A Raging Dawn (29 page)

MY MOTHER
. Perfect timing. As usual. Ryder and I parted as Evie ran in behind Patsy. She threw her arms around me, hugging me so tight that she jostled one of the monitor leads and an alarm sounded.

“I’m so glad you’re awake,” Evie cried gleefully. “Dr. Mehta says I don’t have it. I’m going to be all right.”

Ryder turned the alarm off. He seemed much too comfortable around the medical equipment. I doubted he’d left my side the entire time I was unconscious. That would explain why he looked so awful. Same suit he’d worn at Tymara’s trial two days ago, I finally noticed.

“I’m happy for you,” I told Evie, meaning every word.

She stepped back, joining Patsy, who hadn’t stepped more than a foot into the room. “She insisted we come tell you straightaway,” she said, as if she needed an excuse to visit her dying daughter. “That nice Italian doctor—”

“Tommaso,” Evie put in, making the neurofellow sound like a dreamy movie star. Evie was only two years younger than me, already finished with husband number one and looking for a suitable replacement. The expression on her face was all too familiar. Tommaso had better watch out.

“He was able to test her without waiting for blood results,” Patsy continued. “A new test using a nasal washing. Cutting-edge.”

As if my old-fashioned genetic blood test that Louise had performed was second-class. Only the best for Evie.

How sick and twisted did a family have to be that wonderful news about one daughter being healthy turned into a competition?

I wasn’t playing Patsy’s games. Not any longer. I’d done my penance long enough. Especially since, as it turned out, I’d committed no crime. Neither had Dad. It wasn’t his fault he’d inherited fatal insomnia.

Ryder slipped his hand into mine, standing by my side, saying nothing but making it clear we stood together.

“I’m glad you’re going to be okay,” I repeated. I took a deep breath. Faced my mother. It was more difficult than I’d imagined. “Because I won’t be around much. I have a lot to do and little time. I’m leaving.”

“Leaving?” Evie frowned. “Where would you go? What about Christmas? You have to at least stay for dinner tonight.”

Right. The family Christmas party. I wasn’t sure if any amount of rest could give me the energy to face that.

“You must be there tonight,” Patsy told me, her tone stern. “You look fine. I’ll talk to the doctors, make sure they release you. After all, it’s only fitting you honor Jacob’s memory.”

Jacob? I felt the blood rush down my body, draining away. Ryder’s grip tightened, keeping me anchored. “Did he—”

“He’s still alive,” Evie reassured me. “But the new treatment isn’t working.” Her expression clouded. “They’re not sure how long…”

I slumped back against the pillows. Ryder tucked me in, pulling the covers over me. Not treating me as if I was a child or weak, but rather as someone he cared about.

“You should go now,” he said without looking at my family, his gaze focused on me. “She needs her rest.”

Patsy hesitated. Not because she wanted to stay—that much was clear—but because she hated losing a power struggle.

At least, that’s what I thought. Until, for the first time in twenty-two years, she surprised me. She stepped to the other side of my bed, ignoring Ryder’s protective glare, and took my hand in hers, her fingers caressing the tape around the IV in the back of my hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her tone tentative.

Her words stunned me. Evie stood, watching, slack-jawed.

“Whatever happens,” Patsy continued, not meeting my gaze, “you always have a home here. I just want you to know that.” She dropped my hand and left. Evie followed after her, throwing a quick, puzzled glance over her shoulder before she closed the door behind them.

I stared after them. What had just happened? Had my mother actually finally forgiven me? Or was it all an act? I honestly could not tell.

I blinked hard, my eyes still too dry for tears. Then I realized I had none. My family had made me who I was today, and without that strength, I’d never have been able to survive what happened last month or two nights ago, much less what was still to come.

I’d never have met Ryder. I turned to him. He still held my hand, but wasn’t hovering. More like he was waiting, giving me space to decide what I needed. “Tell me about Jacob,” I finally said. “All of it.”

Without releasing my hand, Ryder sat on the bed beside me. “Louise said they had to decide about a DNR for him.”

He’d started calling Jacob by his first name. Ryder did that with victims in his cases. The rest of the world? It depended on how seriously he took them. Hence, Jacob had been Voorsanger, while Manny Cruz was always Manny. I guessed Louise was Louise and not Mehta because she’d never let anyone call her by her last name.

“Is it the PXA?”

He nodded. “Louise tried a new treatment, something called chelation? It helped a little, but not enough. Now she’s trying hemofiltration. But—”

“Jacob would never want to have his life sustained if there’s no hope.” I stared at our joined hands, unable to look up. His hands were so different from Jacob’s. Rougher, with scars and calluses.

“That’s what the ethics committee decided after they reviewed his case. He’s still in the ICU getting treatment, but if it fails and his heart stops…”

I could fill in the blanks. “I guess I’d better get dressed.”

“What about all this?” He gestured to the IV and monitor.

“Don’t need it. I feel fine.” Better than fine. The enforced rest had invigorated me. I removed the monitor leads and the IV, climbed out of bed, and headed to the bathroom. After a quick shower, I changed into clean clothing someone had brought and felt worlds better. Almost human, even.

Ryder appeared in the doorway as I combed my hair, trying to avoid the bruises from where Littleton had punched me and banged my head against the floor. The left side of my face was a gorgeous palette of green, yellow, and purple, but no permanent damage. I was lucky.

I turned to Ryder, half-tempted to ask the nurses for a razor for him, but what he really needed was sleep. Ironic that I, for once, was well rested while he was exhausted.

He took me by the waist, his palms resting on my hips. “These fugues, Louise tried to explain, but I’m not sure I understand. Tell me more about them.”

