But he’d have to worry about that later. Now he needed to concentrate on Skye and her son. “Have you learned anything while in Boston?”
Skye slid behind the wheel and slammed the door closed. A quick glance his way revealed a gaze filled with sudden anger and determination. “I have a name. Ferguson.”
“Have you located him yet?”
She turned on the rental car. A blast of hot air rushed from the vents until the air conditioner kicked in. “I’ve tried the white pages and went through every Ferguson. At this point, no address and I’ve found out very little about him.”
“There’s Miltronics. It’s possible he might have worked there.”
“He did years ago. He’s not on any of the rosters now. Trying to talk to someone at the company about him has been fruitless. It’s worse than hitting a brick wall.” She pulled onto the street, her hands fastened tightly around the wheel. “But right now, I need to follow up on visiting someone I haven’t seen since I left Boston.”
“And that is?” Frowning, he glanced over at the delicate curve of her cheek, the straight line of her nose, the smooth, sheen of her chestnut hair. All soft and feminine except for her hard, inflexible jaw.
“I—” A muscle ticked along the ridge of that jaw. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
Because of her obvious discomfort, David decided not to pursue the topic. Plus, he found out quickly enough. Less than an hour later, she pulled into the parking lot of a two-story building. The moment they stepped through the entrance to the bottom floor, the astringent scents of a dental office battered his senses.
“I don’t get it,” he muttered as they walked down an empty hallway.
“The building mainly consists of dentist’s and doctor’s offices. I’m here to see Dr. Schrimager. She’s a psychiatrist I was seeing for several months.” She sent him a sideways glanced and laughed wryly. “I haven’t gone over the bend. Not yet.”
“I didn’t say a thing.”
“You didn’t have to.” Her voice echoed in the stairwell as she led them up a flight of stairs.
“Okay.” He caught her elbow when they stepped into the hallway on the second floor. When she drew to a stop, he dropped his hand to his side. “I need to understand. What has this to do with your son or anything else?”
“My past. That creature showing up in my head whenever I try to delve into my childhood is too bizarre to be normal. I need to find out more, and the only way I can think to do that is through hypnosis. Years before I was forced to be evaluated by the doctor, but now I need to see her.”
“You’re talking about being forced because of your divorce, right?”
~~*~~
Skye met David’s fierce expression and folded her arms tightly across her middle. The divorce still filled her with a kaleidoscope of insecurities, and she detested how it left her feeling vulnerable and fragile. So many times she’d told herself she wasn’t a failure, but even so, the breakup of her marriage always left her wondering.
She pressed her back against the wall, glanced down both sides of the dark green carpeted hallway. To her right, a door opened, and a boy and woman stepped from one of the offices and walked toward them. Skye nodded at both and silently watched them turn and disappear down the stairwell. When their steps faded and no one else appeared in the hall, she turned back to David and said in a hushed voice. “My divorce was nasty. Jay wanted sole custody, and no amount of pleading or pressure would change his mind. After the kidnapping attempt on Tyler, he told everyone lies that I’d grown paranoid, a danger to my own child. I was forced to have a psychological evaluation because of him. The doctor was also a hypnotist. Through her, I stumbled on sections of my childhood that I had no clue existed, and I continued to see her after the divorce became final.”
David shook his head, sympathy softening his brown eyes. “How did you get custody of Tyler? Did your ex change his mind?”
She smiled but couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice. “More like I changed it for him. You see, during the custody battle between us, I found out what I’d suspected for almost an entire year. Jay was skimming off the drug busts and selling on the side. His mistake was that he started using. It made him sloppy.” She cupped her throat with one hand and continued to press her other one against her stomach. “I turned him into internal affairs. He lost his job and his friends because of me.”
“But it got you Tyler.”
A hot tear escaped from her eye. “Until I lost him.”
David closed the distance between them, leaned down and kissed the tear that had stilled on her cheek. “We’ll find him. Faith. Hold onto it.”
