“Damn.”
“Yeah.” Ziggy’s voice held weariness.
“What’s wrong with you? Tired already? It’s only ten in the morning.”
“Yeah. Since I got gassed in France my lungs don’t work right. I get tired as hell easily. I’m pensioned out. Only reason I’m back from the war so soon.”
“Everyone in here is back soon. The war isn’t over yet.”
“It is for me, sir.” Ziggy nodded vigorously. “Not a moment too soon. Don’t get me wrong sir—Cade. I wanted to fight the enemy as much as the next man. I just don’t think my body could take it any more.”
Cade understood that, too. “Which is worse? The mind breaking down, or the body?”
“Easy answer. The mind. At least I have all my wits. I plan on getting out of here soon.”
“Wouldn’t you be in a regular hospital if you weren’t having trouble with your thinking?”
Ziggy’s face turned hostile, the transformation momentary until the man reigned it in. “I have nightmares sometimes. Bad ones. Doesn’t mean I need to stay long in the booby hatch.”
Silence dropped down long enough that Cade felt uncomfortable with the quiet. Men who were supposed to have lost their minds shouldn’t be so fucking silent. “So quiet in here you can hear your hair grow.”
“Isn’t always like that.” Ziggy shifted in his chair. He tapped the small card table in between them. “There were two fights in here yesterday. A Sergeant Fergus Nelson was in here. New guy whose only been here two weeks. He was trying to order the men around and they weren’t takin’ to it well.”
Cade could imagine. “Who's the man with the red hair playing cards with MacRay?”
“Freckle face Talbot. Private Jonah Talbot. Farm boy from Iowa. He’s a swell guy. Honest to a damned fault, though. He tells you what he thinks whether it’s good to hear or not. And most people don’t want to hear it. He’s gotten punched in the mouth twice since he got here two months ago. Was madder than a wet hen.”
Two months. Christ all mighty. How long would he be here? He didn’t know, and the weariness of that threatened to eat a hole in his patience.
His thoughts turned to one young woman who could easily distract him from the mundane. Nurse Dorrenti. Yes, indeed. Earlier in the day she’d come into the ward, saw him there, and quickly went to help another soldier. He’d watched her from a distance and saw the way her pretty face had lit up with a smile and the soldier had soaked in her kindness.
Cade’s body had reacted strongly, in a way he couldn’t understand. Even thinking about her right now didn’t bring the instant anger he expected. His belly tightened and his cock hardened a little remembering how her full breasts had curved her gray uniform. Nurses uniforms never flattered a woman, and the nurses at Tranquil View Asylum wore a get up similar to Red Cross nurses he’d seen during the war. The white collar—a v-neck—had tempted him to stare at her long throat. The white crown like hat with the flow of gray material hanging out the back hadn’t completely hidden her wavy mahogany brown hair. He wondered what it would look like flowing freely down her back. Her heart-shaped face owned the glow of health, with those red bow lips and lively blue eyes. Even when Pepper had half strangled her, she’d kept her composure. He’d never seen a woman as strong as her in a bad situation like that.
No. That wasn’t true. At the field hospital where he’d lay wounded, he’d been tended by a kindly older Army nurse. She’d held his hand and promised him he’d be well. His heart contracted thinking about the woman. She’d fallen over dead one day at the hospital from some ailment. Not a gunshot wound, or being smashed to bits by a shell like the usual death in the trenches. She simply fell flat on her face in front of him. No one had ever told him why.
Then they’d told him about his sister and that was the final nail in his coffin. That’s when he’d lost it, and made the higher ups think he’d gone around the bend as far as he could and then some.
You’re an insane bastard, Captain. A woman dies in front of you and you go on a fucking rampage. We don’t need officers who can’t control themselves. Get out of my sight.
“Sir?” The voice didn’t belong to Ziggy, but to Pepper. “You all right? You’ve been staring into space for ten years.”
“Ten years is it? What did I miss?”
