Final Scream (25 page)

“So how does it feel to be the focus of a story for a change?” Selma Rickert asked as she leaned against the partition that separated her work space from Cassidy’s. Gold bracelets jangled around her wrists, and her eyes were tinted a vibrant green, courtesy of new contact lenses. She appeared nervous, as she usually did since the paper had been declared a smoke-free workplace and she and a few others were forced to go outside for a cigarette every now and again rather than leaving one forever burning in the ashtray that still sat buried somewhere on her desk.

“To tell you the truth, I’d rather be the one asking the questions.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Scratching a bare forearm with the painted nails of her opposite hand, Selma added, “You’d better watch out for Mike. He’s on the warpath—arguing with the powers-that-be again over the ‘direction and attitude’ of the
Times
or some such crap.” The powers-that-be were Elmira Milbert, owner of the
Valley Times
after inheriting it from her husband just this past year. “Besides, he’s hell-bent to get the inside scoop on the fire from you-know-who.”

“Me? Like I have it?” Cassidy rubbed her temples and prayed for an aspirin.

Selma nodded and glanced at the door to the editor-in-chief’s glassed-in office. “You’re the wife of one of the injured parties.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“More than we do, honey. That’s all that matters.”

A weight settled in Cassidy’s stomach. “What’s he want?”

“What do you mean, what’s he want? A story, natch. From someone close to the fire.” Selma shrugged. “You know Mike. He’s always looking for a different angle—after all, that’s what this paper is all about: the alternative viewpoint.”

“But he wouldn’t mind a little sensationalism.”

Selma grinned, showing off her slight overbite. “Not if it sold a few papers.” She winked and settled back at her desk while Cassidy stared at the chaos that was hers. She’d only missed a few days of work, and yet it seemed that the whole world had collapsed since then.

She sorted through her mail and messages, finished a story she’d started a few days before about a new theater troupe, then put a call into the hospital to check on Chase. Ignoring another assignment that wasn’t due until next week, she scanned all the news stories on the fire as well as a copy of the police report that someone had managed to pry out of the Sheriff’s Department’s hands.

An hour passed before Mike Gillespie stopped at her desk and glanced at her copy of the report. “Sorry to hear about Chase,” he said, his eyes, behind thick glasses, looked concerned. A big man with the start of a sagging stomach, he smelled of cigar smoke and coffee.

“It looks like he’ll be okay. It’ll just take time.”

“Helluva thing, though.”

She’d never felt nervous around Mike before, but that’s because they were always playing on the same team. This time, because of the fire, they were on opposite sides—or at least that’s the way it felt.

“If you need more time off…” He let the sentence trail, giving her the opportunity to reply before he’d even finished his thought.

“I might want to work more at home, once Chase is released from the hospital. I’ll fax things to the office.”

He lifted a shoulder and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “Just let me know. We’ve got other people willing to fill in for you.”

“I appreciate it,” she said, though she felt her stomach clench and knew she was bracing herself for something.
Here it comes
, her mind warned,
don’t let him blindside you
.

“Bill has been working on the story about the fire.”

Bill Laszlo was one of the best reporters on the paper. She didn’t respond, just waited until Mike got to the point.

“He might want to ask you a few questions, you know, since your father owns the mill and your husband and brother run it…”

“And my husband was nearly killed.”

His face was suddenly world-weary. “It’s news, Cassidy. Big news around here. That’s what we report. You wouldn’t expect us to ignore it, would you?”

“’Course not. I just don’t like being a primary source, okay? This has been rough on my family as it is; I’m not going to be the one spilling her guts to the media.”

“The shoe pinches a little when it’s on the other foot, doesn’t it?”

“Just tell Bill that I don’t know anything more than he does. The police aren’t confiding in me.”

He hesitated a little and pulled on his lower lip. “The way I hear it, they might suspect you.”

She stared at him as if he’d sprouted horns and a tail. “They told you that?”

“No, but you were called in for questioning.”

“Because my husband was hurt. That’s all!” she nearly shouted, instantly indignant. What was Mike pulling? “They talked to lots of people.”

