She shook her head. “Not now.”
Darwin drew in a breath, his gaze unfocused. He was thinking. “Because Asher isn’t here?” he asked softly.
The reminder made her heart hitch a little, then hurry on. She shook her head. “That was the start,” she said, struggling to make her words clear. But the pain was winning. Her words sounded slurred and hard to make out, even to her. She gripped the railing next to Darwin’s fingers and waited for the sharp wave to pass. Then she held up her hand and wrote in the air with an invisible pen.
Darwin pulled out the little notepad he always kept in his shirt pocket and a pen from his pocket, flipped the notebook open and handed both of them to her. Charlee held the pad over to her right, where her right eye could focus better, and scribbled quickly.
sergio didnt get his fun the way he wanted
he’ll look for someone else to hurt
he knows about you
Darwin read what she had written and his chest rose and fell with a deep sigh. “I’ll call in sick tomorrow,” he said and looked up at her and smiled sourly. “I was going to, anyway. Tonight hasn’t been restful.”
She took back the notebook. Don’t go home, she wrote, and underlined it.
“Figured I’d stay here and wait for Lucas to wake, anyway.” He shrugged. “I like the coffee you get out of that machine thing.”
She smiled, but the pain rippled through her face and she stopped. Instead, she nodded. See you for breakfast? she wrote. Tell me when Lucas wakes?
Darwin put the notebook and pen on the bed next to her hip and patted them. “Yes to both.”
He was nearly out the door when he put a hand on the thick steel plating that protected the corners and looked back at her. “While you’re lollygagging on the mattress there, I have a marine biology book I found on a shelf at work. You could get some time in on that, if you like.”
Charlee rolled her eyes at him.
He smiled and headed across the corridor. She watched him go into Lucas’ room as the nurse came with one of the kidney-shaped bowls in her hand. Her painkiller had arrived.
Thank god.
* * * * *
Lucas turned the scrap of paper around and around in his fingers, watching the digits written on it twirl. They had been written on the margins of one of the sheets of paper that were attached to the clipboard hanging off the end of his bed, then the corner had been torn off, so there was pale green printing and a square border on part of the triangle. The thick, firmly formed numbers had been written in the clear space on the edges.
The sun was shining almost directly onto him through the window next to his bed, making the paper a dazzling white. Hypnotic.
He was drifting in and out of sleep, still coming to full consciousness, but in his lucid moments he had been thinking with the same sort of calm clarity that had gripped him in the park.
His leg was hoisted up into the air, a sling under it and a small factory’s worth of crane apparatus overhead. The bed had been lifted up at the head and he was now folded into almost a V shape, his back forming one side and his leg the other. The good leg rested under the sheet.
He had been in the same position when he had first woken. Thinking about it now, he figured they were pumping him full of something powerful to mask any pain, for he didn’t feel anything but sleepy confusion until he had seen Darwin sitting silently on the chair next to the door. Then thought fragments pulled together in one leap. “Darwin,” he whispered. “Charlee warned you?”
“She has now,” Darwin told him, getting up slowly and cautiously. It hadn’t been completely dark in the room, then, but the light coming in had been low. Darwin was just a black shape in the gloom as he moved closer. “What happened? Your sister isn’t in a state to do much talking.”
The knife flashing. The slicing sound. Then the red mark on her cheek, from high up near her eye, down to her mouth, cutting through the duct tape like it hadn’t been there. It had turned red and the blood had started to run immediately, like the Niagara, pouring over her jaw and onto her neck in a wide red sheet.
Lucas sucked in air. “Sergio,” he breathed. “I’m gonna kill him.”
Darwin shook his head. “You aren’t moving out of this bed for a while.”
“I’ll get crutches. I’ll find him.”
Darwin was still shaking his head.
“I will.”
“Lucas, you just woke up after three hours of surgery. They had to pin your femur, by the look of it. Not only are you going to be here for a while, but they’re probably going to have to teach you how to walk all over again when you do get out. Leave Sergio for the cops. You’ve got better things to think about.”
