by Jagger, Kait
She parked up outside the wooden shed in the garden and entered the house through the basement, removing her boots and unzipping her suit, shrugging out of the sleeves and pushing the jacket down onto her hips, F1 winner’s paddock style. Grinning to herself, she decided to leave it there, a little visual feast for Stefan to come home to.
To her vast annoyance, she heard the sound of footsteps on the floor above as she climbed the steps to the living room. How the fuck had he gotten ahead of her? ‘Herr Lundgren, have you been breaking the speed limit?’ she accused laughingly at the top of the stairs, pushing the door open to find the living room still in virtual darkness. ‘I’ve a mind to report you to the trafikpolisen,’ she said, groping along the wall for the light switch.
And then she saw it, in the dim light from the patio doors: the figure of a man, standing in the living room. And another in the kitchen. Sören and Christian, back early from Goa, was the first, mindless thought that sprang into her head. But the figure in the living room moved and there was a brief glint of an earring catching the light. The one in the kitchen hissed something unintelligible and both figures began to move in her direction. For a split second, Luna froze in disbelief, heart hammering.
They were almost upon her before her throat finally opened in a long, high scream. She turned and raced back down the stairs, getting no more than three steps along the tiled basement floor before a thick, meaty hand caught her from behind, clapping over her mouth. Luna shook her head violently, baring her teeth and biting down hard on a finger. Her captor flung her against the wall with a howl, and viciously backhanded her. Ears ringing, Luna stumbled straight into the other man, face to face with his acne-scarred visage as he grabbed her braid and brutally yanked it backward.
Screaming again, she kicked out, thrashing against him. Then saw a flash in the corner of her eye, something bright and metallic, heard the other man shouting something behind her. And felt warmth, spreading along her collarbone, over her chest. Strange, she didn’t feel pain, though she looked down, saw the knife in the man’s hand, and knew she had been stabbed. He released her suddenly, and she staggered between the two men, listing briefly like a spinning top. She fell to her knees, then slumped to the tile floor.
‘Luna! Wake up, flicka! Wake up!’ Stefan’s voice. Luna’s eyelids briefly fluttered open. ‘Stay with me, sweetheart, don’t go to sleep. Help is coming.’ Stefan’s face, right next to hers. Ah, she thought, how lovely, he’s keeping me company here on the floor. In her final moments of consciousness, Luna watched a pool of blood oozing across the tile floor, joining with another to form a lake. A lake of blood.
*
Pain. Horrible pain. Lights flashing. Darkness falling. Pain again. Scissors cutting. Cold air. Hands touching. Darkness, darkness, darkness.
Fluorescent lights. A metal rail. Plastic tubes coiling along white sheets, one clear, one red.
Luna! Wake up! Luna rose with a violent start, half-sitting up in her hospital bed until an explosion of white-hot agony in her shoulder sent her whimpering back down. A torso in green scrubs appeared beside the bed. A hand came to rest on her forehead. ‘Stefan,’ she croaked, throat scratchy, sore. Spots floating. Darkness.
Wake up, flicka! A different darkness: night-time. A small lamp above her bed, shining down on her.
This time Luna remembered her shoulder and held herself still, scanning the room with her eyes. There was a woman standing in the far corner, facing away from her. Luna opened her mouth, emitting a hoarse, inarticulate sound and the woman turned, gliding to her bedside.
Karoline Lundgren’s face was white with, what? Fear? Anger? Luna couldn’t make it out. And she couldn’t understand her, either, when she leant down and began to speak in Swedish, her features distorted, eyes alight.
‘Where is Stefan?’ Luna moaned, but Karoline just kept talking in a low, fervid whisper. ‘Where is he?’ Luna grabbed the older woman’s blouse, clutching at it, ignoring the sharp stab of pain that lanced through her shoulder. Karoline tried to shake her off, but Luna refused to let go. Frantic now, she reached both hands to Karoline’s shoulders, her neck. ‘Where is Stefan?!’
An alarm sounding. Feet running and bright lights filling the room. Arms reaching for her, holding her down. A prick in her arm. Darkness.
