by E M Kaplan
She stuck her tongue out at him.
His face grew serious. “You took a few hard hits. Your head’s all right. But they had to operate on you here to stop some internal bleeding,” he said, moving a hand lightly over her abdomen, not touching it but hovering a couple of inches over her. He took her hand and while he described her injuries and tried to gloss over the details of her surgery, he gave it a small squeeze whether he noticed it or not.
Then he said, “Turns out, you walked out of the desert right up to a 7-11 store and found a pay phone.” She offered up a silent prayer for the convenience store chain that was omnipresent and repented that she’d formerly considered them a blight on the rural landscape. And then, she offered up a second silent prayer to the god of small electronic gadgets. Pagers. Motorola. Thank you God, for Motorola, and all the drones who work for you.
She shook her head. “I don’t remember that at all. But how would you know which phone I was calling from anyway?” She tried to imagine him standing in his office checking his messages.
“I was already here in Tucson.” And from her puzzled look, he explained. “Josie, you were missing for 48 hours. Police were searching for you. No one knew where you were. You weren’t at the Castle Ranch. You hadn’t called your aunt, who was starting to panic, like the rest of us.”
It sank it slowly. “Forty-eight hours? I was out there for two days?”
He sighed, looking about 60 years old, and sat on the edge of her bed. He put his hand on her arm, lightly, so he wouldn’t disturb the I.V. Her other arm was in a sling, maybe to keep her shoulder still, she speculated. Fine with her. The less movement, the better. Of course, the euphoria of being alive helped, too. And of having Drew sitting next to her touching her. She tried briefly to determine whether it was friendly concern or more. But speculating made her feel the opposite of euphoric.
“You should probably rest now,” he said. “The police are going to need you to make a statement for them. Also, you should probably know that they arrested both Peter and Michael Williams.”
Things were happening without her.
“How did the police know it was them?” she wondered out loud.
“There was a woman who worked for them. Marie or Maria? When she heard that you were missing, she came forward and told the police about some things that she’d seen at their house. There was a bloody shovel in their car. Also, the ring that you always wear. It was on the backseat of their car.” Her ring? She felt her thumb—she hadn’t even realized that she was missing it.
Josie’s eyes teared up suddenly. Maria Garza had stepped forward to say something to the police. Whatever that meant, whether it was for Josie or for Leann, Señora Garza had found it within herself to speak up, to risk everything that she had, and to do what they both knew was the right thing.
Drew saw her eyes getting moist. He stroked her arm gently, making her body heat up all over. “Yeah, I thought so. You need rest.”
He headed toward the door, and she suddenly felt panic about being alone. It was one thing to be relieved that she was alive, but entirely another to be left alone in her room with just her thoughts and the idea that there were bad guys out there. Bad guys all over the world, masquerading as normal people.
“Can you tell me where they are right now?” Would the brothers be extradited to Massachusetts? Josie had been about to ask Drew to stay in the hospital room with her. But he looked tired. She should suck it up and let him go back to his hotel or wherever he was staying. He’d probably had to take personal time off from work to come out here and save her. All because of her stupidity, her inability to keep herself out of trouble.
He hesitated. “Well, I didn’t want to say anything until later, after you felt better. But, they were released on bail. They were in jail less than 24 hours. I’m not really sure who they paid off.” He shook his head in disgust. “Attempted murder, maybe. First degree with you. Flight risks. And yet they were able to bail themselves out. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were halfway to Switzerland by now.” He must have seen the panic rising on her face.
He came back to her bedside. “Hey, hey,” he said softly. “Don’t worry about it. They aren’t coming here. That’s over now.” And she tried hard to believe him. “And you might want to know that when they arrested the brothers, Leann’s mother was able to get the body sent back home. They laid her to rest this morning. Also,” he said, “the police are on their way over. They’ll be here soon, so you need to rest up.”
“Benita?” she asked, remembering the girl at the party who had been mowed down by one of the brothers.
Drew frowned. “She’s got some serious injuries. But they found her hair and blood on Michael Williams’s car. So they had charges for that case, too.” Her heart sank. Yet another female victim in the long wake behind the Williams brothers.
She watched Drew walk toward the door again. There was something intensely comforting about the lines of his denim jeans and t-shirt. He looked back at her and said, “I’m going to get myself a blanket and a pillow. This place is freezing. I’ll be back in a minute, okay?”
“Okay,” she managed to get out before embarrassingly grateful tears started to leak from her eyes. She was a freaking mess and would have to pull it together before she did or said something stupid. Like, I love you. There was only a finite amount of time that she’d be able to exist this way, emotionally tenderized. She looked around for the television remote control to hurriedly shut it off before some greeting card commercial came on and made her cry.
“And Antonio is bringing you some lunch from his kitchen. The food in this place is vile.” He grinned.
She stopped him one last time. He was coming back after all, and she said, “Drew, one request?”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Never. I mean never, ever change your pager number.” Apparently, it was ingrained in her subconscious. A literal life-line. That made him smile again as he shut the door after him.