“All the talk in Prosperity is that the mill was losing money and insured to the hilt.”

She wouldn’t rise to that one. “So that’s the talk, is it? Sounds like pure speculation to me. I thought this paper only printed facts.”

“We were hoping to get them from you.”

“I don’t have any.”

“What about the John Doe?”

Her heart nearly stopped, and she tried to keep from snapping. “All I know is that he’s in CCU and it doesn’t look good.”

“You think he’s the arsonist?”

She shook her head vehemently.
I think he might be my husband’s brother—the boy with whom I lost my heart and my virginity
. “I don’t
know
anything about him.”

“But if you find out, I’ll be the first to know, right?” His eyebrows rose behind his glasses.

“Sure. Right after I call the tabloid shows.”

“Funny, Cassidy,” he said sarcastically as he rapped his knuckles on her desk and turned away. “Very funny.”

“Chase…can you hear me?” Cassidy sat in a straight-backed chair in the hospital room next to her husband, as she had off and on for two days, knowing that there was supposedly nothing wrong with his hearing, believing that he was purposely tuning her out. Though the nurses said he hadn’t uttered a word and the police hadn’t been able to wrest so much as one syllable from his lips, he did finally respond, managed to eat a little food, drink from a bent straw in a cup, and glare at the world through one ugly eye. He was still swathed in bandages and didn’t so much as turn that bloodshot eye in her direction. The drugs he was given for pain might prevent him from connecting with her, but Cassidy suspected he was just being stubborn, playing out the same scene he always did whenever they argued.

She wondered if she’d ever loved him. Certainly, right after the fire that had taken Angie’s life, when she’d visited Sunny McKenzie, she’d had no intention of ever getting involved with Brig’s brother.

Sunny’s prediction that night, that she would marry Chase, had pursued her all the way home, but she’d shoved the silly thought aside. After all, she loved Brig. Not his older, more sophisticated brother. She and Chase had barely seen each other the next couple of years. He’d gone to law school in Salem, she’d finished high school in Prosperity, wondering about Brig, telling herself to get over him, barely having a social life at all. She’d worried her mother, but her father had barely noticed any change in his second daughter.

When Angie had left this earth, a part of Rex Buchanan had followed after her. His love for life had withered. His visits to the cemetery became more frequent, and he was forever locked in his den, drinking brandy and staring morosely into the fire. Cassidy was certain that if she’d curled up and died, Rex wouldn’t have noticed.

Her horse had never been found. Nor was there ever any sign of Brig. Cassidy had gone to college, grateful to get away from Prosperity and the charred ghosts that still haunted her. She’d given up her interest in horses and shoved her cowboy boots to the back corner of her closet. She’d studied journalism voraciously, dated a little, made a few friends and finally, after graduation, had landed a job with a small television studio in Denver. From Denver, she’d moved to San Francisco and finally to Seattle, where she had through years of hard work become a reporter with a decent reputation. Chase, a corporate lawyer, had seen her on the news, called and asked her out.

She’d only agreed to see Chase to find out about Brig. She’d met him in an Irish bar in Pioneer Place. They’d laughed and caught up, and Chase’s smile, softer than Brig’s, but heart-stopping nonetheless, had gotten to her. That had been the beginning. They’d taken it slow, neither one wanting to commit, and yet, as the months had passed, she’d finally accepted the fact that her schoolgirl crush on Brig was just a lingering shadow that she had to banish from her heart and from her mind.

Chase had helped her in that first year or so, she thought now as she stared at the hospital bed where he lay. Helped her forget the man who had left her.

For that she’d be eternally grateful. She cleared her throat and tried to communicate with the silent man lying under the stiff bedsheets. She owed him this much—to help him get back on his feet again. She was, after all, still his wife. She reached for the fingers of his good hand and took them gently in her own. “Chase? Can you hear me? I’ve been thinking…”

He didn’t move, hardly breathed, gave no indication that he’d heard her though he wasn’t in a coma, or so Dr. Okano told her.

