Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (85 page)

CHAPTER ONE

“My God! Is she all right?” Fiona sank into the worn leather sofa as she listened to the ward sister on the phone, giving news about Fiona’s sister Linda.

Her Chinese flatmate, Ami—who had also been woken by the telephone ringing at two in the morning—sat down beside her. She tugged Fiona’s arm. “What is it? Has something happened to Linda?”

Both women wore their towelling robes, still half asleep.

“Shhh... Wait a minute... Sorry. Please go on.” She felt the colour drain from her cheeks, and her mind raced as she chewed over the information the nurse was giving her. She grabbed Ami’s hand and nestled it in her lap.

Ami rested her cheek on her shoulder, and Fiona heard her let out a long sigh.

Words caught in Fiona’s throat. “May I come in and see her?”

“Maybe in the morning. We’ve just given her a sedative to help calm her down. Her ankle is broken, so she’ll need to go for surgery tomorrow afternoon,” the ward sister replied.

“I understand. I’ll have to clear it with my boss, but I’ll try to get there first thing. If she’s still awake, tell her I love her and that I’m thinking of her.”

“Of course. Try to get some sleep and try not to worry too much. Your sister is safe with us, now.”

Fiona hung up and sobbed uncontrollably—something she hadn’t done in years—for a full five minutes. Ami cried also and held Fiona’s shuddering body tightly in a vice-like grip.

Eventually, Fiona opened up and repeated the information the ward sister had shared. “Oh, Ami. If I had gone with her tonight, this would never have happened. If I hadn’t been so involved with my blasted paperwork...”

“You can’t punish yourself like this. Sometimes things happen that are out of our control. Besides, Linda was supposed to be with her friends, wasn’t she?” Ami consoled her quietly.

“You’re right, of course. I’m not sure what the ins and outs are of what happened, yet. Why or how did she get separated from her friends? It’s so out of character for Linda to go off with someone she met in a club. She’s always been the sensible one. Whatever possessed her to do such a thing?”

Ami shrugged and stood up. “I’ll get us a mug of hot milk. It’ll help us sleep. Linda will need us to be strong for her. She’ll get through this. We’ll make sure she does.” She left the room.

Fresh tears ran down Fiona’s cheeks as her sister’s beautiful face flooded her mind. Please let there be no permanent damage, either physically or mentally. During their childhood, Linda had always been the one to whom the boys had flocked. It hadn’t been surprising when she’d been labelled the most beautiful girl at school. She had endured copious amounts of jealousy from the other girls who’d been cast aside by the boys clambering to make a date with Linda. Fiona had found it all amusing, the way the boys queued up to talk to Linda in the school playground throughout their school years.

Not once had she ever been envious of her sister’s popularity or good looks. It was unthinkable that her sister’s popularity would have led to something as harrowing as the night’s events.

Ami came back with two mugs of warm milk and handed one to Fiona. “She’ll be fine. We’ll make sure of that, hon.”

Shaking her head slowly, Fiona said, “I’m not so sure. She has a fragile spirit. You don’t know her like I do.” Ami’s head dropped onto her chest, and Fiona could have kicked herself for saying something unintentionally unkind. “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by that. Me and my big mouth.”

Ami raised her angelic Chinese face, and blinked her intense black eyes a few times. “I know you didn’t mean anything by that. Since I moved in, you two have been like sisters to me. I’ve only known you for just over a year, but you both mean the world to me.”

“I’m sorry, Ami. Just ignore me. Linda and I both feel the same way about you, too. Come on, let’s try to get some sleep. You’ve got college tomorrow, and I’ve got to inch my way into my boss’s good books.”

They each went to their respective bedrooms, but sleep evaded Fiona for the rest of the night. Every time her eyes fluttered shut, all she could imagine was Linda being attacked and mauled by a faceless brute of a man.

Fiona’s teeth ground together as she thought up ways to exact her revenge, most of which involved using a sharp implement. She shuddered the images away. She knew she could never hurt another human being like that.

