Unseen (5 page)

Luckily the shortage of nurses made it a slam-bang for her to get a job as soon as she graduated. And she was good at what she did, anyway. Really, really good. There was a hell of a lot more to caring for the sick than acing a few tests, that was for sure. Everyone told her how good she was at her job and it just swelled her with pride. It sure did.

And she’d wanted to be at Laurelton General. It was totally perfect! It wasn’t too far away from her apartment, and if she wanted some fun, it was a straight shot into Portland on Highway 26, the Sunset Highway, on that last stretch before Portland city center, and when she needed to go to her job, well, that was a cinch. She was thinking about heading into Portland tonight. Lately she’d been going to that new nightclub in the Pearl that played hot music and served Caribbean martinis. Whew, they were powerful. She’d had to take a taxi home a few times, and she’d gone home with friends a few times, too. Slept with a couple of guys she shouldn’t have. Fuck-buddies. She shrugged her small shoulders. What’cha gonna do.

As the wheels of her car ate up the miles, Inga shrugged those thoughts aside. She didn’t dwell on past mistakes or less than perfect decision-making. Life was good. She had her own place and her own life. The apartment was small: a studio with a partition. The only honest-to-goodness room was the bathroom. It at least had a real door. But the space was all hers and now, as she drove through the dark toward home, she felt a smile cross her lips despite the sudden rain that was peppering hard against her windshield.

She switched on the wipers. Jesus, what a downpour. You’d think it was the middle of winter.

The couple in the front farmhouse—her landlords—were kind of out of it, but they left her to her own devices. It was a little creepy sometimes because they’d given up farming years earlier and the property was overgrown, with a barn of gray, broken wood, that listed heavily. Beyond the house was a pasture of Scotch broom and weeds with a stand of firs ringing the northern end. Nothing had been taken care of for years.

But her apartment was the best. The absolute best. And cheap!

She hummed to herself as she pulled into the drive that ran alongside the farmhouse, tucking her Honda into the space provided for her at the north end of her apartment. She hurried up her front steps and unlocked the door. Her ears caught the sound of another vehicle pulling into the gravel drive, somewhere behind her on the route she’d just traveled. The farmers? There’d been lights on in the main house and she’d just assumed they were inside. Huh.

She hesitated for a moment, listening. She thought she heard an engine, but the crunch of wheels on gravel was gone. Was someone waiting inside a car around the front of the farmhouse where she couldn’t see? Or was it just roadway sounds she’d let enter her mind?

Inga let half a minute pass, then lost interest. She had places to go, people to see, dances to dance, drinks to knock back. Quickly she dropped her purse and coat on the single chair in the main room and tossed her keys on the kitchen counter. She then headed to the bathroom, turned on the shower and stripped off her uniform, letting it pool on the floor.

There was a guy she’d met. Daniel. He was so damn hot, with longish dark hair that brushed over the collar of his shirt, and the most fabulous blue eyes. His physique was lean and taut, just the way she liked it. She’d wanted to moan when they’d slow-danced, his crotch pressed to hers. Whenever she saw him it was like he radiated the word
sex
. She didn’t care what it took, they were going to get together tonight. She’d find a way to go home with him. Her shift didn’t start tomorrow until eleven, so they had hours to kill making love.

She practically gave herself an orgasm just thinking about him.

She was toweling off when she heard the sound. A slight squeak of a soft-soled shoe. Her heart clutched. Had she locked the door? Had she? She could visualize her keys tossed on the kitchen counter, but she couldn’t remember twisting the lock.

She was naked. Carefully, she stepped from the shower and pulled her uniform back over her head. Minutes passed. Finally her breathing turned to normal. There was no one out there. She was making it up. Living alone did that to her. Every noise sounded alien.

Nevertheless, she grabbed a glass bottle of bath salts, tested its weight, then threw open the bathroom door, letting it bang hard against the wall, bath salts held high, ready to take on any danger.

There was no one there.

But her front door was unlatched and she quickly crossed the three steps to take care of that mistake.

Her fingers were reaching for the lock when the front door suddenly slammed inward, sending her reeling. Inga staggered, her back hitting the opposite wall. A man stood in the aperture, his arms hunched forward, his head thrust toward her, breathing hard.

She shrieked in fright, and then he was upon her, his hot breath in her face, his body big and hard, his hand grabbing hers and twisting her arm in one swift movement so the bath salts fell to the hardwood floor and shattered, little lavender grains of sand flying everywhere.

“Witch,” he said, throwing her down so that her head cracked hard on the floor and she saw stars.

