Shattered Dreams: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (36 page)

I nodded.

“Then let’s go.” Effortlessly he vaulted over the fence, much as he had at City Park. How was it even possible that afternoon had been less than a week before? It seemed like a different lifetime.

Fourcade’s son edged closer. I didn’t know much about him. I was pretty sure he wasn’t yet twenty. But with a gun in his hand and a glint in his eye, he reminded me of what his father must have been like all those years before, when my mother was still alive.

“You okay?” His voice was quiet, understanding. “You can always wait—”

I moved before he could finish, for the second time in a matter of days climbing a fence designed to keep people out.

We made it to the front door as a siren kicked in from somewhere in the distance. An ambulance, I told myself, but secretly I hoped it was LaSalle.

Getting in was stupidly easy. The landscaping was overgrown, big rambling bushes and trees concealing a series of windows. The first one Fourcade’s son checked was unlocked, almost as if—

Nothing prepared me for the wall of ice. I slammed into it the second I scrambled inside, staggering, doubling over as an invisible fist caught me in the gut.

“Trinity!” I must have cried out because Chase spun around and was by my side in a heartbeat. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

I didn’t know how to explain it. “C-can’t … breathe…” I managed. God knew I was trying.

“Yes, you can,” Dylan said. He went down on a knee to the other side of me—and everything just kind of wobbled.

I didn’t want him to be there. I didn’t want to look into the hard silver of his eyes and remember how out of control I’d let myself—

I didn’t want Chase to know I’d kissed someone else.

I didn’t want to know it, either.

“What do you mean you can’t breathe?” As if to demonstrate how, Chase sucked in a breath, let it out slowly.

“No.”
My chest constricted. Still hunched over, I braced myself with palms to my thighs. “I can’t—”

“Don’t fight it,” Fourcade’s son said, watching me, but thankfully, not touching. “Just let it go,” he said. “Just—”

Another wave swirled through me, stronger than before.

“Come on, baby … sit down,” Chase said. “You don’t have to do this.”

I shook my head. Rest wouldn’t help. “No … it’s this place,” I whispered. “It’s like … every emotion I’ve ever had is pressing in on me at the same time—”

Light flooded the darkness. “They are.” Dylan aimed the huge Maglite he’d grabbed from his father’s car at me. His eyes were dark, steady. “This is an intense place. A lot of people won’t even turn down Tulane.”

I wanted to grab the light, bathe myself in it,
hold
it deep, deep inside of me.

“She’s here,” I whispered. “I can feel her.” Around me the walls breathed, and the stillness thrummed with every beat of her heart. “We have to—” I reached for Chase, held on to him as I stood. “Come on.”

He didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t fight me on it. He took my hand as the chorus of sirens outside grew louder, and led the way to the stairwell. “Which way?”

The vibration from within intensified. “I don’t know,” I said, rubbing a hand to my wrist. “Just … hurry.”

*   *   *

I’d seen darkness. In Colorado, when the sun slipped behind the mountains and night covered the land, so far removed from city lights. Most nights stars winked and twinkled. But some nights they did not. Some nights clouds took over, settling down like a thick wool blanket.

I’d lived darkness. In the mountains … in my mind. My dreams. Sometimes I would find a flicker or flame to lead the way. But sometimes there was nothing but pure blind instinct—and pure blind fear.

None of that, not what I’d seen or what I’d lived, what I’d dreamed, compared to the basement of the old hospital. During Katrina it had flooded, water reaching the ceiling. Early on, when they’d hoped to reopen the hospital, they’d made efforts to clean everything up, but all these years later, the stench of decay hit us the second we emerged from the stairwell into the utter and complete darkness.

“Dylan—”
My voice broke on his name, but before I could say anything else, the beam of his Maglite cut through the corridor. Stacks of chairs lined one side, while soiled sheets and blankets were crammed up against the opposite wall. Empty fast-food bags, soda bottles, syringes, and a thousand other kinds of trash and filth lay everywhere.

Someone had been down there recently.

Pressed so close against Chase that I could feel his heart pounding against my back, I held myself very still, waiting. I’m not sure for what. Just … waiting.

“Trin?” He still held my hand. I couldn’t have let go if my life depended on it. “Do you feel anything? Can you tell if she’s here?”

