Broken Pieces

by Carla Cassidy

  “You still haven’t heard from her?” he asked as he backed down the drive.

  “Nothing. I left a note at the house in case she gets home before us. She would have called me if she was going to be this late. I have visions of her in a ditch somewhere, unconscious and unable to call for help.”

  He drove slowly and together they looked on the sides of the road for Mariah’s car but didn’t find it. When they reached town, they spotted it parked in front of a gift shop. The shop had closed long ago and there was no sign of Janice anywhere in the area.

  “Maybe she did decide to go into the Tavern and have a drink,” Mariah said. “Although that’s definitely not her usual style.”

  It was then Jack noticed the activity in the park and Mariah’s dread nearly exploded in the pit of her stomach. He parked and she got out of his car and began to walk toward the deputies she saw working the area with large flashlights.

  “Hello?” Her walk became a half run as the dread became a screeching alarm in her head.

  “Stay back, ma’am. This is a crime scene,” one of the deputies, a man Mariah didn’t know, responded.

  “A crime scene? What happened?” Jack stood beside Mariah and placed an arm around her, as if to steady her.

  “A woman was attacked.”

  Oh God. Mariah’s heart seemed to stop beating. “Who? What woman?” she asked urgently, a gasp escaping her as her heart pounded so hard, so fast, she felt light-headed.

  “I don’t know. The sheriff’s with her over at the hospital,” the deputy said.

  Jack tightened his arm around Mariah and she welcomed the support, afraid that she might fall. “Come on, honey. We’ll check there.”

  She felt as if she were in a nightmare as Jack led her back to his car and they headed toward the hospital. Maybe it wasn’t her—please don’t let it be Janice. The words were a mantra repeated over and over again in her brain.

  Jack didn’t try to ease her worry and she was grateful for that. She wasn’t in the mood to hear any empty assurances. All her energy was focused on trying to make whatever woman was in the hospital not Janice.

  However, when she and Jack raced through the emergency room doors, the first person she saw was Clay and in his sympathetic eyes she knew the truth. Her knees nearly buckled beneath her.

  “Oh God, Clay, what happened?” Once again she was aware of Jack’s comforting closeness, his arm around her waist as if to anchor her in a raging storm.

  “Somebody attacked her, Mariah.” Clay’s eyes were somber, his expression grave enough to twist her insides into a million knots.

  “Is she all right? Can I see her?”

  Clay shook his head negatively. “The doctor isn’t letting anyone in right now.” His jaw tightened. “It’s not good, Mariah. Somebody beat the holy hell out of her. Last report I got from the doctor is that she hasn’t regained consciousness.”

  Mariah stumbled backward and might have fallen had Jack not caught her. Tears blurred her vision as she stared unseeing at Clay. “Who would have done this to her? Why would somebody do this?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll get to the bottom of it. I swear I will,” Clay said grimly.

  Jack led Mariah to the row of chairs in the waiting room and she collapsed into one of the chairs. Burying her face in her hands, she couldn’t stop the deep sobs that ripped through her.

  Not Janice. Oh God, not Janice. Mariah couldn’t imagine life without the spritelike woman with the heart of a giant and the wisdom of a sage.

  She raised her face to look at Jack, whose expression mirrored her grief. “I don’t understand,” she said as she swiped at her tears. “I don’t understand why this happened. Janice never hurt anyone. She doesn’t know anyone here in town. Who would do this to her?”

  Jack pulled her closer against his side. “We’ll get some answers soon,” he said. “Clay will find out who did it. Somebody had to have seen something in that park.”

  She leaned into him and buried her face in his shoulder, the familiar scent of him oddly comforting at a time when comfort was in short supply.

  For the next hour she mentally said every prayer she’d ever learned in her life. She held tight to a foam cup of hot coffee that magically appeared in her hand, and wished the warmth could seek out and heat the cold block of ice inside her.

