Among the Shrouded (28 page)

CHAPTER

40

MIA

“You know the drill, Officer,” Detective Donna Switzer, a member of the crime lab, said to her as she entered the examination room of the hospital.  “Clothes in the bags and I’ll be back in a few minutes with the nurse to get your statement and to process hair and nails for DNA sampling.  If we’re lucky, we might be able to get a match on your abductor from the system.”

“Thanks
, Donna,” she replied.

As soon as the door clicked shut,
she removed all of her clothing over the collection sheet, folded each piece neatly, and placed everything into the large paper bag on the table.  She redressed in the clothing that was provided and sat down to wait for Donna to return.  After he cleaned and stitched the wound on her head, the doctor had thoughtfully brought her a large cup of lukewarm coffee and a package of crackers which seemed like a gourmet meal in light of her situation.  As she munched on the peanut butter crackers, she wondered how the other women were adjusting to their new realities.  She knew they would be feeling alone and frightened and she longed to finish with her own statement so she could be with them in their time of need. 

She also couldn’
t help but feel conflicted about Thomas.  Although she continued to wonder if he was somehow involved in her abduction, there was also a part of her that was very concerned for his well-being.  As she tried to wrap her head and her heart around the complexity of her situation, Donna Switzer knocked on the door.

“How are you holding up?” she asked
as she entered the room with one of the nurses.

“I’m surprisingly okay.  I don’t think I’d hit th
e point of utter desperation, so I was still running on hope and adrenaline.  Can’t say the same for some of the other women though.”

“I saw.  A few of them were barely alive.  What a travesty
,” Donna said shaking her head.  “Let’s do hair and nails first, then I’ll take your statement.”

She
waited while the nurse combed meticulously through her hair for fibers or DNA that may have transferred during her ordeal.

“I assume my father knows I’m here
at the hospital,” she asked cautiously.

“
He does.  But he’s back at the station dealing with the fallout from the raid.  I’m sure he’s doing his best to get here to you,” Donna replied sympathetically.

“I know,” she
said, suddenly desperate to see a familiar face.

She thought again of Thomas as
the nurse moved onto her fingernails, carefully scraping samples from beneath each of them into envelopes labeled with her name.

“What I can’t get over is how they found you,” Donna commented casually.

“How
did
they find us?” she asked.

“
No one’s told you?”

“No!
”

“Then I shouldn’t be the one to fill you in.
  If you don’t know already, then your account will be more accurate without the bias of that information.”

“You can’t do that to me, Donna!”
she exclaimed.

“I just did,” she replied
with a smile as the nurse finished her nails.  “Now, about your statement.  Why don’t you start from the beginning and as soon as we’re done, you can head back to the station to get the answers you’re looking for from someone who was there firsthand, okay?”

“Fine,”
she replied.

She
began her story with Thomas’ revelation about the men he overheard at Belinda’s Bistro.  She described for Donna in great detail about what she and Thomas discovered at Wayne Brookins’ estate and how she was ambushed in her apartment the following night.  Donna asked her many questions about the women in the basement and she recounted what she could remember of each of their stories.  At long last, Donna pushed her chair back from the table and asked her one final question.

“How do you think these men knew you were involved, if you had to speculate?”

“Honestly, at first I assumed they’d seen me and Thomas at Brookins’ house and traced me to my apartment because of that.  But now I’m wondering whether Thomas Pritchett may have had something to do with it.”

“Hmm.
  Okay.  Well, I’ll make a note of that then.”

“Am I free to go?”
she asked.

“For now.  If we need something more, I think we know where to find you,” Donna laughed.

She gave Donna a hug and ventured into the hallway.  As she wandered through the hospital, she was surprised to see Thomas, sitting without an aura, in a chair beside the nurses’ station.  There was a large bandage wrapped around his left shoulder.

“Thomas!” she called
, surprising herself with the excitement in her voice.

“
Thank God!” he replied.  He rose immediately from his seat and began running toward her.

She
stood, frozen in place, unable to choose whether to be elated or furious.

“I can’t believe you were there
in the warehouse with the others!  It’s a miracle,” he declared, wrapping her in his arms.  Despite his enthusiasm, she couldn’t bring herself to return his embrace.  “Mia, what is it?” he asked.

“Somehow
, the traffickers found me,” she said.

“I know.”

“But they didn’t find you.”

“No.  Thank
God.  Why are you angry?  What’s this all about?”

Before she could reply
, her father appeared from around the corner looking uncharacteristically disheveled.

“Mia?” he said.

“Oh, Daddy!” she cried, racing past Thomas toward her father.

They held
each other for several moments and she allowed her frustration to escape in the form of silent tears.

“Why are you crying?”
he asked at last.  “The story had a happy ending, thanks to your friend Thomas here.”