It was light outside when next Luna woke, her room empty now. Bracing herself against the pain, she tried to sit up, but jerked to a sudden halt. She rolled her head to the left to find her wrist in a padded restraint, bound to the bedrail. Rolled to the right and saw the same. Jesus, sweet Jesus, oh God! Lifting her head off the pillow, she found her ankles tethered to the end of the bed, and came fully, shockingly awake, arching up off the mattress. Hyperventilating, she fought the almost overwhelming urge to start screaming and never stop. Then spotted the call button lying atop her blanket.
The nurse who came moments later informed her in halting English that she didn’t have the authority to release her, so Luna was left to wait an agonising thirty-eight minutes for the resident to arrive, a young man with sad eyes who studied her warily.
‘I have never before had to restrain a patient,’ he said. ‘We only do it when they are putting themselves or others at risk. You were doing both. You reopened your wound during the attack on your visitor last night and we had to give you another transfusion. You are AB Negative, an extremely rare blood type. You have used up almost all our stocks.’
Staring up at him, forcing herself to remain calm, Luna said, ‘I need you to find my fiancé, Stefan Lundgren. I can give you his number—’
The doctor shook his head. ‘Your fiancé was injured in the same attack as you.’
‘No,’ Luna said blankly. ‘You’re wrong. He was with me, after. He took care of me.’
‘From what I understand, he chased off your attackers, but was stabbed in the process.’ Seeing the horror flooding her face, he added swiftly, ‘He managed to phone the emergency services, and because you were in danger of bleeding out you were brought to the closest hospital, here. He was sent to Saint Göran in Kungsholmen, which has a trauma centre.’
‘Is he alright?’
‘I’m afraid that’s all I know. I can ask one of the nurses to phone and make enquiries…’ He shifted on his feet, eager to draw this exchange to a close, but Luna said, ‘Wait!’ and lifted her wrist toward him.
Another wary look. ‘I would need to have a promise of good behaviour if I remove the restraints,’ he said. ‘Will you give me your promise?’
Luna nodded, lips pressed tight together. With an answering nod, he exited the room, speaking briefly with the nurse outside. She looked wary too as she unlocked the restraints, hovering just out of Luna’s reach, poised to flee when she removed the final one.
Edging up into a semi-sitting position, careful to keep her posture submissive, Luna asked for a glass of water. She calmly thanked the nurse when she brought it, draining the glass, handing it back to her. Satisfied that her patient wasn’t going to cause further trouble, the nurse left the room.
Luna sat in silence for a moment. Then reached down and ripped the IV lines from her hand.
*
‘The notes are very clear,’ the woman at the reception desk said, consulting her computer screen. ‘Family members only.’
Luna gripped the edge of the desk, struggling, yet again, to remain calm. She cast an anguished look at the doors into Saint Göran’s intensive care unit, so close to Stefan she could feel him. ‘But I’m his…’ She held up her left hand to display her engagement ring, but it wasn’t there. Removed, she assumed, by emergency room staff. ‘I’m his girlfriend,’ she concluded feebly, despairing at the woman’s sceptical, increasingly suspicious attitude. She saw herself through the receptionist’s eyes: pale, overwrought, wearing a stolen men’s jumper, jeans two sizes too big for her and rubber hospital clogs.
‘His mother is with him,’ the reception
ist began. ‘Perhaps…’ A cold shot of adrenaline pumped into Luna’s body and she abruptly removed her hands from the desk, backing away, making her excuses. She couldn’t risk another confrontation with Karoline. In her weakened state, she might end up in a straitjacket and padded cell. With nowhere to go, she retreated to the waiting area, sitting down at the back of the room, concealing herself behind a large family.
How long could she sit here, waiting for her opportunity to sneak through those doors? Not long, Luna feared. Her shoulder was throbbing and she could feel her wound bleeding through its bandages; it was a lucky thing the jumper she’d stolen from the hospital staff room was black. She looked down at her hand, saw that it, too, was a bruised, bloody mess where she’d torn out her IVs, and surreptitiously rolled the sleeve of the jumper down to cover it. She closed her eyes, trying to think, but only one word played over and over again in her head. Stefan. Stefan. Stefan.
