One Small Sacrifice

by Hilary Davidson

  He passed a storefront clinic and caught sight of a tall blonde woman who reminded him of Emily. You need to do this for her, he reminded himself. Focusing on Emily calmed him. The first time he’d seen her was in a makeshift operating room. He was the patient, and he had wanted to shout and curse thanks to the pain he was in. He’d had to crawl to the clinic, leaving a trail of blood behind him like a snail dripped slime. He’d been convinced he was going to die, but that had changed the moment he’d seen Emily. It wasn’t that she was beautiful, though she was; even with purple crescents under her eyes from a lack of sleep and a sheen of sweat clinging to her in the heat, she was stunning. But what got to him was her preternatural calm. There wasn’t an ounce of doubt in her. You’re going to be fine, she’d told him.

  When she’d said it, he’d believed her. After the surgery, when he’d woken up on a cot with crying children nearby, he’d wondered if he’d dreamed her up, like an angel of mercy who’d appeared out of nowhere and vanished again. When she had come through to check on him, he had wanted to tell her that. Instead, he’d asked about the silver medallion hanging around her neck.

  Behold Saint Christopher, and go on in safety, she’d told him. It was my mother’s.

  Alex snapped out of the reverie suddenly as he found himself standing in front of the Stanton Veterinary Clinic. It was housed on the ground floor of an old redbrick tenement building. The S in the sign was designed to resemble a snake, shiny black with red bands and amber eyes, a hint that the clinic specialized in exotic animals. But all Alex saw at that moment was a warning, a blinking red beacon screaming at him not to go inside.

  “Abandon all hope, ye who enter,” he murmured. Of course, he pulled the door open and walked right in.

  The pale-blue walls hadn’t changed since the last time he’d visited the clinic. At one point, he’d spent a lot of time there. The first dog he’d owned, Lupo, had been a rescue from Syria; he’d emigrated with a host of health problems that Kevin Stanton had mostly cured. Then Sid Vicious had come along, with just as many issues. Maclean had found the dog in Iraq, and he’d been the one to import Sid and bring the dog to New Jersey. But after Maclean died a hero’s death in Syria, Alex had adopted the pup. While Alex gave Kevin Stanton full credit for the good work he’d done taking care of his dogs, he could only think of him with a cold fury.

  Alex hadn’t brought Sid back to the clinic since a couple of months before Cori died. But he had seen Kevin.

  The last time was at Cori’s funeral, when Alex had been standing at the edge of the gravesite, unsure of whether he should be there. Emily had insisted that they go, but when they’d arrived at Woodlawn Cemetery, her determination had given way, and she’d retreated into silence. Still, she’d had no difficulty slipping into a chapel pew and sitting quietly during the service, her head bowed as if it were too heavy to lift. Alex had been too shaky to sit still. He’d sat down and got up again. Then he’d made a jittery circuit around the chapel. Finally, he’d stepped outside for air, and Kevin Stanton had clocked him. Alex had ended up lying in the gravel, his one good suit torn and covered in grit, and he’d held his hands up, deflecting Kevin Stanton’s frenzied punches. It had gone on and on, until Alex couldn’t take it anymore and fought back. He hadn’t meant to. On some level, he’d felt like he deserved what he got, because Cori had died and that was his fault. He also knew Cori had had her own demons, and her father had been largely responsible for those.

  But that didn’t mean he’d tolerate any harassment of Emily.

  Alex didn’t recognize the receptionist at the front desk. She was in her forties, with the pointy cheekbones of a runway model and catlike blue eyes. She was dressed casually, in jeans and a green shirt, but with an elaborate silver necklace cascading from her throat down to her breastbone. Her shoulder-length blonde hair had streaks of silver woven in; it never failed to impress him how age only made some women more beautiful.

  “Are you picking someone up?” she asked brightly as he approached her. Everything in the office was so cheerful, from the bright primary colors of the room to the perky staff. It only made Alex feel darker, as if the color had been drained out of him long ago. But the wattage of her smile dimmed as she regarded him closely. “Have you been here before?” she added uncertainly. “You look familiar.”