Lucas shut his mouth but the desire, the yearning, to have his hands around Sergio’s neck was like a hunger, gnawing at him.
He blinked as his eyes tried to close. He was going to sleep again. It was pulling at him, tugging him back to the land of Nod. He gripped the rail of his bed, fighting back. “Give me his number,” he told Darwin. “I know you’ve got it.”
“Whose number?” Darwin asked, genuinely puzzled.
The sleep was washing over him, pulling him down. It was then that Lucas wondered if the saline drip next to his bed was plugging more than salt water into his arm. “Asher,” he ground out. Even the feel of the cold rail under his fingers was drifting away. “If I can’t, he….”
He what? Who?
The vagueness was the last he remembered before waking up once more, still lying in the same position, his mouth open, the corner damp with drool. Sunlight blazed through the window and Darwin had gone. But there was a triangle of torn paper next to his hand. He had picked it up and blinked at it until his sight pulled together enough to make sense of the numbers. Seven of them.
Asher Strand’s phone number.
He turned his head on the pillow. There was a phone jack in the wall, but no phone. He would have to wait for the nurse to come. So he turned the paper over and over in his hands, thinking of Charlee, thinking of vengeance, thinking of nothing else, and waiting.
* * * * *
Asher got up stiffly from the barstool. It was a comfortable enough chair, even if you sat in it for a few hours. He knew that because customers often remarked on it. They had picked the chairs deliberately, Ylva and he, to encourage diners to stay where they were and have one more drink, then another. Inebriated customers tended to eat hugely, with less regard for the price than sober ones.
But after nearly eighteen hours on one of the stools, including five hours of drifting in and out of sleep with his head pillowed on his arm on the bar, the stool had come to feel like one of Torquemada’s torture devices.
He picked up the coffee pot and cup that had been sitting in front of him, right next to the phone, and made his way back to the kitchen. He needed more black juice. He was flagging. There were more than enough staff in the building now, prepping for the lunch rush that would start any time now, that stepping away from the phone for a moment would be okay.
He nodded at the sous chef (Patrick, his name is Patrick, Charlee likes him) who was testing the soup and walked over to the hot beverage counter and began setting up the machine to brew another pot. He had done it a few times already last night and this morning and it was a familiar task now.
He had arrived here last night just as Anthony was shutting down for the evening. Anthony and one waiter were the only ones left. The waiter had been upending chairs on tables while Anthony counted the money from the registers in his tiny office. Anthony had shot to his feet when Asher stepped into the office, shocked.
Asher had told him to go home as usual.
“Can I get you something before I leave?” Anthony asked.
“I just need coffee and I can take care of that myself.”
“It’s no bother. I can set up the machine for you.” Anthony hesitated. “Is there something wrong, Mr. Strand? It’s an odd hour to visit.”
Visit. Asher focused on the word, tastin
g it mentally. Anthony was right. He was a visitor. The last time he had been here was just after Ylva had left, shortly after Anthony had taken over management. He had been uncomfortable even then. The clock had held some mystical power to keep drawing his gaze and it wasn’t until he had escaped, walking fast and heading for Wall Street, that he had realized that the closer to noon (Charlee’s lunch break) it had got, the jumpier he had grown. If he couldn’t be bothered attending to his own business concerns, then the staff had a right to think of him as a visitor.
“I’m waiting for a phone call,” Asher said truthfully. He had remembered barely an hour ago, after sweating out four hours on his couch while the phone hadn’t rung, that the number he had given Darwin Baxter had been the restaurant’s number. It had galvanized him into a flurry of action: throwing on a change of clothes, tying back his hair, grabbing his keys and wallet and heading out the door to flag down the first cab he could find, all in a tornado of impatience because he couldn’t just step through a portal and be at the restaurant right now.
