My breath caught as I leaned forward to examine the ties at my feet. I couldn’t break them, but from the tiny gap between the chair leg and my skin I knew I could slide the chair free. I tried to stand, but the chair pressed against the back of my knees and forced a bend in my legs.
Gripping the chair seat, I pulled, but the wood grated against the plastic. The bed groaned as Dallas rolled. The edge of the chair pressed into my legs and sliced new damage into my unspoiled skin. Dallas stirred once more. My heartbeat slammed within my chest. With a final jerking motion, I yanked the chair free. Against my will, the pain forced a cry from my chest as the chair clattered backward. The blankets flew from the bed as my tormentor woke, but I was free.
Despite the drain on my muscles, I felt my instincts take control. My guard came up, fists at the ready, eyes searching for any object I could use as a weapon.
“Don’t be stupid, Lindy,” he warned with a sleepy voice.
For one brief moment I thought about backing down, but the need to survive is primal. As he charged, my fist jabbed forward and cracked against his cheek. Despite my weakness, he stumbled back as I shook out the pain in my hand. One hit from him and I knew I was done. He would slice me open and leave me for dead.
Dallas swung, but I ducked at the last moment and all he caught was my hair. I delivered an uppercut into his stomach and shoved him with both hands. The wicked parts of me rallied at the pain I saw etched in his face.
The metallic rasp of the knife drove my fear as Dallas removed it from the sheath. My dried blood stained the blade, but I wasn’t willing to let him have another drop. He lunged forward. I dodged and let his full force collide with the wall. His groan brought a slim smile to my face. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted something black. My fingers slipped through the ring as Dallas barreled toward me. White hot pain exploded in my side. I spun into his momentum and pressed the black device against his neck. The connection wasn’t perfect as I pulled the trigger, but his body stiffened against the blue charge and he collapsed to the ground. The pain returned and I pressed my hand over the injury. My palm peeled back wet with blood.
As I’d delivered the shock from the stunner, his blade had sliced into my abdomen and blood seeped from the wound. Anger with Dallas flashed through my chest, but I had no time to give in to the emotion. Grabbing a towel from the bed, I tore it and pressed the scrap over my laceration. I wanted to cry, to fall down and never get back up, but I needed help.
I pulled the knife and the stunner from the ground and opened the cabin door. The meadow spread out before me, unblemished, as perfect as Oz, as if nothing had ever gone wrong. One look at my broken body would forever convince the world otherwise.
Stumbling as if I were drunk, I made my way through the meadow. I feared Dallas might recover, overpower me, and use the weapons against me, so as I found the river trail, I stashed them beneath a rock for safe keeping. I had to get to my cabin. My cell phone was there. If it wasn’t, then I’d break a window at the main cabin and call for help.
As I spotted the tack barn, my heart found hope again. Each step told me he hadn’t beaten me yet. The corrals were empty; the horse drive was still underway. Any hope of stumbling on help was dashed. We were alone. I took a quick glance at my wound. The towel shone red, saturated, and I didn’t have blood left to lose.
My cabin was locked, but I gripped a rock and clubbed the knob until it fell away. The door swung open. My phone was exactly where I’d left it. Elated, I ripped it from the cord and unlocked the screen. The same words stained the upper corner, “no service.” I stumbled free of the cabin and staggered toward the tack barn; hopeful that at least one service bar would emerge.
I should’ve heard his feet. I should’ve felt the need to react, but I didn’t sense his presence until the last moment and my body slammed hard against the tack barn and crumbled to the ground. Light exploded in my vision as a fist cracked against my temple. My phone popped free of my hand. Knowing it was my only chance for survival, I scrambled through the dust until I had it in my grasp again. I struck out with an upward kick. Despite my hazy vision, I connected with his stomach.
Dallas groaned. His blurred shape fell back. My feet were useless stumps as I drove myself to run and tried to put space between us. His anger crashed against me and I fell face first into the yellow grass that littered the ground around the hay stack. Dallas’ fingers slipped into my hair and clenched tight. Pain seared my vision as he dragged me, kicking and scrambling as I tried to get a foot hold. I dropped in a heap as he released me at the base of the hay stack. Every ragged breath lit me up with pain, but he was gone.
