Poseidia (25 page)

The door creaked open and Bobby peeked in.
Seeing I was awake, he came fully into the room. “I’m so sorry, ma’am, I had nothing to do with this, I swear. It’s all his idea. I was trying to sell some photos and a story about an alien I saw on the beach. I posted it on the internet and he contacted me a few days ago. He flew me out here yesterday.”

“Come closer to me,” I
whispered to him. “Is he still here?” I spoke softly, trying to draw him in.

Bobby
warily approached the side of the bed. “He left a few minutes ago. I’m supposed to watch and shoot you if you try to get away. I don’t want to do that.”

“He said you wanted to dissect me.” I tried to calm my anger
, hoping to influence him. I didn’t want to cloud my efforts with wrath. “Will you untie my legs, please?” I asked. “They’re hurting pretty bad.”

“Uh, I don’t know if I should,” he said, walking to the side of the bed. “I’m sorry to have gotten you into this. The photos I posted of you went viral and when he contacted
me, he said he had seen you too. I lied and told him I also had a video I was going to sell to the highest bidder. He said he had a plan to capture you and if I sold him my video, he’d let me help in the dissection. I thought… you were a monster and I’d get rich and famous overnight. Now, I see… you’re a person. I ain’t no murderer.”

“I… understand.
It’s okay, David is very manipulative.” I spoke calmly. “If you untie me and let me go, I’ll lie to the police about you. I’ll… tell them you helped me, you were my hero.”

Bobby
hesitated, but then untied my legs. “That feels so much better,” I winced as I rotated my sore feet. “May I have some water?” Calmly, I tried to stay as composed as possible. Maybe if I could reinforce to him I was indeed a real person, and play on his sympathy, he would release me.

“
Of course.” Bobby disappeared into the ensuite bathroom and returned with a tumbler of water.

“I can’t drink with my hands still in these cuffs. Can you take them off?”

“I don’t know where the keys are,” he stuttered, seeming to lose his nerve.

Warmth, and confidence,
I pushed emotions to him. “Maybe look around here for them? They can’t be far. Possibly on the bedside table or in the drawer?”
Stay calm, be cool, don’t get hysterical—that never works
.

He searched the bedside table.
“No, nothing here.”

“Can you look around, maybe in the bathroom
, for something to pick the locks?”

After searching the bathroom, he came back with nothing
so he left the room and went downstairs. A few minutes later, he returned with keys. “If I let you go, you’re not going to hurt me or call the police, right? I don’t want to get in trouble with the cops.”

“No, I won’t hurt you
—I’m not a violent person. And no cops. Do you still have the photos?” I asked casually, as he unlocked the handcuffs and I brought my arms down, rubbing my bloody wrists.

“Yes ma’am, I do.”

“Can I have them? I’ll buy them from you. I’ll give you more than David ever could.” I took the water from him, gulped, and then fought a wave of nausea—the water tasted disgusting. But better than nothing in my condition. My clothes hung over the chair at the foot of the bed. I got up to go get them, but stumbled from a head rush.

Bobby caught me,
and then helped me dress. “They’re on the internet now. Millions have seen them.”

Damn.
“Can I buy your silence then… about what happened here?”

He
glanced away and then back to me. “Can I ask you, ma’am, what are you?”

“I have a different kind of skin. It’s a hereditary defect.”

“I don’t believe you, but I take it you don’t want to tell me.”

“Right.”
I wouldn’t have believed me either, but at least he didn’t keep asking. “Can you get me some more water?” As horrible as it tasted, I was in danger of passing out from dehydration.

“
Sure.”

Roman’s knife was no longer on the nightstand. My purse wasn’t in here either.
Damn
.

I quickly drank down the water he returned
with. “When will he be back?”

“Soon, we
gotta hurry.”

“Help me downstairs,” I said and leaned on him. “Have you seen a purse?”

“You’ll find some things in his office, downstairs.” He guided me there.

On David’s desk was my purse and a small box. I hobbled over without Bobby’s help and searched my purse, but it was empty.
Damn, he took the daggers and all the money
.

“I can get you money, but I have to go back to another house to get more. Do you have a car here?”

“No, but Dr. Sohon has several.”

“Then we’ll borrow his.” Looking inside the small box on the desk, I found Roman’s knife, along with photos and the video camera. After confirming the memory card was still in it,
I took the camera to be sure I left no evidence behind. With still no sign of the daggers or the money, I thought of looking further, and maybe finding my locket, but having already wasted so much time, I pushed the impulse aside.

