Illusions Complete Series (48 page)

“I dunno. I met her when she knocked on this door. She said she was an attorney and she could get me out of a drug charge if I gave her, uh, money.”

“Did you give her money?”

“Yeah. She worked a good deal for me, so it was worth every penny.”

“Where is she now?”

“Shit. You better not be a cop.”

“I'm not. Where did she go?”

“There's a house up the street. It's abandoned. Not sure of the address.”

“Where? Exactly where?” I tried to contain my excitement, although I could feel myself breathing heavily, and my heart was pounding a mile a minute.

“Three houses up, on this side of the road. It's a big old house, like this one. It's been taken over by squatters.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling like kissing him.

Then I ran up to the house to which he was referring, and tried the door. The door wasn’t locked, so I walked in and looked around.

There were no lights, and, this being wintertime, it was almost pitch black outside, even though it was only around 5:30, so I could see very little. A cat came up to me and rubbed on my leg, purring loudly.

Somebody turned a flashlight on me.

“Who are you?” that person asked, then brought out a pistol and held it up to my face.

I put up my hands, and looked around, my eyes adjusting to the dark. There were people everywhere, in corners asleep. Some of them were not asleep, but were holding their arms and staring into space. A few were crashed out in sleeping bags in the middle of the floor. Somebody had a boom box, and the strains of Beethoven's
7
^th
Symphony
was wafting through the air.

Good taste.

Nobody paid attention to me except the guy who held the flashlight and gun up to me.

I started feeling the shivers of familiarity, knowing that I was once one of these people, even if I never actually lived in an abandoned house. I wanted to get out of there because the temptation to use was still strong.

But I had to get Iris out of there first.

“I'm Ryan Gallagher. I'm looking for my wife,” I said, holding up my cell phone and showing him her picture.

“She's here. She's upstairs,” he said, motioning to the ancient staircase.              

My heart leapt with joy at the thought of being so close to my beautiful Iris. I could barely contain my excitement as I hurried to the staircase.

However, flashlight boy beat me to the staircase, and stood in front of it, crossing his arms. “You look like a rich boy,” he said.

“I am a very rich boy. What do you want?”

“That looks like a Rolex,” he observed, looking at my watch.

At that, I took it off and gave it to him.

“Thanks,” he said. “Lemme see your wallet.”

I gave him my wallet, which had about a thousand dollars in it, which is the amount that I usually carry with me. “Take it all,” I said. “Just let me find my wife.”

“Thanks,” he said, taking out all the money out of my wallet. “Follow me,” he said.

I followed him up the creaky stairs, with him leading the way with his flashlight. He went into the second bedroom, with me following closely behind, then flashed his lights into the figures who were lying down in the room. There was about six people in this room, some of them sleeping on the floor, others sleeping upright. As with the people downstairs, none of them reacted to our presence or to the light.

My pulse quickened as he shined the light on an alabaster-skinned red-haired girl who I barely recognized. She was dressed in oversized sweats that went well past her ankles, and a man's t-shirt. Like everybody else in the room, she had a vacant stare. Her hair appeared that it hadn't been combed in two weeks, and she apparently hadn’t bathed in that time, either. She was extremely skinny, and, when the guy shined his light on her arms, I could see track marks on her skin.

I felt tears running down my cheeks.

I had found Iris at last.

Chapter Twenty-One

I walked over to Iris. She looked at me with her dead eyes, and I gently picked her up off the floor. She was limp, like a rag doll, and I couldn't get her to hold on to my neck. She just lay in my arms, her head swinging as I walked, so I slung her over my shoulder, my hands wrapped around her legs. I could feel her arms and head on my back.