Pepper grinned, his expression clear of the confusion and murderous intent Cade had witnessed the other day. “Sir, I wanted to say how sorry I was about grabbing Nurse Annabelle. That didn’t make any sense. She’s the nicest nurse in this place. I wouldn’t hurt her for anything.”
Cade took in Pepper’s youthful face—the kid couldn’t be more than nineteen. With a boyish façade and haunted green eyes, Pepper was a strange combination of scrawniness and bluster. He was short, skinny, and insignificant looking. But Cade bet the kid had guts.
As for Nurse Dorrenti, he wouldn’t disillusion Pepper. Let him think she was a sweet, innocent, nice person. Cade nodded. “I’m sure she knows you didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“I’m afraid to apologize to her.”
“Why?”
“She’ll run screamin’ when she sees him,” Ziggy said with a snort.
Cade threw Ziggy a quelling look. “She doesn’t seem like a fearful woman to me. Apologize to her Pepper. It’s the only decent thing to do. She’ll understand.” Pepper nodded and wandered away with a slightly confounded expression.
Cade’s thoughts returned to Annabelle. When he’d first seen her, his body had reacted to the sight of beautiful woman. Until you scared the shit out of her. Right. He’d done that. He’d seen those beautiful eyes widen when she’d thought he would harm her. He’d taken only momentary satisfaction in the thought. Now it simply disgusted him. He didn’t scare women or make them think that he’d physically attack them. Yeah, you do now.
He’d imagined making love to the woman he despised, and that disgusted him most of all. It was evidence he belonged here. A sick man with sick thoughts. Like it or not, his body wanted her. He hadn’t had a woman in so long, he could imagine Annabelle twisted beneath him, moaning as he fucked her hard and deep. Not in pain—God no—but in writhing, mind-splitting pleasure.
Pepper walked back in smiling five minutes later, Annabelle on his heels with an equally pleasant expression. She glanced to the right and caught sight of Cade and Ziggy. She smiled and nodded, but Cade thought he saw hesitation, as if she almost couldn’t decide whether she should smile at them. So far all the nurses had been angels around here. Most of them were older than Annabelle. Didn’t matter. He was nice to them all, homely or beautiful, kind or cranky. Not Nurse Dorrenti. She didn’t deserve it.
He stood. “Talk with you later, Ziggy.” With that he was out the door and heading down the ward quickly. He didn’t want to spend another moment in the same room with her. Before he could get far, he heard her voice.
“Wait. Captain Hale.” He jerked to a halt. He took a deep breath and turned to meet her. “Where are you going?” Annabelle said behind him as she rushed to keep up. “You’re not allowed to go back to your room right now.”
“I know the rules. I also know I’m not supposed to get near you.” He took off again.
She caught up, not an easy feat with his long stride. She walked with him. Her face pinched with irritation. “If you know the rules, then you know you should have gotten permission from me to leave the game room.”
He didn’t look at her again. If he did, he might say something he shouldn’t. “Pepper didn’t have permission when he came out to apologize to you. Nurse Palmer was in there.”
“She didn’t see him leave. She was preoccupied with another patient.”
He turned toward her swiftly and took a step closer. She gasped in surprise or fright. “All right. God forbid I break the rules. Do I have permission to go to Nurse Summit and apologize for my appalling behavior? I told her to shut up and that wasn’t good.”
Her blue eyes seemed darker, more haunted. “No it was not. But Nurse Sum
mit isn’t here right now. She’s gone into Simple.”
He frowned, that damnable awareness of his coming awake. “Is there something wrong with this place? With Simple?”
Annabelle looked startled. “I beg your pardon?”
He shook his head. She probably wouldn’t understand. “Never mind.” He turned and headed back to the game room. “It’s not important.”
She touched his sleeve, a gentle brush of movement that took him by surprise. He stopped again. He towered over her. She couldn’t be more than five feet five inches. “It is important. What did you mean?”
“All right, I’ll tell you. Tranquil View isn’t tranquil. It’s haunted. Something bad happened here a long time ago. More than one thing, I’ll bet my life on it. Evil lives here, and it’s seeping into the pores of everyone here.” He smiled, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “Do me a favor and stay away before I get angry again. Before I curse you for what happened to Velia.”
