Sleight of Hand

by CJ Lyons

  "She's an angel," she whispered, her voice suddenly sounding like a child's. She looked up at him in surprise, her fingers touching her lips. "Sorry," she continued in her normal voice. "That was all my Dad ever said about her. He couldn't talk about her, it made him cry. But Rosa told me the story."

  "What happened?"

  "My mom died right after I was born."

  "I'm sorry." He took her hand and wove his fingers between hers.

  "She did it for me. When she was pregnant she found a swollen gland on her neck. It was lymphoma and had already begun to spread. But she refused to have any treatment that could hurt her baby, and she refused an abortion. The doctors told her that she'd never survive the pregnancy and that I never would either."

  "Wow. How do you feel–I mean, knowing–"

  "That I killed my mother, literally, just by existing? How do you ever repay a gift like that?"

  He put his arm around her. "I'd say you've made a pretty good start. I think your mom would be really proud of her daughter, and the person she's become."

  She looked down into the fireplace, silent, and he knew that it would take more than words for her to believe that. Hart had to prove it to herself, everyday. Finally Drake could understand some of that passion that drove her so hard.

  "This is Rosa, right?" His hand moved to a sepia toned print of a man in an English naval uniform and a woman with bright eyes and untamed dark hair.

  "That's her." Now she was smiling again. "And my grandfather, Padraic Hart. He came from Ireland."

  She'd once told him how Rosa had risked her life for Padraic, given up everything to be with him. He turned her to face him, tracing his fingers over her face, loving the faint hint of Alizarian crimson that colored her cheeks, the way she trembled ever so slightly beneath his touch, as if she were afraid to break a spell.

  God, he had missed her so much, he'd been such a fool to have let so much time go by. What if he'd lost her this morning?

  He shook the thought away and focused on Hart. "No more ghost stories," he told her, leaning down to plant a gentle kiss on her forehead. "I want to see upstairs." He raised her hand and kissed it. "Take me to your bedroom."

  <><><>

  Cassie led him up the steps. Her face burnt with pleasure, embarrassment and sudden shyness. She'd never brought a man here, not to this house, to the bed she'd inherited from Rosa, the bed carved by Padraic's hands. What would Rosa think?

  She suppressed a giggle and clasped Drake's hand tighter as her grandmother's voice came to her: Never pass up an opportunity for good old fashioned fun, girl. The kind where no one gets hurt and everyone's still friends in the morning. Why else would God have made so many men, when just a few could have gotten the job done?

  She stopped on the landing and turned to Drake in the dim light. His hand rested on her hip, snugging her close. It felt so right, his warmth and strength beside her in this house. Like it was meant to be. All the pain they'd both been through, it had somehow led here. Led home. But her home had never felt this full of life. Drake's presence had banished the ghosts of the past.

  She smiled up at him, suffused with a feeling of perfect contentment. Together they moved into her bedroom.

  The air was softly diffused by the morning breeze, almost as if it came from a perfume atomizer. A rosy glow from the early morning sun shifted as the shadows cast by the lace curtains moved. The room was chilly, she'd left the windows open all night, but it didn't feel cold. Not with Drake beside her.

  He turned her within the embrace of his arms. Cassie circled her hands around his neck and stood up onto tiptoe, pulling his head to meet hers. The kiss was soft, a gentle symphony of tastes and perfumes, spiced by an undercurrent of desire. They moved slowly as if they had all the time in the world to explore, to pleasure.

  Drake's fingers skimmed over her flesh in a delicate caress as he slid her shirt from her shoulders. There was no lacey push up bra this time, she thought with amusement, but they didn't need it, she could feel that he was already aroused.

  Cassie stepped away from his clever hands and shrugged out of her bra. He looked down on her, watching as she shed her jeans, his mouth open like a schoolboy looking through the window of a candy store, knowing that the dollar in his pocket could buy him anything he wanted. Naked before him, Cassie raised his hand, placing it over her heart, holding it there, feeling their pulses synchronize into one steady rhythm. Then his hands and his mouth were on her, moving over her until she shivered with delight.