  “I’m here to talk to Kevin Stanton,” he said. “My name is Alex Traynor.”

  The reaction in her face suggested that he’d announced he had bubonic plague and was there to infect the office. “Alex Traynor . . .”

  “Kevin won’t want to see me, but I need to see him,” Alex said. He could feel the eyes of the people in the waiting area checking him out.

  “I’ve heard all about you,” the receptionist said. “You have some nerve, showing your face here, after what you did to his daughter. You should go before I call the police.”

  “You can call them,” Alex said, striding to the red inner door. “I have some letters your boss wrote that the police should see.”

  When he went through the red door, Kevin Stanton was standing at the end of the hallway. He was a big bear of a man, tall and broad shouldered, though he’d lost weight since Alex had seen him last. He stared at Alex in astonishment. “What the hell . . .”

  “We need to talk,” Alex said.

  “I have nothing to say to you. Get out of my sight.”

  “Not before you tell me what you were doing, writing letters to Emily.” Alex strode down the hallway, passing glass cabinets filled with butterflies and lizards and other small animals.

  Kevin crossed his arms. Up close, he looked old and tired. There were dark bags puffed out under his eyes, and the deep blue of his irises had somehow faded. “Letters? What letters?”

  Alex held up the bundle of white envelopes he’d found locked in Emily’s office. “You’re denying that you wrote these to her?” He pulled one out. “‘Alex Traynor got away with murder. He is a sociopath who will kill again.’ That’s literally a quote you gave the police. You wrote that to other people.”

  “Let me see that,” Kevin growled, grabbing the letter out of Alex’s hand, tearing the page so that the bottom flapped loose. He scanned it in a heartbeat. “It does sound like me. You’ve got a collection like this?”

  “Six of them.”

  “Were any of them signed?”

  “No,” Alex admitted.

  “I think you know by now I’ll tell anyone and everyone exactly what I think of you. It’s not a secret I’m keeping. You’re the monster who murdered my daughter.”

  “I didn’t murder Cori,” Alex said. “I would never have hurt her.”

  “The fact you were drugged out of your mind when you killed her doesn’t absolve you of responsibility,” Kevin said. “You chose to get high. You gave her drugs.”

  “There’s a lot I can’t remember, but here’s one thing I know for sure,” Alex said. “You’re the one who hurt Cori.”

  Kevin lunged at him, knocking him back and into a display cabinet mounted on the wall. The glass shattered, and Alex felt a million tiny shards digging into him. He’d been cut by flying glass so many times overseas. Windows blew out of buildings as bombs rained down on them and bullets raged through them. He’d always kept his head in a war zone. But in that hallway, he heard the echo of a thousand windows shattering, and it shook him to his core.

  “Liar!” Kevin was shouting at him, his voice hoarse. He kicked Alex, then stomped his foot, holding him in place against the wall while he punched him. “Get out of here!” he shouted, hitting Alex again and again.

  Alex grabbed the man by the shoulders and shoved him back against the wall, hard.

  “I called the police, Kevin,” the receptionist shouted from the far end of the hallway. “They’ll be here soon.”

  Kevin backed away then. “How dare you come in here and attack me,” he hissed.

  “I didn’t touch you,” Alex said. “You went after me.”

  “More of your bullshit.”

>   “Why were you harassing Emily?” Alex demanded.

  “I did no such thing.”

  “You also denied writing to editors who hired me. But I know that was you.”

  Alex could feel the heat coming off Kevin’s skin, see the fury in his eyes. The question was why he’d suddenly stopped pounding him. When he turned his head, the mystery cleared: there was a teenage girl next to the receptionist, holding up her phone and clearly recording everything.

  Alex stooped to pick up the letters. There was glass everywhere, but no sign of the white envelopes. “Where are the letters?”

  “The sight of you makes me sick.” Kevin’s voice was just a harsh rasp now. “You destroyed Cori. You’re the reason she’s dead.”