Cade couldn’t miss the bleakness in her eyes and the guilt he saw in her flushed cheeks and the tight line of her mouth. He wanted to feel good about reminding her of what had happened that horrible day in France in January. He didn’t. Instead his emotions bounced again, and he wanted to hide. To return to his room and sleep. Blessed sleep without nightmares.
With that parting shot, he returned to the games room, his blood pumping, his anger returning. When she came back into the room a few moments later, Nurse Dorrenti wouldn’t look at him.
* * *
Annabelle, Penelope Billings, Lulu Jordan and Margaret Swartzberg came into the small restaurant in Simple with smiles and laughter. Annabelle was ready for it.
After her encounter with Cade Hale in the games room this morning she’d wanted to throttle him. He did something strange to her with his creepy, odd statements about the asylum. What did he think he knew? A shiver rippled over her even now.
Don’t let it bother you. The man claims to know things just to get a reaction from you. You don’t know him well. It’s best to just ... What?
Too many things from the war haunted her. Too many things continued to overtake her mind when she lay awake at night. Cade confused her. Her emotions would settle whenever he was in the same room. She wasn’t scared of him even though she should be. He was good-looking, strong, and dangerous. Maybe she was one of those silly women who craved peril, who had looked into the abyss and didn’t know how to climb out of it. When he’d reminded her of Velia, she’d almost told him that nothing he said could ever make her feel guiltier than she already did. She was responsible for Velia’s death. She’d never forget that.
They settled at a big square table in the back, and took off their coats and hats. The weather had turned cooler this afternoon, and some suggested snow would come to the Colorado Mountains soon. At nine thousand feet, that was a distinct possibility.
The small restaurant had few patrons; the place seemed dim and deserted most of the time. On the main street through town, it should have plenty of business at the noon hour. Not so on a Monday. The waiter came by and took their order for an English tea. Funny that a place as small and frumpy as this made a fantastic, English-style tea.
“Did you see that new patient?” Penelope asked the girls. With her short, wheat-blond ringlets bouncing around her face, she looked as cheerful and daring as any woman could be. A few women had dared to start cutting their hair short lately. Annabelle hadn’t become that bold yet, but maybe someday she would.
“Which one?” Lulu kept her black hair pinned back in a severe bun. Everything about her tended towards severity, except when she took time off with her friends like this.
Margaret, red-headed and plump, was the oldest of the bunch and the nicest. “That handsome captain.”
They could only mean ... “Cade Hale.” The words escaped Annabelle before she could stop them, and hung in the air, dripping with a distasteful judgment. The girls looked at her, and she became defensive and faked a laugh. “What?”
“Oh, that’s right. He’s the one that acted so mean after he rescued you,” Penelope said. She sat right next to Annabelle. “Awful man. I don’t care how handsome he is.” Annabelle didn’t know what to say to that. “I saw you talking to him after Pepper tried to kill you. Besides, you didn’t think we weren’t going to hear about that, did you?” Penelope’s eyes held humor rather than concern. “Why was he so angry with you?”
Annabelle’s muscles tightened. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
She felt their stares and curiosity, but didn’t look at them. No one at the asylum knew about Velia Hale but Nurse Summit. Others at Tranquil View didn’t know how Annabelle had gotten her limp, and she liked it that way. She’d almost forgotten, in some small way, how she’d been injured. Until Velia’s brother had turned up and brought memories and pain crashing back.
“Well, he may be a handsome man, but it was awful how he treated you. I don’t care about the reason.” Lulu shook her head. “I don’t think I can take this place much longer. The booby hatch will be the death of me. When I heard you’d been attacked I was so frightened. These soldiers are dangerous.”
The waiter came back with their tea and cakes. As they sipped tea in cups laced with delicate blue designs, Margaret said, “Speaking of insane,” she kept her voice low, “Mr. Gregory over at the grocery said some mighty weird things are happening around town these days.”