  He lowered her onto the bed, and she sank into the rich silks and velvets of Roas's quilt, floating in dreamy contentment. He stripped free from his clothes and joined her on the bed. She ran her fingers over his scars–the surgical incision that ran the length of his abdomen, the more ragged, stellate shapes of the entrance and exit wounds, the tiny puckers where the doctors had inserted tubes and drains. He didn't flinch from her touch as he lay beside her. Cassie leaned over him, kissing each one, delicately caressing them with her tongue, savoring each as proof that he was alive. She finished lying on top of him, her finger tracing the v-shaped scar on his chin.

  "This is the one that has me curious," she murmured, flicking her tongue over the smooth pucker of skin nestled below the stubble of his beard. He hadn't shaved in two days, and the growth was long enough to tickle and itch as she rubbed her face against it.

  "Long story," he said, his fingers traveling the length of her spine, tantalizing her.

  "We've time," she assured him.

  He looked up at her, his eyes dark with emotion. "I've got better ideas of what to do with the time," he said with a lopsided grin. He flipped her over so that he was now astride her, and she laughed.

  His face lowered to her breast and his hands began their movement once more. Her laugh was choked by a gasp of pleasure. She danced her fingers down to the sensitive area at the base of his spine and was rewarded with a shiver from him. Their bodies began to shine with sweat that glistened in the early morning light.

  Drake continued to move slowly, tantalizing her with his tango of passion, arousing and rewarding simultaneously until Cassie felt herself thrumming with pleasure. She felt need but no urgency, trusting that he wouldn't disappoint.

  Relaxed, surrendering all control, her only responsibility now was to enjoy the ecstasy that he so painstakingly built in her. And that was more than enough, she thought as a languid warmth spread through her body. She curled her fingers in his hair, pulling his face to meet hers, their eyes locking, their bodies moving in perfect and absolute synchrony.

  Together they rode the wave, higher than ever before and in the end when the final cry of release came, they sounded it together, with one voice.

  It was some time later before Cassie could speak. Her body was floating on an ocean of rich velvet, her mind drifting in a similarly warm place. Her eyes were open, but all she could see was the gleam that had filled Drake's before he collapsed into her embrace–sunlight beamed through a prism of sapphire. A color she'd never seen before. She wished she had Drake's talent so that she could render that beautiful glow onto canvas, immortalize it.

  "We have to do that again," she whispered.

  He raised his head from her chest, one eye open, the other squinted shut against the sunlight streaming through the window. "Right," he sighed, rolling off of her and collapsing onto the quilt. "Maybe next millennium when I get my strength back." He tangled his hand in her hair, gently pulling her head to rest on his shoulder. "That was pretty nice," he conceded.

  Cassie lifted up on one arm to look down on him. "Nice?" she asked. "That's all you have to say–"

  He opened both eyes now and grinned to let her know he was joking. "It was okay," he continued. "Not one of my best efforts–course if I had the right partner–" The last was smothered by the pillow Cassie buried him under.

  "You know there is a way we could do this more often," he said, moving the pillow aside.

  She tensed, hoping that he wasn't going to as
k her to make a choice they both might regret. Neither had mentioned his declaration of love the other night, and she certainly wasn't going to bring it up. To do so would mean making her own feelings about him clear, and they were anything but.

  What she felt for Drake–she wasn't certain if there were even any words to describe it. Was it love? After Richard, she was no longer sure she could recognize true love.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, waiting for Drake's next words, hoping he wouldn't ask her for a commitment that she couldn't make. Not yet, anyway.

  "You could move some of your things over to my place," he said, and she opened her eyes in relief. "And I could maybe bring a few things here?"

  Cassie smiled. "I'd like that," she told him, her fingers stroking the scar on his chin that intrigued her so much. "I'd like that very much."

  He raised his head to kiss her again and Cassie allowed herself to be pulled into his embrace. She might not be certain if what she felt for Drake was love–the real thing like what Rosa and Padraic and her parents had shared–but she was certain that he was her best chance to find it.