E
scape was priority. Knowing my baby needed a living mother was more important to me than my locket. My silly desire to have it back had caused all this to begin with. If I had simply listened to Roman, I wouldn’t be in this mess.

I dumped
the contents of the box in to my purse, including Roman’s knife. Touching the mousepad, David’s laptop came out of sleep mode. On the screen were several of the photos of me, in my old bloody and torn dress, running into the ocean. My stomach fell to the floor. “We’ll take that too then,” I whispered to myself, slamming the laptop shut and shoving it into my oversized purse. Unable to zip it closed, I wrapped my arms around the now bulging bag.

The wall clock’s persistent t
icking reminded me time was slipping by. I needed to destroy any evidence.
What about the samples of my body? Where are they? Crap, I don’t have enough time to do a thorough search.

“Do you know where he went and what he did with, the um, samples, he took of me?”

“I don’t know where he put those. He said he needed some more equipment, something about an ultrasound.”

“Great—he wants to look inside of me now.”

“I think we should get going,” Bobby insisted, as he fidgeted and kept wiping his palms on his shirt.

I nodded. “Where are his car keys?”

“The cars are in the garage, but I don’t know where he keeps his keys.”

Frantically,
I searched the drawers in his desk and found a stack of papers with my name on them in the top drawer. “What’s this?”

“I don’t know
ma’am. I don’t know anything, as I said before. I had nothing to do with this. I just want to get out of here. Can we go now?”

Q
uickening my pace, I flipped through the paperwork—documents for a life insurance policy, in my name with David as the beneficiary, for five million dollars. “He can’t do that, can he? We weren’t even married.”

“Do what, ma’am?”
Bobby paced back and forth between the doorframe and the hallway, watching for David. Sweat trickled down his face and he wiped it away repeatedly.

“Take out a life insurance policy on me if we weren’t married?” I waved the papers in the air as if they were my death certificate—to me they oozed blood and hatred.

“I don’t know ma’am, but he is a big-wig surgeon. I’m sure he can do whatever he wants and get away with it. That’s how the world works. Not fair, but it’s reality.”

“Yeah, reality.”

“We got to get going.”

“We need keys. Look around, they have to be here somewhere.”
Continuing our rummage through the drawers, we found nothing.

“Look, I’ll just hotwire one of his cars,” Bobby
suggested.

“It would have been nice to know you could do that before we wasted all this time looking for the keys.” I caught myself from snapping. Taking a deep breath, I regained my sen
sitivity.

“I didn’t want to get into any more trouble,” he
reasoned, walking through the house to the garage.

I followed
, but before we opened the door to the garage, David walked in.

Chapter 2
5

“D
amn it,” I gulped, deflating
.
The knot in the bottom of my belly clenched and moved into my throat.

“Going somewhere?” David demanded.

Swallowing my angst, I roared, “Damn straight. Out of here!”

“I’m not done with you yet,” he snarled, pulling out a gun and pointing it at us.

“David, this crap is getting old. Think of a new strategy,” I challenged, before I could stop myself.

“Get back upstairs,” he
ordered. “And you,” he directed at Bobby. “You can’t let her manipulate you. A lot is at stake here.”

“I promised him
money, I’m not manipulating him.”

“Get upstairs,” he repeated through tight lips.

Holding my purse tight, I trudged up the stairs at gunpoint. Bobby backed away, but David wasn’t concerned about him at all.
Arrogance.

I
wrapped my fist around Roman’s knife, and then let my purse, and the evidence, fall to the floor keeping the knife tightly secured in my hand. The second I crossed the threshold to the room upstairs, I spun and roundhouse kicked the gun out of his hands—a move I’d learned in weaponry training class. It caught David off guard and the gun clattered noisily before sliding across the hardwood floors.

B
reathing hard, I aimed the knife at him. His expression of shock was quickly replaced with one of hatred.

My rage rose, bathing my being in an incomprehensible confidence. I wasn’t afraid and I certainly wasn’t going to cower anymore
. I would die stronger than I lived, without fear.

D
avid laughed—a sinister sound, sending chills down my spine. The scent of his confidence was sour in the back of my throat. As if he didn’t have to worry about me because I was inadequate, or too weak of a person, to stand up to him. He thought I didn’t have it in me.

D
o I?

Maybe not before.

I do now.