  His words didn’t shock Alex—he’d heard all this before—but they made his heart pound in anger. If there was anyone to blame for Cori’s bottomless sadness, it was her own father.

  “Cori was my friend,” Alex said. “She told me what you did to her.”

  That was when Kevin Stanton lost control. His fist shot out and struck Alex on the side of his temple, a hard blow that whipped Alex’s head to the side. Alex reeled, but he didn’t go down, and he threw a punch that connected with Kevin’s jaw.

  “Kevin!” the receptionist called. “Don’t! You’re being recorded.”

  The big man didn’t seem to care, but he staggered back and slumped against the wall. Alex was ready to bring him down, but when Kevin didn’t punch back, he dropped his fists. As he headed down the hallway, his shoes crunched on shattered glass. The receptionist stepped back to allow him by, but her face was a mask of pure hatred. Alex opened the front door just as the cops pulled up outside.

  CHAPTER 24

  EMILY

  There were only a few things Emily was sure of, semiconscious in the low light of her prison. She was certain that she was in an unfinished basement or a cellar. There were no windows, no source of natural light. Just that dim bulb on a wire that swayed gently, as if it were enjoying the breeze.

  She was positive that she wasn’t in the city anymore. There was no noise from traffic; the absence of honking horns was deafening. She’d always lived in cities, and she’d worked in places where air raid sirens and mortar fire counted as background noise. The flat monotony of the silence baffled her. Occasionally there were footsteps overhead, but otherwise, all was quiet. She strained her ears to pick up any sound, keeping so silent that she could hear the little click her eyelids made when she blinked. The one time she heard a car, she realized it must’ve belonged to her captor, because there was no other traffic. The purr of the engine vanished into the distance, and everything went back to being still.

  Once, she thought she heard a dog bark. She wasn’t sure whether her ears were playing nervous tricks on her. She’d thought it was Sid for a moment as she came out of the trancelike slumber that devoured so many hours in that cell. But it wasn’t her dog; for all Emily could tell, it was just part of a dream. She was having nightmares again, just as she’d had for years after her parents were killed. Only somehow, in the time since, her visions had shifted. In college, just after the accident, Emily would dream about her parents as they died, their car in a head-on collision with a drunk driver who’d swerved onto their side of the road. Now, in her subterranean trap, it had shifted so that Emily dreamed that she was on the road itself, just before the accident. She couldn’t see her parents, but she recognized their car. And the other one, madly careening over the road, was clearly the drunk driver. Emily was filled with a desperate desire to stop the crash, but she had no idea how. Over and over, the drunk driver plowed through her and into her parents. There was no way to save them.

  She woke up sobbing when it happened. The nightmare disoriented her, filled her with a queasy sense of injustice that she couldn’t quell. Even before she remembered that she was in confinement, she would remember that the drunk driver had survived the crash. That would make her ball her hands into fists, digging her nails into her palms. The injustice of that almost drove her mad. It took her time to come back to herself. She wasn’t the type to cry, but she would feel tears in her eyes. This is what Alex lives with, she reminded herself. These dreams, these nightmares, they haunt him all the time.

  The thought of Alex left a hollow feeling in her chest, as if her heart had been surgically removed. It hurt to think about him. She remembered how he’d stormed into her office on Friday. He’d never looked at her like that before. His anger was brimming over. How could you? he’d demanded.

  She’d had no answer for him, except to ask for his trust. Why should he give it to her, she wondered. At this point, she was certain she didn’t deserve it.

  As she drifted in and out of consciousness, Emily imagined that she was back in Syria. After the abandoned hotel outside Aleppo that she had stayed in was bombed, she’d slept on dirt floors for several nights, the dank smell of the earth oddly comforting. In her reverie, she remembered one of her worst days from that time. There had been a chemical gas attack, and civilians had surged toward them, arms outstretched like zombies. The chemical burns hardened their skin until it was like tree bark. The victims were still moving, but the flesh inside and outside their bodies was slowly petrifying. Emily was dreaming of one little boy in particular, maybe eight years old, who came in alone. He had blinked at her helplessly, and his small, bony shoulders had shuddered with the terrible effort it took to breathe.