‘Allt väl?’ Luna forced her eyelids open to find a man looking at her. One of the family in front of her, the father maybe. His little boy was looking at her too with large brown eyes. Luna tried to sit up straight, blanching with pain. The boy pointed to the floor, where fat drops of blood were dripping from her sleeve. ‘Är du skadad?’ the man asked with concern. Others in the waiting room began to turn and look, and Luna shrunk in her seat. She saw the woman at the reception desk peer over, frown and reach for her desk phone.
Through sheer force of will, Luna dragged herself to her feet, pressed her bloody sleeve to her side. A security guard appeared at the desk and the woman pointed in her direction. Seconds later, Luna burst out of the waiting room into the corridor beyond, her rubber clogs squeaking along the linoleum. She made toward the lift, but her body began to refuse her commands, legs wobbling beneath her, vision blurring. She heard the security guard yelling, felt herself weakening, falling.
The lift doors opened and suddenly strong arms were around her. ‘Luna!’ Sören Lundgren exclaimed. ‘Thank God I have found you.’ Luna nearly sobbed in relief when he lifted her into his arms, carrying her back to the waiting area, barking orders at the staff there.
He carried her through the double doors, past a bank of windows and into a darkened room, illuminated only by the circle of glowing machines around a hospital bed. And then Luna did sob. In the bed, a life-support machine puffing next to him, Stefan lay covered in wires and tubes. Sliding down from Sören’s arms, she reeled to his bedside, afraid to touch him for all the pads fixed to his chest, the equipment beeping and humming around him. His eyes were taped shut and a breathing tube snaked like an obscenity from his beautiful, precious mouth.
Doctors and nurses came then, and a gurney was brought. Luna protested weakly, clutching Stefan’s bedrail until Christian came and put his arm gingerly around her. ‘Come, Luna,’ he said gently, helping her onto the gurney. ‘Look. We will move you closer to him.’
She kept her eyes on Stefan while they ministered to her, cleaning her, replacing her bandages. As Sören paced nearby, Christian explained that although Stefan’s injuries had initially seemed less serious than hers, he had stopped breathing twice in the ambulance and subsequently been rushed into surgery, where his spleen had had to be removed. ‘The life support is a precaution,’ Christian explained. ‘To give his body a chance to recover from the trauma of his injury.’
There came a fraught, strangled noise from the doorway and Karoline swept into to the room, decreeing hysterically, ‘She cannot be here! This mentally unstable woman cannot be near my son—’ But before she could say another word, Sören sprang toward her, snarling at her in Swedish, propelling her out of the room.
When the police came shortly thereafter to interview Luna, it wasn’t a great stretch for her to feign numb shock, inability to remember details of their attack. What would Stefan do? What would he say? Exhausted and heartsick as she was, Luna couldn’t answer those questions, but she believed instinctively that he would not want her to reveal the truth, that it had been Putinov’s henchmen waiting for them in the house.
The hospital room became Luna’s entire world over the next several hours. Stefan’s consultant began to slowly decrease his anaesthesia with a view to weaning him off the ventilator, and she was allowed to remove the tape from his eyes and wash the ugly yellow antiseptic solution from his chest. She left his side only long enough to shower and change into the clothes Christian brought her from home. Christian and Sören took it in turns to sit with her, always Christian, it seemed, whenever Karoline was there. For her part, after her initial confrontation, Stefan’s mother appeared to be doing her best to ignore Luna.
That night Luna insisted that, exhausted as he was following his breakneck return from Goa, Sören rest on her gurney while she sat up with Stefan. So it was just the three of them, Luna in the chair next to Stefan’s bed while Sören slept beside her. She listened to the sound of the many machines in the room measuring out Stefan’s life in breaths, and blood oxygen, and heartbeats. She lowered Stefan’s bedrail and pressed her cheek next to his forearm, kissing his hand. ‘Come back to me,’ she whispered. ‘Please come back.’
Resting her eyes for a few seconds, she almost succumbed to a doze, jerking herself up at the last minute. Outside in the hallway, a shadow fell across the glass window. The shadow drew closer, looming into view, and an acne-scarred face appeared in the glass. No, oh no. Shrieking in terror, Luna leapt to her feet and threw herself over Stefan’s inert body, hand jammed on the call button.