I’d briefly fallen into old patterns again, doubting myself, allowing my fear and insecurity
to control me, but not anymore. I knew what he was capable of, and there was no way he was going to let me out of here alive.

“What do you think you’re going to do
with that?” he asked, circling, moving closer to the side of the bed where the gun had careened to a stop. “You’re too afraid to use it on me.”

“Did you take out a life insurance policy on me? How?”

David scoffed, “I told them I was going to propose to my girlfriend who was pregnant. At the time, I didn’t know it was true—the pregnant part. They were more interested in premiums than truth. A young healthy couple wasn’t a high risk for them.”

“You bought all of this… stuff… with blood money from my death.”

“Yes, I did,” he gloated, inching closer to the gun.

I advanced.

A tidal wave of rage, awakened and powerful, coursed through me. I lunged at him, the knife pointed straight for his heart. David skillfully dodged and hit me on the side of my head with his elbow as I stumbled. But when I fell, I managed to kick the gun further away.

Dammit—
I sucked at fighting. It looked easy on television, but in real life, I wasn’t a warrior. Rolling away, I regained my footing, pointing the knife at him again.

He
chuckled, “Give it up, Anna—you’re no match for me. I only need to do one more test and then you can go. Relax.”

I wasn’t so stupid as to believe him this time. “I want to ask you one question
, David.”

“
What’s that?”

“
Why? Why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Kill me?”

I
leaped at him again but as he moved out of my way, he seized me by the hair and hauled me back. Excruciating pain ripped through me as I fell backward, but I did not give up my grip on the knife.

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“Yes,” I answered, one hand grabbing for my hair while the other desperately clutched the knife.

“Because it was easy,” he
boasted, laughing.

Desperate,
I spun around fast and slashed at him, cutting across his stomach. Only a superficial wound; he jumped back.

Furious, h
e released my hair as he brought the hand to his bleeding abdomen. “Now, you’re going to die.”

H
igh on adrenaline, I rushed him again in the seconds he was preoccupied with his wound. David instinctively deflected by latching onto my wrist, the one holding the knife, and spun me around. He slammed me against the wall, knocking the wind from my lungs, wrapping his other hand around my throat, raising me off the floor.

Breathless,
I tightened my hand around the knife hilt, refusing to let him have it.

His grip, like his rage, was unrelenting. As
darkness closed in on me, I used the last of my awareness to reach out. To find Roman.

For the briefest of
seconds, I connected, and he seemed close. But not close enough.

As I lost my
link with him, the darkness gained. Without warning, a surge of energy and strength coursed through me. I sensed Lily, and all the people in Poseidia, sending me strength.

It filled me with light and pushed the darkness away.
As though he were nothing more than a paper doll, I shoved David slamming him into the opposite wall.

Coughing and gasping for air, I grabbed
at my throat. I needed to get out of here before he regained his footing. In my haste, I didn’t see David retrieve his gun. A loud blast, then a chemical scent reminding me of nail polish remover burned my nose, and finally searing hot pain tore through my leg. On instinct, I twirled and ran at him before he could get off another shot. I moved as fast as any other Mer now and I dove onto him before he had time to register my change in direction. Or the knife aimed straight for his heart.

It tore through his flesh. His eyes widened as shock and realization dawne
d on him.

David
underestimated me for the last time.

I made the mistake of locking eyes with him, as
his corrupted life drained. When his soul started to fade into the darkness, I experienced his confusion, anger, and fear as he lay dying underneath me. He saw into me as well, and learned the truth about our baby.

D
ark tentacles seized onto me then, snarling, trying to take me with him. I tumbled into the pit of his hell, two smoky arms entangled around my soul. A scream swelled within me and then unleashed as I struggled to regain my footing in the real world, and force his energy out of mine. I screamed until my ears rang. My throat burned, as if I was choking on the ashes of my own scorched flesh.

With every ounce of
strength I had left, I held onto the light and life within me. I thought about my unborn baby, and Roman, the sweet joy of the Connective, Ruby, and everything I’d gained since my death. With a force of will, I ripped his ethereal limbs from my soul, clawing my way back from the black, unending abyss of death and darkness. Drawing positive energy from Roman, and the Connective, helped me finally destroy David’s hold.

The last emotion I
experienced from him, as his soul was swallowed by the black desolation, was a pure, choking hatred. His stare became blank and lifeless as he slumped, death taking him.