“I’m trying. You have no idea, but I wonder...” She inhaled sharply as anguish pounded inside her chest. “You see, this Ferguson—or whoever—wants Tyler really bad. So bad that they paid my ex to fight for custody. Jay planned on selling Tyler to them if he won.”
“Jesus, Skye!” He pulled her hand from around her throat and pressed it against his chest, twining his fingers between hers. “He’s mad. I can’t imagine. I’m sorry.”
She closed her eyes as he kissed her brow and continued to cup her hand with his. David’s sympathy and warmth threatened to pull her deeper into a maelstrom of pain. Her fingers tightened around his.
David’s undeniable support made Skye realized she didn’t have to be completely self-sufficient and suspicious of everyone’s motives. She might just be able to trust David, even lean on him if she allowed herself that opportunity. As she stood inches from his tall, athletic frame and stared at the strong column of his throat, she found the idea shocking and a bit frightening. When was the last time she’d counted on someone other than herself?
She didn’t know of one.
Taking in a shaking sigh, she met David’s gaze and quickly tugged her hand from his and slid along the side of the wall and away from him. She found his gaze both reassuring and disconcerting. She didn’t want to admire him or his desire to do the right thing, because then she didn’t have to fight her feelings toward him.
“Yes, well...” Skye cleared her throat, forcing her thoughts toward a different topic. “I called earlier to make an appointment but couldn’t get hold of anyone, so I thought I’d come by in person. I need to find out if she’ll see me today. I’m desperate. I know the key to all this is locked inside my head. When I uncover the past, I’ll find Tyler. I just know it.”
She pivoted and walked down the hall toward Dr. Schrimager’s office and heard David’s heavier tread on the carpet following her. When she stopped in front of the doctor’s office, Skye frowned. Beside the door, darkness hugged the other side of the smoky, glass paneled window.
“It’s not lunch time,” David murmured from beside her as he jiggled the knob on the locked door.
“I don’t know why she’s not here.” Skye peered into the window, which didn’t make a bit of difference when it came to seeing inside the waiting room. And of course, the tears she blinked back weren’t helping her see clearly either. “That’s really odd. From what I know of her, she’s never been one to miss work.”
“A day off?” David tried the door one last time. “It says nine to five, and it’s two now.”
“No. She works pretty much like everyone else in the building. Monday through Friday.”
“Here. I’ll ask a neighboring office.”
She followed David across the hall and one door down to a dentist’s office. An elderly man and middle-aged woman waited in green, metal framed chairs lining one wall. A television in the corner murmured about the historical wonders of Egypt.
From beyond a large rectangular cutout in the wall, a receptionist glanced up from behind a beige speckled counter. The woman, half-glasses precariously balanced on the end of her nose, rolled her chair away from the computer screen and nodded to the clipboard. “Please sign in.”
“We don’t have an appointment,” David said, his hand on the small of Skye’s back.
With a smile, the rec
eptionist waited expectantly, her frosted hair gleaming beneath the fluorescent light.
Skye stepped up to the counter. “Do you know why Dr. Schrimager’s office is closed? I tried calling yesterday and just got her answering machine. There’s usually a receptionist that takes her calls. And today doesn’t look any different. The place is closed up.”
Something flickered behind the woman’s eyes and her smile faltered. “I’m sorry, but were you a patient?”
“Yes.”
The woman glanced beyond Skye’s shoulder to the other occupants and lowered her voice. “She passed away.”
Skye stiffened with shock. “When?”
“Three weeks now.”
Sorrow clogged Skye’s throat. “I had no idea she was ill. Did she... Was it an accident?”
The receptionist’s polite expression tightened, and she shut her mouth into a grim line. After a brief moment, she opened her mouth, then closed it again as if struggling with an appropriate answer.