She didn’t blame him for not responding. Blinking against tears, she remembered the night of the fire and the horrid fight they’d had, the worst ever, insults and pain ringing through the house by wounded, unhappy people. He’d accused her of never loving him, not as she had Brig, and she’d flung back that he’d married her because she was a Buchanan, and he’d always wanted to sidle up to the Buchanan money. In the fight she’d ended up suggesting divorce. It had seemed the only solution, even though she’d witnessed the wounded look in his eyes that night. Pain beneath his anger.

Oh, God, how she regretted those words. Chase had always been good to her. Fair. And as much as she’d tried, she never had loved him with the careless, wild abandon which she’d so naively thrown at his brother.

Who was now dying.

How had it come to this? She buried her face in her hands and refused to cry. She wouldn’t show her feelings to the hospital staff or, worse yet, to the reporters who had collected in the lobby and had tried to come up with ways of getting a word with her, the doctor or even one of the victims.

Even now, in this private room, she felt as if someone were watching; that the monitors attached to Chase by all sorts of tubes and wires somehow were attached to cameras, or that someone was looking through the clear window to the nurses’ station even though the flimsy curtain was drawn.

You’re imagining things
.

Exhausted
.

Jumpy
.

Give it a rest
.

But then she heard it…the soft creak of a footstep.

So what? Probably a nurse or an orderly or other employee
. She looked up quickly, squinted through the curtain and saw no one, not even a nurse with a clipboard at the nurses’ station.

Cassidy climbed to her feet and walked to the door that she’d left just slightly ajar and expected to see someone about to enter the room and check on Chase…but the hallway was empty, the light lowered for the evening. She heard soft voices coming from a room down the corridor, but that was it aside from the steady whirr of the air-conditioning and soft little beeps of the monitor.

You’re letting this get to you, Cass…cool it. Find a way to calm down and get through it
.

Chase let out a quiet moan and she was instantly at his side, linking her fingers through his. “I’m here for you,” she said, biting her lower lip and staring at his swollen face. “I promise we’ll find a way to make this work.”

I thought I might be sick.

Seeing Cassidy playing the role of dutiful wife.

What a joke.

As if she’d ever loved Chase McKenzie.

As if she knew the meaning of the word.

She was as big a slut as her sister. When she couldn’t have one of the McKenzie brothers because he’d run off like the coward he was, she’d married the other. And she hadn’t even traded up. Chase McKenzie was a snake…but he was nearly a dead snake. I smiled at that and slipped through a back door to a service staircase.

Two floors down, I ducked into the unisex restroom without being seen and changed quickly from my lab coat and scrubs to dark jeans, black T-shirt, jacket, and baseball cap. I tossed the used surgical gloves into my small athletic bag with my disguise, then slipped a pair of tinted glasses over the bridge of my nose. Quickly, seeing that no one was lingering around this part of the first floor, I crossed the hallway and took the stairs to the parking garage. From there I sprinted three blocks to the alley where I’d parked the truck and stashed the bag behind the seat. As I slid behind the wheel and slammed the rig into gear, I berated myself for failing.

Both men were supposed to be dead.

The blast should have killed them instantly.

Instead they were here, lingering on, holding on to life with tenacious, burned fingers.
Shit!

I thought maybe I’d have a chance to help Chase into the grave tonight but not with his wife sitting at his side, holding vigil, for Chrissakes!

Damn it all to hell.

Patience…you’ve done this before. You still have time.

I glanced again at my reflection. Saw the determination in my eyes. Knew that it was only a matter of time. My hands curled over the steering wheel in a death grip, and as I came to a stoplight in the middle of town, I convinced myself that I would try again.

And next time I wouldn’t fail.

Cassidy convinced Detective Wilson that she had to visit the man in CCU. If Brig was still alive, she was determined to see him. T. John was only too happy to pull a few strings, talk to the doctor and escort her through double doors to a nurses’ station that was hub to several rooms with three walls. From a desk that looked like the controls of the starship
Enterprise
, the nurses could read screens as well as see the patients in their beds, unless a curtain was drawn for privacy.

