Gone Duck

by L. L. Muir

  No matter what his secrets were.

  She also remembered him saying that he hoped Dorothy Jean wouldn’t remember everything, so she wouldn’t be reminded of Lacrosse’s people—because he’d been one of those people!

  Macey was going to be sick.

  His bedroom door was suddenly repulsive and she stumbled back from it, waiting for her mouth to start watering, to warn her to get to a bucket. Then she thought of Dorothy Jean sleeping so very close to the enemy, and she hustled to the next room to check on her. Beneath a pink plush eye mask, which she was wearing wrong-side out again, the woman snored on, peacefully unaware that the man who had been shuffling them around on a dangerous, world-sized game board was the one who’d chosen her for a game piece.

  Macey stood there and let Dorothy Jean’s light, steady snoring soothe her. It reminded her there was nothing to do at the moment. Nothing to run from that needed running from. And there was no use waking up an old woman just to give her fodder for a new nightmare.

  But would she tell Dorothy Jean in the morning? When the old woman was lucid?

  It certainly wouldn’t help matters, unless to put Dorothy Jean on her guard in case Shawn decided to change sides again. But he wouldn’t do that.

  She tried to calm down, to stop thinking in circles. A few deep breaths, synchronized with the snoring, helped. She looked at the facts. Shawn and Dave had decided to leave WHOSO because they couldn’t be a part of what WHOSO was doing. Whatever had gotten them hired in the first place, whatever they’d done up to that point, didn’t really matter. They wanted out and they took some insurance. And Shawn had gotten Dorothy Jean somewhere safe.

  He’d risked his life to get them both safe.

  So why was she so hurt? Because he didn’t tell her from the start?

  It was like taking a baseball bat to the chest. Like Atticus himself had let her down. Atticus—her fictional, perfect, adult hero in her Keefer Boone series, who was perfect because she had the power to write him that way. He could never let her down, of course. But she had to admit that in the latest book, and in her imagination, Atticus had begun to resemble a certain neighbor of hers.

  That was it. That was where her wires got crossed. She was mixing up Shawn with another man, fictional and perfect, and Shawn was neither. He wasn’t her Atticus in shining armor. He was flesh and blood and human, with a few secret agent tricks up his sleeve, most of which might only consist of staging and makeup.

  And acting.

  She remembered how he’d told Dorothy Jean, straight-faced, that he didn’t know about her daughter, but he’d help her find out—if he could. He’d probably been dying to tell her the truth, but if he had, he might have lost the woman’s trust. And Dorothy Jean Lyman was hard enough to handle when she was cooperative.

  Of course he couldn’t tell her. And if it was only going to cause her pain, he shouldn’t tell her, ever.

  Macey’s chest throbbed again, bruised from the blow of his confession, sore from the added weight of keeping his secret. But she also ached for him. Somehow, he’d been responsible for Dorothy Jean ending up in the WHOSO facility, and it was killing him.

  First thing tomorrow, she decided, she was going to try to ease his burden.

  In the bathroom, she turned on the hot water and tossed a washcloth into the sink, then watched the steam blur her image in the mirror. Her hands stung while she twisted the water from the cloth and held it against her face, steaming away her thoughts, washing the details of the day from her senses. But then Atticus wandered into her head to point out that he was, in fact, separate and distinct from Neighbor Dude.

  Perfect, heroic Atticus…

  Like a truck with no headlights, coming out of the darkness, she felt it hit.

  Her thing.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  When Macey realized what was happening, she quickly took stock of the fact that she was in a safe place and no one depended on her for anything, at least for a while. She only hoped Lacrosse wouldn’t stumble onto them until it was all over.

  And then she simply let it take her.

  She put on her dark wig and called for a concierge to come to her room’s outer door. She unblocked it in time to answer his quiet knock. The kid was happy to take her two hundred dollars and a short list. She paced for an hour until he came back, then she went to work.