From behind the receptionist, another woman in her early twenties with large, blue eyes and a pierced nose, stepped away from the copier and walked up to the counter. She crouched down beside the receptionist and insisted in a harsh whisper, “Tell her.”
“Marie, that’s enough. We’ll get in trouble.”
The younger woman shook her head. She stared back at Skye with avid eyes, leaned across the counter and said in a hushed whisper, “They’re saying she was murdered.”
Chapter 22
“Dr. Schrimager up and disappeared. Just like that.” Face growing as animated as the younger woman, the receptionist must have changed her mind when it came to keeping silent. She snapped her fingers and said in a loud whisper, “Her car is gone, her purse. But everything in her house is the same. I’ve heard people say she ran off with some guy, but her staff didn’t see her with anyone.
“From what I understand the doctor’s anal when it comes to schedules and day to day things. So what other conclusion can you reach?” The receptionist inched even closer and lowered her voice. “She’s got to have been murdered.”
Murdered.
Skye backed away from the counter and the woman’s words, nausea swirling in her belly. “You must be mistaken.”
Beside the receptionist, the girl with the pierced nose shook her head. “Oh, no. The police were here even asking questions.”
Skye didn’t want to believe them, but the earnest look stamped across both women’s faces was undeniable. She blinked back the sting of tears as David cupped the small of her back.
“There’s another psychiatrist on the first floor.” The receptionist nodded toward the office’s entrance. “He’s taking a lot of her old patients.”
“No thanks,” David answered for Skye. His arm swept around her waist and somehow kept her from collapsing to the floor. “I think we’ll pass.”
David led her quickly from the office. Once in the hall, Skye sank back against the wall a few feet away from the dentist’s entrance, battling another wave of nausea that bubbled up her throat.
“We need to get you out of here,” David insisted in a voice thick with concern as he swept a tendril of hair from her brow. The warmth of his hand penetrated her clammy skin.
“Not yet.” She pressed her arms against her stomach and grappled for calm. Other than her ex-husband, Dr. Schrimager was the only other person who knew about the attempted kidnappings on Tyler. The woman had delved into Skye’s past—a past somehow entwined with the present. She knew the woman would be alive now if Skye had avoided the doctor after the initial custody evaluation. “I killed her.”
“Skye, don’t even think that way.” David’s voice sharpened. “You’re jumping to conclusions. They haven’t found a body. There could be any number of other reasons why she hasn’t shown up, so don’t start blaming yourself.”
“Don’t worry.” She grabbed David’s upper arm and didn’t know whether to push him away or bury herself in his arms. The sympathy and kindness in his brown eyes threatened to crush the last of her control she so desperately desired. “I’m not going to add more guilt to what I already have.”
“You don’t know if her disappearance had anything to do with you. If for some reason the woman does turn up murdered, it could be a completely random act,” David insisted as he searched her face with dark, solemn eyes.
“It’s too much of a coincidence, David. You know it. I know it.” Her grip tightened on his arm. “They must be frightened of what I might have told her. I know she recorded our conversations.”
“Say that you’re right—what could you possibly have told her that was worth killing for? And how could that be tied to Tyler?”
“I don’t know!” She released David’s arm and ground the heel of her hand into her temple as tears of frustration spilled over her lashes. Helplessness gnawed through her insides.
Tyler.
Skye’s control splintered even more. Her child was out there with some sick pig. Just to feel his small arms around her neck, the soft, supple touch of his cheek against hers, to see those big, brown eyes sparkle with mischief.
God, without her son, she felt like a husk, empty, brittle, lifeless.
A woman stepped from the dentist’s office. The door snapped closed after her as she passed the two of them. Skye wiped at the tears tracking down her cheeks, hating how she was falling apart in full view of David and complete strangers.
Abruptly, she pushed off the wall. “I need to use the restroom.”
She fled the hall and David and turned left into a small alcove. The pain squeezing around her chest threatened to cut off her breath as she scrubbed her damp cheeks with the back of one hand. The door to the woman’s bathroom stood open, and Skye stepped around a yellow plastic triangle propped up in the middle of the entrance warning of a wet floor.