Stay calm
, she warned herself as she glanced at the filled beds. Three men and two women lay in bed, sleeping or drugged, tubes, wires and catheters hooked up to their bodies.

“This way,” T. John said softly and led her to the third cubicle.

The marrow of her bones seemed to turn to ice. This—this broken man was Brig? Little hair, face battered, swollen and discolored beyond recognition, barely breathing. Wires held his jaw together; bandages covered parts of his head and arms and legs. She bit her lip as images of him as a young man—a healthy, vigorous, irreverent man—flitted through her mind. Brig with his head tossed back as he laughed, Brig’s body tense, muscles straining and gleaming in the sun as he fought Remmington, Brig’s eyes flashing dangerously as he lit a cigarette and Brig kissing her in the rain.

She held back a little sound of protest and wanted to turn away, to run as fast and as far as she could go. Forcing herself, she approached him slowly. A sick feeling grew in the pit of her stomach. Tears burned her eyes.

“He regained consciousness?” T. John asked a nurse who was changing IV bags.

“No.”

“What’s the prognosis?”

“You’ll have to ask the doctor.”

T. John frowned at the dying man as Cassidy fought to keep her composure. He couldn’t be Brig!

“You know him?”

She shook her head. “It would be impossible to tell…”

“Any educated guesses?”

“No,” she said, deciding that even if this man turned out to be Brig, she would keep his secret, at least for a little while. He’d been running for so long; she’d helped him escape all those years ago, and the truth of the matter was, she couldn’t be certain. Just because he was with Chase and he’d been found with a half-burned St. Christopher’s medal wasn’t enough. If only he would open his eyes and look at her. Maybe then she’d see a little of the man she’d known so long ago.

“I’m sorry, but if you’re going to stay longer, I’ll have to clear it with Dr. Maloy.”

T. John glanced at Cassidy, but she shook her head.

“All right, then,” he said, taking her by the elbow and propelling her past the nurses’ station and through the door to the outer hallway. Her feet were leaden, her insides shaking.

The detective reached into his pocket for a pack of gum. “Want a stick?” he offered, extending a pack of Dentyne, but she mutely refused, barely hearing him over the rush in her ears. “Not a pretty sight, was it?”

“No.”

He unwrapped the gum, formed the stick into a ball, then plopped it into his mouth. “The doctors are surprised he’s lasted this long, you know. His heart was supposed to give out before this, but it seems to still be beatin’. He’s one tough son of a bitch, I’ll grant him that. Still hangin’ in here. He wasn’t so much burned as all busted up inside, you know; lost a helluva lot of blood when one of the beams fell and pinned him. I’d say he was lucky to have made it this far, but—”

“He didn’t look lucky to me.” Finally she could talk, though her voice sounded foreign and strange, as if she were trying to speak through glass.

T. John glanced at her. “Maybe you’d better sit down.”

Rather than argue, she fell into a chair in a small waiting area where some other worried people—presumably friends or relatives of patients in the Critical Care Unit—sat or paced. White-faced, lines of worry etched across their faces, hands wringing shredded bits of tissue, they waited for news of a loved one fighting for his or her life.
Like Brig—but that man can’t be Brig!

“I can get you some water—maybe coffee?”

“No.” She waved away any kindness and reminded herself that she couldn’t trust him. Law or not, T. John Wilson was the enemy. At least for a while. “I—I’ll be fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

He waited, leaning on a post, arms folded over his chest, booted ankles crossed, while she struggled to pull herself together, while she tried to keep her wild imagination from galloping away with her. If the man was Brig—what was he doing at the sawmill? Why had he been with Chase? How long had Chase known that Brig was alive—just recently, or had he been lying to her for months, maybe even years? Maybe ever since the first fire, the blaze that felt as if it had occurred a lifetime ago.

The world seemed to crumble beneath her feet. Had Chase known his brother was alive when he’d first started dating her and then just neglected to mention the fact? Nausea washed over her and she thought she might be sick. She swallowed twice and finally stood on unsteady legs.

“You’re sure you’re all right?”

