Primitive Secrets

by Deborah Turrell Atkinson

  The desk was between them. In the few precious seconds while Storm’s chest heaved reflexively, Wo scurried around the desk. By the time Storm began to wobble to her feet, Wo loomed above.

  This was the harridan who had killed Uncle Miles and Lorraine. Letting this witch triumph would be an anathema. So Storm concentrated every aspect of her fury on the woman above her. She loathed the dank sheen of her hair, the stony pallor of her face. She abhorred the arrogance, the manipulative deception of the woman. This was a killer who hid behind false intellectual authority and aloof superiority.

  Storm couldn’t allow Wo to win. She couldn’t let Wo’s demented insolence steal any more from the people around her. Storm’s world narrowed to a super-focused tunnel of anger. Her blood raced hot and fast. She pulled together anything she’d ever known about fighting. A cop had once told her that women were better off fighting from the floor because a woman’s legs were much stronger than her upper body.

  Jesus, God, please let it be true. If she stood up, she’d be a bigger target for that lethal needle. She rolled to one side and raised the foot with the shoe as if to hold Wo off. And the woman ignored the thick-soled sneaker. She bent over Storm, features frozen in concentration, her breathing labored with her recent exertion. The needle quivered in her grip.

  Storm suspended breathing and waited. She stayed still, poised until the needle was inches from her bare calf, though the skin of her leg crawled with dread.

  Wo aimed her shot. Storm’s eyes nearly crossed with her focus on the glinting stainless steel. Another half inch, nearly grazing her flesh.

  Storm forced herself to exhale and fired the coiled piston of her leg. The bottom of her shoe smashed into the hand holding the syringe. Wo’s face contorted with pain. She grabbed her injured fingers and the syringe tumbled to the floor.

  Storm scooted along the floor so that the syringe was inches from her other foot. For the first time, Wo showed an expression other than condescension. Fear flashed in the rictus of her lips, which hardened into a homicidal grimace. She swung one arm at Storm and reached toward the syringe with the other.

  Storm used a swollen vein on Wo’s forehead as a target. Like a battering ram, her leg slashed out and the shoe connected with the woman’s head. The muddy sole hit with a dull thud and Wo crashed to her rump.

  Storm tried to wobble to her feet, but her right ankle buckled. She stifled a moan of pain and rolled away. The syringe had been knocked farther from Wo’s reach when she fell, but it remained only a few feet from either of them. Storm’s only chance was to get to it first.

  A slurred voice came from the doorway. “You fucked up, Meredith. I wasn’t much in the mood for coffee.”

  Wo swung her head like a viper whose attention was momentarily distracted from its prey.

  “Hamlin, help,” Storm gasped. “Call the police.”

  Hamlin, pale, stared as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “Hamlin, she attacked me,” Wo said. “She wants to keep her beloved uncle’s office, push me out.”

  “Bullshit, Meredith.” Hamlin shook his head as if to clear it. “Get over there and sit down.” He pointed at Hamasaki’s desk chair. “Now.”

  Wo sat where she was. “Hamlin, you never could separate reason from your emotions.”

  Hamlin ignored her. “Storm, are you okay?” He reached down to help her stand up. At the same time, Wo got to her feet and backed slowly toward the chair.

  Hamlin blocked Storm’s view of Wo, but her view of the carpet was unimpeded. The syringe was no longer on the floor.

  “Hamlin,” Storm shouted. “She’s got a drug.”

  Storm watched Hamlin try to focus his eyes. “I know, she put it in my coffee.” His words blurred together.

  From the corner of her eye, Storm saw Wo strike. The rest of the scene seemed to proceed in slow motion. Storm cried out a warning, too late. Hamlin, still confused, reached for the sting in his hip.

  Panicky, Storm shoved Hamlin with all her strength. She had to break his contact with the lethal syringe. Hamlin staggered backward, still holding Storm’s arm, and stumbled against one of Meredith’s boxes. He fell to his knees. Storm, dragged off balance, sat down hard beside him.

  Hamlin looked up, dazed, at Wo, who still held the hypodermic. “Meredith, stop this now. You’re with your colleagues. We can work out whatever—”

  “Shut up,” Wo said. She circled around the two and readjusted the plunger.

