by Tim McBain
His body heaved for breath, panicked wheezing audible somewhere in the distance that he somehow knew to be his own.
So that was alarming.
Was he being attacked? Kidnapped and trapped somewhere? Was he dying?
His jaw moved then, a disgusting mealy feeling occupying that orifice. His tongue scraped at the roof of his mouth, both surfaces as dry and rough as starfish.
A jab pricked him in the belly, the pain small at first, somehow familiar. He pondered it, could feel his forehead wrinkled up in concentration, but he couldn’t remember. Then the numbness gave out. The full brunt of the pain in his gut hit like he’d been pierced with a dagger, and he blacked out.
He woke again some time later. Hours? Days? He couldn’t say. Again, he found himself confused about most everything.
His eyelids fluttered open, but his eyes kept rolling back into his head. His vision juddered, the picture refusing to stay in the frame long enough to make any sense.
Even with his sight taken from him, he sensed someone in the room. He didn’t know how. He just felt a presence.
“Agent Loshak,” the voice spoke barely louder than a whisper. “Can you hear me?”
He knew this voice — a man’s voice — but he couldn’t place it. He stuttered out a response, a series of hard consonant sounds that added up to gibberish.
“Holy shit. I don’t know if you’re understanding this, but you have acute pancreatitis. You went into a coma and coded. They said you were probably brain dead, but… I’ll, uh, get the doctor now. Oh, and the Bengals lost again.”
He heard footsteps trail away, and then he was out again.
Chapter 115
The murmur of hushed voices. That was the first thing she remembered sensing.
They were far off. Separated from her somehow.
Closer, a rustling sound. Like someone turning the page of a book. She pictured her second-grade teacher, Mrs. Horning, who used to read out loud to them every Wednesday in her loud, sharp voice. A voice so piercing that you could hear her reading from inside a stall in the girl’s bathroom at the other end of the hall. They would sit on the floor, criss-cross applesauce, and she would read to them from Freckle Juice and Stone Soup and Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping. Violet and her best friend Marnie would play with each other’s hair when Mrs. Horning wasn’t looking. They had to do it only when she wasn’t looking because if Mrs. Horning caught them, she’d stop reading, crook her finger at them, and say, “That’s how you get lice!”
Nearer than the papery whispers, so close it seemed to be right next to her ear almost, there was a dull, rhythmic clicking.
She inhaled deeply. A familiar smell surrounded her, but it was the sudden rush of oxygen that made her eyes flutter open.
A beat later, a voice.
“Darger — Violet?”
It was so bright in the room, she could see nothing but white.
“Can you hear me? Hold on. I’m going to get someone.”
It was familiar that voice, but her thoughts were a confused jumble just now. A churning vortex of dark water.
Dark water, why did that seem important?
There were more voices now, louder. A commotion of other noises, too. Shoes squeaking on floors. Doors opened too forcefully and banging into rubber stops.
Her head lolled to the side. She would worry about the sounds and the seething black water later.
For now, she just wanted to sleep.
It was another day before she really woke for good. That’s what Casey Luck told her later, anyway.
It was later, too. Instead of bright mid-day light streaming through the window next to her bed, it was the amber tint of late afternoon.
Casey was in a chair in the corner of the room, reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. She watched him for a while before he sensed her eyes on him. He stirred and lifted his head. He glanced at her quickly and then back down at his book, as if he hadn’t really expected her eyes to be open. But finding that they were, his gaze flicked back to her. He closed the book on his thumb.
“You gonna stick around for a while this time, or are you going to konk out again?”
She licked her lips. They felt like two caterpillars that had been caught out on a hot driveway under the noon sun.
“Sticking around. I think,” she said. Or tried to say.
Her throat was dry, too. Thick and raw. There was pain when she swallowed, but it felt far away.
Her eyes traveled from the patch of tape over her hand, along the IV tube that ran across the bed and up the metal pole. Several bags hung there, suspended over her head. She couldn’t get her focus sharp enough to read them, but she figured one of them had the good drugs in it. The clicking sound she remembered vaguely from earlier emanated from the IV pump.
By then, Casey had come closer, scooting a different chair next to the bed.
She asked about Loshak first.
“It was bad at first. I got a call from McAdoo not long after you took off from the station. Apparently, they lost him there for a minute. Had to use the defibrillator and everything. But they got him back. He woke up right before you did. Yesterday, I mean. He’s still in and out, but the doctors sound hopeful.”
“Clegg?”
“He’s dead. Don’t worry about that.”
The memories were cloudy, but she remembered the image of him floating face down.
“Van Ryper?” she asked. The real question she’d wanted to ask was, “So what the hell was up with Van Ryper?” But there was only so much her shredded vocal chords would allow at the present. Thankfully, Luck caught her meaning.
“Van Ryper and Clegg knew each other back in the day. They didn’t go to school together, but they hung out. You know how it is. Clegg had done a doozy of a job stealing Van Ryper’s identity. There was the job at the airport. The Buick. He had a passport, credit cards, a bank account so he could get the direct deposits from work. And it looked like he had other identities ready to go. Backups, I guess.”