“Wait…wait…I have money…please…”

He was unbuckling his pants, humping hard against her. Determined. She knew he wasn’t hearing her.

“Wait! Please…!”

Part of her brain was disengaged. Her hand groped along the floor and landed on a sharp shard of glass. She grabbed it and jabbed forward, gouging the piece into his neck, pulling it out and stabbing again and again for all she was worth. She couldn’t let him win. Couldn’t!

In surprise he jumped back, clapping a hand to his neck, his eyes wide. He looked kinda crazy to Inga’s way of thinking and he threw his head back and howled like a beast. Then he hit her in the face till she was dizzy. She flailed the glass at him again and again until he ripped it from her hand.

She tried to scream but his hands circled her throat. “Burn in hell,” he growled through gritted teeth.

Her fingers scrabbled to loosen his hold but it was no use. His grip was too tight, too hard. Pinpoints of light swirled in front of her eyes. She fought against the darkness but it was no use. The pressure wouldn’t give. Wouldn’t quit. She tugged and tugged at his hands but he was too strong. Her trachea was clamped shut. She couldn’t breathe!

Couldn’t…breathe…

Oh, God. Please…

“Witch,” he spat and then Inga’s world circled and spun into blackness.

Her last thought was a regret that she wouldn’t get to be with Daniel after all.

Chapter Four

Dr. Avery was in his fifties, with silver hair and black eyebrows and a stony expression that would have worried Gemma had she not learned that beneath his cold exterior he was a man who fiercely loved his wife and two sons, one of whom was engaged to be married. She knew he’d been in to see her before but she’d gained mostly impressions about him, about what he thought of her injuries, nothing concrete or substantial.

This visit he’d removed the bandage over her eye, the white of which was half-filled with blood.

“I look gruesome,” Gemma said.

The doctor didn’t answer, just kept writing vigorously on her chart.

She’d spent a restless night, waking up to shadowy thoughts and images, fading back to sleep, waking again with her heart pounding in fear and a sense that she needed to save someone, falling to unconsciousness once again, back to the fleeting ghosts and skittish memories.

“Am I going to be able to leave today?” she asked a tad belligerently as the doctor just kept on writing.

He didn’t look up.

“When’s the wedding?” she tried, hoping small talk might get his attention if medicine wouldn’t.

“What wedding?”

“Your son’s.”

His gaze slowly lifted from the chart, which he slid back into its holder at the foot of her bed. “The end of next month.”

“So, are you releasing me? I feel incredibly better than yesterday. Even if I’m gruesome.”

He gave her a studied look. “You seem to have recovered fairly quickly. Your head injuries aren’t as severe…as we initially suspected,” he said cautiously. “You have some bruising around your chest, probably from the seat belt. You’ve lost some time, maybe as a result of concussion, although you haven’t displayed other symptoms.”

“Seat belt…” Gemma repeated. “So, it was a car accident?”

“We’ll know for sure when you locate your vehicle.”

“Then…I’m outta here?”

He nodded once, shortly. Gemma had already spoken on the phone to someone from administration and given them information about herself, which though meager, was enough to satisfy them. She knew her own social security number, or at least one that popped into her head, so she’d rattled it off and the woman at the end of the line had typed it into her file. It had to be hers. It wasn’t like she would know anyone else’s, right?

She was torn between just skedaddling and throwing herself on the hospital administration’s mercy, asking for some cold hard cash to find her way home.

The doctor stood for a moment, rocking on his heels, as if he had something else he wanted to say. Gemma waited somewhat impatiently. She’d redressed in her blood-spattered clothes, knowing she was going to burn them the first chance she got. She just wanted to get out of here and find a way back to Quarry. She couldn’t recall her address but she had a murky idea of the direction to go.

Maybe if Detective Tanninger were around today, trying to meet with that EMT…maybe he’d give her a lift. It was as good a plan as any.

Dr. Avery finally headed toward the door and Gemma swung her legs over the bed. But the doctor hesitated before entering the hallway, gazing back at her thoughtfully. “I haven’t told anyone my son’s getting married. Didn’t want the hospital staff talking about something that might not happen. My son and his fiancée have had a very on-and-off relationship. I don’t know how you knew.”

“You must have told me earlier. I drifted in and out for a while.”

“I wouldn’t have,” he said positively.

Something feathered along Gemma’s skin. A cold whisper of awareness. “Maybe I dreamt it and it just happened to be true.”

He gazed at her a long moment, then pushed out the door.

I’m a mind reader.

She rolled that idea around and found she didn’t like it much. But it felt…real.

Gemma didn’t waste any more time. She found her shoes again and after a quick, horrifying look in the mirror—the whole right side of her face was a technicolor mess—she took a deep breath and prepared herself for an uncertain future.