Moments. I had mere moments left.
I checked my phone and shrieked with delight when I saw two bars. I unlocked it and dialed the numbers, 9-1-1. As my thumb hovered above the call button, a slip of orange passed through my eye line and looped around my neck. My breath jammed within my throat as Dallas tightened the discarded bailing twine around my throat. Legs flailed in my vision, disconnected from my own body with crazed alien movement. Skin caught under my nails as I clawed and tore at his skin, creating damage of my own to remember me by.
Cursing, he released his grip and I collapsed. Oxygen burned my lungs and I heaved twice before his hands tore at me again. Maniacal screams surrounded me, but I couldn’t understand him. I couldn’t respond. My voice was gone, swallowed by an impending relapse. All I could do was shriek and strike out blindly at the violence that rained down on me. I had nothing left. The pain was too intense.
My body was too broken.
He would win.
It was as true as any thought I’d ever had.
I thrashed to free myself, a last attempt because there was nothing else I could do. A flash of blue shimmered from the darkness, a beacon that cut the power between us. I recognized the metallic flash of the knife immediately. Isabelle’s words rang clear in my thoughts, You never know when you might need something lethal.
Sprawling across my hips, Dallas’ full weight pinned me to the ground and his voice became clear again.
“We could’ve had it so good. We could’ve been together forever, you and I, but you had to screw it up, didn’t you?” He removed a new blade from a sheath at his waist, smaller, but no less deadly. “Why couldn’t you have been Cassidy forever?”
My fingers stretched to reach the hidden blue hilt. “Because,” I managed to find the words amid the fog, “she was weak, and I’m stronger.” I ignored the blade against my neck and willed my fingers to grow another inch.
The weight of his body shifted forward, but his knife never wavered from my throat. “Not strong enough, Lindy,” he said.
My fingers closed around the blue hilt. His body pulled back, his knife overhead as he prepared to plunge it into my chest. Using the groove, I flipped the blade open. His weapon and body arched down on me. Out of desperation, I pulled my own knife toward my chest, and thrust it upward with both hands.
Dallas stalled, mouth open as he collapsed forward, limp and heavy. Blue eyes stared into mine as his breath turned ragged and his body stiffened. His weapon tumbled from his grasp, useless without his vengeance. Panic took hold as my breath turned to gasps. Our bodies jerked apart as I struggled to free myself of him. Dallas rolled away, eyes turned vacant, blue hilt still jabbed against his body. I collapsed into the dirt. The sun seared my wounds. Flies flocked to my stench. I trembled and heaved with pure revulsion.
The cell phone rested five feet away, but it might as well have been miles. Dirt embedded itself under my fingernails as I clawed my body toward it. Every inch was agonizing. Every drop of blood I lost was precious. Stretching once more, I felt the rectangular shape press against my palm. Consciousness faded like lights being extinguished one by one. The screen started to darken, but I tapped it, and it lit up again. My vision blurred. The icons mashed together in a marred blob. The screen was cold beneath my thumb as I pressed the call button. The earth cradled my face as I collapsed. My eyes closed ho
ping to block out some of the pain.
The land of nothing welcomed me back with open arms.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
Chapter 30
Dayton arrived on the scene first. I vaguely remembered him carrying me to an ambulance. There were snatches of memories, names I recognized, Isabelle, Ryder, and Shane as he spoke on his phone. Every time my eyes opened again, I was still in the ambulance. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t ask what was happening. I’d used my last words on Dallas, the monster had done his best work and the rest had been stolen from me.
Paramedics were in a constant buzz around me. I watched them with a clinical eye, but as the bag of blood flashed though my vision, fear gripped my mute body. Reason told me I was safe, but that shred of sanity was only a whisper against the screams that exploded from my chest.
“Restrain her,” a strong voice commanded and Dayton’s face flooded my blurred vision.
