“I’ve already talked to Dr. Martindale,” Nate said as he dragged a chair close to the bed and sat down. “Wanna hear the scoop?”
Kiera nodded groggily. Now that Nate was here, she realized just how out of it she really felt. She kept stealing quick glances at him, telling herself she should appreciate the love and support he was expressing, but it rang hollow, and she couldn’t ignore the yawning distance there was between them. She had never seen it so clearly before.
“I know what they did. They took out my brain and put it in a freezer. They’re just waiting for someone who needs a new one.”
Nate chuckled but, unlike the old days when he would have played along with one of her jokes, he didn’t have a comeback. It pained her to see how much things had changed between them. Or maybe they had never been good. Could she admit to herself that their marriage had always been missing . . . something . . . something that neither one of them could provide?
She felt a deep sadness as she looked at him and realized he was part of her previous life, but he wasn’t—or could no longer be—a part of her life now.
It’s over.
And then it hit her. She had thought it . . . she had suspected it, but it was so obvious she was almost embarrassed she hadn’t admitted it to herself before. She knew now, with total certainty, that Nate was seeing someone else, that there was another woman in his life.
“Like the doctor said,” Nate said, “it wasn’t very serious. The tumor was benign, like we’d hoped. It looked like it had suddenly started to grow again, but other than pressing on the optic nerve, it wasn’t tangled up with—uh, anything else.”
“So that accounts for the hallucinations, the flashing lights and everything,” Kiera said. Even as she said it, though, she knew it wasn’t true, because just then she caught a hint of something moving across the field of her vision like a smoky figure behind her husband’s back. She fought back a rush of panic.
Maybe it just takes time . . . Maybe my nerves are still firing after the surgery . . . Or maybe something’s still there inside my head . . .
She had the frightening feeling that whatever it was, it was still there and it would always be there, surgery or not.
Shifting her eyes, she tried to track the hazy streak as it floated by behind Nate, but it moved along with her eyes, so she could never look at it directly.
Before Nate said anything, the curtain was raised again, and Liz O’Keefe entered, holding a large vase filled with roses and baby’s breath.
“Well look at you,” Liz said, smiling as she placed the roses on the windowsill and then approached the bed. When she leaned down and gave Kiera a kiss on the cheek, Kiera caught a whiff of her perfume and sneezed. The sudden motion sent a dull ache through her head, but—thankfully—the pain quickly faded.
“What do you think of my new headgear?” Kiera asked, touching the bandages that swathed her head. “Just the most stylish thing, don’t you think?”
Liz pursed her lips and tried to smile, but she obviously felt uncomfortable. She hadn’t even bothered to say hello to Nate, and Kiera wondered if she was picking up on the weird vibes between her and her husband. Then again, Nate didn’t really like Liz or Jon. They weren’t his kind of people, he told her. Moving away from the bed, he glared at Liz, looking annoyed that she had intruded on their privacy.
“Where’s Jon?” Kiera asked, glancing at the curtain as though expecting to see him lurking nearby.
“Still at that real estate agent’s meeting in Boston,” Liz said. “Don’t you remember?”
“Oh, right,” Kiera said, nodding. She vaguely remembered him telling her something about that. “It must’ve slipped my mind. God, you’d think I needed brain surgery or something.”
“Look,” Liz said as she started backing away from the bed. “You’re just coming round. I’m sure you need all the quiet time you can get. I was in town doing a little shopping, but I’ll drop by later.”
Kiera started to protest, but another, stronger throb in her head made her realize Liz was right. The truth was, she wished Nate would leave, too, but she knew he planned on staying at least for a little while longer. Thankfully, there was no sign of Trista yet. Kiera didn’t want to face any of that tension.
“Sure thing,” Kiera said. Her eyes went unfocused as she heaved a sigh. “I am pretty beat.”
“What do you expect?”
Kiera was startled by the male voice and looked up as Dr. Martindale walked over to the bed. He was smiling as he placed a hand on Kiera’s shoulder.
“So, how are we feeling?” he asked.