She
dried her eyes with her hands and looked from her father to Thomas and back again.  She couldn’t understand why her father was beaming at Thomas when only weeks before he had warned her never to see him again.

“What do you mean ‘thanks to Thomas?’” she asked.

“Hasn’t anyone told you how we found you?” replied Rosetti.

“No!  No one has!”
she said.

“You should be the one to tell her,”
he said to Thomas, giving him a wink.  “I only have a couple of minutes before I have to get back to the station, but let’s go into the waiting room and sit down.”

She
allowed Thomas to take her hand as they sat beside one another across the table from her father.

“Well, go ahead
, Son.  Don’t be shy.  Tell her what happened.”

Thomas began, smiling at
her, “So after we went to Brookins’ house last weekend, you never called me the next day…”

“The commissioner took my phone!  He never gave it back!”
she interrupted.

“Let the man speak, Mia,”
her father warned.

Thomas continued, still holding tightly to
her hand.  “So when you didn’t call me after a few days, I went to the station to look for you.  Everyone told me you’d taken leave so I went to your house to see if you were holed up there for some reason.”

“I wasn’t.”

“No.  You weren’t.  Anyway, I couldn’t imagine why you weren’t returning my calls after that night we were together, so on Thursday I decided to go back to the station to ask your father if he knew where you were.  He let me listen to the message you left him and you sounded really scared to me.”

“I was really scared!”
she cried.

“I know.  So that
message got me thinking the reason you weren’t answering my calls was because of the stakeout and not because of something that happened between us.”

“Is that what you thought?  That I was ignoring you?”

“Yes.”

“And you kept after me anyway?”

“Yes.”

“Oh
, Thomas,” she said, suddenly realizing where the conversation was headed.

“Let the man finish!”
her father exclaimed again.

Thomas smiled at
him and continued, “I borrowed Belinda’s car and drove to Brookins’…”

“You did what?
!” she roared.

“I know.  It was s
tupid.  But I didn’t know what else to do.  I sat outside his house and eventually he came out.  I followed him to the warehouse and saw him leaving with the rest of the women.  I didn’t see you leave with them so I assumed you weren’t there.  I followed the vans because I thought maybe they would lead me to you, but I ended up at the auction site instead.  I was able to sneak inside to see what was happening, but I couldn’t stand to watch for very long.  When I left, one of the guys came out the door and saw me…”

“Oh
, God, Thomas.  Your arm,” she said.

“Yeah.  He shot me.  Grazed my
shoulder.  The bandage makes it look a lot worse than it is, so don’t feel too sorry for me.  Belinda’s car has seen better days though,” he laughed, shaking his head.

“I can’t believe this.  Where did you go when you got shot?  Please tell me you went straight to
the hospital,” she said.

“
Maybe if I had more sense, but no, I didn’t go to the hospital.  I drove here to the station in case they were following me.  Figured they wouldn’t try and kill me here.  Luckily, Jack was still on duty and was willing to see me.  When he heard what I had to say, he called your dad at home right away.  Your dad sent a squad to the warehouse within the hour and that’s when they found you.  I just can’t believe you were there the whole time.  If I’d known, I could have gotten you out sooner.”

As
he finished, her father’s phone rang.  After a brief conversation, he announced that he was needed back at the station.  He stood up, giving her a kiss on the forehead and patting Thomas on the arm.  “This guy’s a hero in my book.  You’re lucky to have him,” he said genuinely, and with that, he was gone. 

Alone
together for the first time in a week, she was reeling from his account of what had transpired during their time apart.  She was furious with herself for having judged him so poorly. 

“You
were so brave, Thomas,” she said, crawling into his arms.  “You aren’t dark after all,” she mused.

“What do you mean?
” he asked skeptically.  “Do you see darkness around me?  I thought you said my aura was light?”

She
realized her slip right away.  Her gut reaction was to backpedal or try to play off the comment as a joke, however, when she looked at the sincerity in his eyes, she knew at once she had to tell him the truth about how she saw him.

“I have to tell you something that may be hard to hear, but it’s important for me to be honest with you.”

“You’re scaring me, Mia,” he said.

She
paused for a moment and gathered her thoughts.  Finally, she took his face in her hands and told him the truth.

“Thomas, the very first time I saw you
, it was during a line up.  There was something about you that caught my attention right away and to this day I have no idea what it means.”

“It
was my fabulous fashion sense, wasn’t it?”

“No,” she
laughed.  “Thomas… I can’t see your aura.  It doesn’t mean you don’t have one, because I’m sure you do, it just means for some reason, I can’t see it.”

“Why
not?”

“I have no idea.  But I can’t see
any light.  Or any dark…”

“And you ca
n’t trust what you can’t see,” he said.

“Sort of.  It’s hard for me.  Every other person in the world has an aura I can use to make my initial judgment
about the quality of their character.  I didn’t have that luxury with you.”