“He’s almost a hundred. Everyone over fifty thinks the world is going to hell.” Lulu’s dour expression didn’t last, and they all laughed.
“Isn’t it?” Annabelle asked. “War is doing horrible things to people. If that isn’t hell, what is?” All three women stared at her with exasperation. Though Margaret always had kindness and indulgence for the soldiers, and she’d always been nice to Annabelle, her expression now showed the same as the others. They didn’t want to hear any of this on their afternoon off.
“Sorry.” Annabelle made light and smiled. “So what does the old grocery man think will happen next?”
Margaret cleared her throat, and for a second Annabelle thought she saw fear in the girl’s clear green eyes. “He told me that two more murders were committed at the mine last week, and that Sheriff Tanner is about beside himself trying to figure out why the crime rate keeps going up and up.” She whispered her next words. “He thinks we’re in for a rough winter. Grocery man said it’s coming back.”
“It?” Penelope sipped her tea.
“Evil. He mentioned those murders ten years ago.”
Annabelle’s stomach flopped. “It’s all poppycock and you know it. Come on now, girls. We’re nurses. We don’t believe in ghosts and goblins.”
“We don’t?” Penelope grinned. “I heard that several people in the local Catholic Church are caught up in a terrible adultery scandal. Two couples who were cheating on each other.”
Lulu grunted. “Please, that happens everywhere. I do not see how this little town is any different than anywhere else.”
“You’re from Pueblo, Lulu,” Penelope said. “That’s why. Big city crime never surprises you even when it’s in a little city.”
Annabelle barely heard the rest of their speculation, her mind centering once more on what Cade Hale had said to her in the hallway today. No, it couldn’t be. There were no evil vibrations, no ghosts in the asylum. He was as disturbed as the rest of the soldiers seeing things in the corners that weren’t there. His mind had been unhinged by war and Velia’s death. That had to be it.
Margaret bumped her teacup and sent the liquid splashing over the rim into the saucer. “My mother said I shouldn’t come up here to work. She’d rather I go to France, I guess.”
“She thinks the asylum is evil?” Annabelle couldn’t believe it.
Margaret nodded. “She said the whole town is, and the asylum.”
“That’s crazy talk.” Lulu eyed Annabelle over her cup. “I think Annabelle is right. There are no such things as ghosts.”
“I’ve heard strange th
ings in the asylum.” Annabelle quickly qualified the statement. “But I know there are logical explanations for every one of them.”
As the women moved on to other subjects, Annabelle welcomed it. She didn’t want to discuss ghosts or even Cade Hale’s exceptional body structure or his liquid deep voice, or other mesmerizing things she’d noted relating to the soldier. Or the way he could squash her with one condemning look.
A terrible screeching sound came their direction, high pitched and ear-splitting.
“What that—“ Lulu started to say.
A motorcar leapt into the window like a deer, crashing and breaking as it plowed over two customers. With shattering screams, Margaret and Penelope leapt up and away from the catastrophe. The car came to a halt three feet from their table.
Chapter 3
“I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
And in-flu-enza.”
Children’s jump rope poem, 1918
* * *
A knock came on Annabelle’s door later that evening and woke her out of a restless sleep. She’d dozed with a book on her chest, and she blinked in the light. The lamp near her bed seemed to dim. She shook off sleep and swung her feet off the bed. She pushed her feet into her slippers. “Who is it?”
“Cade Hale.” Surprise kept her immobile for a moment, long enough for him to speak again. “Annabelle?”
Her first name on his lips surprised her. Apprehension slid through her veins.
Rules said lights should be off by nine for patients and staff alike, except the staff on duty. She looked at the small clock on her bedside table. Ten minutes to nine.
She opened the door slowly and cautiously, half wondering if he’d left when she hadn’t opened the door right away. No. He stood there dressed in his soldier’s uniform.
“Captain Hale, what are you doing here? It’s almost lights out. You must return to your ward. If anyone sees me talking with you—”
Shadows Rise Page 3