As I approached the staircase, I knew that this was going to be tricky at best. Flashlight boy illuminated the staircase, but it was narrow, the stairs were very steep, and I was extremely nervous about falling with Iris in my arms. I sat down at the top of the stairs, and gently set Iris down next to me. She went limp on my lap. I gently stroked her hair while I tried to think of what to do. I knew that she couldn't walk - she was way too high. Since this was December, the sky was pitch black outside, as was this house. There was no way I could make my way down this staircase safely, with Iris in my arms.

Flashlight boy was standing at the bottom of the steps, looking at me expectantly. “You coming or not?” he asked.

I gently tried the railing to see if it was solid. It was unstable and threatened to give way if I were to lean on it. So, bracing myself on the railing while taking Iris down the stairs was out of the question. Maybe flashlight boy could help me? Nah, he was probably high, and I didn't trust him not to drop her.

I sighed and said to flashlight boy “I better not. The staircase is too dark. I'll just have to stay here until it is light.”

“Suit yourself,” flashlight boy said. “You can sleep on one of the beds in that first bedroom. Nobody will bother you.”

“Thank you,” I said, carrying Iris into the first bedroom. There was a single bed up against a wall, with very thin sheets and a tattered pillow. I was wearing a heavy coat, and I knew that Iris wasn't feeling the cold now, but might be by the time it was light outside. So, I took off my coat, and put it on her, and gently laid her down on the bed. The bed was more like a cot, with a light mattress and no box spring, on a rickety metal frame. I laid down with her on the bed, covering her with my body and stroking her hair.

She was unresponsive.

I knew that there was a very slim chance that my car would still be out front in the morning, so I called Daniel and asked if he could be on standby to come and pick us up.

“Sure,” he said. “But what are you doing in that neighborhood in the first place?”

“I'll explain later,” I said.

Then I fell asleep, holding Iris in my arms.

Even though I was on a flimsy cot, in the middle of a dilapidated house without heat, I felt comfortable and safe for the first time in over two weeks.

I slept better that night than I had since Iris went missing.

When I woke up, Iris was apparently coming down. She was twitching violently, and I saw goose pimples on her flesh. She was also visibly shivering. Her head was shaking and twitching, over and over. She looked at me and appeared not to recognize me.

However, it was now light, so I felt more confident taking her down the stairs.

This time, however, when I picked her up, she was able to put her arms around my neck. I could feel her entire body convulsing, which also made me nervous with regards to our flight down the stairs, but I knew that I had to get her out of there and get her into a hospital as soon as possible. I took a deep breath, and negotiated the stairs carefully, taking each step one at a time. When I got to the bottom step, and the floor below, I let out a sigh of relief.

Flashlight boy was nowhere to be seen, but I did see other people lying around, and some were starting to twitch like Iris.

I walked out the door with Iris in my arms. She was twitching violently and shivering. To my surprise and delight, my Porsche was still out front. It was missing all four hubcaps, but that didn't matter. When I laid Iris on the passenger's side seat, I discovered that the interior was intact, much to my further surprise and delight. I honestly thought that the interior would be stripped of the GPS and satellite radio, but that was not the case.

Then I drove Iris towards St. Joseph Hospital, which was a hospital across town, and was the hospital where Iris lay for months in a coma.

Oh, Iris, what drove you to this? I knew that she was in real trouble, and I was right, but the question was why?  Why would she go off the grid like this and live among the junkies? Iris was never a drug abuser. Never a drug abuser.

But she was shot up with black tar heroin. That made her more susceptible to doing something like this. She seemed to be fine. She recovered from that. She moved past that. I thought that she was safe. I never, in my wildest dreams, could imagine that she would do something like this.

Why?

Next to me, Iris was now twitching violently, her entire body and head going into what looked like convulsions. I thought about taking her to a closer hospital, but the closest hospital was one that I didn't trust to give her the best care. And I knew that what she was going through right now were the normal symptoms of coming down off of a powerful heroin high.              

