Trauma (38 page)

“Speak,” Price said.

“It's a no-go,” a man's voice said in his ear.

“Fine.”

“Too much scrutiny right now. There's another way to get her removed.”

“Are we going dark?”

“No.”

“Bad idea. We should go dark.”

“Not my call,” the man said.

Price could not help but smile. “Yeah,” he said with a chuckle. “We're all just players here.”

 

CHAPTER 51

Carrie woke to the sound of persistent knocking on her bedroom door. She panicked, thinking she was back in the on-call room, and whoever was knocking had come to do her harm.

“Carrie, are you awake?” Adam asked. “Can we talk?”

She shook her head to clear the cobwebs from her mind. “Yeah, come in,” she said, her voice raspy with sleep.

Adam entered, looking distraught.

Dressed in the same clothes she had worn to her interview with Detective Kowalski, Carrie sat up in bed and spun around to put her feet on the floor. She eyed her brother with concern. “What's wrong?” she asked.

She knew what was wrong, of course. Adam was coming unhinged. It was obvious in the way he had threatened David. The encounter had left Carrie rattled and unnerved. David, to his credit, took it all in stride, but Carrie wished Adam had apologized to him in some way. Perhaps Adam had experienced a change of heart.

Adam eyed Limbic before plopping down on Carrie's desk chair. He slouched forward, and Carrie waited for him to speak.

“What's going on, Adam?” she asked at last.

“David,” Adam said in a hushed voice.

“I have his number. I'm sure he'd love to hear your apology.”

“That's not why I came to talk to you.” Adam's expression was grave, his haunted eyes encircled by dark rings.

Carrie felt the weight of his gaze. “What, then?” she asked.

“Outside, when I was toe to toe with him, I had thoughts that scared me.”

“Thoughts?”

Adam bounced his legs up and down. Evidently, it was not enough to settle him, because he took a ballpoint pen from Carrie's desk and twirled it about his fingers like a miniature baton. He had learned the trick in high school and tried to teach Carrie the method, but she never quite caught on.

“I wanted to kill him,” Adam said.

Carrie gasped. “Adam, what are you saying?”

The pen tumbled from Adam's hand and dropped to the floor. His gaze never left Carrie, and his cold stare sent a chill down her spine.

Adam's eyes turned red, and he looked on the verge of tears. “I'm saying I didn't just want to hurt him, I wanted to kill him.” His hushed voice was almost hypnotic. “It took everything in me not to grab his head and break his neck. I could have done it, too. I don't know how I held back. If you hadn't been there, I don't think I would have.”

Carrie was stunned. A hollow pit in her gut allowed all sorts of feelings to roll in: fear, disgust, sadness, hopelessness. It was a cocktail of emotions she could not process.

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

“I'm telling you because I need your help,” Adam said.

Carrie's guard fell immediately. She could look past Adam's confession to focus instead on the guilt and fear that seemed to consume him. She reached for Adam's hand, but he jerked away from her touch and rose to his feet.

“What can I do to help?” Carrie asked, rising as well. “We'll talk to Mom and Dad. Maybe find you a new therapist.”

“I don't need a therapist,” Adam said through clenched teeth. “I need the wires.”

Carrie blanched. “What did you say?”

“You heard me,” Adam said. “I want those wires in my brain. Scramble this shit up so I stop thinking the way I do.”

Carrie sank down onto her bed. “I can't do that,” she said.

“What do you mean you can't? You're in charge of the thing.”

“No, no. I'm just a surgeon.” This was an odd bit of irony, to embrace the role Goodwin had tried to thrust upon her. But she did not know what else to say.

“You still have pull, don't you? You're the brain surgeon. You can get me in and get me cured.”

“It's not that simple,” Carrie said.

“Why?”

“Because it might not work.” Carrie cringed inwardly, knowing her argument had holes.

“I was at dinner when you told Mom and Dad all about that Ram
ó
n guy. And who was the other one? Bushman or something. It worked for them. You said it worked for two others, too.”

“But they're the exception, not the rule.”