No! I’ll never be the same again! Oh, God…

“Yes,” she lied with more conviction than she felt. “I—I think I’ll visit my husband.”

T. John stared at her so hard she wanted to shrink away. “I thought you two were separated. Didn’t you have some kind of big fight that night?”

“I already explained—”

He held up a hand. “I’m just pointing out that on the night he was nearly killed, you argued, told him you wanted a divorce—isn’t that right?”

With a sigh, Cassidy nodded. She’d tried to be as truthful with the detective as possible.

“And then he left all angry and in a huff. And you—what did you do—stayed at home and worked on some story?”

“That’s right,” she said.

He obviously didn’t believe her. “I hope you’re not lying to me, Mrs. McKenzie, ’cause I don’t take kindly to bein’ lied to.”

“Neither do I, Detective. Nor do I like being treated as if I’m obstructing your investigation. I didn’t follow my husband to the mill that night, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”

“He’s insured for a lot of money.”

Cassidy glared at him. “I don’t care about money.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re one of the few women in the world who have enough. And even though you wanted a divorce—”

“I didn’t want it. I felt that…that there was no choice.”

“But now you feel duty-bound to sit at his bedside and hold his hand?” Wilson didn’t bother hiding his disbelief.

“I want to.”

Lower lip protruding slightly, the detective’s eyes narrowed as he chewed thoughtfully on his wad of Dentyne. Nothing seemed to escape him, and despite his laid-back, I-don’t-really-give-a-damn manner, he seemed restless. No, she couldn’t trust him.

“I’m still married to Chase.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“He needs me right now.”

“The way I heard it, your husband never needed anyone.”

The barb stung, but she didn’t let her temper get the better of her. “You don’t know him.”

“But I will, darlin’,” he assured her as she turned toward the elevator. “Before this is all over, I’m planning to know your husband backward, forward and inside out.”

Don’t bet on it. No one really knows Chase McKenzie. Believe me, I’ve tried
.

There were more flowers in the room. Huge baskets of roses, carnations, bachelor buttons and seemingly every other bloom known to man had found their way inside to crowd around the IV drip, plastic furniture, sink and bed. Balloons, tethered by ribbons, floated near the ceiling. But despite the splashes of bright colors and good wishes from friends and employees of Buchanan Enterprises, Chase looked just the same—unmoving on the bed. Cassidy took her seat beside him, reached for his hand through the metal slats of the bed and tried to get his attention.

“They say you’re not cooperating,” she said softly.

No response.

“They think you’re awake, but you won’t say anything.”

The single eye continued to fixate on the ceiling.

He was shutting her out. Again. Just as he had for years
.

“I was hoping that you’d be getting well enough to come home.”

Nothing.

Cassidy wouldn’t give up. She tried another tack. “Mom and Dad are supposed to be here this afternoon. They’re anxious to see you and tomorrow your mother is coming over. I—I arranged it with her nurse—”

The eye blinked then refocused.

“Brenda, you remember her, she’s your mother’s new private nurse. She was hired by the hospital a couple of months ago. Anyway, Brenda says that your mother’s been very upset since your accident…”

More than upset; Brenda had admitted that Sunny, upon hearing the news of the fire at the mill and her son’s injuries, had been hysterical. She’d ranted and raved, thrown things and insisted on being set free, then wept openly for her boy. Worse yet, she’d predicted the fire. Her psychiatrist, Dr. Kemp, a balding man who still wore his thinning hair in a ponytail and kept three days’ growth of gray beard forever on his chin, was concerned, and had been forced to sedate Sunny. He’d been studying her for years, trying to separate her psychosis from her supposed E.S.P., and appeared to be getting nowhere.

“Sunny’s visions are becoming more frequent, I guess, and she keeps saying that this was bound to happen.” Cassidy removed her hands from the bedsheets and twisted the handle of her purse, uncomfortable when speaking about her mother-in-law, a woman she respected, yet didn’t completely trust. “I’ll bring her over tomorrow afternoon and—”

“No!” His voice was raw, barely audible, but vehement in its passion.

