She'll Never Know

by Hunter Morgan

  "You startled her." He took another step toward her, his tone still calm, so matter-of-fact. "She thought someone had broken in. She grabbed my sidearm before I could stop her."

  Jillian heard the tick, tick, tick of the fan overhead. Saw the glass of Scotch. The line of coke beside it.

  The place hadn't been a hotel room. It had been a rented condo. A condo her husband and her best friend had rented. He was supposed to be at a police officers' conference in Portsmouth. Work for the new anti-crime division he would be heading up. Maggie's husband thought she was visiting her sister in Florida.

  "She shot me," Jillian repeated. "Maggie shot me."

  Against her will, her vision blurred with tears again. "And you left me to die on that street corner," she accused him, bitter anger bubbling up inside her.

  "We didn't know what to do." He took another step, his tone still cool. Businesslike.

  Instinctively, Jillian tightened her grip on the curtain rod, lifting it up a little.

  "You were barely breathing. She thought for sure you would die."

  "A physician high on coke, drunk. I'd certainly rely on her medical advice," Jillian bit out.

  "Laura, you don't understand. This got out, Maggie would lose her medical license. I'd lose my badge. The promotion. I've worked my whole life for this promotion. You know how badly I've always wanted to work undercover."

  "You cheated on me with my best friend, let her shoot me, and then you left me for dead, you son of a bitch!"

  In the moonlight she saw him twitch. She saw his face change. She'd pushed a button. Now he was angry.

  "It was all a mistake," he said through clenched teeth. "All a big mistake. Bad luck. No one was supposed to find you so soon. Then they said you would die in surgery. Maggie checked on you. When you came out, they said you wouldn't recover." He rubbed the barrel of the pistol against his pant leg. "You weren't supposed to wake up from the coma, Laurie," he grunted.

  Once she would have flinched at the sound of his raised voice. Maybe even cowered. She didn't know what had happened to her brain in the time she'd been unconscious. Maybe she'd just had some good sense knocked in her. All she knew was that today she was not the woman she had been then.

  "So when I did make that mistake and survive, you couldn't just let me go?"

  "There was too great a chance your memory might come back. Maggie talked to your doctor in Portsmouth. Pretended to have heard about you case, pretended she was treating a similar one. Your physician thought your memory might return, and we couldn't have that. Not after we left you like that."

  "So you followed me here? You've been watching me all these weeks?"

  He shook his head. "We went back to Atlanta. We had to. And when you woke up with the amnesia, I got Maggie to file the missing persons report. I couldn't let anyone know I knew where you were."

  "Because you would lose your big promotion," she said with biting sarcasm. "How'd you find me?"

  "The kid who called. I couldn't believe my luck. I just happened to pick up the phone in the bullpen."

  Her gaze fell to the pistol again. "And now you're here to finish me off? Clean up your mistakes? Your bad luck?"

  He took another step toward her, and as he moved, she caught the flash of a knife blade in his other hand.

  Suddenly afraid again, she looked up at him.

  "The serial killer," he said quietly. He was calm again. Confident again. "Another stroke of luck. This one good. At least for us. All those poor girls with those slit wrists. And now one more."

  "Guess you are a lucky man," she murmured.

  That was when she realized he wasn't going to kill her without a fight. She was done with the shame of his abuse. The shame of the divorce. The guilt that what he said was true, that her dedication to her career had gotten in the way of the marriage.

  "Laurie, honey," he said. It was that pleading voice she knew too well. The voice that made her think it was her fault he had hit her. Her fault they couldn't have children. Her fault he had been forced into affairs with other women. The voice he used when he was trying to make amends. Convincing her not to go to the police and turn him in.

  "Don't you Laurie, honey me!" Jillian lunged forward and swung the heavy curtain rod around with surprising nimbleness.

  Taking him by complete surprise with her offensive move, she struck Michael hard in the side, knocking the knife out of his hand.

  He sprang sideways, grunting angrily. Cursing. He was pissed that she was going to make this difficult for him.