  <><><>

  Virginia measured a length of hair with her fingers before cutting it with the bandage scissors she'd liberated from a medication cart. She probably didn't need to be doing this. The police were so dumb, they had no idea how easy it was to hide in a hospital if you knew what you were doing and had an ounce of brains. There was no way they would catch her, not unless she wanted them too.

  And she didn't, at least not yet, not until she could figure out what had gone wrong. She'd been so careful. Had someone seen her in the PICU? Maybe Tammy Washington hadn't been as sound asleep as she had seemed?

  The baby kicked again, hard enough to make Virginia wince. Stop it, Samantha. You're no better than your brothers, never knowing when to be quiet so that your mother can think.

  In response the baby shifted, this time putting pressure on Virginia's bladder. Virginia sighed, put down the scissors and went into one of the toilet stalls. That was one of the nice things about hospitals, plenty of tiny bathrooms hidden in back hallways. All you had to do was find one, place a out of order sign on the door and it might be weeks before anyone disturbed you.

  Virginia sat there for a few minutes, thinking about her next move. She could run away, start all over again in a new city, but it wouldn't be easy with a new baby and no money. And she couldn't leave Charlie behind–if he lived, they'd find someway to blame everything that had happened to him on her. No, Charlie was going to die. And none of these doctors would be able to stop that. It was just the way things had to be.

  But what was she going to do about Samantha?

  CHAPTER 33

  Cassie held Drake's hand as they climbed the stairs to the ICU. "We could have taken the elevator," she told him as they rounded the second floor landing.

  Drake paused and pulled her close, kissing her deeply. "Can't do that in an elevator."

  She arched an eyebrow. "If you did, I probably wouldn't mind riding in them so much."

  "I'll keep that in mind."

  Cassie tugged at his hand. "C'mon, there's time for that later. I want to see your mom."

  The clatter of feet galloping down the steps above them echoed through the concrete-walled space. As Cassie and Drake rounded the next landing, a woman in surgical scrubs bent her head over the railing from the flight above.

  "If I was you," she called out in a sing-song voice, "I wouldn't waste any time."

  Cassie looked up. Virginia Ulrich, her hair chopped in a haphazard pageboy, grinned at them. The gleam in her eye reminded Cassie of Morris, the crackhead.

  "Not if you want to see your mother alive, Detective Drake."

  Drake dropped Cassie's hand and charged up the steps. "What did you do?"

  Cassie was close on his heels, but Virginia had the lead on them. She fled through the third floor door before they could reach her.

  "She's going after Charlie," Cassie said.

  Drake hesitated, torn between apprehending the fugitive and ensuring his mother's safety.

  "Go," Cassie told him, wrenching open the door to Pediatrics. "I'll get the guard from Charlie's room."

  "Have him call for back up," Drake shouted over his shoulder as he bounded up the steps two at a time.

  Cassie raced through the third floor door, startling the clerk at the nurses' station just beyond. "Did you see her?"

  "See who?" The clerk looked up from his computer screen in surprise.

  "Virginia Ulrich. She came this way." Cassie looked up and down the corridor. No sign of Virginia.

  "I don't know, I'm just covering."

  The security alarm sounded on the computer console. The clerk looked at it and jerked his hands off of the keyboard as if it had electrocuted him. "What the hell?"

  "Call security, have them get a police officer to Charlie Ulrich's room." The clerk looked at her like she was escaped from the psych floor. "Do it, now!"

  Cassie ran down the hallway to the closed door of Room 303. She pushed it open, then froze.

  Inside, Virginia Ulrich was holding a needle and syringe at the port of Charlie's IV. She calmly sat with her son as if she was waiting for Cassie's arrival. Her eyes were wide and her gaze leapt around the room erratically. But the hand that held the syringe, poised to inject whatever poison was in it, remained steady. With her other hand she massaged her gravid belly.

  Charlie was sleeping, peacefully oblivious to the danger or his mother's presence.

  "Come in, Dr. Hart," Virginia said in low tone. "Don't wake the baby."