Overhead lights glared off the wall of mirrors, which revealed white walls and two empty stalls in dull, ugly gray. After Skye quickly used one of the toilets, she stepped up beside an elderly woman with silver hair and faded skin brushing her teeth.
As Skye washed her hands, the scent of the woman’s toothpaste assailed her senses. Peppermint.
The smell drove a wave of anxiety through her body. Peppermint. That smell. She hated it, couldn’t rid herself of the odor as it clung to her nose. She forced the air in and out of her lungs, struggling to appear normal as the woman slipped the toothpaste in her purse and stepped from the room. Once the woman’s footsteps faded to silence, Skye grabbed onto the black and white speckled counter as her vision fogged around the edges. The cloying scent stung her lungs.
The image of the lizard snapped into her thoughts. Oh, God. Not that. She clutched the counter tighter, floundering under vicious, yellow eyes. Incisors. Huge. White. Razor-sharp. Mentally, she lurched past the image into memories she thought deeply secreted inside her head.
A picture flared in her mind’s eye. Her hands gripped the arms of a chair from her past. Metal clamps kept her wrists tied to the leather. A person stood to her right and along her peripheral vision.
She didn’t dare look. She couldn’t. Because if she did... No. Their presence filled her with terror. But it didn’t matter. She couldn’t stop the person’s silhouette from edging closer. A man in a white lab coat stepped from the shadows. His face appeared as he leaned over with a needle in one hand. His teeth flashed, and his breath washed over her.
Peppermint.
Brown hair mixed with gray. His face, elongated nose and sharp, brown eyes sent shivers of dread crawling across her spine. He was from her childhood nightmares. The man in shadows.
Then the needle slipped into her skin as she lay tied to the chair. A hospital gown covered her body, but her legs lay naked, exposed and in stirrups. A diamond glittered beneath the light from her finger. An engagement ring hugged her wedding band.
She didn’t understand. It didn’t make sense. She wasn’t a child but a woman, married to Jay.
Skye’s breath hitched against he
r throat as she twisted her arms, vainly jerking her wrists against the metal clamps. Whimpering, she turned her head to the side as her childhood nightmare placed the syringe on a metal table beside her and picked up what looked like a turkey baster.
Oh, God, what did it mean? The stirrups. The man. Oh, God. No.
Vision darkening, Skye dropped to her knees. Then nothing.
~~*~~
Two hours later, after disabling the house’s main alarm system and phone and retrieving Ferguson’s cell phone, Peter hadn’t yet found the little fuck, but he wasn’t giving up, only taking a break to get some answers from Ferguson. The kid was somewhere on the property or inside the house, holed up and silent. If the boy had pissed his pants in fear, Peter hadn’t been able to smell the stench in any of the rooms.
With the electricity back on and the air conditioning humming, Peter now stood over Ferguson. When he’d discovered the bastard passed out on the top of the stairs to the kitchen earlier, Peter had dragged him into the two-way mirrored room and tied him in the dentist-like chair. Just as Peter taped the bastard’s mouth shut with the roll of silver duct tape he’d used on the kid, Ferguson came to.
Blinking, the other man turned his head against the backrest and looked around. Then realization and panic flared in the other man’s eyes as he twisted beneath the metal bands clamped around his wrists and ankles. The tape muffled the words spewing from Ferguson’s mouth. The old man probably never thought he’d end up being the experiment, but life was ironic. Always had been.
As much as Peter would love to keep Ferguson’s mouth shut, he knew he wouldn’t get any intelligible answers. With a sigh of resignation, Peter dug a finger beneath a corner of the duct tape and ripped it off.
A cry sprang past the man’s lips. Peter suspected he’d hear more of the same in the next half hour.
Identity--A Tale of Murder, Mystery and Romance Page 20
