Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) (39 page)

“Sorry,” the cop mouthed at me, once he was near enough to talk to me in a near-whisper. “Didn’t mean to leave you alone, ma’am. I just went to use the john. My partner must have gone to get food.” When I didn’t say anything, he shrugged, coloring a little. “I thought he was going to wait for me. We really shouldn’t have left your door unattended like that, I apologize...”

I smiled a little, I couldn’t help it. Hardly anyone I knew called the bathroom “the john” anymore. The expression sounded weirdly dated, and the blond-haired cop with the military haircut looked young to me, at least a few years younger than me.

“Your name’s Michael, right?” I said.

He nodded, beaming that corn-fed grin down at me. I felt a pulse of pleasure off him that I’d remembered meeting him before.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he said. “That’s me. Michael Lawson.”

I found myself looking more closely at his face. It hit me that he might not be as young as I’d originally thought. Now that I was standing right next to him, probably the closest I’d ever been to him where I was actually looking at him directly, I could see tiny lines around each of his eyes and slightly deeper ones on his forehead when he smiled.

He just had one of those faces, I guess.

Perpetually youthful.

Looking at him this close, I found myself thinking he might be older than me, actually. Maybe as much as four or five years older. Maybe even more than that.

“Can I ask you a favor, Officer Lawson?” I said.

“Michael,” he corrected.

“Michael,” I said, smiling wider. “I didn’t bring any cash with me, Michael, and I’m thinking the cafeteria is probably closed. I’m starving, so I wondered...”

But Michael immediately shook his head. “No, ma’am. It’s open. The cafeteria here’s open all night.” He rolled his eyes a little, still smiling at me. “That’s probably where Lou is, to be honest. Knowing him, he’ll be a while.”

“Ah.” I nodded. “Big city hospital. Got it. They must take credit cards then, too?”

Michael nodded again. “I believe so, yes.”

I sighed in relief. “Then never mind,” I said, shoving a hand in my pocket to make sure my ID and my credit card were still there. “I don’t think I’ll need that favor after all. I was going to ask if I could borrow a few dollars, but I think I’m good.”

I started to turn to walk down the corridor towards the elevators, when he startled me, reaching out quickly to touch my arm. The fingers on my arm were light, cautious, almost like he was worried about offending me, but when I turned, quirking an eyebrow, he didn’t remove his hand.

“You can’t go down there alone, ma’am,” Michael said, his voice somber. “Detective Tanaka would have my badge if I let you go anywhere alone at this time of night. It might seem ridiculous to you, but I can’t have it. I’m sorry.”

“I’d rather if you stayed with Black,” I said, my voice a touch warning.

He glanced towards the door, then shrugged. “The detective was pretty clear he worried more about the risk to you.”

I stared at him, incredulous. When the officer didn’t back down, I exhaled, muttering a little under my breath. Damned Nick.
 

Black catches a bullet in the chest and he’s worried about me. Typical.

“I really don’t want you leaving him alone,” I repeated, my voice a touch colder.

“Then we’ll have to wait for Lou to come back,” Michael said at once, not missing a beat. “But I’m afraid I can’t let you go downstairs alone, Ms. Fox...” He hesitated, coloring a little. He glanced at Black’s hospital room door. “...Or is it Mrs. Black?”

Maybe seeing something in my face, he shifted his weight to his other foot. Taking his hand off my arm, he shuffled a half-step away from me.

“I don’t mean to be impolite... and if it’s none of my business, just tell me. It’s just...” He met my gaze again, and that time, I couldn’t help noticing his eyes were a shocking blue in color, if a different, lighter shade than Mozar’s. “It’s just... I’ve heard you called both today, ma’am. I wanted to make sure I was calling you by the correct name.”

“Ms. Fox is fine,” I said, feeling my face warm. “Or you can just call me Miriam.”

That boyish smile returned. “Miriam. That’s fine. That’s probably easiest.”

Smiling back politely, I glanced down the hall, listening to the silence. Suddenly, that quiet felt a lot more awkward. Remembering that a lot of men had been reacting to me strangely lately, I wondered if I’d given Officer Michael Lawson the wrong idea. Maybe he’d taken my invitation to call me by my first name the wrong way. Or maybe he thought I was dodging my marriage to Black, or deliberately downplaying it, by telling him to call me Ms. Fox.

Or maybe I was just reading way too much into everything right now.

“Well,” I said, after a few seconds more. “I think I’ll just wait inside the room. Do you mind knocking when your partner shows up?”

Michael looked relieved as well, probably because he’d also felt the awkwardness there. He smiled, nodding at me warmly, his expression earnest. “Not at all, ma’am. I’ll let you know right away, then we can head down to the cafeteria pronto.”

“Thank you. That would be great.”

Hesitating a last time, I turned away from him then, walking the few steps back to Black’s hospital room door. I’d just reached it, and reached my fingers for the L-shaped metal handle, when the presence behind me shifted.