  Jillian swung again. Higher this time, even harder, and struck him with such force in the side of the head that she thought she heard his jawbone crack.

  Michael growled as he threw his bulky, iron-pumped body into hers, knocking the curtain rod from her hand. He slammed her head against the kitchen wall, rattling her teeth.

  Jillian screamed. She knew no one could hear her. She screamed anyway and not so much out of fear as anger. All these years she'd let him hurt her. Not just physically, but emotionally. He'd taken from her her self-confidence, her positive attitude, her belief that the world was a good place. He'd stolen from her the concept that her life could have meaning.

  Jillian fought wildly. She fought for the person she had been who couldn't fight back. For the person she was now. She had too much to live for to let this sick son of a bitch kill her.

  She wrenched one hand free and balled it into a fist remembering her self-defense classes. She threw it upward, knocking him in the chin, and then dragged her fingernails down his face, clawing his flesh.

  Michael cursed in pain as he tried to turn his face away, yet still held her against the wall, still hung on to the pistol.

  Jillian panted to try to catch her breath. She was dizzy. Disoriented. The weight of his body against hers against the wall was crushing her. She felt him lift his hand. Felt the cold barrel of the pistol catch on the hem of Ty's T-shirt. Brush her bare thigh.

  He was going to shoot her. It wouldn't look like the serial killer had done it, but she'd be just as dead. And Michael would be on his way home to Atlanta and Maggie. No one would ever know what had happened to Dr. Laura Simpson.

  Not if she could help it.

  Jillian jerked her knee upward and at the same time threw her head forward and swung her free hand, attempting to knock the pistol out of his hand.

  The sound of the gun wasn't loud. Just a pop, really.

  * * *

  The gunshot startled the Bloodsucker and he let go of Ty's unconscious body, dropping him into the weedy, empty lot behind the cottage. He looked back toward the source of the sound.

  What was going in inside the cottage? That had sounded like a gunshot. Had Jillian committed suicide?

  All that wasted blood, he thought, horrified by the possibility. All that strength spilled onto the floor. Wasted.

  A dog barked on the street, and he jumped in his skin. Suddenly he was afraid. Fear had no place here. People who were afraid made mistakes. There could be no mistakes.

  The Bloodsucker thought he heard a shout. From the street? The beach?

  He looked down at Ty, lying unconscious in the spiky grass. Dark clouds had drifted across the full moon. He could barely see the young man's face and the blood matted in his hair. He would sleep a while. The Bloodsucker had used a little of the chloroform, just for good measure.

  He glanced at his car pulled up to the curb. Contemplated finishing his task. At least he would have Ty.

  Then he heard the voice again. Footsteps pounding on the pavement. Coming from the condos on the other side of the street, toward the cottage. Toward him. Someone else had heard the gunshot, too.

  The Bloodsucker ran for the driver's-side door. Jumped in. He started the car, shifted into gear, and sped down the street, headlights off, leaving Ty Addison unconscious in the weeds and sand behind the cottage.

  Chapter 16

  The sound of the gunshot wasn't what Jillian expected. It was almost anticlimactic after the viol
ent struggle.

  Again, time seemed to lag. Almost stand still.

  She felt the warm blood run down her leg. Smelled it. She vaguely thought of the OR. The bright lights. The music piped in. She liked to listen to Jimmy Buffett when she did surgery, and her favorite assist team hated his music. She saw herself in scrubs. Felt the weight of the scalpel in her hand. But she wasn't in the OR right now, and Dr. Laura Simpson seemed like another person she only vaguely knew.

  Dazed, still pressed against the wall by Michael's weight, Jillian looked down at the floor. Blood pooled on the old boards in a patch of moonlight. Dark. Congealing.

  She felt no pain. Not yet. Not like at the condo when Maggie shot her in the neck and there had been blinding, searing pain. She just felt the dead weight of Michael's body against hers and smelled his musky cologne.

  Michael.

  She looked into his large, round, frightened brown eyes and realized that he had been shot not her. She pushed against his chest and he swayed; his knees buckled.