  Each time the door to the emergency room swung open, she sat up, hoping the doctor would come out to let them know what was going on, to tell them that Janice was going to be fine.

  Mariah was grateful that Kelsey was spending the night with Katie and had no idea what had happened to the woman Kelsey loved like an aunt. God, she didn’t want to tell her daughter about this.

  It was nearing midnight when a tall gray-haired man came out to speak with them. “Brian,” Jack said in greeting. “This is Mariah Sayers, Janice’s closest friend. Mariah, this is Dr. Brian Walsh.”

  Dr. Walsh nodded to Mariah, the stress lines around his eyes indicating near exhaustion. “She’s conscious and she’s asking for you.” Mariah closed her eyes in relief as Jack squeezed her shoulder. “In fact, she won’t let me run tests or do anything else for her until she sees you. She’s quite insistent.”

  “Where is she?” Mariah started to sweep past Dr. Walsh, who stopped her by grabbing her arm.

  “She’s in room three, but I have to warn you—she’s banged up pretty badly. I don’t want her upset. If you can’t control your emotions, then I’d rather you not go back there. She doesn’t need histrionics right now.”

  For a wild moment she wanted to run, away from this hospital, away from this horror. She didn’t know if she had the strength to see Janice beaten and not lose it. She wasn’t at all sure she could do as the doctor had instructed.

  Then she thought of all that Janice had done for her. Janice had given her life, more than her own mother had ever done. Surely Mariah could suck it up for the woman she loved like a mother, like a sister.

  She nodded. “I’ll be right back,” she said to Jack, then swept past Dr. Walsh and through the doors that led to the emergency room.

  Plains Point Hospital was a small facility and there were only three examining rooms. Mariah kept her gaze focused on room three as she summoned every ounce of inner strength she possessed.

  Still, she couldn’t stop the gasp of shock that escaped her lips as she stepped into the room. The person on the bed was not her friend. Her mind rebelled at the very idea, and yet it was Janice, beaten so badly she was nearly unrecognizable. If it weren’t for the point of her ears, Mariah wouldn’t have been certain it was her.

  It was like seeing somebody horribly deformed. You didn’t want to stare yet couldn’t seem to stop looking. Janice looked dead and as Mariah approached the side of the bed, she felt as if she were in a nightmare. The whole thing felt surreal and she wanted somebody to jump out from behind a curtain and squeal “April Fools!”

  But it wasn’t a nightmare and it wasn’t a prank. It was real, as real as the oxygen tube that went into Janice’s smashed nose, as real as the stench of blood and antiseptic that permeated the small room.

  On wooden legs she walked to the edge of the bed. Janice’s face was swollen and black-and-blue and her very stillness terrified Mariah.

  Emotion surged up inside Mariah and tears burned at her eyes, but she squeezed them back and instead reached out and touched Janice’s small, slender hand.

  Cold. It was so cold it made Mariah ache. Janice sucked in a liquid breath and her eyes, mere slits in black pouches, gleamed overbright.

  “I’m here, Janice. You’re going to be all right,” Mariah said fervently.

  Janice’s fingers tightened on Mariah’s and her swollen lips parted. It was obvious she was in tremendous pain and despite all her efforts to the contrary, Mariah’s eyes filled with tears.

  “It’s all right. Don’t try to talk. I just wanted you to know that I’m here.”

  Janice squeezed her hand more tightly and her mouth worked feverishly as she
tried to sit up. A monitor began to beep a frantic sound as Janice reached up and grabbed the back of Mariah’s head and pulled her close.

  She held Mariah next to her with a surprising strength. “He told me he broke me. He broke a piece of me. That’s what he said.”

  For a moment everything seemed to stop. The sound of the monitor hushed and a roar took its place, a roar inside her brain as she stared into Janice’s wounded eyes.

  Mariah’s head spun wildly as Janice released her and fell back on the bed. At that moment the doctor rushed in. “You need to go,” he said to Mariah, who looked at him through a veil of shock.