It was a nightmare, they told her. There was no man, no evidence of an intruder on the hospital’s video cameras. The doors to intensive care were pass-controlled, they assured her, with only authorised personnel allowed in.
So she apologised. A bad dream, she nodded, not for a second believing that the face she’d seen was the product of her imagination. The hospital room emptied out and Luna sat back down next to Stefan’s bed, waiting for Sören to fall asleep again. When his breathing deepened into a soft snore, she retrieved a small cardboard box from the shelf above Stefan’s bed. Her personal belongings, sent on by the other hospital. She reached first for her engagement ring, slipping it back onto her left hand, then for her mobile.
Walking out into the hospital corridor, she rang two numbers, getting voicemail each time. Then scrolled down her contacts list to a third, one she’d never rung before. A woman answered on the second ring.
‘Mrs Salonen, my name is Luna Gregory. I’m looking for your son.’
*
Luna sat with Mika and Matthias in the hospital’s deserted multi-faith room, drinking her third coffee of the night. Four hours, it had taken, for them to get to her from Helsinki after their mother raised the alarm. Cursing long and freely when she described the ambush at Stefan’s father’s house, Matthias questioned her at length while Mika held her hand, squeezing it occasionally when she faltered.
After Matthias finished interrogating her, he pulled out his phone, intent on calling in private security guards until Stefan could be moved, but Luna stopped him with a decisive shake of her head. ‘The other night, Stefan told me this was almost over, that he had what he needed to end the stand-off with Putinov,’ she said. ‘I want you to tell me what he meant.’
Matthias squinted at her. ‘I’m afraid that’s privileged information between me and my client.’
Luna sliced a hand through the air. ‘Your client is lying in a hospital bed on life support,’ she said furiously. ‘For all I know, it’s your actions that have put him there. You’re going to tell me everything you’ve put in train, or so help me I’ll go to the police and you can explain your privileged information to them.’
Mika said something to his brother in Finnish and Matthias growled back at him in the same language. He turned to her, weighing up her determination, and cursed again. Then tersely, sparingly explained the trap they had laid between them, the management consultant and the man who hated Russians. Complex to o
rchestrate, but devastatingly simple in its outcome, only one question came to Luna when he finished talking her through it.
‘Presumably,’ she said, ‘these arrangements are time limited. They must be acted on now?’
Matthias made a face, an acknowledgement. ‘But it doesn’t matter anymore,’ he said. ‘Without Stefan, this plan is dead. We must wait until he is recovered and then formulate a new strategy.’
‘No,’ Luna said. ‘We put the plan in motion, now. We do exactly as Stefan intended and end this, once and for all.’
‘The game has changed,’ Matthias replied uneasily. ‘First the fire, now my friend has been attacked. You have been attacked. The only thing that matters now is keeping you both safe. The logical course—’
‘To fuck with your logical course,’ Luna interrupted. ‘I’m telling you that I will meet with Putinov. You can either help me, or leave me to do it on my own.’
‘Not on her own,’ Mika corrected. ‘I will go with her.’ Matthias glowered at his brother, then at Luna, and cursed floridly.
Sören, too, did his best to dissuade her, standing with her and the Salonens around Stefan’s bed, the four of them arguing in terse whispers. ‘It should be me who meets with this Russian scum,’ he said firmly.
‘No one should be meeting with him,’ Matthias gritted out. ‘Now is not the time for hysterics.’ He threw Luna a meaningful glance to find her staring right back at him, eyes opaque, impenetrable.
‘No, Luna is right about one thing: this must end now,’ Sören said. ‘Had I known what would come of my failure to contain Augusta’s vendetta against Florian, where it would lead…’ He rubbed his hand over his face, voice cracking. ‘I have failed my son. I started this—’
‘And I will finish it,’ Luna said, looking unwaveringly from Sören to Matthias. She honestly didn’t care what they thought. Her mind was made up. And her body… it would be compelled to serve her, to keep itself together until this task was completed. It actually felt good, comforting, the familiar burst of freon suddenly coursing through her veins, freezing her from the inside out.