The next morning, Fiona rose at seven and jumped in the shower, during which she figured out the telephone conversation she intended to have with her boss at nine to wangle the day off. She had to come up with some plausible excuse. He wasn’t the type to be satisfied with a naff excuse like ‘I’ve got a stinking cold’ or ‘I overslept because the alarm didn’t go off.’ She couldn’t possibly tell him the truth.

When nine o’clock arrived, she swallowed hard and dialled the private line to his office. “Rick? It’s Fiona. I hate to dump this on you first thing, and I know we have an important meeting with corporate clients today, but I need to take the day off.” She closed her eyes, anticipating the barrage of words that would come her way.

“Fiona, I know you well enough by now to know that it must be extremely important for you to take time off on such a significant day. Do what you have to do, and come back soon.”

Wow. His reaction floored her. Maybe Rick had picked up on something in her tone.

Whatever the reason behind his sudden understanding nature, she was extremely grateful. “Hope everything goes well with the Tyler account. I’ll definitely be in tomorrow.”

“It will. You’ve done all the groundwork, anyway. All I have to do is get them to sign the contract. Take as much time as you need, girl.”

“Thanks, Rick. It’s appreciated. Good luck.”

“You too,” he replied, and they both hung up.

“Well, that went better than planned,” Fiona said when Ami walked into the room still wearing her night shirt and carrying a bowl of cornflakes.

“Just the hospital to deal with, now. Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you? I have a free lesson, first thing.”

Fiona screwed up her nose and shook her head. “I’m heading off now. I’d rather have a few minutes alone with Linda, if you don’t mind. You know, assess her state of mind.”

“The offer still stands, but I absolutely understand.”

Fiona picked up her Yves Saint Laurent Muse designer handbag, and her coat from the coat rack, and headed for the front door. “See you later.”

Chewing on a mouthful of cornflakes, Ami nodded.

The traffic around London was horrendous as usual, but Fiona stopped caring about the length of time the trip was taking her by focussing on her sister, instead. As much as her usually organised brain warned her to remain calm for Linda’s sake, it didn’t stop her seething at the injustice of the situation. Linda was such a gentle soul who definitely didn’t deserve to be treated like that.

Not that any woman deserved to be raped. The situation still surprised Fiona; she always considered her sister to be the cautious one, as far as men were concerned. She usually chose her boyfriends after several weeks of consideration. She was never one of those girls who jumped into bed with a guy after meeting him a few hours before.

Which was why Fiona found it hard to fathom how her sister had got herself into such a deplorable, unthinkable position.

Finally, she arrived at St Thomas’ hospital. She asked at reception where she could find her sister and rushed through the corridors, her heels clicking on the tiled floor and echoing off the walls.

Thankfully, Linda had been allocated a private ward. Fiona tapped on the door lightly before pushing it open.

The sight that greeted her caused her to inhale sharply. Fiona was both sickened and repulsed by the bruises that had caused Linda’s face to swell. She was almost unrecognisable. Her left eye was a mere slit; the swelling surrounding it was a rainbow of colours.

Okay, now. Remain calm. Don’t break down. Fiona approached the bed and kissed her sister gently on her bandaged forehead. Then she sat on the bed beside her battered sister.

“Oh, Fi. What did I do to deserve this?” Linda asked her voice croaky and full of emotion.

Tears welled up as Fiona studied her sister’s appalling injuries. She swallowed down the lump in her throat and patted Linda’s hand. “You mustn’t blame yourself, sweetheart. You don’t or can’t have any control over another person’s instincts. If this man set out to hurt a stranger, you were just unfortunate, to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Linda remained silent for a few seconds, but as fresh tears cascaded down her puffy cheeks, she whispered, “He wasn’t a stranger…”

CHAPTER TWO

Lorne clutched at the excruciating pain attacking her sides as tears streamed down her face.

Tony glanced up at her and shook his head. “Some bloody support you are.”

