Watching Their Steps

by Alana Terry

  I was in a hospital.

  There was a reason I avoided hospitals, and it wasn’t because I was afraid of needles. It was too easy for Collin to find me in a hospital. I may as well hang up a flashing neon sign with my name and room number on it.

  I opened my eyes slowly, bracing for the pain, and blinked at the dim glow of light that filtered into the dark room through the open doorway and around the drapes that covered the windows.

  I lifted my arm and looked at the white bandage on my forearm. I grazed it thoughtfully with my fingertips, and the memories from last night came trickling back: the light pressure of the knife against my arm, the sickening feeling of his skin against mine.

  I touched my bottom lip with my tongue and hissed in a quiet breath of pain. I hadn’t felt it when the killer hit me in the kitchen—thanks to whatever he’d slipped into my drink—but I felt it now. The entire left side of my face hurt, especially my mouth.

  I didn’t notice the figure sitting in a chair in the corner with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands until he stirred at my sharp intake of breath. He lifted his head and looked at me from across the room.

  “Hi,” I said. My voice sounded raspy.

  Marx sat up straight and released a breath of relief. “Hey, sweetheart, how you feelin’?”

  I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry. “Thirsty.” I looked around the room for something to drink, but by the time I spotted it, Marx was already there with the pitcher of water in his hand.

  Either he was really fast or someone had removed my brain while I was sleeping and replaced it with a cotton ball, because I couldn’t seem to focus. I hadn’t even seen him move.

  He poured water into a small plastic cup. “You had me worried there for a while. Sam woke up three hours ago.” He set the pitcher down and approached the bed. His expression was pained as he regarded me. “How’s your head?”

  I pushed myself up in the bed slowly, pausing halfway when my head began to pound violently. “There are tiny percussionists inside my skull making a racket,” I mumbled as I very carefully propped myself up against the pillows. I accepted the cup of water he held out to me.

  I ignored the burning in my lip as I took a small sip. I felt dehydrated. I wanted to gulp it down, but I forced myself to sip it slowly. “How’s Sam?” My own voice was absurdly loud inside my head.

  “Cranky, but fine.”

  Relief washed over me. I’d been so worried he was dead. I had left him completely vulnerable when I gave him that bottle of poisoned punch. “Was he hurt?”

  “Only his pride.”

  I finished the water and set the empty cup on the side table. The tape on my skin snagged on the blanket, and I traced the needle in my arm back to an IV bag hanging from a hook above the bed.

  The bag blurred in the darkness, and I pressed a hand to my forehead in the hopes that it might bring the world back into focus.

  “Dizzy?” Marx asked worriedly. I groaned in confirmation. “It’s probably the concussion.”

  I vaguely recalled someone shouting that I may have a concussion. That man had no volume control and should consider a vow of silence. I rested my aching head back against the pillows and pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes. I could swear I felt my heartbeat inside my eyeballs. “Is this what a hangover feels like?”

  Marx grunted in mild amusement. “I take it you’ve never drunk before. And by drunk I mean anythin’ more intense than chocolate milk with marshmallows.”

  I smiled a little. “I tried coffee once. I’m pretty sure dirt tastes better.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. I can call the nurse and she can give you somethin’ for the pain.”

  “No,” I said quickly. I finally had control over my body again; I wasn’t lost in a state of disconnected numbness or mental fog, and I had no intention of taking anything that would dull any of my senses. “No drugs,” I told him. “I just need a few minutes to get used to it.”

  It was just physical pain. I could push through it. I rubbed my eyes and blinked at Marx until his fuzzy image sharpened.

  He stood a few feet from the bed with his arms crossed over his chest and a grim expression on his face. It was the first time I’d ever seen him without his suit jacket.

  He wore jeans and a black short-sleeve T-shirt, and if it weren’t for the gun on his hip, I would never have guessed he was a cop. He looked remarkably average. Except for the intense green eyes that missed nothing.