“Well we are absolutely wiped,” Kiera answered honestly.
As she looked at him, she had the odd sensation that he seemed farther away than she knew he was. He almost didn’t look real, like she was looking at him through the wrong end of a telescope, and he appeared to be at the far end of the room.
“I’ll come back during visiting hours,” Liz said as she backed away. “It’s good to see you came through all right. I’ll let Jon know.”
Kiera smiled and nodded. The feeling of dissociation that had started when she looked at the doctor was getting steadily worse. Her eyes flickered and closed for a moment, but the feeling of falling backward in a slow-motion tumble startled her and made her jump. When she opened her eyes again, the room looked like it was swaying from side to side, like the deck of a boat on a storm-tossed sea.
“You want me to wait outside?”
She recognized Nate’s voice, but he, too, sounded so far away he might have been shouting to her from far down the corridor.
“I’d appreciate that,” Dr. Martindale said.
Kiera wondered why she suddenly couldn’t keep her eyes open, even though she was terrified of what would happen when she closed them. Through narrowed slits, she watched Nate leave the room. All she could see was a featureless gray blur that only vaguely resembled a person.
“So,” Dr. Martindale said as he looked down at Kiera. “Are you really feeling all right?”
Kiera was sure that the panic bubbling up inside her would make it impossible for her to speak, but she licked her lips and said, “Not really . . . I’m . . . Just now, I started feeling . . . really disoriented.”
“Disoriented?”
Kiera listened to the rolling echo of the doctor’s voice and struggled to focus, but no matter how hard she concentrated, her eyesight kept twitching back and forth.
“I . . . I’m not sure,” she said, fighting back a chilling rush of panic. She took a breath to try to pull herself back from the dizzying rushes that were sweeping through her, but she could feel herself sinking deeper. “I just feel . . . really kinda . . . messed up.”
“The anesthesia will do that to you. Plus the pain meds you’re on could make you feel a little fuzzy.”
“Yeah . . . fuzzy,” Kiera said and then chuckled. “I’m feeling kinda . . . fuzzy.”
She was slipping deeper. The warm darkness inside her head—even with the spinning, backward fall—seemed safer than reality. A faint voice in her head asked if she felt safer because Nate had left the room.
“Fuzzy Wuzzy . . . was a bear . . . Fuzzy Wuzzy had no . . . Yeah . . . No hair . . . You didn’t shave my head . . . did you?”
She raised her hand and touched her head, but she couldn’t tell through the bandage if there was hair there or not.
“Your hair is fine,” Dr. Martindale said, his voice echoing now like he was shouting in a canyon. “I think we’d best get you up to your room so you can get some rest. It’ll take a while for the anesthesia to wear off.”
“Uh . . . Yeah . . . That sounds . . . like fun,” Kiera said, “fuzzy wuzzy fun.”
Her own voice was so faint and dreamy it sounded like someone else was talking for her. She had been afraid before, but now she no longer cared as she squeezed her eyes tightly shut and let herself drift into the darkness that reached up to embrace her.
And in that darkness, she dreamed . . .
6
Kiera jumped when she heard a car door slam shut. The sound echoed like a cannon shot through the huge, all-but-deserted parking garage. It was night, and she was on the top floor that looked out over a fantastic view of Portland’s brightly lit skyline.
Moving with a swift, gliding motion that felt like flying, she wove her way between the cement pillars until she came to a single parked car. A woman was bent over as she struggled to fit a key into the lock. Kiera could sense the woman’s rising frustration when the key didn’t go into the lock the way it was supposed to.
Wanting to help, Kiera came closer. It didn’t strike her as at all odd that she was flying, her feet a few inches above the oil-stained cement floor, and it never occurred to her that she must be dreaming.
“Maybe I can get that for you,” she said, but her voice was no louder than the hiss of a soft breeze through dry grass. It wafted the woman’s hair, making her look around, but she obviously didn’t see Kiera, who was surprised to see her friend, Liz O’Keefe. After a moment, Liz went back to fumbling with the key, trying without success to get it into the door lock.
