Obsession Falls (19 page)

The old cowboy who knelt beside Summer turned his head and looked into Kateri’s eyes.
She’s not dead. Not if you help her.
He stood and walked away, giving Kateri room.

Lacey crawled close to Summer’s side and rubbed her head against Summer’s unmoving arm.

Kateri ignored the frantic squawking from the phone. She scooted back to Summer and put her fingers on the pulse on her neck.

It beat faintly. But it still beat.

“Come on. Come on!” Kateri embraced Summer, a whole-body embrace, willing her own life into the still form. “You didn’t come this far to quit now. Come on! Live!” She put her ear close to Summer’s mouth.

Summer wasn’t breathing.

The cowboy said,
Help her. You can save her. That’s why she came to you.

Once again, the faint scent of tobacco smoke touched Kateri’s senses, compelling her to believe in him. To believe in herself.

So she put her mouth to Summer’s and breathed her breath into her lungs.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Taylor wandered through green fields touched by mist, where time did not exist and life was weighed in tastes of golden joy and seen in blossoms of yellow despair. She would stay. She wanted to stay.
Please … life had been so difficult.
She would stay. She needed to stay.

Then … someone touched her arm.

“You son of a bitch.” She lunged at her attacker. “Leave me alone!”

A woman’s hearty voice: “Kateri, tell me why I do stuff like this for you.”

“Because I can’t do it for myself.” A woman’s soft voice.

“Yeah, yeah. Hypothermia is a bitch, and so’s she.” Another touch, this time on Taylor’s foot.

Taylor kicked her attacker as hard as she could. “Are you going to kill me? I dare you to try.”

Someone coughed, gasped. Hearty Voice again: “Okay. We’re not going to play nice.” She sat on Taylor’s hips and unbuttoned her shirt.

Taylor’s rage faded, and she tore at the shirt. “Get it off. Get it off!”

The weight disappeared, and Hearty Voice said, “What’s she doing now?”

“I looked it up,” Soft Voice said. “Wanting to rip your clothes is one of the weirder signs of hypothermia.”

Taylor got her shirt half off. Tore at the waistband of her pants.

“What about trying to kill me?” Hearty Voice asked. “Is that a sign of hypothermia?”

“Half the people in Virtue Falls want to kill you.” Soft Voice laughed.

Taylor paused to listen. Familiar voice … She strained to hear it.

Soft Voice spoke again. “Yes, Rainbow, rage is a symptom of hypothermia. You’re a big girl. She’s half dead and she cut off her own finger. So dry her off. She’s shivering.”

They rubbed Taylor with what felt like a wire scrub brush.

She fought, but she didn’t have the strength. So she cursed.

Someone licked her face.

She struck out.

The dog yelped.

She tried to open her eyes, to say,
Nice dog.
And,
Sorry
. She managed to open her eyes and whisper … something.

A pretty blond cocker spaniel crept forward and placed its head on the pillow next to Taylor’s. Taylor lifted her hand, inch by painful inch, and stroked the soft head. Somehow, that made her feel calmer. She closed her eyes and let them wrap her in blankets …

Taylor couldn’t speak. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t remember where she was or why she was here. Her skin hurt.

Hearty Voice said, “It’s her pulse and breathing that scare me. She needs to be in the hospital. Can you imagine the scandal if she dies in the library?”

Again the soft voice. “She won’t.”

This time Taylor knew that voice. “Kateri,” she whispered. Kateri, the angel who had appeared out of the blue, frozen world.

“Wow.” Hearty Voice. “You must have impressed her. She knows you.”

Kateri said, “Yes, and we’ll keep her alive.”

“We? You’re assuming I am going to help you.”

“No, I meant Lacey and I.”

The dog barked.

A moment of surprise, a loud laugh, and Hearty Voice said, “That’s putting me in my place.”

“Someone has to.” The creak of wheels as Kateri moved her walker across the threadbare carpet. “I’m going to call Dr. Watchman.”

Taylor shouted, “No doctors! You promised!”

“She’s mumbling something.” The woman with the hearty voice leaned close. “Nope, can’t tell what she wants. Kateri, why are you going to call that old horse doctor?”