“They’re trying to save you. I’m taking you home. Trust me, Lindy.”
Trust. What did I know about trust? A soft hand gripped mine and I followed it to Isabelle Billings’ fuzzy face. The smile was unusual for her, but it reminded me of the picture I’d found of the little girl on horseback.
“You’re going home, Lindy.”
My name. She used my real name.
Everything went black.
♦ ♦ ♦
As I opened my eyes again, red lights swirled around me. I could hear Isabelle’s voice. “She needs a hospital. Pumping blood into her and stitching her shut isn’t medicine, Spence.”
“Her uncle knows her, and he insists that she comes home right away,” Dayton countered. “They’ve gone through the trouble to set this up. The least we can do is send her.”
“This is a cop thing, isn’t it? Some unspoken blood brothers sort of agreement.”
“Belle, you know this has more to do with your son than her uncle. He’s cashed in every favor, and lined every pocket with cash to bring her home. She needs her family right now.”
Emotion tinged Isabelle’s voice. “But she feels like my family. She’s Cassidy to me.”
I could see enough to know that Dayton had wrapped his arm around her. “It’s not that much longer from here. They’re paramedics. Her uncle will be there at the hospital. There’s a team waiting for her. She’ll get the help she needs.” He brushed the hair from her eyes. “Remember, I’ll be your family now.”
The sound of their kiss made me want to throw up and the thought lightened my heart. Cassidy would’ve loved that mushy junk, only Lindy could be that jaded.
♦ ♦ ♦
‘Not much longer now’ might not sound too bad, but with fourteen stitches in my side, and more cuts, scabs and possible scars than I could count, five minutes would’ve been too long. I wanted to say goodbye to Dayton and Isabelle before they left. I wished I could thank Isabelle. It was her advice that had saved my life, but the words mashed together against my lips. Instead a muddled, “thank you,” was all I could force before the ambulance doors shut again. I hoped she knew the rest.
They kept me sedated in the second ambulance, for that I was grateful. Fear shook me every time I broke through. Bits and pieces filtered in, prolonging the trip. The siren blared as we drove for what could’ve been hours. I wondered what Dayton had meant when he’d talked of favors being cashed in. Did Ryder have something to do with all of this? The ambulance was different, and so was the team that worked on me. Did he hire someone?
I’d cost too many people more than I could ever repay. And for what? Who was I?
Was I the weak child my father had worried about?
Was I the pillar of strength Dallas had tried to drain?
I was just Lindy, a diseased girl from central California. But therein was the truth. I had been weak as a child. Dad was right about that. But all I’d faced, the cases, my monsters, every trial and frustration—that was what made me strong.
At first blush, Cassidy Billings had appeared stronger because she didn’t have my weaknesses. But my weaknesses had built me into a fortress. Even with that knowledge, I couldn’t find peace. I’d taken a life and I wasn’t sure if I could cope with that, or the history Dallas and I shared.
Sedation wore off and rational thought started to break through the terror. The paramedic with the sandy blonde hair and hooked nose tried to talk to me, but when my stare remained vacant, he focused on his work instead. I had no luggage, nothing left to call my own. I was a zombie with my stained and torn clothes. My hair had been brushed, but I knew I owed that to Isabelle. If she’d gotten the chance she likely would have applied makeup. I was grateful she convinced the paramedics to wash the streaks of cracked blood from my skin instead, and for whatever reason, my smell had drastically improved.
Our breakneck speed slowed to a stop and my stomach ceased its lurching acrobatics. Through the back window I saw the sign for Seattle Memorial Hospital. The doors popped open, and I craned my head to peer into the night. There was nothing. I don’t know what I expected. Certainly not a team of doctors holding signs with my name like chauffeurs at the airport, but still, my disappointment peaked to look into the night and see only a parking lot of vehicles.
“There’s something going on,” the paramedic in the driver’s seat told the sandy-haired one. “The bay is packed.”
“I’ll check it out,” the second paramedic said and I felt the ambulance bounce as he jumped from the back end.