“There haven’t been any calls for me tonight, have there?” Asher asked. He almost didn’t want to know the answer. If Darwin had called, there was trouble. If Darwin had called, then he had missed the call and still did not know what he could do to help, or where to do it. If he hadn’t called, then he was just as screwed.
Anthony shook his head regretfully.
“I’m going to wait up,” Asher said.
“Hence the caffeine,” Anthony said, putting it together. “You might want to help yourself to food, too. It will help you stay awake. There is a pot of the house jambalaya in the pantry.”
“Thanks,” Asher told him and headed back to the kitchen.
He hadn’t felt like eating, in the end. The coffee had been warm, although after three-quarters of the first pot, he no longer appreciated its flavor. It was just hot liquid and the act of sipping gave him something to do.
Sleep had battled to take over a few times. That was when Asher had pulled the phone behind the bar over to where he was sitting, parking it right in front of him. If he did fall asleep, he reasoned, then he would surely wake if the phone rang right next to his ear.
But the phone stayed silent while he watched the street empty and the passing cars slow to one every few minutes. He watched the light of dawn emerge a degree at a time while he thought he was only imagining the increasing light, until it was no longer possible to say that dawn wasn’t here. Then the sunlight had jumped from the tips of the buildings, one to the next.
He had stayed sitting, waiting, until the sous chef had rattled the back door as he unlocked it. Then he had gone through to the kitchen to ask Patrick, as it turned out, to please make him a quick breakfast, nothing elaborate, before he began the murderously heavy load that was a sous chef’s daily lot. Asher had hurried back to the bar to watch the restaurant stir around him as staff arrived and began to take care of things.
The floor under the tables had been vacuumed and the chairs put down. The tables had been set. Good cooking smells had emerged from the kitchen, making his stomach growl. He was hungry, after all. His breakfast had arrived and Asher fell on it, devouring it in a few massive mouthfuls.
He had used the bathroom to wash his face and neck, after that, to wake himself up and look a little less like he had spent the night sitting at the bar, then he had gone back to sitting and waiting.
Once the need to sleep had backed off, he had nothing more to do than think. Thinking, though, was not a fun exercise. He kept circling around the same boggy ground. He kept hearing Sergio’s voice, the vicious delight in it and the edge of madness shading and shaping his words. Remembering the call would jerk Asher’s heart into overdrive, making his body tense and his fists curl up tight. He kept finding himself reaching for his hilt and having to abort the movement, especially once customers started to arrive.
I’m going crazy, he realized, glaring at the phone. If he didn’t shift his mind off the subject, he was going to go silently nuts here on this stool.
As he stood waiting for the latest pot of coffee in a long line of such pots to finish brewing, Asher dug his finger and thumb into the corners of his eyes, rubbing away sleep. He had to find something to do. He couldn’t keep just sitting at the bar, waiting for the phone to ring.
Then again, why couldn’t he? He could sit there until the wind changed. He wasn’t hurting anyone. This was his place.
What if no one calls? Ever? The thought struck him as he was cleaning up the filter and putting away the coffee and he stood with the coffee cone paused over the garbage can, absorbing the possibility with something like horror curling through him with cold fingers.
Finally, he tipped the used filter into the can, and turned back to finish cleaning up, moving slowly, trying to think around the stiff shock the idea had generated.
Had he really alienated her so much that she wouldn’t reach out even for something like this? Had he really fucked up that badly?
You’re a prince. A real asshole. How in hell did you think she was going to react? You’ve spent months teaching her you’re not a superhero at all, that you’re the ass end of a superhero. She can’t rely on her family and now you’ve explained in neon letters that she can’t rely on you, either.
Well done, asshole.
The phone rang.
* * * * *
Asher almost dropped the full pot of coffee when the phone buzzed next to him. There was an extension here in the kitchen as well as the one on the bar, so if the hostess was busy, the staff behind the bar or in the kitchen could take the call.