My heart broke with every twitch and every shiver. I was kicking myself for not being more prepared with a heavy blanket for her. I was coming down in this area looking for her. I should've known that this was a possibility. Why didn't I bring a blanket? The heat in the car was turned up to as high was it could go. This made me feel uncomfortably warm, but she was all that mattered right now. Her comfort was all I was thinking about. I knew that the cold was coming from within, that nothing I did would make her warm, but that knowledge didn't stop me from beating myself up about not being more prepared.

I finally got to the hospital and checked her in.

Only to be informed that there would be a 9-hour wait for an available bed.

Screw it. We could be in Los Angeles in a little over three hours, and she could be checked into the best facility in the country. But could she fly in this condition? At least here, she could have an Emergency Room bed, and they could give her fluids and monitor her vitals.

I could fly her out to LA once she is stabilized.

So, Iris was given an ER bed, and they hooked her up to a saline tank and gave her methadone to help ease her withdrawal symptoms. I sat next to her, holding her hand. I stroked her hair and talked to her soothingly. She probably was aware of my presence, even if she couldn’t show it.

“There, there, my beautiful girl. You're back safe, if not sound. And I love you, and will never leave you again.” I bowed my head, realizing that there would be yet another long leave of absence from my job, as I helped Iris recover from this.

I started to reconsider even being there at all. What harm would there be if I simply became a trust fund baby, and spent all my time with my lovely wife?

I answered my own question - the harm would be that I would be leaving a job that I was good at. I had the business acumen of my father, without the cold-blooded ruthlessness. I was able to finesse negotiations, like the one in Tokyo, and that made me valuable.

At the same time, perhaps it was time to move on. There wasn't a reason why I should be working for somebody else. I could buy my own company, start it from the ground up. I could choose passion projects, something that could do some real good in the world, as opposed to simply acquiring pieces of silver.

I called my job and told them what happened. They understood, of course. They really didn't want to lose me. They told me to take all the time that I needed.

Inwardly, though, I knew. I knew that it was time to move on. When Iris gets better, I could make my next move in life, and it should be something that would include her. Opening up an animal sanctuary was something that I could do, and we could do it together. When she gets well, I will bring this up to her.

But, for right now, her getting better is what was most important. Period.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Iris

I was laying down at the bus stop, waiting for a bus to pick me up and take me to parts unknown. My mind was a blank, except for focusing on how it was I could get away from what happened to me in that house. I couldn't go back into that house. But my thoughts were jumbled, incoherent. They didn't make much sense, even to myself. I didn't have a plan, I only knew that I had to get away.

And yet...there was a vague memory in my brain. The memory that was in my cells of a euphoric sensation that I had never experienced before or since. The mental and physical pain that I was experiencing right then was excruciating, worse than anything that I had ever experienced.

I was desperate to get back to that euphoria.

The euphoria I was remembering was the feeling after Rochelle shot me up with all that heroin. That was what I needed right then. Euphoria.

Which gave me a plan. I needed to find a drug house so that somebody could give me what I started to desperately crave. The voice inside my head was at top decibel now, telling me that I somehow deserved what just happened to me. That I really never did escape my misfit situation, I just got into a new one. And all I could think about was the feeling of the belt tightening around my neck, and the threats that every protest, every kick, and every scream would result in death for me, as that man would strangle me and leave my body right there in the kitchen.

And the physical pain was more than I could bear.

But I really didn't know exactly where to go to get some drugs that would help me ease my extreme mental and physical pain. I knew that I was very naïve about all of that, never having been in that world. I just figured that I would be able to go to the seedy part of town and go on a street corner and find somebody who would deal to me.

That wasn't going to work.

I could go to a rape crisis center. But they might expect me to tell them who did this to me. It was a retired government assassin. I wouldn't last two minutes in this world if I ever breathed a word about him.

And Ryan...lovely Ryan. He wasn’t here. I couldn't rely on him to fix me this time. Besides, this was his fault. I told him a million times that I didn't want a bodyguard, but did he listen? If he just would've listened to me, this never would’ve happened.