I closed my eyes and opened myself, immediately wished I hadn’t. “No!” I shouted, but the buzz wouldn’t stop, the jumble of voices as if everyone in the world was talking to me at one time. Scratch that. Shouting. Begging.

Pleading.

“Stop,” I said, and then did what I’d sworn I wouldn’t do only a few minutes before. I jerked away from Chase and brought my hands to the sides of my face, blocking my ears. “Stop, stop, stop…”

The glow of Dylan’s Maglite found me, and the voices stopped.

He edged in front of me, sandwiching me between the two of them. “You ever been down here before?” he asked Chase.

“A bunch,” he said. “My dad used to teach here.”

“You lead then.”

Chase frowned.

“What?” Dylan asked.

“I just…” The beam of the Maglite made him look unnaturally pale. Frowning, he shoved the bangs from his eyes. “I don’t think Trin should be down here.”

The protective rasp to his voice washed through me like the most amazing sedative. He was here.
He was here.

He’d come back.

Squinting, my eyes adjusting to the shadowy darkness, I sucked in a sour breath and let myself look around, saw the sign on the wall. Dark letters directed visitors to the cafeteria. Another sign—

“Oh God,” I whispered, my hand instinctively lifting to close around the tarnished dragonfly at my chest. My stomach churned. “You think he put her in the morgue.”

In a gross way, it made sense. No one would find her here in the bowels of the hospital. No one would even look.

“You’re not going in there,” Dylan said in a voice so horribly quiet my throat tightened.

“No, I…” Did have to. If that’s where she was. I had to. “I can do it.”

His eyes narrowed. That was the only warning I got. Without another word he pivoted and took off down the narrow hall, taking every molecule of light with him.

“No!” I shouted as Chase let loose the most imaginative stream of cussing I’d ever heard from him. Lunging into the primal darkness, we followed.

At the door to the morgue, Chase stopped. “Wait here.”

I stared at him, felt myself start to shake. “No! I can—”

The second he kicked open the door, I gagged. The smell of death and antiseptic hung heavy in the air, seeping into my body with the breath I tried not to draw. In the center of the cavernous room stood Jim Fourcade’s son, absolutely still, the beam of the big Maglite trained on the freezer drawers hanging open.

“Jesus
…” That was Chase. I think. Or maybe it was me. I didn’t really know, couldn’t really tell thought from nightmare.

“Get her out of here!” Dylan shouted, pivoting and closing in on us. At the door he shoved the Maglite into my hands as his eyes met Chase’s. “You got a phone?”

Chase nodded, pulling his iPhone from his pocket. The faint glow joined with Fourcade’s, and together the two of them stepped into the cold room once habitated by the living and the dead. I stood there, my fingers in a death grip around the big light. All I had to do was step inside. All I had to do was—

The bang from somewhere behind me shattered the awful silence. I spun toward the stairwell, lifted the big Maglite as a man staggered into the corridor. Stunned, I pivoted back toward the morgue, but he was on me in a heartbeat, yanking me against his sweaty body.

“Trinity!” Chase shouted, and through the soft glow of his phone, I saw him freeze several feet away, his eyes dark and—

The cool metal of a blade touched my neck.

THIRTY

“Easy, darlin’, and no one gets hurt.”

I stood in the stale, putrid shadows, eyes locked with Chase’s. He stood so motionless, I wasn’t even sure that he breathed.

But I knew that I did not.

Beside him, Dylan edged closer, equally still, even when he moved. Carefully I glanced down at his hand, saw the gun.

“Please.”
The word came out weak, broken, so I forced a swallow and tried again. “Let me go.”

The tall man dragged me back from the morgue. He’d seen the guys. I had no idea if he’d noticed the gun.

“’Fraid I can’t do that,” he muttered, shifting me in front of him, like a shield. “I said a prayer, darlin’, and here you are.”

“No.”
The gun was off the table. A clean shot was impossible. “Let me go,” I said again. “We won’t follow—”

“But he will,” the man muttered, and I gagged on the stale smell that washed over me.

My fingers tightened around the flashlight. I didn’t lift it, though, didn’t want to prematurely draw his attention to the only chance I had. “Who?”

The man tightened his arm around my middle. “He’s coming,” he said as I tried to dig in my feet.

But he kept dragging.