  "What have you given him?" She tried to keep her voice calm, edging into the room until she was at the foot of Charlie's bed.

  Virginia smiled. She jerked her head at Cassie. "Right there is fine. I believe the camera has a good view of you." She raised her eyes to the ceiling where the video surveillance camera was hidden.

  There were the sounds of running footsteps and a police officer appeared at the open doorway, his gun drawn. Cassie recognized Johnson, Spanos' partner.

  "Step away from the child," he ordered Virginia.

  Virginia's eyes darted to him. "Stay back," she replied calmly, gesturing with the syringe.

  "You okay, doc?" Johnson asked in a low voice, holding his position just outside the room.

  Cassie nodded. "I'm fine."

  He lifted his radio from his belt and took several steps back before speaking into it. Cassie returned her attention to Virginia.

  "Virginia, why don't you come with me? You really don't want to hurt Charlie," she said softly.

  "Of course I don't want to hurt him!" Virginia stroked his hair with her free hand. "I love my son. But you drove me to this–you took him from me! Who will watch over him, guard him if I'm not around? I know you doctors. You'll poke and prod and torture him and what will come of it in the end? He'll die, just like his brother and sister before him."

  "Virginia, Charlie is going to be just fine. As long as you put the syringe down and come with me."

  "No!" she cried out, and Charlie stirred slightly under her hand. "No," she repeated in a lower tone. "I can't let him go through what his brother and sister did. Not without me here to protect him. I'm going to save him from you. You'll never take my son from me!"

  "I'm just trying to help Charlie," Cassie told her. "You didn't really do anything to Muriel Drake, did you?" Keep her talking, she thought. Stall. Maybe she'll let her guard down.

  "Tell them to give me my child back," Virginia instructed Cassie, nodding toward the hidden camera. "Tell them how you had it all wrong, that you were persecuting me–jealous of what I have because your own life is falling apart. Tell them how you almost killed Antwan Washington and how your incompetence has gotten you fired." The woman's voice rose, and her fingers clenched on the syringe. "Do it now!"

  Cassie gritted her teeth, her eyes cutting over to the doorway. Johnson nodded encouragement to her.

  "Don't look at him," Virginia yelled.
"He doesn't know anything–about how you invaded my privacy, made up dirty lies about me, tried to tell Dr. Sterling I was a bad mother. Go on, say it!"

  Cassie took a deep breath and focused her attention on Virginia and the hand holding the syringe. "I was wrong," she said. "Now, give me the syringe. Please, Virginia."

  "That's right," Virginia raised her face to the camera. "The great Dr. Hart was wrong." She glanced over to the doorway as footsteps sounded down the hallway. "Did you all hear that?" she called out to Drake as he skidded to a stop in front of the door. "You're a witness. Your good doctor just admitted her mistake–one of many, I'm sure."

  Drake took a step into the room. "I heard her," he said, locking his gaze with Virginia's. "And it's on tape. So why don't we all leave here, let Charlie get his rest?" He took another step forward.

  "Why don't you just go to hell?" Virginia answered sweetly. "Stop right there, Detective. You're the one who told them to take my boy from me, locked him up down here all alone."

  "I'm sorry," Drake said, spreading his hands wide in apology.

  "You sound so sincere," she scoffed, dismissing him. Virginia turned her smile on Cassie, chilling her to the bone. "You think of yourself as the great healer, the brilliant doctor," she said in a bitter tone. "Well, Dr. Hart, tell me, how much do you value life?"

  "I don't understand what you're asking." She could hear more police and security arrive outside in the hallway, but she kept her eyes focused on Virginia.

  "You'd do anything to save Charlie, wouldn't you?"

  "Of course. So why don't you–"

  "And my unborn child, would you try to save her if she were in trouble?"

  Cassie looked down at Virginia's swollen belly. What was she getting at? Had she done something to hurt her fetus, maybe induce early labor?

  "I would do everything in my power," she replied slowly.

  "And if I were dying, would you try to save me?"

  "Of course I would."