  Staggering to her feet, Storm got between Hamlin and Wo and moved with Wo, mirroring her feints. She wanted to scream, to spew the frustration and terror that she felt.

  But that was just what Wo wanted. She loved this. Ever the combatant, she relished seeing Storm’s fear and the impotent rage with which she smoldered. She cherished the sight of Hamlin, vulnerable and failing on the floor, bewildered by her attack. Wo laughed.

  She held up the syringe so that Storm could see that it still had fluid in it. Hamlin was leaning on an arm, one leg out straight, the other tucked beneath him. He opened and closed his mouth from time to time, but made no noise.

  Storm wanted to run to him, prop him up. But she had the feeling that Wo was waiting for her to do just that. So she kept her eyes on Wo, who watched Storm, then Hamlin, then Storm again. The satisfied smirk on Wo’s lips grew. She knew time was on her side. Hamlin was weakening.

  Wo circled and Storm moved with her, still keeping her body between Wo and Hamlin. Wo held the syringe safely out of Storm’s reach, poised for another shot.

  “You don’t have a chance,” Storm whispered to her.

  That made Wo laugh out loud. “Wrong. It’s you who has no chance.”

  “You think the cops won’t figure this out?”

  “It won’t matter.”

  Of course, she would go to Hong Kong. Or China, for that matter. They’d never find her, even if they could get an extradition treaty.

  Wo took a step closer to her and instinctively, Storm backed up. The moment she did, she knew she’d made a mistake. She’d had to go to the side to avoid stepping on Hamlin’s outstretched leg. Now, Wo not only had an opening to Hamlin, Storm was grazing one of Wo’s overfilled boxes with her leg. One more step and she’d be backed against the wall.

  Wo chuckled. “I admire your zest, Storm, but the game’s up.”

  Hamlin rustled beside her, but Storm didn’t dare glance away from her opponent. And she was afraid to look for another reason. Her hopes dropped with each passing second as the drug took effect. Perhaps three minutes had passed since he’d been injected, but it seemed to Storm like three hours. Once he stopped breathing, what could she do to save him?

  Wo watched her face and slightly relaxed. Storm feared that she transmitted every emotion to the woman, and each one fed her sense of impending victory.

  Hamlin moved again. This time, he dropped on his back to the floor and Storm’s heart fell with him. She didn’t dare take her eyes off Wo, but desperate and furious tears sprang to her eyes, nearly obscuring the projectile that flew by her head. Hamlin used the last of his strength. The ceramic cat that had perched on top of one of the boxes caught Wo squarely on the cheekbone.

  Wo shrieked and froze in her circular path. Storm backed one step toward the wall, where Hamasaki’s family portrait hung, and prayed. Wo moved in on Hamlin just as Storm lifted the picture, gratified to feel the weight of glass instead of Plexiglas in the frame. It was damned awkward, but Wo was enjoying her moment of power over the man sprawled on the floor too much to notice Storm’s move.

  Wo was watching Hamlin flop desperately like a grounded trout, each movement becoming weaker. With all her strength, Storm slammed the frame over Wo’s head. The glass cracked loudly and Wo looked at her, amazed. She paused, then stumbled to her knees.

  But Storm’s attention was drawn to Hamlin’s twitching foot. With horror, she saw a paperweight roll from his limp fingers. His eye
s met hers, then jerked twice and were immobile. His foot stopped moving.

  “No!” Storm screamed with rage. She took a quick step toward Wo. Like a big square discus, she swung the picture frame in a two-handed backhand, up from her waist to the woman’s jaw.

  The glass, already cracked, shot out in long shards at impact. With a grinding noise that Storm realized with a rising gorge was flesh and cartilage in addition to wood, the frame crumpled. Wo’s hands flew to her throat and she bent over, retching and choking. Storm stood rooted in shock at what she’d done, frozen with horror and in anticipation of Wo’s next move.

  Wo dropped to her knees, then her side, and curled into a fetal position. Her breathing came in rasping gulps, interspersed with a keening whine, which faded away.

