Chasing Shadows (17 page)

To my surprise her eyes were troubled. In fact, her whole expression seemed burdened, as though she'd just been given some terrible news she didn't want to accept, but had to.

“Don't let him hurt us,” I said to her.

But she was already turning away, forcing herself to walk from the room, her shoulders stiff.

“This is Ben's show. I can't do anything to help you,” she said as she exited the doorway. “I'm sorry.”

And then Ben was coming toward me, a length of rope in his hands.

“Might as well make this easy on yourself,” he said casually. “The more you struggle, the more I'm going to have to hurt you.”

“How did you know I was here?” I asked Ben, trying to stall. “I was really quiet.”

“How?” He threw his head back and laughed. “Did you think there'd be nothing set up to warn me of intruders? How stupid do you think I am?”

“But I didn't hear any alarms or anything.”

“Nothing so unreliable as alarms, which any decent burglar can disable in no time,” he said, taking one of my hands and starting to wrap rope around it. “I prefer the old canine system, only with dogs that are trained to be silent. Instead of barking their fool heads off, my dogs listen and watch, and if they hear anything they come to me and let me know. So, I am warned, but the intruder is not. Clever, what?”

I wasn't much in the mood to admire his cleverness, especially since at that moment he was holding my
hands together while he wound rope around my wrists. Beside us, on the cot, Nadine gave a small murmur of protest but made no attempt to move.

“What are you going to do with us?” I asked, trying to look him right in the eye.

“Now, that's the sad part,” he said. From the tone of his voice, you'd have sworn he really felt bad about it. “You see, Nadine here was going to be allowed to live. But your interference means you must both die. See what has happened because you just wouldn't let it go?”

I kicked at him and tried to twist away from his firm grasp, but it was useless. He held the rope that bound my wrists tightly with one hand while the other rose and came toward me. The slap, even though I saw it coming, was a shock, which is kind of amusing when you think about it. After all, it shouldn't be a huge surprise that someone who's willing to kill you might hit you too.

“You'll be more cooperative soon enough,” he said pleasantly. “Just like our little Nadine here.”

The full meaning of his words didn't hit me until a few moments later when Lisa returned. By then, my hands and feet had been tied and he was replacing the ropes I'd removed from Nadine.

“We need a gag for this one.” Ben addressed Lisa, nodding in my direction.

“I can only do one thing at a time,” she said. Her eyes flashed angrily at him, and I wondered if it was
because he was ordering her around or because she was upset by what was being done to us.

I saw then what she held in her hand and understood why Ben had told me I'd soon be more cooperative. A syringe filled with clear liquid came toward me, and though I squirmed, she plunged it into my thigh easily.

The effect was almost instant. A warm, sleepy feeling crawled through me, leaving me groggy and almost confused. I tried to say something, but my tongue felt thick and awkward, with a life of its own.

No wonder Nadine had been incoherent and unable to say much when I'd taken off her gag earlier. She'd been drugged, floating in the same state of unreality that I now drifted in.

Ben and Lisa were talking, but they seemed very far away, their words muffled and disconnected. I had no idea what they were saying, although it seemed to be an argument of some sort.

And really, what did I care? It suddenly made no difference at all what they did to me, to us. I think, at that moment, Ben could have brought in a gun and shot me and I'd just have lain there not caring what was happening.

Even in the state I was in, I had enough reasoning power left to realize that as long as they kept me drugged like this, I would be totally unable to
do anything to help myself or Nadine. Heck, not only could I not
do
anything, I couldn't even clearly
think
anything.

That was unfortunate for Lisa, because she chose that very time to grill me. Since she'd just given me the injection, you'd have thought she'd know better, but she didn't. She just forged ahead.

“Shelby, it's me, Lisa,” she said, leaning down. “I want to help you.”

Well, I wasn't
that
gone that I didn't know who she was! I smiled crookedly and nodded to show I understood. Oddly, a feeling of great affection for her swept over me.

“First, I have a few questions I need to ask you. Then I can help you.”

“Okay,” I said dreamily. It echoed in my head, the “k” thick and guttural.

“How did you know?”

“Knowaaa?” I asked, then tried again. “Know. Whaa…t?”

“That Nadine was here with us. How did you figure it out?” She smiled and patted my arm. “It was very clever of you. I'm just curious how you put it all together.”

My head played flashes of images and I tried to connect them, but it wasn't working so well.

“Thu pies,” I slurred at last. That made me giggle, because I'd been trying to say
pipes
, and the expression
on her face struck me as hilarious as she tried to figure out what clue I'd gotten from
pies
.

Ben interrupted then, saying something to Lisa about later. She looked reluctant but she withdrew, patting my arm again. “We'll talk after,” she said, “you just rest for now.”

I didn't have a whole lot of options, seeing as I was tied up. It was the gag, which I heard Ben remind Lisa to get, that was going to be the worst, though. My tongue already felt ten times its normal size. I was convinced a gag would choke me to death.

Luckily, I never found out whether or not I was right. Just as Lisa returned with a strip of cloth, a banging came on the door upstairs.

“Police! Open up!” a voice hollered. “Now!”

They didn't wait. Seconds later the door crashed open and we could hear feet running everywhere. Ben and Lisa stood frozen in shock for the first few seconds, and by the time they tried to react it was too late. A couple of officers had rushed downstairs and stood, guns drawn, yelling for them to get their hands up.

The next thing I knew Ben and Lisa had been handcuffed and led away. I heard one of the officers say there'd been two more upstairs, which was a surprise. I'd thought Carlotta was the only other one in the house. Even in my hazy state, I could recall Ben telling me that the three of them were sharing a place while the family business got off the ground.

Then I heard sirens, which I thought was kind of strange. After all, the police had already caught the bad guys, you wouldn't think they'd need more.