I hesitated, torn between wanting to share and remembering how Louise had dismissed my fugues as delusions born of seizure activity in my brain. She was the smartest person I knew. If she couldn’t find a way to believe me, would Ryder?

“No more secrets,” he urged.

I exhaled, pulled back, just far enough so I could meet his gaze, watch his expression. “You’ve read the info about fatal insomnia—”

“What little there is available. Even the case reports Louise shared sound too bizarre for words. And each patient is so radically different.”

“Welcome to my world. Each symptom seems radically different—in me.” I shrugged, trying to lighten the mood. “Guess I never was one for following the rules. Not even in how I die.”

A wince flitted across his features at the word. “What are these fugues like for you, then?”

“They vary. I can tell they’re coming. I’ll get really hot, like a fever, see colors and shimmers, hear music. Oh, Ryder, the music…I could get lost in it. It’s so beautiful and terrible and awe-inspiring. It fills my soul. And then I freeze. My entire body. Can’t blink, can’t move. But most of the time I know everything that’s going on around me. I mean everything. One of my early ones happened last month when we were down in the tunnels searching for Esme. I could see the molecules of dust as they moved past me.”

He frowned at that—not condemning me, trying to understand. “Like time slows down?”

“Exactly. But all my senses are taken to the X
th
degree. Smells, sights, sounds. And I can rewind time, examine it for things I missed the first time around.”

“That’s how you found Esme.”

I nodded. He seemed to accept my newfound abilities. Devon had as well, but he really had no choice since he’d witnessed them firsthand when they saved his daughter.

“These fugues, they’re painful?”

“Not the kind where time slows. Except when I come out of it. Then my body feels like centuries have passed, all cramped from not moving.”

“Wait. There’s another kind?”

I hesitated. This was the part that could get tricky. “Yeah. The kind where I can talk with not-quite-dead people.”

ONE OF THE
reasons why Ryder was good at his job was his ability to see beyond appearances while maintaining a healthy skepticism. He could empathize with victim or perpetrator, see their point of view, how their lives had spiraled out of control, yet also look past the self-involved picture they painted to piece together an objective reality of a crime.

From the moment he’d met her, everything about Rossi had strained those abilities to the max. “Not-quite-dead people?”

“Thanks for not laughing. Because, yes, I know how crazy it sounds. It started last month with Sister Patrice, that first night we met.”

“After she’d been shot. You cracked her chest right there in the ER, tried to get her heart started.”

“I was holding her heart in my hand when I heard her voice. Telling me to ‘Find the girl. Save the girl.’”

“Esme…” It had been strange how Rossi had known about her being missing, seemed to know so much more about Patrice’s death than she’d had any right to.

“I didn’t just hear Patrice. I saw her—I
was
her, inside her mind, reliving her memories of being shot, of sending Esme to hide in the tunnels.” She stopped, giving him a chance to catch up—or walk out. Her expression turned guarded; she expected him not to believe.

Ryder wanted desperately to defy those expectations. “How does it work? Has it happened with others?”

“There’s a certain type of brain wave that some dying people and people who have taken PXA exhibit. Somehow, my disease, with its altered brain chemistry, responds to people with those same brain waves. PXA seems to amplify things. Both kinds of fugues, the hypersensory one where I can slow time, and the one where I can…” She searched for words. “Where I can connect with other minds.”

“When you saved my life last month, shoved me out of the path of the bullet—”

“The bullet aimed at me. You threw yourself in front of me. Because of the PXA Leo gave me and my fugue, I realized where the bullet was going before it got there and was able to push you so that you only got grazed.”

“But it should have hit me full-on? Your…” Now it was his turn to stumble over his words. “Your gift, it saved me. Saved Esme. Without you and what you were able to do—” He thought about it. Did it really matter how or why she’d been able to do what she did?

No. It didn’t. “It
is
a gift. Rossi, how far can this go? Could you read my mind? Like when I’m sleeping or something? What about someone like Littleton, if they take PXA, could you find the truth?” God, wouldn’t that be something? How many predators could he get off the street? Wouldn’t be admissible in court. Hell, he could finesse his way around that.

But, there was a greater issue. He examined her face. Despite the day of rest, her skin was virtually transparent, her eyes sunken. As if she were vanishing before his eyes, eaten from the inside out by the predator prions consuming her brain. He sucked in his breath. “It’s killing you, isn’t it?”

She swallowed and looked away. A little nod, something she could deny if pressed. “I don’t simply communicate with them. Their entire lives, all their memories, flood into me. I’m not aware of them, not all at once—seems like the dying have a focus, maybe their last wish? But after, I still have to live with them inside me.” Her voice broke. “All of them.”

“How many?” He was having a hard time understanding the immensity of what she was trying to describe. It was hard enough keeping track of his own thoughts and memories; he couldn’t imagine having someone else inside your mind. “You said Sister Patrice. Who else?”

“Leo Kingston. Before he died. And one of his victims.”

His hands balled into fists at the thought. “That savage, insane brute is living inside your head?”

“Not his consciousness. But his memories. Sometimes, they pop to the surface. It’s like looking at a movie from behind the screen, trying to figure out what’s my reality and what was his.”

He had no words. What could he offer her? How could he spare her that burden? All he could do was circle his arms around her and bring her to him, as close as humanly possible.

Because, despite how crazy she sounded, he believed her.

“If you want to run, now’s your chance,” she said as she pushed back from him.

Run? Did she really think he scared that easily? Or that he would abandon her to this Hell on earth she’d found herself in? She thought she was so tough, so self-contained, so inscrutable. Not to him. He knew her, better than she knew herself. Even if only now was she finally sharing the whole truth with him.

“Where do you go when I fall asleep?” It wasn’t the next question he’d intended to ask her. Wasn’t even in the top one hundred. But somehow it tumbled out before he could stop it.