Josie was still fumbling for the remote control. After she found it, she squinted at the tens of tiny little buttons, seemingly randomly color-coded. Just as she found the power button on the remote, a local news program began. The sound was low, but she was immediately riveted by the pictures that they flashed of Michael and Peter Williams. The pictures were from last week, from the wedding. They were smiling with their arms around each other, dressed in their tuxedos. They looked deceptively normal. She turned the television off, leaned back, and closed her eyes.
CHAPTER 30
Later, some men from the Tucson Police Department visited her. They were plain-clothed detectives, one of them older and jovial, the other younger, with curly hair that seemed a little too long for department standards. She was a bit sad that she wouldn’t be seeing her friend Flores from the Puerta PD—apparently he’d already given them what information on her that he’d had, although she wasn’t sure what that meant. Surely, he hadn’t told them that he’d given her copies of police reports.
She dutifully gave them a statement, starting from when she talked to Maria Garza, including the hit-and-run the night of the anniversary party, and answered their questions as best as she could. Her heart hurt when she thought again about Benita. The policemen were extremely polite and gentle with her, more or less. The older man squeezed her foot on their way out and wished her a speedy recovery. She realized later that she was the one they were referring to as “the vic.” How had that become her? It was mind-boggling how easy a line it was to find yourself on the other side of.
Drew checked on her immediately after the detectives left. “Not too bad?”
“They were nice,” she said. “Professional investigators, unlike me.” She made a face. “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, coming out here.”
He struggled for a minute, probably trying to figure out the best way to answer her without making her angry. “Well, you were successful, for the most part,” he offered.
She snorted. “I’ll hav
e to do a better job of it if I ever do this again in the future. That’s for sure.” And in response to his groan of disbelief, she said, “Other than the beatings, and the anxiety, I enjoyed myself. For the most part.”
To that, he just shook his head. Probably steeling himself for a Conversation (with a capital C) later. Later was okay with her.
#
After that, Drew brought her food for every meal. Sometimes, he stayed with her, but when she insisted, he left to sleep in a real bed—at her aunt’s house, it turned out.
Patrick, the movie star, sent her a huge arrangement of flowers. All kinds of tropical, wild-smelling things—which Drew eyed suspiciously—along with a card that said, “Get well soon. Your fellow hostage at the food gulag, Patrick.” At least he hadn’t told her to call his people. She remembered belatedly that she’d never checked in on him after the anniversary party. She also remembered her irritation at him after they’d nearly been hit by Peter in Michael’s car. Probably, he was still hyped up with adrenaline and still felt “alive” because of the stupid incident.
A few days later, he caused a stir at the nurse’s station when he came to visit, thinly disguised with his baseball cap pulled far down over his eyes. Drew lurked in her room, glowering at him until Josie shooed him out. Really, there was no contest. Didn’t he realize that?
Patrick sank onto the side of her bed dramatically and tossed his baseball cap on to the side table. He clasped her hand. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
She assured him she was fine. Well on her way to recovery.
“And you will come out to L.A. to visit me when you’re able, won’t you?”
She smiled noncommittally.
“Does that mean no?” He seemed a little stunned. “We have something between us, I think. Something unusual. I really want to see you again, Josie.”
She took a deep breath. “I feel kind of ambivalent about you Patrick.” He furrowed his perfectly symmetrical eyebrows. She wasn’t sure if he were stumbling over the word or the disbelief that she wasn’t jumping at the chance of seeing him again. She explained bluntly, “Sometimes I’m really attracted to you. And other times, I’m just repulsed.”
He squinted as statement sank in. Then, he smiled broadly. “But that’s what I love about you, Josie. You keep me grounded. You’re totally real. You have such potential in Hollywood. Please, please, come see me sometime.” And when she tried to refuse, he began backing out of the room. “Don’t answer me now. I left my private cell number in your room with your stuff. Just call me sometime. You know you will.” And then, mercifully, the door closed on him. When she checked out of the hospital, she would leave his flowers at the nurses’ station.
Eventually, they released her from the hospital. She still needed bed rest to heal up—especially her ribs and where her scar from surgery was healing. But it was cheaper to do that outside of the hospital. Anxious thoughts of the medical bills piling up were starting to impede her healing. Her Aunt Ruth offered her a place to stay as long as she needed, but Josie just wanted to get the hell out of Arizona.
Her family came to see her before she left the hospital. Libby, obviously coached, kept a safe distance and tiptoed around Josie’s bed as if she were as fragile as a dandelion. Her aunt and uncle, in their own ways, expressed their anger that the two brothers had been released on bail. “Wish I had a gun,” her uncle said shaking his gray head on the way out.
Through Drew, she sent his cousin Antonio a message thanking him for the food and personal attention at Castle Ranch. Drew went there to pack up her stuff. Drew also took her home, arranging for wheelchairs in the airports, carrying her bag for her. Doing everything basically.
After what felt like an eternity measured in minute details, she left Arizona and headed east.