He was gone only a moment before he returned breathless.
“There was an explosion downtown. They need everybody. Help me get her out.”
The ambulance shifted again before my gurney was pulled out and the lights blurred as they rushed me through the doors. Chaos erupted as we entered the hospital. Screaming, crying, someone was yelling for her mother and above it all, there was the constant shouting from medical personnel.
A woman flooded my vision for a second, nothing more than a female blur, but somehow in that moment she assessed everything I needed. My body lifted into the air then came down again on a new gurney.
“She’s not from the explosion,” the woman said as if it meant I’d trespassed.
“No,” I couldn’t tell which of my paramedics had spoken, “we called ahead. She’s supposed to have a team ready for her.”
If he had more to say, he was cut short.
“That was probably before we ended up with more patients than we have doctors. Is she stable?”
No one was talking to me. Why wouldn’t anyone talk to me?
“She’s stable,” the other one replied.
“Then she’ll have to wait, because I’ve got more than I can treat at the moment.”
“Do you need help? I know it’s probably not okay, but you look…” His voice faded as he moved away.
The sandy-haired paramedic stooped to my level and caught my eyes. “Stay here. You’re safe. The doctor will be with you shortly.” I heard something clip to my gurney, maybe it was identification of some sort. I had no idea, and he was gone before I could ask.
I counted to one hundred before I sat up. I needed to know that I still could. I needed to take inventory of what I’d lost to this relapse. Cold air wafted over my face as the doors flew open again. More bodies, too injured to be able to see if they were alive or dead. My face felt hot and I craved the cool, but my need to escape death and violence felt stronger. Though stiff, my feet took my weight as I moved down the hallway away from the commotion.
Everything took effort: breathing, thinking, the steps and ability to stay upright. As I focused on one demand, the others faded until a new ailment required my attention. The intolerable pain increased with my movement and made me want to crumble beneath the torture. I looked over my shoulder, hoping to see Uncle Shane burst from a hall somewhere, but no one.
No one came for me.
A secondary hallway beckoned me, darker than the harsh fluorescent lights that blinded my obscured vision. At the end I spotted a door. Cra
zy thoughts of escape filtered into my mind. Dogs wander off when they know they’re dying. People think it’s to spare their owners the pain of their passing. Isn’t that fair? To save someone you love from watching the end? I could understand that sort of sacrifice.
My hot skin craved the brisk Washington air that waited for me outside the doors. I set my hands to the bar and pushed. Once more cold air washed over my burning cheeks. It was enough to propel me forward. Everything was shutting down. If the doctors could save me from the wounds Dallas had inflicted, what would my disease leave me with? Would I be alive, but a shell? Locked in my mind like the psych patients I’d studied in school?
My back slumped, my stomach muscles refused to hold me any longer. I’d made a mistake. I should’ve stayed inside. The chipped paint of the railing flaked away beneath my weakening grip. I couldn’t turn around, not even to go back the ten feet I’d come.
Wet dew kissed my cheeks and extinguished the glowing heat there. Did I have a fever? Likely some part of me was infected. With a list this long, where would the doctors start? Instead of dwelling on that, I tipped my head up and let the dew gather on my skin. The sensation was fading; all sensations were fading, like sand slipping from an hourglass.
“Lindy.”
Like an exhalation of relief, the voice spoke from the dark. My raw nerves resisted it at first. I needed rest before I could endure anymore abuse. But it registered and comfort seeped through my body.
“Huckleberry,” he tried again, and I found him, a lone shape beneath a street lamp. The damp air created halos around their brightest points. Rationally, I knew it was cold, but I couldn’t feel it, not anymore. I couldn’t feel anything.
I stumbled toward him, one step, and then another. My body collapsing inward on itself as I staggered forward. The asphalt would hurt. Strong arms caught me on my fourth step and braced me up.
As I looked through my blurred vision into his dark eyes, and the ever furrowed brow, I wanted to cry in relief to be back with him again.
Saddles & Sabotage Page 30