  I looked from him to the beeping monitor beside him. My heartbeat made consistent little zigzags on the screen next to my blood pressure. “I wish you hadn’t brought me here,” I told him quietly. “I can’t be here.”

  “I didn’t have a choice, Holly,” he said, and he sounded weary, as if we’d had this argument a dozen times before. I was pretty sure my concussion wasn’t bad enough to make me forget that much. “I knew the risk, but if Collin decides to pay you a hospital visit, he’s gonna get a face full of tile before I arrest him.”

  The thought of seeing him again made my heart rate pick up, and Marx glanced at the monitor. The last time I had dared to step into a hospital for treatment, Collin had tracked me down, and I had barely gotten away.

  Even though I’d checked myself in as a Jane Doe, he knew exactly what injuries I needed treatment for, because he’d given them to me. It wasn’t exactly difficult to narrow it down from there.

  “I would’ve been fine,” I tried to argue. “I don’t need to be here.”

  “The killer drugged you, and none of us had any idea what he gave you or what it was gonna do to you. Not to mention the fact that you were bleedin’ on the floor.”

  I cringed at the memory.

  There was something humiliating about being found completely vulnerable. I had never had to worry about it before, because no one had ever been there when I had to pick myself up off the floor, and no one had ever cared enough to step in on my behalf. I hated that Marx had found me that way.

  “You should’ve asked me,” I said. I wasn’t sure if it was fear or embarrassment that made my voice curt; maybe it was both. I scraped at the edges of the tape on my skin, trying to peel it away so I could pull the needle out of my arm.

  I was not staying here.

  Marx released a patient breath. “He hit you hard enough to give you a concussion. And you were high as a kite. You weren’t exactly in a position to make an informed decision. I did what needed to be done, and there’s no point in arguin’ about it now.”

  I ripped off the tape with a hiss of pain and glanced at the door. I didn’t want to be here; I wanted to leave, but I wasn’t sure I could even stand without the room tilting around me.

  “You’re perfectly safe here, Holly.” Marx punctuated his words to make sure I understood. “Mer’s in the lobby, Sam’s down the hall, and I’m stayin’ right here. Even if he does track you down, he’s not gettin’ within fifteen feet of you.”

  There was a promise in his eyes, and I wanted to believe him, but promises of safety hadn’t been working out so well for me lately. I was beginning to think safety was nothing but an illusion.

  But even Collin wouldn’t be stupid enough to come after me when there were three police officers in the hall. He was arrogant but he wasn’t reckless. I paused with my fingers on the IV as I considered whether or not to stay.

  Where would I even go if I left? I couldn’t go home. Not yet. And there was no safe place within walking distance. I would have to take a cab, which I couldn’t pay for, or hitchhike, which was only ever a last resort. Crap. I was stuck here.

  I released the IV reluctantly and hoped I wouldn’t regret it. “I guess I can stay for a few minutes.” I reclined back into the pillows. If God didn’t forbid stealing, I would take one of these criminally fat pillows with me when I left.

  Marx relaxed a little. I knew he wanted me to stay in the hospital, but I doubted he would’ve forced me back into the bed if I had tried to get up.

  “Is there sick
-people room service? Can I have pistachio pudding?”

  Marx smiled a little. “Pistachio? Really?” He grabbed one of the chairs from along the wall and set it down beside the bed. He tried to be quiet, but the sound of the chair legs hitting the floor ricocheted around inside my skull. “We might be able to scrounge up some chocolate or vanilla. But we need to talk first.”

  Was he seriously holding the pudding for information ransom?

  He sat down in the chair and leaned forward, resting his interlocked fingers on his knees. The position brought him entirely too close. I drew my knees into my chest and curled my toes into the mattress in a subtle attempt to put some more space between us. I had no doubt he noticed—he was perceptive that way—but he didn’t comment.

  “I’m sure you’re gonna fight me on this, but I need you to tell me what happened last night,” he said.