“Dr. Watchman knows what she’s doing—she’s always treating the Families when they go out and get drunk, cut, stabbed, shot, beat up.” Kateri sounded farther away.

Hearty Voice said, “But Dr. Watchman’s not supposed to treat humans. She’s a veterinarian, for shit’s sake.”

“People are very much like horses,” Kateri replied in a prosaic tone.

“A lot of them are very much like horses’ asses,” Hearty Voice said.

Kateri chuckled softly. “True … More important to the case at hand—Dr. Watchman doesn’t report stuff to the authorities.”

Taylor relaxed.

“Dr. Watchman doesn’t report stuff to the authorities because
she’s
Native American and
her patients
are Native American.”

“And
I’m
Native American, so she won’t tell on me,” Kateri said.

“Half Native American,” the hearty-voiced woman said.

“
And
I’m god-kissed.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Rainbow scoffed, but beneath that, Taylor heard caution.

God-kissed.
What did that mean? Taylor tried to ask, but again, no one paid any heed.
Why wouldn’t they listen?

Danger. They were in danger. Michael Gracie was after them. They were going to die, and it was Taylor’s fault.

She fought again. She needed to run.
They
needed to run.

Hearty Voice restrained Taylor by wrapping the blankets tighter.

Lacey whined and rubbed her head against Taylor’s face.

“The doctor’s on her way.” Kateri was close again. “Summer can’t stay out here in the main room. The children will arrive soon. I’ve made her a bed in my office. If we use blankets as a stretcher, can you drag her in there?”

As Taylor bumped along the floor on the makeshift stretcher, pain racked her joints. She screamed. And screamed.

The dog barked. And barked.

Kateri and Rainbow tried to hush them both.

They got Taylor into the office and shut the door.

“Wait until she’s had some painkillers,” Rainbow said. “Then we’ll make her more comfortable.”

Taylor drifted off, then woke in a panic when someone put a needle in her arm.

Michael Gracie. He was going to kill her.

Taylor fought until the sedative took effect.

When she came out of it, it was dark. She was cold. She was in pain. She fought again.

The third time she woke, daylight shone from the high windows in the cement-block cell. Three women slept sprawled in chairs around her.

Who were they? Where was she?

Who was she?

Taylor silently cried until the dog snuggled with her. She slept.

On day three, she knew who she was. She knew where she was. She knew who these women were. And she wanted to cut off her finger again. It made sense, because if she got rid of her finger, she wouldn’t be trapped here anymore, and Michael Gracie wouldn’t get her.
He was going to get her.

Taylor heard Rainbow say, “She’s really crazy,” in a voice of awe.

“No, she’s not,” Kateri said. “She’s had hypothermia, and she’s got an infection. She’ll come out of it.”

Another needle. More sleep.

Taylor woke and met Rainbow. Rainbow was tall, raw, with broad shoulders and big hands. She had recently shaved her head, and her salt-and-pepper hair was a quarter-inch long from ear to ear. She had a long, uneven, jagged scar behind her left ear where no hair grew. Taylor vaguely thought that if she had any sense, she would be afraid of Rainbow.

Taylor met Dr. Watchman, a Native American who wore her black hair in a long braid that dangled down her back. She smelled of peppermint, and handled Taylor as if she
were
a horse, efficiently, briskly, and without allowing any struggle. Somehow, Taylor expected her to sing Indian medicine chants. But she never chanted. She never said a word.

The nights were the worst, but Kateri was always there, her lilting voice singing the chants the doctor did not. For Kateri, Taylor always quieted down.

Yet Taylor could not bring herself to eat until Rainbow shook her roughly and said, “Kateri didn’t save your skinny ass so you could die of starvation in her office and leave her to explain that to the cops. Eat this soup, damn it!”

The dog barked disapprovingly.

But Taylor ate.

More pain, more days, and the distant sound of children’s voices singing Christmas carols …

Christmas. She had survived to see Christmas. She thought her father would be proud.

Kateri explained that they had to transport Taylor out of the library and to Kateri’s apartment, and they had to do it this week, between Christmas and New Year’s, while the library was closed for the holidays.

Taylor didn’t want to move.