“Drop it!” With the words a new light flooded the corridor, and a quick glance revealed Jim Fourcade emerging from the stairwell. His eyes were unyielding steel, in his hand, a gun. “Back away from the girl.”

My heart thudded violently. My throat, separated from the blade by only the thinnest stretch of skin, totally closed up.

“I didn’t hurt her,” the man snarled as I stared at the threadbare remains of what had once been a cotton dress shirt. His gray slacks were dirty, too, his loafers covered in … blood.

But it was the Mardi Gras mask, partially concealed by a torn front pocket, that made my heart stagger.

Fourcade’s eyes gave away nothing. “I mean it. Let go of the girl.
Now.
”

The man didn’t even slow. With a strength born in that thin expanse between life and death, desperation and insanity, he wrestled me deeper into the darkness of the corridor. I couldn’t see Chase anymore. I couldn’t see the morgue. I moved without thinking, going limp in his arms. He staggered from the unexpected weight, the knife scraping up to my chin as he yanked me back against his body. Heart slamming, I slid a leg behind his. We tangled. He tripped, staggered, his arms flailing out.

That was the only opening I needed. I twisted, vaguely aware of shouting as I swung the Maglite and smashed it against the side of his head.

A horrible sound broke from his throat. He flew back and recoiled into himself. I fell. Rolled.

Everything after that—

It all happened so fast. “Get her out of there!” I heard someone yell, and then arms were closing around me, dragging me across the sticky floor. I thrashed, opened my mouth to bite down—

Then I heard the voice.

“I’ve got you, baby,” Chase muttered, cradling me against his chest. “I’ve got you.”

I sagged against him, held on tight. Refused to fall apart. Around us shouting erupted, footsteps and swearing and—gunshots. Five of them, the horrible echo ping-ponging through the concrete of the basement.

“Get a medic down here!” I heard someone shout.

Four uniformed cops pounded by, guns drawn. Twisting, I followed them. I saw the heap and heard my aunt scream. She ran past us as we scrambled to our feet, dropped to her knees next to Detective DeMarcus Jackson.

Both kneeled in blood.

Chase tried to hold me back, but I staggered forward as one of the uniformed cops rolled the man who’d held a knife to my throat onto his back.

I stopped.

Looks could be so deceiving. He’d looked timeless the first time I’d seen him, with his reddish brown hair pulled behind his neck and his tailored gray suit slightly big, his eyes sharp and piercing. Then, in the parking garage, he’d looked threatening. “It’s him,” I whispered. “The guy who followed me.”

Moments before he’d seemed powerful. Now I saw a body that looked gaunt and malnourished, his hair filthy and tangled, his face heavily whiskered. And he lay so very still …

I’d seen death before, even murder. But that had been an animal. Seeing the blood drain from a body that had been alive and desperate only a few minutes before, as he now lay lifeless—

“Don’t look,” Chase said, trying to turn my head into his chest, but I was so done with being protected.

Alone, I thought. Broken. The man in the baggy designer suit looked as cast aside in death as he’d obviously been in life.

Open door number one; open door number two. Take a different path—dream a different dream. Even the road not taken led somewhere.

It took a moment for my aunt’s voice to register. Numbly, I glanced over to see her rock back with a hand to her mouth.
“Aaron.”

And suddenly I realized who had been shouting moments before. Who had made the kill.

Jackson crouched over his bloodied partner. Their faces were close. I could see LaSalle’s mouth moving.

“Easy,” Jackson said. “Try again.”

“Ffffffif fffffffflr.”

Aunt Sara reached for his hand.

LaSalle’s eyes fluttered open. His mouth was so swollen his lips were indistinguishable. “Jjjjjjeeeeesss…”

Jackson stiffened. “The girl,” he said.

LaSalle closed his eyes, opened them again. “Ffffifff floooo—”

We were running before he finished.

*   *   *

Fluorescent light washed through the corridor, revealing closed doors along each side. All except one. Uniformed cops swarmed, and paramedics rushed. Vaguely I was aware of urgent voices and shouting—and the muffled sound of masculine sobs.

“Pitre?” Chase murmured, but his All-State receiver did not look up, just sat slumped with his back to the wall and his knees to his chest, his head lowered, rocking. He must have followed us, too. His clothes were wet, filthy, his shoes covered in mud. In front of him kneeled an older version of himself, in the uniform of the N.O.P.D., but with the ravaged eyes of a brother.