  The early morning hours flew by and long before she expected it, Dorothy Jean knocked on the bathroom door.

  “I’m sorry, Dorothy Jean. Can you use one of the other bathrooms this morning?”

  The woman chirped something cheerful through the door that Macey didn’t understand and left her in peace. Ten minutes later, after the old woman got dressed and went out into the dining area to have some breakfast, Macey locked her out and went back to the bathroom.

  Less than half an hour, her roommate tried to come back in. A soft knuckle rapped three times. “Honey? Can you unlock the door?”

  “No!” Macey shouted. “I can’t. I need to be alone today. You and Shawn will have to entertain each other. I just…can’t.”

  A few minutes later, he pounded on the door. “Macey? Unlock the door.” His voice was more sober than it had ever been. Apparently, he’d dropped the pretense. “You’re making Dorothy Jean worry. She doesn’t know that you…do this sometimes. She’s freaking out. I told her you’re fine, but she won’t take my word for it.”

  “I’m not fine,” she whispered to herself. Then she poked her head around the corner and hollered again. “Kiss my ass! Tell her whatever you like.”

  She could hear the old woman giggling on the other side of the wall. Dorothy Jean was a tough old bird. She was going to be okay. And Shawn couldn’t be too worried if he’d been spying on her for half a year. He had to know the drill.

  She turned on the bathroom fan to drown him out. He came around to the door in the hallway and attempted to enter with his key, but she’d already had the lock re-coded, thanks to her mid-night concierge. Shawn tried to talk to her again, so she turned up the volume…on the voices in her head.

  ***

  Macey was exhausted, but she needed to hold her arm up for just a few more seconds. Then she’d be done. There wouldn’t be any space left. She’d have no choice but to stop.

  Almost over.

  Holding onto the towel rack, standing on top of the toilet tank, she turned carefully, searching the printer-papered walls for just a little more writing space. She just had a few more details to jot down, but she couldn’t stand the thought of writing on the back of one of the fluttering sheets of paper currently taped to the walls. She had to have it all in front of her where she could see it. Nothing hidden. Nothing to be forgotten.

  There wasn’t so much as an inch around the black letters. The dark marker had held up well considering its fine tip. Then the blue. No room left there either.

  The green did better than expected, but still not as good as the blue. The red was spotty, like always. She’d had to fill in the gaps with orange. She hadn’t even given the yellow a chance.

  There!

  Half a sheet was empty in the shower. She’d pulled down the curtains earlier to get them out of the way. She didn’t know how she could have missed an entire half of a page.

  But what color was left? The brown in her hand was almost spent, but hopefully it had a few more words left in it. Too bad she wasn’t home, where she had an entire room covered in whiteboard. Plenty of space there. A complete plot could fit if she started high in the corner. But she’d started with too much adrenaline and the bathroom had filled quickly with large lettering. The bedroom was full too. And though she’d been tempted to write directly on the huge vanity mirrors and the mirrors covering the closet doors, she couldn’t leave traces behind. Someone would steal her plot.

  She simply couldn’t allow anyone inside the room until she committed the pages to memory. Another day, tops. Because Cop Dracula had taken her phone, she’d have to take pictures with the disposable cameras for a
backup before burning the pages.

  The euphoria was leaving her body, dripping out of her veins as if her wrists had been cut, pouring out onto the floor, taking the joy of creation with it. And all she’d be left with were the words.

  But at least she’d have the words.

  Her energy was ebbing away too. Her hold slipped on the towel rack. Her skin was too cold for gripping. She had to get down, fast.

  So she did.

  She regretted it, of course, when her head hit the tile floor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “She hasn’t eaten or had water all day. She does that sometimes, when she has a manic episode.”

  Macey woke to voices. And pain.

  It wasn’t the kind of headache that usually followed a fit of creation, though that was there too. This new pain centered on the back of her head like someone had put it there. It was like a small hat of pain.