“Gotta be the wrong key,” Liz muttered in frustration.
She was obviously talking to herself, so Kiera didn’t bother to answer. Then, stepping back, Liz looked at the key ring in her hand and started to chuckle. Hovering behind her, Kiera looked at the key ring, too, and saw that it was a remote. When Liz pressed the lock button, the car’s lights flashed, and the horn beeped twice. After smoothing her clothes, Liz turned and started toward the bank of elevators that would take her down to ground level.
Kiera could sense that Liz was in a hurry. She looked anxious as she practically ran toward the elevators. They were at the far end of the building, and Kiera wondered why, if Liz was so concerned about being alone up here, she had parked on the top floor of the deserted building. Her shoes clicked on the cement, echoing with an odd reverberation in the vast darkness.
Liz was panting heavily by the time she reached the elevators. Leaning against the wall, she let out a loud gasp as she pressed the Down button. Kiera realized that, in her hurry, Liz hadn’t noticed the handwritten Out of Order sign taped beside the metal door. The message was hastily scrawled with dripping red letters.
“It’s not working,” Kiera said, but once again, her voice was as soft as a whisper in the night.
“Damn it,” Liz muttered when she finally stood back and saw the hand-lettered sign. She turned around to the stairway behind her and was about to start down the stairs when both she and Kiera sensed motion behind them. In the shadows, Kiera couldn’t see who was approaching them, but whoever it was, he was moving fast.
Kiera’s vision suddenly telescoped, and she felt like she was falling backward. She blinked her eyes and realized she was looking at Liz from the far end of the garage. She watched, unable to move, as the person—nothing more than a black silhouette—came up behind Liz and slammed into her hard enough to knock her against the wall.
“No!” Kiera cried out, but her voice was muffled by the darkness that surrounded her.
Liz also let out a strangled cry as she swung her purse around, trying to hit her attacker in the face. Kiera was frozen helplessly as Liz kicked and punched at her attacker, but the person was stronger than she was and started pushing her toward the metal railing of the stairwell.
Anger and fear filled Kiera as she watched the struggle. Closer . . . closer they came to the wide, gaping hole of the stairwell that went straight down three stories to the cement floor.
“Express elevator . . . going down,” a high, twisted voice whispered like the rasp of metal against metal.
The assailant slipped his hands under Liz’s armpits and lifted her off her feet. She squealed and continued to struggle, kicking and thrashing wildly, but to no avail. One of her shoes flipped off and shot between the railings. As she was pushed facedown over the opening, she—and Kiera—watched the shoe drop, twisting and turning end over end until it hit the bottom of the stairwell and bounced out of sight. A man’s face suddenly appeared at the bottom of the stairwell as he leaned over the railing and looked up with shock and surprise in his eyes.
“Help me!” Liz and Kiera shouted in unison.
But Kiera watched helplessly as Liz was lifted up over the railing. She fought back valiantly. Her arms and legs banged against the metal railing, making it ring like a gong. But her flailing didn’t do any good. The person forced her over the railing and then, with one last, powerful shove, he let her go.
For a moment, Liz was airborne. Kiera wondered why Liz couldn’t hover in the air like she could. Her arms flapping uselessly, Liz twisted around and made one last, desperate grab for the railing. Her hand smacked against the metal railing, and then she dropped out of sight.
Kiera cringed as she listened to the long, fading shriek, and Liz’s cry blended with Kiera’s as she cried out and sat up in bed, her eyes wide with horror.
The hospital room was dark, and she was alone. For a long time, she sat there in bed, listening to her pulse racing in her ears. Only much later was she able to relax and drift back off to sleep.
CHAPTER 6
Yellow Dust
1
“No, you can’t have a word with her. Not right now. She had surgery yesterday, and I don’t think she’s up to seeing anyone.”
Nate’s voice, coming from the corridor, sounded both angry and nervous as it drew Kiera out of the thin sleep she had drifted into sometime before dawn following a terrible dream that—thankfully—was already fading from her memory.