She was in the hallway when an orderly holding a wheelchair stopped short. “Ma’am, you need to take a seat. Hospital policy.”

She suspected it was hospital policy to take her to administration for check out, too, but the orderly did not appear to be someone who would take no for an answer so she perched on the wheelchair, wondering wildly if she could make a break for it when he rolled her near an exit.

Mind reader
, she thought again, and felt decidedly uncomfortable.

Billy Mendes was lanky and bowlegged, as if he’d just gotten off the ranch. He walked with a kind of cowboy strut as well, though it wasn’t an affectation, more like a natural hip swing to get his bowed legs in line.

He came inside the ER and shot a look at Lorraine, the battleaxe nurse with the dyed black hair and orange lips, before crossing the waiting room in a couple of big strides and walking up to Will.

“You the guy lookin’ for me?” he asked. “From the sheriff’s department?”

“Detective Will Tanninger,” Will acknowledged, and the two men shook hands. They moved toward a section of striped chairs near the window where no one else was sitting at the moment.

Mendes kept standing, his hands shoved in his pockets. “You wanna know about the woman who staggered in on Saturday? The one that got out of the silver Camry? I thought the guy who dropped her off was gonna park and come inside and help her, but he never came back. He just drove off and then she just kinda walked from side to side, like she had no balance, y’know? Swaying, like. And then she makes it inside and just crumples to the floor. I came runnin’ from the ambulance.” He waved in the direction of the portico outside the ER. “We were just gettin’ ready to go, but there she was, and I got my ass chewed for that one.” He threw a dark look in Lorraine’s direction. “But hey, we had an accident victim right here. I thought we should help her first.”

“It delayed you from making your call?”

“Not much, it didn’t,” he asserted. “Thirty seconds? Lorraine started screamin’ and I helped the woman to lie down flat. She was out cold by then, but breathin’ okay. ER team grabbed her up and Pete and I took off to the accident on Highway 217. One of those nights where everybody smashes up their cars. Couple of fatalities.”

“So, you saw a man drop her off in a silver Camry?”

He nodded.

“It was definitely a man?”

“Yeah…” He started to sound uncertain.

“Can you remember why you thought so?”

Billy looked puzzled for a moment. “I guess ’cause he was drivin’ kinda fast. Not that girls can’t, too, but not so much in a hospital parking lot. He kinda screeched in and then she got out, and then he reached over and pulled the door shut and left. I thought it was weird he didn’t help her when I saw that she couldn’t walk so well. Maybe it was a chick. Since she didn’t even try to help her friend? But then I thought he or she or whoever was gonna park the car and come back. I don’t know.”

“Could the driver have come back after you left in the ambulance?”

“I suppose…you can check with Lorraine…” He grimaced, letting Will know exactly what he thought of that idea.

“Was there any body damage to the Camry?”

“Uh…I was lookin’ at the girl, and I just saw the car’s rear end, mostly. Don’t recall any passenger-side damage. Didn’t see the front.”

Will grilled him some more and learned Gemma had arrived at the hospital in the early evening, just as it was getting dark. If she were the woman who’d run down Edward Letton, that would mean there had been a lot of hours in between the accident and her appearance at Laurelton General.

There didn’t appear to be anything more to learn from Billy, so Will shook his hand and thanked him for the information, then he turned back to the exit. He was out the door and heading to his department vehicle, when he abruptly changed direction and returned to the hospital, making for the bank of elevators. What was it about Gemma LaPorte that kept him wanting to see her again? Was it just this investigation? The fact that she was an enigma that he couldn’t quit puzzling over? Was it that he both wanted her to be innocent of hit-and-run, and yet somehow hoped she
was
that avenger? Someone who wanted to rid the world of sick scum no matter what the cost?

That was the kind of thinking that could get him fired, or worse, he knew. That kind of vigilante philosophy that the bad should be punished without benefit of a trial. That murder, in the name of good, was almost okay.

He’d seen it a couple of times in his career. Law enforcement officers who, burned out and frustrated, took their job to that next level. Not waiting for the judicial system to pass its verdict. Deciding to wipe out the offender first and ask forgiveness later.

Only there was no forgiveness. There was prosecution and jail time.

But Will didn’t think he had burned out. He didn’t truly condone Gemma’s behavior. Vigilantism was not to be tolerated at any level. It was just that inwardly—and this Will would never admit to anyone—he applauded her courage and ability to act.