Cassidy jumped, dropping her purse. Her keys and wallet slid through the open zipper compartment and onto the tile floor. So he could hear her after all. He’d been pretending. Relief and a tinge of anger surged through her as she scooped up the contents of her handbag, then reached through the rail of the hospital bed again to touch the fingers protruding from one bandaged hand. “You can hear me!”

Silence. Stubborn, stony silence.

“Sunny’s anxious to see you, to touch you, and rest her mind that you’re all right—”

“I said no!” The voice was a rough croak, slurred as he fought to speak through his wired jaw.

“For God’s sake, Chase, she’s your mother! She’s worried sick, and even though she can’t sometimes distinguish between what’s real and what’s not, she needs to see you with her own eyes, to see for herself that you’re going to make it.”

“Not like this!”

So this was about pride. His damned pride. But Cassidy suspected there was more to it. Chase had never been comfortable around his mother ever since he’d had to force her from the old trailer by the creek, the home she’d loved. For her own good. Or so he’d said.

He’d found her one night, not long after he and Cassidy had married, unconscious in her small bathtub. Blood had seeped from the wounds in her wrists, clouding the already rust-stained water in thin red streaks. Chase had dialed 911. Sunny, unconscious, had barely been alive when the paramedics had arrived.

Now Sunny McKenzie resided in a private hospital that had once been a rambling brick mansion. The hospital was run by an efficient medical staff who reported weekly that Sunny’s condition, not particularly stable to begin with, would probably never improve. Though she’d stopped inflicting pain upon herself, there would always be a chance that she could become violent again. To herself. To others. Chase had reluctantly agreed to have her committed. His eyes had glistened as he’d signed the papers, then hurried down the wide steps of the hospital. He’d grabbed hold of Cassidy’s hand and stalked blindly past landscaped gardens and serene pools, never saying another word until they reached the parking lot. “She’ll hate it here,” he’d predicted in frustration. Swiftly, he slid behind the steering wheel of his Porsche and jabbed his key into the ignition.

“Why not let her go home?” Cassidy suggested. She’d been scared to death the night she’d first visited Sunny after Angie had died and she’d run from Sunny’s prophesy, but over time she had learned to respect Sunny McKenzie.

“And have her slit her wrists all over again? Or hang herself? Or turn on the gas? God, Cassidy, is that what you want?” He pumped the accelerator, twisted the ignition, and the powerful engine roared to life.

“Of course not, but she needs her freedom.”

“Maybe later.” A determined edge had developed around his features, and the bone in his jawline showed white. “She’ll be safe here. She’ll hate it, but she’ll be safe.”

And that was that. Cassidy had offered other ideas over the years, even suggested that Sunny come to live with them. Chase hadn’t heard a word of it. Sometimes Cassidy thought he was embarrassed because of his mother the palm reader; other times she thought that he believed Sunny finally resided in the best place for her, that he really was concerned about his mother’s safety and mental health. Hadn’t he lived with her long after most sons would have moved out, even after Brig had taken off? Hadn’t Chase been the ever-dutiful son?

Her husband, she thought sadly, was a complex man; difficult to understand. Sometimes impossible to love.

“Chase,” she whispered softly, willing him to respond. But he seemed to have tuned her out again. “Detective Wilson from the Sheriff’s Department is going to ask you questions. Lots of them. About the fire and about the man you were with.”

He didn’t so much as flinch, and she wanted to shake some sense into him. Didn’t he hear her? Didn’t he care?

She tried again. “I suppose you’ve overheard us talking and know that he probably won’t survive. He’s lost too much blood, I think, and he’s got internal injuries.” She didn’t really know the extent of the other man’s wounds, just understood that most likely he wouldn’t pull through. Her mouth seemed to turn to dust. “Who was he?”

The eye closed.

“Chase, please. I think I should know.” She reached for his hand and he flinched. “Chase—”

His eye flew open. “Don’t!” he nearly yelled in his harsh, unrecognizable voice. “Don’t touch me.” Finally he turned his horrid gaze at her—startling blue against angry red. “Don’t ever touch me again.”