“So? What's the worst thing that can happen to me?” Adam asked. “I get some surgery that doesn't do anything. Then I go back to being a walking time bomb, but this time with actual wires in my body.”

Carrie imagined Adam lying in a hospital bed, his head bandaged, muttering “Follow my light … follow my light … follow my light” the way Steve Abington had.

“No, it's not that simple,” said Carrie. “I'm not entirely sure it's safe.”

Adam looked flustered. “Have you done the surgery before?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And two of my patients are missing.”

“Because of the surgery?”

“No,” Carrie said, but corrected herself. “I just don't know. I'm still trying to figure it all out.”

Carrie did not know how much to say. Yes, the DBS procedure could produce a specific side effect, but that was almost secondary to what Sandra Goodwin and Cal Trent were cooking up. And she still did not know how Bob Richardson from CerebroMed fit in this equation. Until she had some answers, she would never put Adam forward as a candidate for the surgery. Never.

“There's a reason I've been followed and twice nearly killed,” Carrie said.

Adam glowered. “Yeah. And I think that reason is David. Who knows who he's pissed off? Believe me, I've seen those embedded reporters in action. They can be like jackals. Maybe he dug up the wrong details on the wrong people and now that he's hanging out with you, you're a target, too.”

“I don't think so,” Carrie said.

Adam fell to his knees and clutched Carrie's hands with force. “Please,” he said. “I need to feel better.” He panted to catch his breath. His emotions choked back his voice, and his eyes brimmed with desperation.

“Until I know it's completely safe, I just can't do it. I'm sorry.”

“I don't care about any damn side effects!” Adam shouted. His ferocity took Carrie by surprise and frightened her. “I'll take any side effect right now.” Adam sprang to his feet and began to pace. “What I'm afraid of is that next time I feel like I did with David, I won't be able to hold back.”

“I'm sorry, Adam,” Carrie said. “But I just can't. And I don't want you to get your hopes up for this treatment, either. We need to focus on therapy. You need therapy.”

Adam nodded glumly, several times in quick succession. Without another word, he marched out of Carrie's bedroom but left the door open. She had expected him to slam it shut.

Carrie exhaled loudly and took a moment to collect her thoughts. Part of her believed Adam would be fine if he did get the operation. That he'd be like Ram
ó
n or Terry Bushman, one of the fab four for whom DBS had been a life-saving procedure. Another part of her worried he'd vanish without a trace, like Abington and Fasciani. Until she had answers, there could be no wires.

A few minutes later, Carrie heard a loud crash followed by the shattering of glass. She raced downstairs, arriving in the foyer at the same instant as her worried parents.

Without words, Carrie followed her parents into the living room, where Adam perched upon the couch so he could reach the photographs on the wall. His face had a wicked look, a darkness she had never seen. In his hand, Adam wielded a massive hammer that Carrie recognized from his toolbox. He had already shattered one photo, and now Adam swung the hammer at a second, this one a picture of the siblings dressed in ski gear, taken at Sunday River in Maine. The hammer struck dead center, and the glass shattered into thousands of jagged pieces.

Adam was not selecting photos at random. Each picture was of him and Carrie. He swung again, and this time shattered the glass on a picture of brother and sister taken in front of Big Ben when they were in their teens. The face of the hammer put a large hole where Carrie's head had been.

“Adam!” Irene screamed. “What are you doing?” She sank to the floor, her hands covering her mouth but not silencing her sobs.

Howard Bryant held Carrie back. Adam was in a blind rage; who knew what he would do if she approached?

Adam cocked his arm back once more, and aimed the hammer at another photograph, but paused to shoot his mother an annoyed look.

“I'm just showing my sister the same kind of love she showed me,” Adam said. He brought the hammer forward again, and the sound of breaking glass filled the room once more.

 

CHAPTER 52

The next morning, Carrie was back in her mom's Volvo, making what had become a routine drive from Hopkinton to the VA. Adam had stormed out after his terrifying tirade and never returned. Where he'd gone, Carrie could not say. Part of her worried he'd never come back home, another part worried that he would. Carrie's distraught parents had left the house before she did, to continue to look for their son.