  She watched him fall. Watched him reach out to her.

  The pistol hit the wooden floor. Skidded away. Under the table? The couch?

  She stared at Michael at her feet. The pool of blood in the moonlight was growing bigger by the second. It was amazing how much blood a man could lose before he became unconscious.

  Michael must have hit a main artery when he accidentally shot himself. Her gaze swept his body. One leg of his camo pants was shaded a differently color. His leg. Thigh. That was the source of the blood. He had apparently hit his femoral artery.

  "Help me," he whispered, his voice rough. He sounded scared.

  Jillian didn't think she had ever seen Michael afraid.

  He'd be dead in a matter of minutes, she thought matter-of-factly. Blood loss. There would be nothing anyone could do for him in the ER by the time the ambulance got him. Transported him. Started the transfusions.

  He deserved it, she thought.

  But then Jillian... Laura... remembered her Hippocratic oath. The promise she had made years ago. The responsibility she had accepted when she became a physician.

  She could save this man who had beaten her, abused her emotionally. Cheated on her. Lied to her. Let his girlfriend shoot her.

  Jillian reached behind her and flipped on the hall light. The living room lamp. She took her time, walking to the kitchen counter. She opened a drawer and pulled out a handful of old flowered dishtowels. As she walked back toward Michael, she heard a dog barking. She heard a man shout.

  Someone else must have heard the gunshot.

  She stepped over Michael's prone body, squatted, and pressed the pile of towels to his thigh where blood was gushing out. She grabbed his hand and moved it over the pile of towels turning red with blood. "Hold that."

  Michael muttered something. He was slipping into unconsciousness.

  She got to her feet. Went down the hall. She picked up her new white leather belt. Walked back down the hall realizing she had stepped in the blood and left footprints with her bare feet. She'd have to buy a mop for sure now.

  Jillian crouched over Michael and made the tourniquet. She was just tightening the belt to put pressure on the femoral artery when someone pounded on the door frame. A young man she recognized from the new beach condos across the street from the cottage opened the screen door and stuck his head through the open door.

  "You all right?" he called.

  "I need an ambulance," she said. "There's no phone here."

  He took one look at Jillian drenched in blood, at Michael on the floor, and ran. "I'll call from my place," he shouted.

  She gave the tourniquet another yank.

  Michael grunted.

  "Take your time," she told the kid who had already gone for help. "He'll live." She met Michael's gaze and smirked. "He'll be as good as new by the time he and Maggie go to trial."

  * * *

  "You sure you don't want me to stay another day or two?" Ty asked. "I don't mind. I'm already registered for classes. No one will even notice if I show up a couple of days late."

  He and Jillian were sitting on rail of the front porch of the cottage each sipping a beer. She could tell it had been a hot day because even though the sun was beginning to set, she could still see the waves of heat rising off the sand on the beach over the dunes.

  Jillian had spent most of her day in air conditioning. After her neighbor called 911 and the ambulances and police cars arrived, she was transported to the hospital to get checked. When an officer found Ty in the backyard of the cottage, just coming to, he'd been transported there, as well. It was after four in the morning before they left together, him with seven stitches in his "dome," as he called it, her with a clean bill of health. They went directly to the police station and talked with Claire for hours.

  Jillian told the police chief exactly how things had unfolded that night in the cottage. As implausible as it all sounded, Claire seemed to believe every word. Claire spoke to Michael's precinct captain in Atlanta and confirmed both his and Jillian's identity and got the full story of her alleged disappearance.

  Apparently, when Maggie and Michael returned to Georgia and discovered Laura might live, she filed a missing persons report. When he was questioned, he said Laura had decided on the spur of the moment to drive to her parents' place in Florida. Because he had filed for divorce and was moving out, and the couple weren't getting along well, he said he didn't check to be sure she had arrived safely in Florida. It was only more than a week later when her office called saying she'd not returned to work after suddenly taking the week off, that he said he became worried.