  “Take it off,” she grumbled to herself. Just take it off.

  “Here she is,” someone crooned. A man. Crooning in her bedroom.

  She opened her eyes. A very handsome man with a healthy head of brown hair smiled at her before he shined a light in her face and peered closely at her left eye.

  “I’m Dr. False,” he said.

  She laughed a little, but it hurt, so she stopped. “Dr. False?”

  “No. Fultz. F-u-l-t-z. I’m a doctor. You hit your head and I’m here to see if you’re all right. Your husband found you on the bathroom floor. Do you know where you are?”

  Again, she was tempted to laugh, but she resisted. “I know I don’t have a husband.”

  Another man laughed. It was Hot Neighbor. “She’s got her sense of humor. That’s a good sign, right?”

  The doctor smiled. “It’s a great sign.” The light was suddenly gone and she clearly saw the fierce look Shawn was giving her over the other man’s shoulder.

  “Where are the kids?” she asked, just to mess with him.

  “Still at the movies.”

  The doctor looked in her other eye and didn’t get excited. “I think she’ll be fine. She’s got a nasty goose egg, but those are good things.”

  She reached behind her and felt the massive lump. “This is a good thing?”

  “Yes.” He chuckled and helped her sit up. “If it swells out, it’s probably not swelling in.”

  “Probably? That’s good enough for you?”

  “Yes.” He patted her hand, then stood and pulled a long card out of his pocket and handed it over to her husband. “Here is a list of things to watch for, just in case. She needs to take it easy for a day, probably.”

  “Probably,” she muttered.

  Shawn frowned at her and led the doctor out. When he came back, she pretended to be asleep.

  “Do you think she’s going to be all right?” Dorothy Jean asked from the doorway.

  “She’ll be fine. Maybe you could stay here while I go clean up that bathroom.”

  “No!” Macey sat up so fast her head tried to explode out the back, and she cried out from the pain. “Shawn Parker, or whatever your name is, if you touch one page, I’ll kill you!”

  Suddenly his big, warm hands were on her cheek and her shoulder, slowly pressing her back.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “That was a mean joke. I knew you weren’t asleep. No one will touch a word. I promise.”

  She took air slowly into her lungs and let it out again. Then someone turned off the lights but left the door open a little. A thin sliver of light lit the corner to her left. She let go of the pain and allowed herself to float away from it, but there was something warm and heavy on her ankle. It was someone’s hand, resting on her…

  Anchoring her.

  ***

  She woke in the night and had to pee. While she was contemplating the patterns in the master bathroom’s floor tiles, reality came back with a vengeance. But instead of dealing with that mess, she decided to go back to the other bathroom and start memorizing the plot to a book she would hopefully still be alive to write.

  Only there was a blockade, and an occupied loveseat, in the way.

  Shawn slept on his back, snoring at the ceiling. But what made her laugh was the pile of pillows lying on top of his crotch.

  He snorted and rolled onto his side. When his hand groped for a pillow and pressed it back against his groin, she laughed again and went back to bed. She could take notes in the morning.

  ***

  It took her two days to memorize what had taken her sixteen manic hours to write. After the first day, when he was sure she was over the mania and showed no sign of depression, Shawn stopped babying her.

  “I read your plot,” he said, over dinner. “But before you get upset, try to remember that I’ve read at least four others on your walls at home, and I haven’t tried to sell any of them on some writer’s black market.”

  “Just how often does she do this?” Dorothy Jean asked, eyeing Macey like she was some unique thing in a zoo.

  “Usually on a full moon,” Shawn answered, tilting his head back and forth like he couldn’t get a handle on her.

  Macey stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes at both of them.

  She hid her surprise that he’d picked up on the moon connection. She’d been writing for ten years before she’d caught onto it herself. And she couldn’t believe she hadn’t paid any attention to the moon phases since they’d “hooked up.” But then again, she’d had plenty to occupy her mind instead.