  I stared into his dark green eyes briefly before dropping my gaze to the blanket. I picked at the fuzzy pills of fabric on the threadbare blanket with my fingernails as he studied me quietly. “I don’t really wanna talk about it.”

  “I figured as much. But it needs to be done.” He tilted his head in an effort to see my face, but I deliberately kept it averted. I didn’t want him to be able to read my thoughts. “You’re avoidin’ my gaze again,” he said, sounding thoughtful.

  “Maybe the blanket is just more interesting than your face,” I replied with a small shrug. I knew he was going to ask me for every detail about last night, and I didn’t want to revisit those memories just yet.

  “I know this is gonna be an uncomfortable conversation—for both of us—but we don’t have the luxury of secrets this time.”

  I looked up at him, puzzled by his choice of words.

  “Yes, I said both of us,” he said when he read my expression. “Most of my victims are dead, Holly.” I resisted the urge to flinch at the word victim. I didn’t want him to think of me that way. “Occasionally, I have a live victim, but my interaction is minimal. A few interviews at most. I’ve never tried to protect somebody before.”

  That surprised me.

  “When you called me last night, I wasn’t sure I was gonna get to you in time, and I wasn’t sure what I was gonna find when I got there,” he said. I could hear the pain in his voice. His knuckles turned white as his fingers tightened around each other. “I knew by the sound of your voice that somethin’ was wrong with you. When you stopped talkin’ to me, I was worried I was already too late. Then I heard the two of you in the background. I knew he was hurtin’ you in some way, but I couldn’t drive any faster.”

  There hadn’t been a lot of conversation to overhear, but there had been enough. And he’d probably heard every pathetic whimper I made while the killer was memorizing my skin. The thought made me want to crawl under the bed and hide.

  “What did he do, Holly?” Marx asked quietly.

  I twisted the blanket into tiny knots to help keep my emotions under control. “If you heard everything on the phone, then there’s nothing more to say.”

  “I wanna hear it from your perspective.”

  My vision had been warped and my perception of events had been distorted by whatever drug the killer had graciously dumped into my drink. I hadn’t been able to focus on most of the details, and I had faded in and out of consciousness more than once, so I didn’t feel the least bit guilty for answering, “Blurry.”

  Marx frowned. “You’re avoidin’ my question.”

  “Well, maybe you should stop asking it then,” I offered helpfully. Maybe if I stalled long enough, he would get frustrated and leave the room, and I wouldn’t have to discuss it.

  “I can’t do that, Holly. I need to know what happened last night.” Well, so much for getting frustrated and leaving the room . . .

  I lifted my gaze to his briefly. “Are you gonna arrest me if I refuse to give you the details?”

  He gave me a flat, unamused look. “You know very well that I won’t, so it’s pointless to even bluff.”

  “Then I have nothing to say.” I didn’t want to talk about it, and he wasn’t willing to do the one thing that would force me to.

  He hung his head between his shoulders and sighed. “Don’t do this, Holly.” When he looked at me again, his eyes were beseeching. “After everythin’ we’ve been through, after everythin’ that’s happened, please don’t shut me out.”

  The raw emotion in his voice made me hesitate to say the snippy retort that sprang to my tongue. I didn’t want to hurt him. “Why do you always have to push? Why can’t you just . . .”

  “Pretend it didn’t happen?” he asked when I trailed off. “I know there are things in your past that you would rather forget, and you try never to think about them. But I’m a cop. I don’t have the option of pretendin’ a crime didn’t happen just because it makes me uncomfortable. This man killed one of my friends, and he broke into the home of a girl under my protection and attacked her. I cannot let that stand. He doesn’t get a free pass.”

  My home—the only place I had managed to feel safe since I was twelve—had been violated. That wound was far more painful than the throbbing in my head or the cut on my forearm. He’d taken something precious from me that I had strived my entire life to find.

  How was I ever supposed to walk through that door without thinking about what happened there? How was I ever supposed to feel safe inside those walls again? Tears burned across my vision, deepening the ache behind my eyes, and I tried to blink them away.