However, Adam was not Howard and Irene's only concern. Her parents had thought her return to work was too much, too soon, but Carrie had insisted. After all, the man the police believed to be an emotionally unstable, well-armed stalker was dead.

While Carrie sounded convincing, the reality was a far cry from her assurances. The drive to the VA proved tense, as Carrie remained on high alert. Until Goodwin and Trent were decommissioned, she remained a target, and certainly DARPA had more deadly resources to throw at her. So long as she kept with the crowds, on the roads, or in the halls of the VA, however, Carrie felt moderately safe.

What she would not do, misguided or not, was cower, go into hiding, or hire an armed detail to guard her 24/7. She had to live her life, terror be damned.

Bottom line: she was on a mission.

Her voice mail and e-mail were flooded with messages from concerned friends and former colleagues, many of whom had heard about Carrie's ordeal on the local news. Dr. Finley had called, but she let it go to voice mail too. He'd side with her mother and insist Carrie rest at home for the day. Among those checking in was Carrie's old pal Valerie from BCH, who called during the morning commute. Their conversation was brief, but Val's worry touched Carrie's heart. The former colleagues made plans to get together for drinks and dinner in the coming weeks.

“You have no idea who that man was?” Val asked.

“Police are still looking. They think they'll get an ID soon enough.”

“Well, I'm just grateful you're all right. And I want you to know, Carrie, that you're deeply missed around here. I mean that.”

Carrie's eyes welled, but she did not cry. No need to make Val feel worse. “I'm doing okay,” she said. “I mean it.”

Val, being Val, said, “You got somebody to talk to?”

“Like a therapist?” Carrie asked.

“Well, not exactly,” Val said.

“Oh, that,” Carrie said.

“Just saying, it would help.”

Carrie laughed. “Yeah, I've got someone to talk to.”

“Well, I want to hear all about him.”

“Who said it's a he?”

Val scoffed. “It could be a woman. Don't matter to me. But I am pretty sure we're not talking about a stuffed animal here, darling. You can give me all the four-one-one when I see you. And take care of yourself, Carrie. I mean it.”

“I will.”

As she hung up with Val, the car in front, no signal given, abruptly changed lanes. Carrie had to hit the brakes hard to avoid a collision. She hit her horn, and muttered a string of expletives that would have made her mother blush first and cringe second.

The other driver's maneuver was not unusual during rush hour, and Carrie's outburst surprised her.
Stress-induced,
she figured, and in that moment she forgave Adam for everything. Her brother's anger, directed toward her and at David, was triggered by constant duress. In the aftermath of her own extreme stress, Carrie could better relate to Adam's persistent volatility. She called her parents to check on the search and was told they had been unable to locate Adam. They would resume the effort later, after they returned home from work. Carrie had her doubts they would have any success. Something about Adam's last tirade made Carrie believe she would never see her brother again.

Carrie remained extra vigilant as she navigated through the crush of morning traffic. At one point, she glanced in her rearview mirror and noticed a red Camaro a few cars back that looked a lot like Adam's. Of course that was impossible. If Adam had gotten that car fired up, they'd have seen a celebration worthy of Mardi Gras on his side of the garage. Curious, though, Carrie tried to get a look at the driver, but the car was too far back for her to see much of anything.

Frustrated with the pace of her commute, Carrie took the next exit, not her usual. A short time later the Camaro reappeared in her rearview. Carrie relived the sinking feeling she'd had in the park, when her future would-be murderer became something to fear. A block later, though, the Camaro turned down a side street; just like that, it was gone.

The uneasy feelings—the fear and paranoia, a sense that something horrible could happen any minute, a terror that pawed at the back of her neck—those feelings lasted all the way to the VA and followed her into the building.

*   *   *

CARRIE BRACED
herself for an onslaught of attention that did not come. Even in the busy main foyer, nobody took notice of her. In a way, the silence was a stark reminder of her low profile at the hospital. While her face had been splashed all over the TV, she was not a well-known figure here. Her role fit in that netherworld between employee and contractor. At the main entrance, Carrie flashed her ID to the security guard and walked in without fanfare.