  “So?” She cut into her chocolate dessert, something she ate a lot of for a few days after her manic writing rants. “You read it. And?”

  He leaned back in his chair and raised both eyebrows. “And I found your theme right away.”

  “Which theme?”

  “Forgiveness. Lots of forgiveness. Does that mean you forgive me, Macey?”

  “What did he do?” Dorothy Jean eyed Shawn like he was now on display at the zoo, but maybe in the reptile section.

  Macey ignored the question. “You’re wrong about the theme.” She wagged her chocolate-smeared fork back and forth. “It’s the end does not justify the means.”

  “Really?” He looked doubtful. “Show me.”

  She rolled her eyes and dug her fork back into the chocolate frosting crusted in nuts. “I already took them down. Sorry.”

  Dorothy Jean opened her mouth to contradict her, but Macey cut her a look that shut her up. The woman giggled into her coffee cup instead.

  Shawn leaned forward and gave her a sober stare. “Are you sure it wasn’t redemption?”

  Dorothy Jean was watching just a little too closely for them to get into it, but Macey didn’t care to see Shawn beating himself up more than he probably had already, just because he worried what she thought. Her opinion shouldn’t have mattered.

  “Yes. I’m sure. But…” She couldn’t resist teasing him a little and took another bite to draw it out. Then she wiped her mouth, folded her napkin, and pushed the cake away. If she ate any more of it, she honestly would hurl. “But you know how things change as I go along. I’m sure there will be…plenty of redemption and vindication by the end.”

  Shawn exhaled audibly through his nose and his body relaxed. She remembered her earlier intentions to ease his mind, and she felt horrible that he’d suffered alone for days. With or without the help of the full moon, she knew the shock of his confession had sent her spiraling inward, away from reality as quickly as she could go. But it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, she had another book plotted, and, setting the goose egg aside, she’d gotten some rest and was better equipped to handle a new batch of stress.

  The table was made of some lovely, red-toned wood and she knocked on it, just in case. Their predicament was much too deadly to invite bad luck.

  “I think I’ll turn in early,” Dorothy Jean announced and pushed her coffee cup and saucer into the center of the table. “Maybe watch some TV. Since my room is back to normal again...” She patted Shawn on the shoulder while she passed behind h
im and gave Macey a wink. “Goodnight, you two.”

  Macey rose and took the dessert dishes to the cart. Shawn checked the peep hole, then wheeled it into the hallway while she called for room service to come take it away. It was their evening routine. They were getting comfortable, but it couldn’t last. He’d warned her comfortable people made mistakes, so they would have to move on as soon as Dorothy Jean was up to it. And Macey was pretty sure the old gal was up to it.

  Shawn came back inside and locked the door as completely as possible. The wad of keys that had come with the cowboy’s truck, he balanced on top of the handle. She waited for him to finish so she could take in one last look at him before saying goodnight.

  He watched Dorothy Jean’s bedroom door while he walked over to her and stood close. “Just so you know,” he said quietly, “I thought I was helping her. I believed she wouldn’t live long and that I was her only hope. I had no idea they’d take her away from her daughter.”

  She lifted her hands and laid them on his chest, wanting to hug him, but too shy to actually do it. “I believe you. It’s okay. You’re not like Lacrosse. I could never—”

  He cut her off with a kiss. His hands rose to either side of her face and he inhaled deeply, consuming her. Then he put his arms around her, pulled her close, and started again. She was slightly dizzy and she realized why it was a such a good idea to be kissed up against a wall, so she wouldn’t float away. With his arms holding her so tightly, however, she would never get far.

  She started morphing into a limp noodle, his lips seducing away all her energy. Give it to me. Give it to me. And she wanted to give it to him. It was late. What did she need energy for?

  Suddenly, his lips were gone. He bent and scooped her into his arms, which had never happened before in her life. Then his lips were back. Just as warm and soft and insistent as before.