  “Please tell me what happened.”

  Apparently, I wasn’t escaping this conversation no matter how much I wanted to avoid it. I pulled the blanket tighter around me and tried to keep my voice even. “He was already inside when I came out of the bathroom after my shower.”

  “How’d he get inside?”

  “Stanley’s keys.”

  “Stanley’s keys are in evidence. I put them there when I processed his apartment with the Crime Scene Unit.”

  “Then he made copies,” I replied a little impatiently. “I locked the door before I got in the shower, and he was already inside when I came out. There’s no way he fit through a window.” The windows were barely large enough for me to squeeze through.

  Marx closed his eyes and swore under his breath. “The killer didn’t send Stanley to your apartment that night to scare you. There were probably fifty or sixty keys on that ring, and he wanted to know which ones were yours. He probably made copies the night he killed him.”

  “Stanley was murdered?”

  “There was a very high concentration of alcohol in his blood stream, accompanied by trace amounts of ketamine,” he explained. “It’s what the killer laced your drinks with. It’s most commonly used as an animal tranquilizer, but it’s developed several recreational uses on the street. A low dose can give the user a sense of euphoria. And in a high enough dose, it induces a nearly paralytic state so the victim can’t fight back. If you remember . . .”

  “I couldn’t move.” I remembered all too well. No matter how hard I had tried to make my body move, it refused to obey me.

  The memory of the killer’s hands caressing my bare skin as I sat there, unable to do anything except endure, sent a shiver down my spine. I steered my mind away from those frightening memories. “Why kill him? Why not just make copies of the keys while Stanley was sleeping?”

  “No one knows for sure whether or not the killer intended for him to die. But mixin’ ketamine with any other form of depressant is very easily lethal. Stanley’s heart stopped.”

  I closed my eyes in regret. Stanley had been murdered so the killer could make copies of my keys. What a pointless reason to take a person’s life.

  “It’s likely he made copies of other select keys as well. That would explain how he seemed to vanish into thin air the night he broke into Jace’s apartment. He never left. The officers knocked on doors, but not everybody answered,” Marx continued.

  “Why didn’t he make a copy of Jace’s key?” I asked.

/>   “It’s possible he did. But if he’d used the key to open the door instead of kickin’ it down, we would’ve figured it out sooner. And then we would’ve had your locks changed.”

  Fear tightened my chest. We needed to change Jace’s locks before the killer decided to use her against me. “Jace . . .”

  “She’ll be fine. She’s in the waitin’ room with Mer until I decide she’s calm enough to come in. She can be a bit . . .”

  “Intimidating?” I offered.

  He smiled and clarified, “Overwhelmin’ and impulsive. She actually threatened to take out my ankles if I didn’t let her through the door.”

  That didn’t surprise me. Jace could be as protective of me at times as I could be of her.

  Marx continued summarizing the events of last night as if we’d never veered off topic. “We found Sam unconscious around the back of the buildin’. Apparently, he chugged the entire bottle of punch, and it knocked him out cold. It’s probably the only reason the killer left him alone. The killer then let himself into your home while you were in the shower and waited for the drug to take effect.”

  “Why even bother drugging me?” I asked bitterly. It was obvious he didn’t need me paralyzed in order to subdue me. My aching head was a testament to that.

  “Because he wanted you docile. He might be bigger, but if he had any intention of takin’ you with him, he probably realized how difficult it would be to shove a flailin’, screamin’ woman into the trunk of his car without anybody noticin’.”

  He had intended to take me with him. I had been so certain I’d failed to change his mind before I slipped under, but something had changed his mind. He’d left me lying on the floor, unconscious, for Marx to find.

  “So, after you realized you were drugged, you tried to throw it up in the sink. Then what happened?”

  “I called you.”

  “And then?” His voice softened when I stared intently at the blanket and said nothing. “You have nothin’ to be embarrassed about, Holly.”