The corn-fed cop with the blond crew-cut and the sky blue eyes and easy smile abruptly got erased. That soft, innocent-feeling light vanished behind me in a puff of smoke.

The silence behind me grew deafening.

I froze, realizing my mistake...

But it was already too late.

I THREW AN elbow back without thought. I jerked my waist, threw my whole body behind it, but I was a split-second too slow in a game where timing was everything. His weight slammed into me even as I started to turn, his hands grasping the back of my head as he used his forward momentum to plow my face into the heavy door.

I let out an involuntary cry.

It hurt. A lot.

Even so, I didn’t let myself react to that pain.

I gasped, writhing, fighting to turn before he could pin me for real, but he slammed my head into the door a second time, and that time it stunned me. I jerked the handle down in desperation, and the two of us fell forward onto the floor of the hospital room.

I fought to crawl away, but he slammed me down again, twisting my arm in a ju-jitsu hold that made me cry out for real, thinking he’d break my arm.

He used his weight that time, too––hitting me on his way down, and then slamming my face into the tile. It probably would have broken my nose, and maybe knocked me out for real, but I turned my face instinctively and it hit my cheek hard instead, blanking out my vision.
 

Even so, it was enough for me to let out a groan, right before I scissored my legs between his, trying to force him to flip over. He gripped my waist when I did, shifting his weight over me, and for a bare second, I thought I might get free.

When I started to turn over, he used my own muscles against me, though.

Twisting my wrist to force my whole arm and body to turn, he flipped me to my back. It was that, or let him break my arm for real, or possibly dislocate my shoulder. I swung at him with my other fist, trying to hit him in the face, to push him sideways with the grappling motion, but he captured that wrist too, slamming it to the floor hard enough to make me gasp.

I fought to writhe free, but he still had my other arm.

For a long moment, we just faced one another, panting.

Looking up at him, I realized this was what he wanted.

He wanted to look into my face, to be able to see me.

Once I realized that, I started to scream, but he elbowed me in the face before I could take a full breath, throwing his body down with a practiced precision without releasing my wrists. He hit me in the sternum hard enough to crack a rib and knock the wind out of me, forcing me to take pained gasps. Yanking one of my arms down and trapping it under his knee, he wrapped his free hand around my throat, bringing his face down to mine.

“Don’t scream. Miriam. Don’t scream...”

His words were intimate, soft.

The threat was unambiguous though, on the surface.

“...It will go really really badly for him, if you do. I can cause a lot of pain for him, even in his current state, Miriam...”

He stared down at me with those shockingly blue eyes, his face completely devoid of emotion. Nothing about him looked human to me at all now.

Looking up at him, I found myself thinking about his words. I nodded when his mouth firmed. “Okay. Okay...”

I was still gasping from where he’d knocked the wind out of me.

He staring down at me, studying my face with those shocking blue eyes, when I reached out with my mind, reading him. I saw pictures there at once, things he wanted to do to Black. Those pictures got more detailed and I whimpered, feeling terror pool in the middle of my gut. Some part of his mind shoved at mine, telling me he would do it––that he didn’t want to, but he would, that he would take no pleasure from it, but he would do his duty.

I didn’t believe him. He wanted to hurt Black.

He relished those images, cherished them. They made him feel right with the world.

Even as I thought it, he spoke again, his voice as empty as his eyes.

“I don’t want to kill you, Miriam,” he said, soft.

I looked up at him, fighting to breathe, to think.

I tried to concentrate too, thinking maybe I could push him...

Then something else hit me.

I felt like a fucking idiot when it did.

UNCLE CHARLES!
I screamed out into the space. It wasn’t like Black, where I knew instantly what to feel for, what to connect to. It felt like a call into nowhere, into nothing. Into a kind of void. I tried to concentrate on my uncle, on being a kid, on what it felt like when I was a child, when I held his hand... when I followed him everywhere.

That time, I almost felt something.

UNCLE CHARLES! HELP ME! HE’S IN BLACK’S ROOM... HELP ME PLEASE! HE’S GOING TO KILL ME! HE’S GOING TO KILL BLACK...

Something darkened my vision, right before pain exploded in my jaw.

I let out a low cry, more in shock at first. When the actual pain hit, I couldn’t make any sound at all. I could only arch my back, panting.

“You need to focus, Miriam... focus on me. This is important.”

I looked up at him, still breathing hard, fighting to think past the pain in my jaw where he’d hit me with what I now realized was the butt of a gun. Looking up, I saw that same gun in his hand. My mind wrapped round that, fighting to think past it even as he jammed that barrel under my jaw, unlocking the safety with a click of the trigger.

“I need you to pay attention. To
listen,
Miriam. Are you listening?”

I nodded. “Yes,” I gasped. “Yes. I’m listening, Michael...”

“This isn’t your fault.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “All right.”

“It’s not. Do you believe me?”

I fought to think, looking up at him, struggling to focus past the gun pressed up into my throat. “I want to. I want to, Michael...”