  “Help me,” he had whispered at her in Arabic.

  She had stared at him helplessly, fully aware of the truth. That little boy was going to die of suffocation. There was nothing she could do to stop that. She had knelt in front of him and touched his face.

  “You’ll be all right,” Emily had told him. “I’ll help you.”

  She had taken him to a cot and dosed him heavily with opiates. There was no way to stop his death; all she could do was make it painless.

  She woke up crying, thinking of that boy, of all the people she’d wanted to help and who’d died anyway. For a minute, she was disoriented, because her first impulse was to get up and back into the makeshift hospital and try her damnedest to help people. It didn’t take long for her to remember that she was trapped in a subterranean prison and that she wasn’t going to be allowed out of it any time soon.

  Stop calling me. I’m telling you it’s over.

  Emily sat up, shocked by the echo of her own voice inside her head. Everything around her swirled. She had been captured and roughed up and starved, but she knew something else was wrong. She’d been in similarly dire straits in the field, but she’d never felt nauseated every time she lifted her head.

  The more Emily thought about it, the more certain she was: she was being poisoned in that little cell.

  There was no doubt in her mind that she’d been doped up with tranquilizers. When she forced her brain back into Central Park, picturing her last run, she remembered something hitting her in the back. Not hard, not like a punch. It was more like a swift, expert jab with a needle, but it had unleashed a torrent of heat throughout her body, electrifying every nerve ending. Within seconds, everything had gone dark. Her brain hadn’t been right since.

  There was no tranquilizer that could keep a person down for days without being readministered on a regular basis. Even knockout sedatives like Propofol didn’t last long on one dose; too much at one time left you dead, not dizzy for days. When her eyes started to focus, she saw plastic bottles of water left for her just in front of the bars of her cage.

  That’s it, she thought. He’s poisoning me through the water.

  She hadn’t seen anyone enter or exit, but obviously he was checking on her and leaving her something to drink and the occasional protein bar. She had no sense of time, or whether it was day or night, so it was impossible to detect a routine. Her watch was gone, so there was no way to even guess at how long she’d been there. Emily had the sense that time was passing her by, that she was in a trance most of the day, lost on that cool dirt floor
.

  She reached a hand out and found a protein bar. The wrapper crinkled as she pulled it apart. She devoured it in seconds, ravenous like the kids she’d seen in refugee camps. It was a kind of hunger hard to imagine in some parts of the world, where food was always close at hand. It was an all-consuming sensation, a companion in every waking moment. It seemed as if it could never be filled up.

  “Hey,” she called out, but her voice was just a hollow croak.

  She took a sip of water, knowing it was poison. She was dying of thirst, so what else could she do?

  “Hello,” she called out again, her voice stronger.

  There was no response. There never was. The only rejoinder was the voice in her own head.

  Stop calling me. I’m telling you it’s over.

  She knew he was angry, but she’d never imagined it would turn out like this. It was eerie, this ongoing silence. No demands, no ultimatums. Just the purgatory of solitary confinement. She put her hand on her chest, expecting to feel the weight of her Saint Christopher medal, like she always did when she was afraid in the field. But it was gone, and she remembered she’d stored it away.

  There was a brief flash of red that caught her eye. Was she imagining it? It was like a laser tracker on a sniper’s rifle. For a moment, she felt like Alex, trapped by waking nightmares. Only this wasn’t a phantom. She stared and stared and stared at the spot where she thought she’d seen it. Finally, there was another little flash of light.

  She couldn’t see what was behind it, but she knew: there was a camera stationed on the ceiling of her jail. He was watching her every move.

  CHAPTER 25

  SHERYN

  Sheryn had been excited when the desk sergeant told her about Alex Traynor’s arrest. That feeling shifted on the drive downtown, as more details had filtered in. She was dreading her conversation with Kevin Stanton.