  As the doctor began to administer to Janice, Mariah stumbled backward, away from the bed. She bumped into a chair, nearly fell, then turned and ran from the room with Janice’s words thundering in her head.

  He broke a piece of me.

  He broke a piece of me.

  She didn’t stop running until she collapsed in Jack’s arms. “It’s all right,” he said as he held her tight and stroked her back. “Shh, it’s going to be all right,” he said. But she knew that was a lie. Nothing was going to be all right.

  Because now she knew.

  He was still out there.

  The same man who had raped her sixteen years ago was still out there walking the streets of Plains Point, and as long as he was out there, no woman was safe.

  Chapter 24

  Jack left the driver’s side of his car and opened the passenger door for Mariah.

  The moment she’d come out of Janice’s room, she’d crawled deep inside herself, not speaking to him, barely moving without his help.

  He’d loaded her into the car, wondering if she was in a state of shock. As he grabbed her hand to help her out, the iciness of her skin worried him.

  “Mariah, can you get the key out of your purse?” he asked when they reached her front door.

  She lifted her face to look at him, her eyes empty and darker than he’d ever seen them. “Honey, you need to unlock the door,” he said gently.

  Like a robot she opened her purse and withdrew a ring of keys. He took them from her and opened the front door. Tiny greeted them, barking happily and dancing around their feet. Mariah didn’t appear to notice. She stood inside the entry as if rooted in place.

  He’d tried to get her to talk to him as they drove away from the hospital, but his efforts to bring her around had been fruitless. The only thing he knew to do for her was to get her warm and get her to bed.

  He locked the front door, took her purse from her and led her up the stairs, all the while talking to her in soft, gentle tones.

  “What you need is sleep. We’ll get you warm and tucked into bed and things will be better tomorrow.” He had no idea if that was true, but didn’t know what else to say.

  She walked up the stairs with him like a docile, obedient child and he wanted to wrap her up in his arms, keep her where nothing and nobody could ever touch her with pain again.

  It was easy to tell which bedroom she’d been using, for the room smelled of her perfume and a blue silk nightgown was tossed across the back of a chair.

  She didn’t protest when he undressed her and pulled the nightgown over her head. If she’d been hysterical, he would have been less worried. But her silence coupled with the blankness in her eyes had him very worried.

  It wasn’t until he pulled down the covers on the bed that her eyes sparked with a hint of life. She stared at him for a long moment, an urgent plea in her eyes. “Don’t go.” She reached out and took his hand, squeezing painfully tight. “Please, don’t go. Don’t leave me here alone.”

  “I won’t,” he replied, and pulled her against him. She stood in his embrace, neither accepting nor rejecting it. His love for her nearly brought him to his knees.

  He held her for several minutes and someplace in the back of his mind recognized that the embrace wasn’t so much for her but for him.

  Finally he released her and got her into bed. He stripped down to his briefs and got in next to her and pulled her icy body against his.

  Almost immediately she went to sleep, as if it was the only way she knew to cope with the horror the night had wrought.

  Jack wasn’t so lucky. He remained awake a long time, worried about the woman in his arms, praying for Janice and wondering who in the hell in his hometown was capable of such madness.

  Chapter 25

  It was the dream, no, the nightmare. Mariah stood beneath the trees outside her house and listened to the sounds of the storm approaching.

  A rumble of thunder brought a breeze of cool air and was followed by a lighting of the sky in the southwest. She hoped her father went to bed before it rained. The last thing she wanted was to be stuck in the middle of a storm while Jed Sayers practiced his Sunday sermon.

  A sound. A rustling noise. Something dark and slick slammed over her head at the same time she was shoved off her feet. She slammed into the ground and couldn’t breathe.

  “If you scream, I’ll kill you.”

  Did she know that voice?

  His weight fell on top of her. Hands pressed down on her, biting into the bare skin of her upper arms.

  Did she know those hands?

  He smelled of the approaching storm, of wind and rain and damp earth. Dear God, did she know that smell?