  Though Michael had gone to surgery and was unable to be interviewed yet, by noon, between what Jillian knew and what the Atlanta police had to say, Claire had put the whole shocking story together.

  After dumping Jillian's body, Michael must have hidden her car, run it into a lake or something, and then he and Maggie—Dr. Margaret DiStefano—returned to Atlanta as if nothing had happened. When they later discovered through Maggie's inquiries that Jillian had been found alive and taken to the Portsmouth hospital, they went on with the farce that Dr. Laura Simpson had gone missing while traveling to her parents' house in Florida. Michael hadn't known where his wife went after being released from the hospital until Ty accidentally spoke with him while trying to find Jillian's true identity.

  Michael had apparently taken a few days off immediately to drive to Delaware and finish the job he had started to cover his and his lover's tracks. And almost succeeded.

  Jillian tilted the green bottle back, enjoying the slightly bitter, cold taste of the beer Ty had brought with him. "Your parents are right. You should go home and have dinner with them and head north in the morning," she told him. "My sister will be arriving from California late tonight, and we're going to drive back to Virginia together to return the car to the Amnesia Society and see Angel. Then I think we'll fly down to visit with Mom and Dad before I go back to Atlanta to testify. Michael should be able to be transported by then."

  "Then what?" Ty asked.

  She lifted her shoulder, imitating one of his carefree shrugs. "I'm on a leave of absence at the hospital in Atlanta right now, but I pretty sure I won't go back into practice there. Mom and Dad want me to come to Florida. Lynn thinks I should join her and her family in Napa Valley. I don't know what I want to do yet. Maybe neither."

  He nodded. "You should take your time. Go to both places once the crap in Atlanta is over. Decide where you like it better."

  "Well, Mom and Dad don't live far from the beach." She brushed some sand of her calf. "I think I'd like to live on the beach." She gazed out over the ribbons of dark clouds hanging over the ocean's horizon. "At least near it."

  "Florida's cool. I could come see you spring break. Bring my surfboard. I never did get a chance to teach you how to surf."

  She turned to him. "I'd like that."

  He tipped his bottle, finished off the beer, and set it on the rail. "Guess I better h
it the road. Mom and Dad want to follow me up on my bike." He rolled his eyes. "Like a few lousy stitches are going to bother me?"

  She laughed. They still weren't sure why Michael had attacked Ty coming out of her cottage, but it would be a while before they knew because he had refused to speak without his attorney present.

  Jillian smiled, sad and happy at the same time. She hated to see Ty go, but she was so thankful for the time they had spent together. Thirteen years her junior or not, he'd been her lifeline for a month. But from the day they'd met, she'd known they were only passing through each other's lives.

  Ty leaned over and kissed her. "See ya."

  "See ya," she breathed, keeping her eyes closed for a moment.

  He jumped down off the railing into the sand and turned to go.

  "Ty," she called.

  He spun around. "Yeah?"

  She held up his sunglasses.

  He slid them on. Then he raised his hand in a peace sign. "No worries."

  Afraid she might cry, Jillian didn't say anything. She just lifted her hand, copying his motion. She watched him disappear around the corner of the old cottage. Then taking a deep breath of the salty ocean air, she smiled, jumped down off the rail, and took the first eager step into her new life.

  * * *

  The Bloodsucker squirted ketchup on his cheeseburger, then all over his basket of fries. He glanced up as he returned the plastic bottle to its place beside the napkin dispenser.

  The diner was busy this evening; he'd had to wait until the booth here in the back was vacated by a bunch of people from the hospital. They'd invited him to join them, but he'd politely declined. He had a book with him, just so no one would think it was odd that he was here alone.

  The Bloodsucker took a bite of his burger. Everyone in the diner was buzzing with the news. As he chewed, he listened to them speaking Jillian's name, calling her Dr. Simpson now, as if they had known her their whole lives, instead of a month. Everyone was talking about her and the incredible story that had unfolded in Albany Beach the day before, bringing the small town to national attention once again. She was gone now. His Jillian. Gone for good. He had accepted that. He had lost his chance.