried.”
I finally take a look around and notice my surroundings. Light pours in through a huge window, revealing mountains beyond. To my left, an IV bag drips at regular intervals, while a heart monitor maps out the fragile perseverance of my heart. Everything smells of bleach, and the sheets on the bed I’m laying in are starched within an inch of their lives. I’m in hospital, in Wyoming by the looks of things.
“What…what happened?” I manage.
A torn look flashes across Morgan’s face. “I’m not supposed to tell you anything until you remember, but fuck that. Are you sure you want to know?” The last thing I recall is a sinking, falling feeling, and unbearable pain pulling me into a forever darkness. I nod my head.
“I need to hear it.”
“You were drugged by that insane police woman, and Luke found you. He attacked her, and both he and you got shot in the process. You fell into the pool but Luke managed to knock that bitch out and jumped in to save you. He gave you CPR for forty minutes until the ambulance could get to you. He nearly bled out and died, Ave.”
Tears blind me halfway through Morgan’s brief description of what I’d believed were going to be the last minutes of my life. So I’d fallen into the pool. That explains why it had felt like my mouth was filling with water; because it actually had been.
Luke had been shot trying to save me. He nearly died defending me, giving me CPR while his own life blood seeped out of him. I suddenly feel sick.
“Where was he shot?” I whisper.
Morgan’s smile fades a little. “In the chest. The bullet punctured his lung and shattered. Three different pieces of shrapnel lodged inside his chest cavity. He had two operations, one to remove the shrapnel and then another when he coded later on. They didn’t know what was wrong until they went back in and realized they’d missed a piece and it was pressing down on his aorta. He nearly died all over again, but he pulled through. You’re so alike, Ave. You’re both fighters.”
My first reaction is to try and sit up. It hurts like hell, though, and the room spins.
“Whoa, girl, where d’you think you’re going?”
“I need to see him, Morgan. I need to see with my own two eyes that he’s okay. What room is he in?”
She shakes her head, pressing her palm against my shoulder, forcing me back into the bed. “He’s not in any of the rooms, Ave. He was checked out of hospital three weeks ago. He’s still recovering, but he’s up and walking around just fine now.”
“Three weeks?” That information just won’t compute. Won’t make any sense inside my head. “How long have I been out for?”
Morgan pulls up one shoulder, looking a little sheepish. “Not long, chica. Only seven weeks.”
My mouth hangs open. I’ve been unconscious for seven weeks? I’m no doctor but even I know it’s a miracle that I’ve woken up at all after being gone for so long. I should have noticed that the mountains out the window aren’t covered in snow anymore. I stare down at my bed sheet, feeling awful.
“I missed Tate’s funeral,” I say quietly.
“Yeah,” Morgan agrees. “It’s okay. I’m sure he knows you would have been there if you could have been.” I squeeze her hand, hating that she’s trying to comfort me when I should have been there to support her.
“I’m sorry, Morgan. You had to go through that on your own…”
She shushes me, squeezing my hand back. “It’s okay. My mom actually came with me. She’s…she’s been surprisingly good actually.” That’s unexpected news. Maybe bridges are starting to be built there. “The cops actually arrested the person responsible for the drugs.” Morgan continues cautiously. “Leslie’s been remanded until her court date later on in the month. They’re trying to charge her with manslaughter.”
“Leslie? My roommate Leslie?”
“I know. I didn’t want to tell you. I just didn’t want to have to deal with it at the time. I’m sorry.”
I had been way off base about Noah, then. “So she’s a drug dealer?”
Morgan nods, yes. “She wanted to show her parents she was capable of earning her own way. She wanted to leave college with more money than when she started, and she figured selling pills was an easy, lucrative way to do that. She knowingly bought pills that were cut with goodness knows what.”
“My God. I had absolutely no idea.”
Morgan just shrugs. “You were shot in the leg in case you were wondering. And the quacks thought you’d suffered major brain damage from lack of oxygen to the brain. They told your uncle that the kindest thing to do would be to take you off life support, that you weren’t going to come back and if you did you were gonna be a vegetable. But Luke wouldn’t even let them talk about it. He punched a doctor and got banned from the hospital for a week. He groveled until they eventually let him back in.”
I trace my fingertips over the bump in the sheets that is my right thigh, feeling a twinge of discomfort when I try to flex my toes. Shot in the leg. That’s what that secondary pain had been. I close my eyes, taking a deep breath. I feel like I’m on the brink of losing it. “I need to see
him, Morgan. Right now. Where is he?”
“I’m right here,” a soft voice answers me. I open my eyes and Luke is standing in the doorway, his left arm bound against his body in a sling. As always he’s wearing a black t-shirt and faded out jeans, but there are dark shadows under his eyes. They tell stories of countless nights of lost sleep, of anxiety and worry. He looks like the broken little boy my father had taught to play Blackbird. My heart breaks a little for the lost, haunted look he wears. “You woke up,” he states. His voice is flat, expressionless. I nod my head.
“Been a while, I hear.”
Luke doesn’t say anything. He just stares at me. Morgan clears her throat. “I think I’m going to go see where Brandon’s got to. A girl wakes up from a coma, you expect the nurses to come running, right? Sheesh.” She stands and ducks past Luke, who doesn’t move an inch when she sidles past him through the doorway.
“Are you okay?” I whisper. It’s a dumb question; I can tell just from looking at him that he’s far from okay. He blinks, and the action seems to wake him from his trance. He steps into the room and pauses, looking behind him before he closes the door softly. He paces towards the bed and stares down at my hands clasped in my lap.
“I would have killed her. I wanted to, but I couldn’t leave you. If I stopped pressing down on your chest, you would have been gone forever. I kept going, Ave. I kept going.” His eyes are filled with tears. I reach out and take his right hand, hanging limply at his side, and pull it to my cheek. He is so cold. I can smell cigarettes on him, and I know he’s been smoking.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I ran out on you.” I promised him I wouldn’t. He told me twice that I would hightail it the second I found out about his past, and after everything I’d said in return he’d been right. I’d done exactly that. I’m disgusted with myself as I press the back of his hand against my forehead. His fingers twitch, wanting to curl around mine, but they don’t. I think he’s too numb to do anything but stand there and let me touch him. “Will you forgive me, Luke? Please say you’ll forgive me?”