For a few minutes, I laid there, recovering from the shock. As I regained my hold in this world, I
touched my shirt, now soaked with his spurted blood. Breathing deeply to slow my heart, sweat, fear, sulfur, and copper struck me in a foul potpourri. I struggled to stand, but had to sit down on the bed before I fell. My vision wavered as the adrenaline faded.

Bobby burst through the door and saw David’s body at my feet. He ran over to check his pulse, then looked up at me and shook his head.
Without a word, he pulled Roman’s knife out of David’s chest. For a minute, I was scared—he could turn it on me and in my weakened state, I wouldn’t be able to put up the fight I had with David.

“We got to get out of here. N
ow,” he said, holding the handle out to me.

I nodded as I took the knife from him.
Whew.

Exhausted and weak,
I tried to stand again and almost fainted as the blood rushed from my head. Bobby offered me his arm, and then walked me to the bathroom, helping me bandage my leg with supplies David had left in there earlier. Trembling out of control, I cleaned off Roman’s knife in the sink. Nauseated, I watched the blood swirl in macabre strands down the drain.
What have I done?

Almost as if he could read my mind, Bobby
assured, “It was self-defense. He was going to kill you.”

“My head knows that, but my heart is
less certain.”

“Your leg is bleeding through the bandages. We need to get you to a hospital.”

“No, I need to go home. They’ll take care of me. Will you help me get home?”

“
Of course, but we need to go now, in case someone heard the gunshot. Let me carry you, it’ll be faster.”

I remembered how I refused to let Roman carry me on the beach. Bobby was here now because of
my stubbornness.

“Yes,
please. Thank you,” I relented.

As h
e set me in David’s passenger seat, I clutched my purse as if my life depended on it.

“We need keys, I’ll be right back. I bet they’re in his
pants pocket.”

“Can’t you hot wire it?
”

“It would be easier to have to keys.”

“Okay,” I said. “But hurry.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he
agreed, sprinting back into the house.

I now knew where my locket was—in David’s briefcase in the back seat. Among other jumbled thoughts, it had flickered through David’s mind before he died—he’d tried to sell it but learned it was fake gold.
Note to self: Take his briefcase with me back to Poseidia.

While
Bobby was gone, the smell of petroleum permeated the less desirable odors, and it occurred to me what I needed to do.

I
limped out of the passenger seat and picked up a full gas can sitting against the garage wall.

A mounting sense of hysteria pushed at the edges of my emotions. It took all my energy to maintain my faculties. My mind was quickly slipping into a fog of shock.
Vestiges of adrenaline kept me going for the moment, but soon it would run out, and I would have to deal with reality.

I’d made my way into the living room when Bobby
returned from upstairs.

“We need to go,” he insisted.

“I need to do this first,” I protested. “But I need a lighter. Do you have one?”

“You’re in luck,” he
grinned, reaching into his pants pocket. “I keep trying to kick the habit.”

Thank you.

“Will you help me?”

Bobby
hesitated, then took the can from me, and sloshed it all over the floor and new furniture.

T
ransfixed, I watched as if time stood still. Taking two deep breaths, I flicked the lighter on and as we headed to the garage, I threw it over my shoulder. The fire roared to life, engulfing all of the living area within seconds.

W
e were out of the garage and heading down the road to freedom a minute later. Turning, I grabbed David’s briefcase out of the back seat, pulling it and my purse in close.
Roman’s knife. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look at it again.

“Turn left,” I
instructed. “Head to the interstate, and I’ll guide you from there. I’ll get you your money—I promise.”

“We need to get rid of this car.”

Lightheaded, I panted. “My car is back at Stanford Hospital. I have the keys, but we’ll end up on security cameras in the hospital garage if we take David’s car there.”

“What do we do?”

“We’ll go to a house where I can get help. Get on the highway, and head north.” I leaned back in my seat and reached out with my senses.
Where are you, Roman?

As soon as I reached out to
the Connective, I sensed Roman, and his frustration. He was across town looking for me.

Roman sensed me and I let him know we were heading
to the house in San Francisco.

I’ve lost too much blood. I won’t make it.

If I could have a few minutes of sleep, it would all be better. I closed my eyes and slipped away into the darkness.

The next thing I knew someone was shaking my should
ers. I opened my eyes a sliver.

“
Where are we headed?” Bobby asked.

I
considered the interstate signs briefly. “Take the second exit from here, and then turn right. It’s the big house on the hill.” Spent, I faded again.