  Storm leaped over Wo and even kicked her out of the way to get to Hamlin. “Ian, Ian,” she cried and threw her weight against him. She got him onto his back, crushing the box next to him.

  Hamlin was a dead, limp weight. His lips were turning blue. She knelt beside him. “I’ll breathe for you,” she gasped.

  She raised her head from his mouth and felt her own eyes fill with tears when she read the terror in his. She pinched his nose closed and blew between his slack lips. She gave him ten good breaths and watched the blueness begin to fade from the fingernails of the hand splayed across his chest. She thought even the expression in his eyes had softened, but it was hard to tell. He was like a rag doll.

  “You look better.” Storm wiped a trickle of sweat from her forehead. She lowered her mouth to his and blew again, then came up to gasp for her own oxygen.

  Hamlin’s eyes again held a look of dread. She frowned down at him. His fingernails and lips were pinker than when she’d started. “What’s wrong?” she asked, then felt a pain in her left thigh.

  Stunned, she looked over her shoulder. The syringe, empty, wobbled in the flesh of her leg. She pulled it out and stared at it in horror. How much had been left in it? How much did she need to be paralyzed?

  Frantic, she blew the air she’d inhaled into Hamlin’s mouth and sucked in another breath. Then she realized that she couldn’t open and close her mouth very well. Her jaw was starting to hang. She could barely close it. Her neck felt weak, too. She gave Hamlin another breath, drew in more air and staggered to her feet. She had to get to a phone.

  Storm made it to the doorway, then felt her overtaxed ankle give with a searing pop. Like a marionette whose strings were cut, she dropped. With her face pressed to the floor, she commanded her legs to rise, and could not do it. There she lay, her nose pressed into the plush carpet while the chemical smell of whatever rug shampoo had last been used tormented her. Fibers pressed painfully into the sclera of one eye and she couldn’t even blink.

  Dizzy nausea washed over her. As the darkness crept in from the sides of her vision, Storm hallucinated a room full of violent, angry shouting creatures. A wild man with red piggy eyes who tossed her helpless body onto its back. The wild boar on the mountainside had finally found them.

  Chapter 39

  Something dropped on Storm’s chest, a thud on her hollow lungs. The shouting continued, her lips felt swollen and bruised, her jaw was in a vice. Noise shrieked around her. She tried to scream, but worse than any nightmare, she couldn’t move her lips. She tried to roll from her back, but again she couldn’t move, even though she could feel the fierce arms of the beast that trapped her. Tears ran down the sides of her face, and pooled in her ears.

  The tears, though, cooled her burning eyes and Storm began to see a blur of white above the black mass that crouched on her face. Her heart lurched, then pounded with dread. A man’s gentle voice broke through to her. She could hardly make out the words over the screaming of a siren.

  “Hey, you’re all right. Gonna be okay. You hear me?”

  A woman’s voice shouted from behind Storm’s head. “You think she’s back?”

  “I think her eyes are more focused.” The man’s face peered into hers. Storm could smell his aftershave.

  “Sure,” said the woman’s voice. “And you know what she’s thinking, too.”

  “Marty, you have no imagination. Her PO2 is pretty good. She’s got enough oxygen in her blood to be conscious now. What else do they want us to do?”

  Storm heard the static of a radio and recognized the movement of a vehicle. The siren warbled a more frantic refrain. “We’re almost there. Rob and Francine are right behind us with the guy.”

  She felt the restraints on her arms; bands across her chest kept her from rolling off the stretcher. She must have passed out from absolute exhaustion. The ambulance lurched to a halt and the big doors at Storm’s feet were thrown open by a flurry of people. She bumped helplessly on a gurney through a mechanical door where lights shone fuzzily overhead. She was okay. But Hamlin?

  People moved around her with efficiency. A woman in green scrubs leaned over her and spoke, waving away a syringe. She put her face in front of Storm’s and touched her hair. “Your friend is being treated. We’ll send you down to -ray for that ankle. Can you tell us if you took anything, if you were given anything?”

  Storm croaked out, “Nothing.”