Only it wasn't police. It was a pair of ambulances. They strapped both Nadine and me onto stretchers. They also stuck needles in us for no apparent reason, since they were just short, empty plastic tubes that weren't attached to an IV or anything. After checking a
few things like pulse and blood pressure, they loaded us into the ambulances and headed off.

I tried to tell the guy in the back of the ambulance with me that I really needed to go home, and that they could just drop me off there. He said things like “sure kid” and “no problem” but we ended up at the hospital anyway. I wished my tongue was working a bit better so I could have told him that I didn't appreciate being humoured or having my hopes raised for nothing.

I was dismayed to see Mom and Dad come rushing in shortly afterward, while I was still waiting for a doctor to come and check me out.

Mom cried a lot. Dad held onto her, sort of holding her up with one arm, but he looked kind of scared and on the verge of crumbling himself.

I figured I was in
big
trouble.

The doctor came then and he checked me out, repeating some of the things the ambulance guys had done, and adding a few of his own. He tried to reassure Mom and Dad, but it was a bit difficult since Mom still wasn't exactly what you'd call settled down.

“Her vitals are fine. We're just going to keep an eye on her for the night,” he kept saying, and Mom kept right on crying and kind of trembling.

After a bit they moved me upstairs to a room and my folks came in and sat with me. I was really woozy
and all I wanted to do was sleep, but I figured I'd better try to stay awake and talk to my folks, seeing as they'd gotten up out of bed in the middle of the night to come down there.

I tried to tell them I was sorry. It came out all weird and garbled, which didn't do much to cheer up poor Mom. I think she figured I was fried for life or something. She kept saying “Oh, Randall,” in the most pathetic way, and I'd have sure liked to tell her it was all right, but every time I tried to talk it seemed to make things a bit worse.

At last one of the nurses came in and told them I was doing fine and that the best thing would be for them to go home and get some sleep and let me get some rest. Once they'd taken the advice and left I was out like a light.

In the morning I woke up feeling sort of off, if you know what I mean. I still couldn't quite focus or concentrate properly, and my head hurt a little, but I could tell I was on the way back to being myself.

The doctor came by again, only this time he didn't do anything except talk. He said some embarrassing stuff like he hadn't realized he had a real live hero as a patient and other dumb things like that. He wanted to know how I was feeling and then he said I could go home whenever my parents came to get me.

I asked him how Nadine was, and he told me she was fine and why didn't I go down the hall and see for myself.

I didn't have a housecoat or anything with me but the nurse brought me another one of the strange nightgowns they give you in hospitals, the kind with the back wide open except for a couple of ties, which I was already wearing. I put the second one on backward and then walked three rooms down the hall to the room the nurse told me Nadine was in.

She was barely awake, but she sat up as soon as I got to the doorway of her room. She started crying and held her arms out. As soon as I was close enough, she grabbed onto me and hugged me just about as hard as Mom and Dad had last night.

“I don't know
how
you did it,” she sobbed, “but you saved my life.”

“Aw, Ben told me they weren't planning to kill you until I interfered,” I said, though I was pretty sure he'd been lying.

Her answer surprised me, though. She told me, in faltering terms, that she'd heard Ben and Lisa talking about what to do with her. Can you imagine anything as cruel as talking right in front of someone about whether or not you should kill them?

“Ben kept saying they should just get rid of me,” she said, “like I was just some old disposable thing they
didn't need around. It was actually Lisa who begged and persuaded him that they should let me live. Only, the plan they came up with wasn't much better than killing me, really.”

“What was the plan?” I asked, still grappling with the horror that all of this had been discussed in her presence.

“They were sending me back to the city with some guy who came here a day or two ago. And he was supposed to keep me locked up there and get me hooked on heroin — turn me on to it, Lisa called it — and then put me on the street as a prostitute. Ben actually made jokes about how well I'd fit into this guy's stable.

“I'm pretty sure I was supposed to be leaving with him today,” she continued, pausing as a shudder ran through her. “If you hadn't found me when you did — my whole life would have been totally ruined.”

“So
that
was the fourth person in the house,” I said. “Well, the police got them all. Speaking of police, I imagine they'll need statements from us. Besides what they did to you, we'll have to fill them in on what this whole thing was about.”

“I wouldn't mind hearing that myself.”

I turned to see Greg standing in the doorway.

My knees went weak at the unexpected sight of Greg there in the hospital. Though I managed a smile and a hello, both were pretty feeble.

I tried to read his expression, but his face was set in a hard line, as if he'd clamped his jaw tight.

“Your mom called me,” he said at last, like he didn't know what else to say.

“Well, good then. I'm glad she did.”

“So, do you want to tell me what happened?”

I told him about hiding in Ben's truck and going to the house and finding Nadine. “I almost persuaded myself I was wrong and didn't go inside at all,” I added, “until I realized a couple of things. One was that they had a bunch of gardening supplies in a basement room, but there was no sign of any gardening anywhere in the yard. The second was that there was a window recently
boarded up. I almost missed that because the boards were all old and grey from the weather. It took a few moments before I clued in to the fact that the ends of them were white, which meant they'd been newly cut.”

I told him about the injection Lisa had given me and the police coming and the ambulance drive to the hospital — what I could remember of it anyway.

“Who called the police?” he asked.

“Oh, that was me,” I smiled. “I had Mom's cell phone with me and when I heard someone coming, I had just enough time to dial 911. I left it open, out of sight under the cot, and kind of yelled so the emergency operator could hear me.”

“But they were right there in the room with you, weren't they? It didn't make them suspicious when you started saying stuff that would get the police to come?”

“Well, I started off by yelling for them please not to kill me, or something like that, so the person on the other end of the phone would keep listening.” I explained how I'd managed to work in the address of the place so the police would know where to go.