Asher fumbled the coffee pot, burned his fingers on the sides of it and dropped it two inches onto the counter with a hiss of pain. He rounded the big stainless steel table and lunged for the phone hanging on the wall.
It fell silent just as he got his hand on it.
He hurried out to the bar, to take the phone from whoever had picked it up, but the phone was sitting on its base where he had left it. He turned to look at the hostess’s podium, but there was no one there.
Anthony. He hurried back into the kitchen, then down the corridor past the pantry and cold room to the little back office area. Anthony was standing at his desk, his raincoat hanging over his arm, a briefcase on the desktop, talking into the phone. “Next week would work better,” he said after a thoughtful silence. “It will be a slow week and we can manage without the freezer while you work on it.” He turned and looked over his shoulder at Asher, giving him a rueful smile and shaking his head.
Asher went back to the kitchen, his heart slowing.
She’s not going to call, he told himself. You’re just going to have to go there. Walk right into the middle of whatever the trouble is and try to sort it out on the go. She hates you and it won’t change her mind about you, but you’re not going to like yourself (prickly gruellies) if you don’t.
He dumped the coffee in the big sink, and put the pot on the drainer, his energy rising. Going in there without knowing the score was a rank beginner’s error, but he felt better, anyway. It was action. It was doing something.
The phone rang as he was finishing and this time he picked it up casually, already occupied with planning out his next move, and trying to guess the unknowable shape of the problem and what he might face. “The Ash Tree,” he said.
“Is that Asher?” The voice was soft and he could hear the pain in it, even through the phone line.
Asher turned his back to the kitchen. His heart was back to jumping again. “Lucas?” he asked, for the voice was nearly unrecognizable. “What’s happened? Is Charlee okay? Are you?”
Silence. Just for the space of a heartbeat, but it might have been a year while Asher waited to hear the answer.
“She’s...it’s not good.”
He closed his eyes. Your fault. This is your fault. He reached out with his hand and propped himself up against the wall, his fingers splayed out next to the phone. “Where are you?” His own voice was soft, now.
/> “We’re at Mercy General.”
The answer dropped his heart right down to his toes. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Asher told him.
* * * * *
He looks worse than I do. That was Lucas’ first thought when Asher finally walked into the room. The last time—and the only time—he had met Asher in person, he had been wearing a suit. His hair had been a lot shorter and his eyes had blazed with life and energy, the blue almost fizzing with it.
Now the suit had gone, replaced by jeans that looked wrinkled and worn. Lucas could see a simple, cheap T-shirt, in some nondescript brown color under the black leather jacket. Black sneakers. Sneakers, Lucas repeated to himself. He didn’t know much about this guy, but he knew enough to know that sneakers were a low point for a man who ran a bank, owned a restaurant and was so full of self-confidence that keeping a whole gang in line was reduced to “chatting” with them when he bothered mentioning it at all.
“Where is she?” Asher asked. His eyes were red around the blue, and the beginnings of shadows and dark rings were forming on the flesh around them. He had been seriously sleep deprived lately, Lucas guessed. “You said she was in the room across from you. It’s empty.”
Lucas clenched the sheets as the dull fury returned. “They’re sending her home.”
“Home?” Asher repeated, sounding as appalled as Lucas felt. He shoved his hands into the deep pockets of the leather coat and moved his shoulders, like he was shifting a heavy weight around on them. “Is it insurance?” he asked Lucas, his tone gentle.
The low-grade anger caught at Lucas’ throat and made him choke. He nodded instead, but even that took effort. “I think they’d toss me, except I can’t even walk. They’re putting me in a general ward sometime this morning.”
“So where is Charlee now?” Asher asked.
“Out in the ER waiting area, waiting for someone to pick her up.” Lucas made himself look squarely at Asher. “They took the guard off my door this morning. I don’t think there’s anyone with her, either.”
Asher considered him for a moment. “Who is going to pick her up?” he asked bluntly.
The Branded Rose Prophecy Page 20