She wasn’t given a choice. On the day after Christmas, when the early night had fallen and rain blurred the streets, Rainbow wrapped Taylor tightly in blankets, covering even her face, then wrapped her again in a rug. With many a grunt, she hoisted Taylor over her shoulder and carried her outside. The cool, damp air slid through the layers. Kateri warned her there would be a jolt. There was, as Rainbow placed her onto the tailgate of her Volvo station wagon and slid her in like a package.

Lacey leaped up and settled herself on Taylor. Then the little dog growled, a surprisingly deep, menacing snarl.

Taylor heard a vaguely familiar, screechily unpleasant voice say, “So you’re stealing a rug from the library?”

“Mrs. Branyon! How good to see you! Actually, it’s my rug. I used it in my office, and next week I’ll be replacing it with a new one I ordered from Ikea. But thank you for asking!” Butter would not melt in Kateri’s mouth.

Why did Taylor remember Mrs. Branyon?

The woman said, “Likely story. Thieving Indian doing nothing except reading books to kids and taking money from the city for it. Should be ashamed…” Her heels tapped on the sidewalk. Her voice faded.

Taylor remembered now. “Old bitch,” she said.

She didn’t think anyone had heard her until Rainbow laughed and agreed.

The transport into the apartment was as wrenching as the removal from the library, leaving Taylor exhausted and semiconscious.

But here it was quiet, warm, and comfortable. Time had no meaning for her, and Taylor let herself drift—for days—through blessed nothingness. Everything had been so difficult for so long, she had been so afraid, so hungry. She had dredged up the last coin of courage and then spent it to get to Virtue Falls. Now she couldn’t bring herself to sit up and grasp reality. And she didn’t want to try—until the day she heard voices in the living room.

Kateri … and a man.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Taylor tried to stand. Her knees buckled. She slithered off the bed, crawled to the open door, leaned against the wall beside it, and listened with all her might.

“It’s not as bad as you think.” A man’s voice, deep and warm, with a hint of a Spanish accent. Not Michael Gracie’s voice.

“You’re a lousy liar. It’s twice as bad as I think.” Kateri’s soft voice wasn’t soft anymore. Instead, it crackled with such authority Taylor was reminded of her first-grade teacher, Mrs. Williamson, a stern disciplinarian and the terror of Taylor’s young life.

Automatically, Taylor sat up straight and squared her shoulders.

Kateri continued, “I work in the library. You think I don’t hear everything that happens?”

“You’re too damned smart for a woman.” He spoke with affectionate humor.

A light slap, then Kateri said, “Landlubber doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he’s too arrogant to learn. I cannot believe he was promoted to commander of the station. No one is less qualified to lead men anywhere, much less onto the Pacific Ocean to bring in a boat full of drug smugglers. Did he figure because they were in a sea kayak with no motor they wouldn’t know how to handle firearms?”

“I believe he said something to that effect, yes.” The humor was gone from the man’s voice. “That smuggler shot Ensign Morgan in the chest. The bullet hit his lung, rattled around in there. Until the helicopter got there, I thought we were going to lose him. We might still.”

Abruptly vicious, Kateri said, “It’s too bad the bullet didn’t hit Landlubber.”

“He’s good at hiding.” The man’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Fast, too.”

“Put your men into the line of fire, then duck out of the way. Oh, Luis.” The despair in Kateri’s voice broke Taylor’s heart. “I screwed up, man.”

“
Because of the cutter? You didn’t overturn it. The tsunami overturned it. And it was Adams’s fault that you didn’t make it through the breakwater and into the open sea. He blocked you. There were witnesses.”

“I can’t pass the buck on this one.
I
was in command.
I
was at the wheel. That cutter, and the lives of my men, were my responsibility. Instead of playing poker with Adams, taking his money and making fun of him—”

“He deserved it.”

“Yeah, he sucks at poker. But that’s not the point. I could have made him listen.” Kateri sounded flatly certain. “Then at least he would know something now and I wouldn’t be waiting every day to hear he’s
accidentally
killed one of you. Or all of you.”

Taylor peeked around the door.

Kateri and Luis sat on the short couch in the tiny living room, facing each other and looking at each other … earnestly.