CHAPTER 31
Susan and Benjy were waiting for them at Logan airport. They leaned over her wheelchair and fawned over her so much she felt irritated and ashamed of herself. Susan had brought her flowers—those, she kept. They were pink, miniature roses, so Josie asked her, “Does this mean we’re going steady?” To which she received only a kiss on the cheek as a reply.
To Benjy, she apologized for her awful behavior the last time she’d seen him.
“Forget about it,” he told her with a sweet, lop-sided smile, and she knew she’d been let off the hook entirely too easily. She wanted to cry. She didn’t deserve his forgiveness. But she took his hand when he offered it.
The entire journey home from Arizona, she’d been as helpless as a baby. Drew glided her from gate to gate in a wheelchair, carried her bags, and settled her gently in her seat. She tried to bear her helplessness stoically, but she caught him grinning at her crabbiness. She was struck again with how easy it was to let him take care of her, but then wondered if she were truly irritated with him—or with herself for being unwilling to entirely let herself…trust someone else.
She’d been on her own for so long.
#
A week after returning home, she received a phone call from Greta Williams.
“Now I know what it feels like to be summoned before royalty,” Josie said to Drew. She was lying on the couch surrounded by her papers and books, trying to sort through some older material that she could send in to her editor. She’d found an old article that she’d started on comfort foods. Maybe she’d finish that one up and e-mail it in to Julieanne. She still wasn’t eating normal foods—and her stomach seemed to have shrunk to the size of an apricot pit.
Drew who had stopped by to check on her during his lunch hour said, “I think it’s ridiculous. This is America. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. Does she know that her sons beat the crap out of you and left you for dead in the middle of the desert?” He was grinding his teeth.
“Cut that out. You’re going to give yourself lockjaw.”
In fact, she felt obligated to obey the summons. More than obligated—she had a thing or two she wanted to settle with the old battleaxe. Greta Williams had informed her that a car would be arriving at her apartment at two o’clock to take her to Lydia Ash’s house. Both women would be there. And they were expecting complete details about what Josie had discovered in Puerta and the subsequent events. Josie suspected Mr. Obregon would be there, though she hadn’t asked. She was certain that neither of the brothers would be at Lydia Ash’s house, so it should be a safe meeting place.
“I’m going,” she eventually admitted to Drew. “I want to wrap things up. And yes, there is the aforementioned matter of her sons beating the crap out of me…”
Drew glowered and paced around her room. He looked good in his work clothes. Sears catalog be damned. She watched him and tried to restrain her unadulterated admiration. It had only gotten worse since they’d returned home. But she got it. She got him. After all, it was his job to put people back together and to help them stay that way.
She also had a niggling tick of curiosity that had burrowed under her skin about how Greta Williams would react when she heard it from Josie herself about what her sons had done both to Leann and to her. Or when she showed her the police department photos of Leann’s battered face.
“Do you want me to go with you?” he offered. He ran a hand through his hair, and she watched the way his arm thickened the sleeve of his dress shirt.
She squinted at him. “You know, I’m beginning to think you have a crush on me.”
He muttered something and wouldn’t repeat it when she asked him to. She asked again, seriously. Then again, teasing.
He said, “I said, Only for the last ten years or so. I’ve had this damn…crush since I met you.” He glared at her, mortification coloring his face along with something else. Anger? Arousal? “Okay? Happy now?”
She was silent, stunned. Awestruck. Uncertain. Yet…thrilled. Her body flushed hot, and then ran cold and shivery. For ten years, they had been like two teenagers in their stubbornness. All this time, he’d been…attracted to her? She frowned and started to speak several t
imes before anything coherent came out.
Then she said, “Actually, yes. I am happy now.” He was still glowering and pacing, angry that he’d been forced to cop to a confession first. He had completely missed that she was trying to say that she felt the same way about him. She flagged him down as he began pacing again. “Stop. Look, I’m trying to tell you that the feeling is mutual. I…” Want him? Like him?…Love him? She froze up.
He smiled then, a goofy, pleased grin. Standing in the middle of her apartment with his hands on his hips, with that confused, yet happy expression on his face. He said, “But I still wish you weren’t going to see that woman.”
CHAPTER 32
At two minutes to two, Josie’s doorbell rang. She pried herself off the couch and buzzed in the driver that Greta Williams had sent. She checked the peephole before unlocking the door.
“Hey, Mr. Obregon.” Josie was pleased to see him, though inexplicably shy for a minute. It had been a while since they had spoken face to face although their phone calls and faxes had been an intimate connection for Josie. He looked the same in his awkward plaid suit coat and too-tight pants. His meaty hands hung loosely at his sides, but his blue eyes sparkled just the same as before.
“Good to see you again, Josie girl,” he said though she saw him scrutinizing her carefully, looking for her sore spots and places slowest to heal, of which she had plenty.
“Hang on just a minute. I have some things I want to bring,” she said. She moved slowly around and picked up a shoulder bag that contained her papers that she wanted to show Greta Williams. Mr. Obregon was there in an instant and took the bag from her.
“Let me help you get into the car,” he said as she headed toward the door with him.
“Are you going to carry me?” she gritted out, and then regretted it. As usual, her irritation at herself found the first available outward mark.