She opened her mouth to ask another question, but he held up a hand.
“You wanna know why Van Ryper — the real Van Ryper — and his mom were so damn shady when we brought them in?”
She nodded.
“Well, to start, we found a dime bag in the Nissan, so that explains why Kurt and his buddy ran. But the real revelation was that Kurt and mommy have been cashing her deceased brother’s Social Security checks for the past six years, to the tune of over a hundred grand.”
“They thought—” she croaked and Luck stopped her again.
“They thought that we were onto the fraud. That’s why we were asking about the truck. That’s why the Feds were involved. Yeah.”
“How did you know?” she asked, trusting by now that he already knew what all of her questions would be.
“How to find you?” he smiled when she held up her thumb. “Someone called in a deranged woman standing around in the middle of the road. And gunshots.”
She raised an eyebrow at the word deranged.
“I’m just passing on what the lady said,” Luck said, then patted at the pockets of his jacket. “Oh yeah. I have something for you. Two somethings, actually.”
He brought out his fist with a crinkle of plastic. His fingers opened like a flower’s petals, and in the center of his palm sat the gold hedgehog brooch inside an evidence baggie.
“You don’t need it for evidence?” she said, barely mustering a whisper.
“Nah. Clegg is dead.”
He peeled the zip top open and shook the pin into his other hand. It looked like there was something else in the bag with the hedgehog, but he tucked it in his other hand. He thumbed the clasp on the brooch and bent toward her, moving to pin it to her hospital gown. She shrunk back from him. It took him a moment to realize why she was hesitant to take it.
“It’s OK. I had ‘em autoclave it for you.”
Her shoulders loosened with relief.
He pinched the blue gown with his fingers, s
tabbing through the fabric with the pin end. When he’d finished, he gave the hedgehog a little tap on the head.
“Hell of a good luck charm, huh?”
She tucked her chin, staring into the emerald eyes, and bobbed her head once.
“But wait. There’s more.”
Once more he presented his fist and opened it in slow motion. This time there was a ring in his hand. A moonstone ring.
Violet gasped a little as he handed it over.
“Figured that out of everyone, you should have this too.”
She turned it back and forth in her fingers, staring into the strange depths of the milky gem.
“Shouldn’t this go to Mrs. Peters?”
Luck smirked.
“Technically, there’s a little loophole in our chain of evidence policy called Fuck Her.”
Chapter 116
Darger sat on the foot of Loshak’s hospital bed while he spooned chocolate pudding into his mouth. He looked gaunt, his face longer and bonier than ever, but he also ate with more gusto than she’d seen at any point in their time together.
“You heard from Ryskamp or anything?” Loshak said.
“Nah, I turned my phone off days ago,” Darger said. “I find it rings less that way.”
Loshak chuckled and took another big bite of pudding. After a few more bites, he spoke.
“James Joseph Clegg. He was a crafty son of a bitch, I’ll give him that. But he was no match for Violet Darger.”
Laughter puffed out of Darger’s nostrils.
Loshak’s spoon froze mid-scoop.
“That’s no joke. You did a hell of a job. The stolen identity could have bought him a lot more time. Everyone else was all in on the real Van Ryper from the sound of it. I probably would have been, too.”
Darger swallowed and then spoke, her voice soft and small.
“Yeah. Well, thank you.”
Loshak tilted his head.
“Careful now. You might faint, expressing all of this unbridled enthusiasm.”
Darger smiled, but Loshak thought her expression looked more sad than amused.
“Doesn’t feel quite how you thought it would, does it?” he said.
She shook her head.
He set his pudding cup down on the tray in front of him, careful to make sure the weight of the spoon didn’t knock it over.
“It feels good to catch these guys, but it never brings the dead back. I think part of you always thinks maybe it will. No matter how many times you go through it, part of you thinks maybe this will be the time. But you did good. You did the best you could do.”
She blinked a few times, and then she nodded.
“It’s a job, you know,” Loshak said, picking up his pudding again. “Someone has to do it.”
The Violet Darger Series
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- About the Authors -
Tim McBain writes because life is short, and he wants to make something awesome before he dies. Additionally, he likes to move it, move it.
You can connect with Tim on Twitter at @realtimmcbain or via email at [email protected].
L.T. Vargus grew up in Hell, Michigan, which is a lot smaller, quieter, and less fiery than one might imagine. When not click-clacking away at the keyboard, she can be found sewing, fantasizing about food, and rotting her brain in front of the TV.
If you want to wax poetic about pizza or cats, you can contact L.T. (the L is for Lex) at [email protected] or on Twitter @ltvargus.
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- Books by Tim McBain & L.T. Vargus -
The Violet Darger series
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The Clowns
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The Scattered and the Dead series
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The Awake in the Dark series
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Casting Shadows Everywhere
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title & Copyright
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
/> The Violet Darger Series
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