For a few seconds, she thought she was home in bed. Even after she opened her eyes, it took her a while to realize where she was. Dazed and confused, she looked around the hospital room. It was suffused with a dull gray light that looked like a thin haze of smoke. The shades were drawn, and it looked like it was a cloudy day.
“Can I ask what this is all about?”
Kiera thought Nate sounded nervous. She rolled her head to one side and looked at the partially open door. Someone—it had to be Nate—was blocking the entrance, but the dark silhouette reminded her of something from her dream, which made her shiver. Beyond him were two indistinct silhouettes.
“And you are?” one of the men said. His tone was flat and humorless.
“Nate Davis. Her husband. And I’m telling you, she can’t see you right now. She needs to rest.”
“We just have a few questions, Mr. Davis,” said another, more pleasant-sounding voice. “We won’t take more than two minutes of her time.”
Nate was silent for a moment. He glanced into the room at Kiera, but she wasn’t sure if he realized she was awake. Whatever it was, it sounded important, and she wanted to signal that it was okay, that she could see whoever was out there, but she remained motionless. Looking down at her hand, which was lying outside of the covers, she experienced an odd feeling of dissociation. She remembered the feeling she’d had earlier—when was that?—of floating in darkness, and she wondered if she was dead or dreaming this now.
“Hon . . . ?” Nate whispered, moving silently into the room. “You awake?”
Kiera tried to speak, but the only sound she could make was a faint, guttural grunt. She cleared her throat and finally managed to say, “Yeah.”
The feeling of dissociation grew steadily stronger, and with it came an inexplicable rush of fear. She had a sudden impulse to bolt upright in the bed and scream at Nate not to let these people in, but it was already too late. Helpless to move, she watched as Nate stepped aside, and two figures entered the hospital room. In the thin morning light, she couldn’t see their faces clearly until they were close to the bed.
“Mrs. Davis?” one of them said. “I’m Detective Fielding. This is Detective LeRioux. Can we ask you a few questions?”
“Sure,” Kiera said even though the sense of dread was steadily mounting inside her. She glanced at Nate, who looked grim and maybe a little frightened.
“You don’t have to if you
don’t want to,” he said.
“No. It’s okay,” Kiera said. “What’s this about?”
“You’re friends with Elizabeth O’Keefe?” Fielding asked.
The tension Kiera had been feeling before suddenly jolted her as a fragment of the dream she’d had last night came back. Her eyes widened as she looked from the detective to her husband and then back to the detective. She took a shallow breath that clicked in her throat. The feeling that she was floating rushed over her, making her feel giddy.
“Liz? Yeah. Sure. She’s a good friend.” Even to her, her voice sounded weak. “Is something the matter? Tell me what happened.”
“Ms. O’Keefe had an accident last night,” Fielding said simply.
“An accident—?”
Panic surged inside Kiera. Her heart started racing, high and fast. Each pulse made her vision twitch.
“She fell down the stairwell in a parking garage in Portland last night.”
“Oh my God! Is she—?” Kiera started to say, but judging by their faces, she knew the answer. In a flash, she had a clear mental image of the parking garage, almost as if she had been there herself. She saw the wide stairwell and, crumpled at the bottom, looking like a rag doll that had been tossed aside, a figure she recognized.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, but she’s dead,” Fielding said. His voice was still emotionless, but Kiera caught a hint of sadness in his eyes. His partner, LeRioux, had a harder, more suspicious look in his eyes.
“My God! You can’t be serious.”
“She either fell or was pushed over the railing,” Fielding continued. “But I was wondering if you could explain how this—” As he spoke, he reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a clear plastic bag. Inside was a slim plastic card. “—got there?”
Kiera looked at the thing until she recognized it.
“My driver’s license. Where did you find that?” Panic coursed through her body.
“It was on the floor of Ms. O’Keefe’s car. On the passenger’s side,” Fielding said simply. “Someone in the parking garage last night reportedly saw Ms. O’Keefe struggling with someone. He didn’t get a good look at whoever it was, but he says he saw someone with red hair in the parking garage. Since you match the description . . .”
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