His hand sunk into the mud behind him as he tried to retrieve his false leg. Annoyance creased up his eyes. He held out his other arm in her direction. “When you’ve quite finished laughing at me, any chance you can help a disabled man out of this damn quagmire?”

Lorne knew she shouldn’t laugh at him, knew he’d exact his revenge on her somehow in the not-too-distant future, but the way he’d tumbled reminded her of one of those old black and white films she used to watch as a child. In her youth, the Three Stooges had held her captivated for hours.

When she’d married Tony six months ago, she had no notion her life would be filled with so much laughter and love that had been missing throughout her previous marriage to Tom. Although, looking at the way he was sinking in the mud around their two-acre paddock, Tony wasn’t doing much laughing at the moment.

She ventured forward on the outskirts of the innocent-looking mud patch and held out her hand to help. Their fingers touched tentatively. She reached further, not wishing to spoil the new pink wellies her daughter, Charlie, had bought her the previous weekend. Her hand slipped into his.

Instead of Lorne pulling Tony out of the mud, he jerked his hand quickly and pulled her on top of him. “Laugh at me at your peril, Lorne Warner.”

Her screams of disbelief quickly extinguished, replaced by hoots of laughter. “You really don’t like me missing out on anything, do you?” she asked as he placed a muddy hand either side of her face and looked at her, his eyes brimming with love.

“For better, for worse, the vicar said. It doesn’t get much worse than this.”

They laughed before he kissed her deeply.

The truth was that the mess they were sitting in at the moment was a breeze, compared to what they’d both encountered through life thus far. As an ex-MI6 agent, Tony had been tortured several times for the sake of queen and country. His final mission, after he’d been captured and publicly tortured by the Taliban, had been the one where he’d actually lost his leg. So far, Lorne had been utterly impressed by the way he’d adapted and coped with his disability.

Lorne’s own life experiences had hardly been run-of-the-mill, either. In the line of duty as one of the Met’s best serving detective inspectors, she’d met her fair share of callous villains and come close to losing more than a limb several times herself, in the last decade, mostly at the hands of her archenemy the Unicorn.

The Unicorn had succeeded in killing her partner in the force and had kidnapped and raped her daughter. Those two events had done more damage to her mentally than anything he could’ve conjured up physically, if ever he’d had the chance. There had been an incident where she had found herself naked in his presence, but Lorne, being Lorne, had managed to squirm her way out of the situation before the Unicorn had laid his mucky paws on her.

Their kiss ended, and Lorne let out a satisfied sigh.

“What was that for?” Tony asked.

“Just thinking.”

“About?”

“How we got to be here. The obstacles we’ve both had to overcome. You more than me.”

“Come on. Help me up.”

Lorne salvaged Tony’s prosthetic limb before they attempted to leave the mud. They grunted and groaned as they fought against the stickiness and slipperiness of the mud, then laughed at the way it made slurping noises as they trudged through it back to the safety of the grassy part of the paddock.

He took her in his arms and smiled down at her. “If we hadn’t been together, I doubt I would have got through the last six months, darling.”

Lorne shook her head and wrinkled her nose. “I doubt that’s true, Tony. You’re one of life’s survivors. You wouldn’t know what failure was if it was tattooed on your forehead and you had to look at it in the mirror every morning.”

“Have I told you lately how much I love you?” he asked, running a muddy finger down the length of her nose.

She pretended to think about her reply. “Umm…not since this morning. Let’s grab a coffee and see if the post has come yet.”

Tony strapped his artificial leg in place and slipped an arm around her shoulder as they set off for the main house.

“Are you sure you want to set out on this new venture? Isn’t it a bit soon?” he asked tentatively.

Lorne glanced up at him as they continued walking. “I need to do it. I love having this place. Love the fact that we’re able to save and nurture all these animals that are crying out to be cared for, but there is still something missing. I thought we’d been through all this before I’d applied for the diploma.”