  Who was this man?

  Then he was taking her, hurting her. “I broke you and now I have a piece of you forever.”

  Mariah screamed.

  “Mariah, honey.”

  Jack’s deep voice pulled her from her dream and she opened her eyes and stared at him. His hair was charmingly bed tousled and his eyes were warm and sleepy. The light of dawn was just creeping into the bedroom window.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “A nightmare.” She snuggled closer to him and stifled a moan as she remembered that reality was almost as bad as her dreamscape.

  He flung an arm around her and pulled her tight against his warm strong body. “It’s early. Try to go back to sleep.”

  She tried to relax in his embrace, but images from the night before filtered through her brain. She was afraid to get up and face the day and afraid to fall asleep again and face her dreams.

  At the moment life was an unrelenting nightmare. The boogeyman was alive and well and living in Plains Point. He’d nearly killed Janice last night. What was next? Who was next?

  Jack, obviously feeling her tense muscles and unrest, began to stroke her thigh. It was not meant to be a sexual thing; rather the languid caress up and down her leg was meant to be soothing.

  But in his touch her desire was born, the desire to banish the images from her nightmare, the need to be held and loved and to lose herself in him. She wanted to be mindless for just a little while because although Jack didn’t know it yet, the time of her telling him good-bye was imminent.

  She turned in his arms to face him and she leaned forward and kissed the warm skin of his neck at the same time her hand swept down his chest.

  His eyes fluttered open and he groaned as she touched him through his briefs. The glow of his eyes told her he knew her intention.

  As he took off his briefs and tossed them to the floor, Mariah pulled her nightgown over her head, then took off her panties.

  Once again they moved together, a tangle of arms and legs, of hungry mouths and stroking hands. His mouth trekked down the side of her throat, down to capture one of her nipples, and as he suckled and intense sensations coursed through her, she shoved back thoughts of Janice, of evil, and focused only on Jack and the hot spark in his eyes and the pleasure of his touch.

  He was her reality for now and she clung to him because she knew when they finished making love, when they got out of bed, she was going to pack her and her daughter’s bags and prepare to leave, not only Jack behind, but also the evil that had touched her life sixteen years ago, the evil that still walked the streets of Plains Point.

  Clay sat in his car in his driveway as the sun crested the horizon
. He was sick and he was scared. He leaned back against the headrest. He was exhausted but reluctant to go inside.

  Janice Solomon was going to live, but he had a feeling in the days and weeks to come there were going to be times when she wished she were dead.

  She had four broken ribs, a swollen spleen, a punctured lung and enough facial damage that she was probably going to need some plastic surgery.

  The attacker had meant for her to die. Clay tightened his hands on the steering wheel. Nobody did that kind of damage and not expect to kill a person.

  It hadn’t been an assault—it had been attempted murder and what worried Clay as much as anything was that Jess had said the man was about to pick her up when Jess had yelled.

  Had he meant to carry her off and finish the job? Hide her body so nobody would find her? A pain pierced Clay’s forehead as his brain worked overtime to make some sort of sense of everything.

  He stared at the neat ranch house in front of him. He and Sherri had a good life here. He was respected as an officer of the law and Sherri had her group of friends that went to lunch and helped each other with babysitting.

  He’d never wanted to live anyplace else. He liked the idea of his kids going to the same schools he’d gone to, that they’d play with the kids of his closest friends. Once again his head ached as he thought of what was going to happen next.

  He tensed as his front door opened and Sherri looked out. The last thing he wanted or needed at the moment was another crazy argument with the woman he loved more than life itself.

  She came outside wearing only the black spaghetti-strapped nightgown he’d bought her on their fifth anniversary. It was a little tighter on her than it had been when he’d first bought it, but as far as he was concerned, she was still the prettiest girl in the world.

  She opened the passenger door of his car and slid in. “Out all night like a tomcat,” she said. “How’s your girlfriend?”