  The woman hustled away. Hovering in the background, behind a nurse who pricked Storm’s arm with a needle, then connected it to a clear plastic tube, Storm saw the round bespectacled face of Detective Fujita. He looked worried. The nurse spoke to him. “Detective, you’ll have to stand back now. She’s doing pretty well. We don’t know about the guy, yet.”

  “We don’t do CPR too often.” Fujita’s voice was anxious.

  “You did great, Detective. We’ll take over from here.”

  “I’ll call later. I need to talk to them.”

  Fujita faded out of Storm’s vision. She tried with all her might to keep them open, but her eyes closed.

  Then light inundated her eyes again. Her heart was hammering in her chest and clammy sweat poured from her face. An attendant trotted to her side with his eyes on the monitor beside the bed.

  The nurse rushed over and patted Storm’s arm. “You’re okay. You’re exhausted and you fell asleep.” The doctor returned, checked a gauge by the bed. The worry lines faded.

  Storm realized that her eyes were following the doctor’s back. She wiggled her arm and felt the sting of the needle to the IV line. She moved her hand, then tried to jiggle a leg. It worked.

  “You feeling better?” a man’s calm voice asked.

  “Yeah. Hamlin?” Storm’s voice rasped, dry and painful.

  “He’s still intubated. Just relax, now. I’m going to give you something to help you sleep.”

  “No!” Storm tried to rise to her elbows. Dread swept through her. “I don’t want it. Nothing else, please.”

  The fellow put his hand gently on Storm’s shoulder. “Okay, okay. But you need to rest and you may want some painkillers for that ankle. We’ll keep you here overnight.”

  Storm hadn’t known she was asleep until she woke herself with a shout. Her face hurt, her whole leg throbbed, and she couldn’t remember where she was. The sun streamed through Venetian blinds behind a dark head. Another person stood on the other side of the bed, silhouetted against the light.

  Aunt Maile leaned over the bed and hugged her. “They called us last night. We came over on the earliest plane.”

  Uncle Keone’s voice rumbled. “We got plenty scared, honey.”

  Storm’s eyes filled. Their lined, brown faces had never looked so loving or welcome to her. “I’m so glad you’re here.” She looked first at Maile, then Keone. “Who’s they?”

  “First the police, then someone from the office. One of the lawyers, had a haole name.” Aunt Maile looked at Uncle Keone, who shrugged.

  “Oh.” The only Caucasian partner was Cunningham. The breath caught in Storm’s throat. “Have you heard anything about Hamlin?”

  Aunt Maile opened her mouth, but a light knock on the
door interrupted her. “She’s awake, Detective.” She sounded pretty happy to see the cop.

  Fujita paused at the threshold and fiddled with the plastic top of a paper Starbucks coffee cup. “Mind if I talk to her for a minute?”

  Aunt Maile patted Storm’s hand. “We’ll go get a cup of coffee and come back.”

  Fujita sat in the chair next to the bed, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and slurped through the little hole in the top. Storm could smell the rich brew. It was making her salivate. All of a sudden, she was starving.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Two o’clock.”

  Storm looked at him with surprise. “In the afternoon?”

  “Yup.”

  “You gave me CPR.”

  “You had a pulse. I just breathed for you.” He tucked his chin and peered into the little hole of his coffee top.

  “What made you come to the office when you did?”

  Fujita peered over his glasses at her. “Your stepbrother called 911. He was frantic.”

  “Martin, thank God.” Storm paused. “You gave Hamlin CPR, too?”

  “No, Officer Roper did that.” Fujita smiled a little. “Sandy claimed she never caught anything from him when they dated a few years ago. She was willing to lock lips with him last night.” He flushed. “Her terms, not mine.”

  “Where is Hamlin?”

  Fujita looked away. “He’s on another floor. You’ll have to talk to a doctor.”

  “Detective Fujita, is he okay?”

  He seemed to be avoiding her gaze. “He’s a little more beat up than you. It’s lucky we got to him when we did.” He met her eyes.

  She looked at the cop, longing to believe him. “What made Martin call you?”

  “Wo blasted by DeLario in the parking lot on her way in, nearly knocked his motorcycle into a concrete piling.”

  “Oh, no. Was he hurt?”

  “He made it home. Who did this to you?” he asked.