The elevator took him to the fourth floor, and when the doors opened he saw Gemma in a wheelchair, being pushed toward the elevators by an orderly. Simultaneously, another elevator’s doors opened. Edward Letton’s wife, Mandy, stepped out and glanced over at Will, whom she’d met briefly in Letton’s room. Then as both sets of elevator doors closed behind them she turned to Gemma, whose bandage had been removed, leaving the splendor of her bruised face and swollen eye for all to see.

Mandy understood who Gemma was instantly. “You…” she said tautly. “What are you doing on my husband’s floor?”

Gemma, who’d seemed locked in her own thoughts, looked blankly at Mandy.

“This is the fourth floor,” Will told Mandy. “Your husband’s on five, but he’s not allowed visitors. You know that.”

She didn’t even register a word. “You’re the woman who ran him down.”

Gemma’s eyes widened.

“Ms. Letton, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Will said, stepping between Gemma and Mandy Letton, whose gaze had zeroed in on Gemma like twin laser beams.

“I don’t know what kind of monster you are,” Mandy said with a catch in her voice, “but my husband’s barely alive because of you! Were you drinking? On drugs? Or was this some kind of thrill kill! Luckily, you didn’t succeed. He’s still alive and he’s going to make it.”

Gemma’s gaze turned from Mandy to Will. He could read the questions in her eyes: Why didn’t Letton’s wife know what Letton had been about to do? Will would have loved to tell her that members of both the Winslow County Sheriff’s Department and the Laurelton Police Department—the city where Mandy and Edward Letton lived—had tried to explain about the guard at Edward Letton’s door, but Mandy was actively not listening to anything they said that alluded to—or explicitly described—the van and its special chains, cuffs, and restraints.

“You should be the one with the guard outside your door,” Mandy declared in a shaking voice.

Gemma’s lips tightened. “I’d choose my words carefully if my husband were a predator.”

“Wait.” Will put up a hand and blocked Mandy’s view of Gemma and vice versa.

“You’re the one who started those vicious rumors! I should sue you for assault
and
slander!”

“If your husband survives, he’s going to jail,” Gemma stated certainly. “He earned that all by himself.”

“He’s going to survive. And you’ll be the one going to prison for attempted murder!”

“Ms. Letton, I’m going to escort you downstairs,” Will said, turning to Gemma’s orderly. “I’ll meet you down there,” he said, actively blocking Mandy from any further progress toward Gemma.

Gemma was having none of it. She climbed out of the wheelchair and walked the last few steps to the elevator, slamming her palm on the call button of the second elevator. “I’m leaving on my own power. You can tell whoever’s in charge of hospital policy, what they can do with that wheelchair.”

Mandy Letton tried to get past Will, who kept his body between her and Gemma. He realized he would probably find humor in the situation later on, but in the moment he was aware that, given their own devices, these two women could end up in a physical fight. Stranger things had happened.

Mandy struggled again to get past Will. The orderly tried to convince Gemma to get back in the wheelchair. Gemma’s elevator car arrived with a bell-like
ding.
Will watched her get inside and turn to tell the orderly she didn’t want him or the wheelchair anywhere near her, then the elevator doors closed.

Mandy Letton pushed Will hard in the center of his back. “Damn you. You’re letting her go? She tried to kill my husband!” Hysteria flooded through the anger.

The orderly said in awe, “You just pushed an officer of the law.”

Mandy whirled her flash-fury on him. “Shut up. Shut up! Everybody shut up!”

“Ms. Letton, you need to get control of yourself,” Will warned. He didn’t want to arrest her. Didn’t want this scene to become a deep hole and more fuel for the media on the Letton case.

Her mouth quivered and her eyes grew hard. When the second elevator arrived, she turned into it blindly and faced to the back. Will and the orderly joined her. Nobody said a word.

As soon as they hit the street level, Mandy pushed past both Will and the orderly. They watched her hightail it to the parking lot and Will was hot on her heels. If she was looking for Gemma LaPorte, he was going to make sure no physical violence occurred.

Gemma was nowhere in sight and Will was annoyed. He followed Mandy out to her car, a white compact, and waited under a watery sun as the wind threw a shimmer of rain at him.

Then he slowly turned around, searching the lot for a glimpse of a woman with straight brown hair whose movements were cautious with the need to keep pain at bay.

She had no idea how to get home, but she was outside the hospital. In the parking lot in a fitful rain. No purse. No socks. No damn underwear. No funds. No means at all. She couldn’t think of the number of a close friend—for that matter she couldn’t think of the
name
of a close friend—and her half-baked plan to ask hospital administration to loan her cab fare and add it to her bill, was out the window. She wasn’t going back in there for any reason. Any reason at all.