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"He'll be all right?" Bobbie asked, hope and disbelief warring in her eyes as she stared at the medication being inserted into her husband's IV line. "You really mean he'll be okay, Dr. Durant?"
Natalie finished the procedure, then handed the needle to an aid to be disposed of in the sharps box. She stepped over to Bobbie's side and squatted down in front of the distraught woman, taking her hands in her own.
"It should make him well, Bobbie," she said. "There's still no guarantee. Cody is very sick, but we have isolated what made him sick and we're countering it with the proper medications. There's no reason to think that he won't get better. It will still take some time, but he should be okay, yes," she said in her gentle, quiet voice.
"Oh thank God," Bobbie breathed, then looked at the doctor before her. Impulsively, she flung her arms around Natalie's neck and hugged her. "And thank you, Dr. Durant. Thank you."
By the time Natalie left Cody Michaelson's room, she was wrung out. But it was a good weariness. The hours, the ridiculous hours, she'd spent trying to find a way to save the patients they had in the hospital were finally catching up on her and Bobbie's tears as she cried on Natalie's shoulder were a balm and a blessing.
She was smiling when she left the room, but it was an incredibly weary smile. Bed, she thought. Bed and then a long, luxurious bath with every exotic soap she owned. The very idea almost made her reel and she laughed out loud, then looked around guiltily to see if anyone had heard her laughing to herself. Nope, her luck held, she was alone in the corridor.
One more thing though before that bed and bath routine.
She wanted to see Eva, be sure she was okay. Eva had not been happy with the overnight hospital stay, but Natalie would hear no arguments. She had been so frightened when Eva was missing; to find out that she had been kidnapped under the same circumstances that she, herself, had... only with the cruel addition of the dark cellar.
It was almost as if someone had researched them, studied them...
To know their fears, to know what little tokens to send them...
She shivered and shook that thought off. Now she'd only give herself nightmares.
Instead of resting, she found Eva fretting, sitting up in the bed with the phone in her hand and a scowl on her face.
"What?" she asked, coming over to sit by the bed. Her legs were simply exhausted.
"I can't get him to answer. Anywhere," Eva complained, but there was the beginning of real worry in her voice.
"Who?"
"Miles. He went to see that sweet little old lady for me because I couldn't go. She sounded so worried that I didn't want her just ignored and Miles was here and he volunteered so I didn't think there would be any problem..."
"Whoa, Eva, slow down."
"Mrs. Ferguson called me. Said she had to see me, that she'd found some information but she didn't want to tell me over the phone and I just thought it was because she was a bit reclusive... Natalie, I get a recording at Mrs. Ferguson's house, that the phone is out of order. Okay, I thought maybe the storm had knocked down a line or something but I've been trying to call Miles on his cell phone and I'm not getting an answer there either and with everything that's happened..."
"Okay, okay, relax," Natalie tried to calm her, though she could feel the stirrings of concern herself. "I'll call Stephen and have him check it out, okay? Just relax. I'm sure it's the storm, nothing more and Stephen will just end up chewing us out for sending him out in this weather." She smiled gently at Eva and brushed her hair back from her face. "Okay?"
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Stephen was not amused.
Miles had better be all right. That was a given. So he could chew his ass out for not keeping his cell phone charged up, for taking off on such a cockamamie errand in the first place without letting someone else know, for dragging him and Frank out in the middle of this damn typhoon.
Okay, maybe not typhoon, but the rain was coming down so hard in such a wind that the windshield wipers could barely give them sight of the muddy road. Good thing Frank had insisted on taking his Land Rover or they'd have been mired down long before they pulled into the yard of the remote home.
Miles' car sat there, right in front of the house. Lights on in the home gave the appearance that he and the old woman were probably inside snugged up in front of a blazing fire, blissfully oblivious to the fact that a search had been set out after them.
"Just what I said," Stephen groused as he cut the engine and unbelted himself, "her phone's out and Miles let his die. I'm gonna kill him."
"I may help you," Frank agreed, with a sigh, staring out at the lightning strobed sky and the streaming rain they were about to step out into. "Let's do it."
The house and the imagined fire wasn't anything they had expected. Instead they walked into a horror movie. The old woman's body lay sprawled where it had been dumped, the phone yanked out of the wall. Even after a complete search of the house there was no sign of Miles. They shared a look, then ducked outside into the rain again, found the car empty, no sign of violence until they stepped back and the interior light gave them some illumination.
Frank skirted around the vehicle, came back and said, "All four tires are slashed. Probably the engine's been sabotaged too. There's no way Miles was going anywhere in this car."
Before Stephen could respond, they heard a clap of thunder that... wasn't...
"Hand gun," Frank said, "off to the right."
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"Hey, babe."
Bobbie jerked out of her half doze. "Cody?" Her voice was hopeful, almost certain she'd dreamed the sound.
But no, there he was, his brown eyes crinkled in that smile that was only for her. His face horribly pale, his voice a mere whisper. It was the sweetest sound she'd ever heard.. She sat up in the chair, swearing she could hear every bone in her body creak in protest at the change of position, then got to her feet and moved to the edge of the bed.
"I'm right here," she said, tears streaming down her face. "Where else would I be?"
He smiled again, still a shadow of his normal expression. "Why, right here beside me where you belong," he said, "where you've always been."
"That's right," she said through a veil of tears. "Where I'll always be."
And, careful of the tubes and wires exiting and entering her husband's body, she lay down beside him and held him in her arms.
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"Why haven't we heard from them?"
Rain slammed against the glass in the window as if seeking violent entrance while lightning and thunder created a sound and light show just beyond its surface.
Natalie rubbed at tired eyes and sank deeper in the bedside chair. "It's only been an hour, Eva," she said, and not for the first time. "Eat your fries. I'm not going to be busted for bringing you contraband food if you're not going to eat it."
With a deep sigh, Eva pushed the food away and lolled her head on the pillow, willing to kiss whatever ass necessary to get herself released from the hospital. Unfortunately for her it was Natalie who was the admitting doctor and there was no way that Nat was going to let her escape until Nat was good and ready to let her go.
"Why haven't we heard from them?"
Natalie would have sworn Eva was in the backseat of a car whining, "Are we there yet?"
She grinned. "They haven't even had time to get there, Eva, much less time to get back. And you have to give Stephen time to chew Miles out, time to sweet talk the little old lady and then time to get back in this storm. Patience. Heard of it? It's a virtue."
"No, Nat," Eva said, "you don't understand. Something's wrong. I just know it. Try calling Connor's cell would you, please?"
"All right, all right, but reception is going to be hard to get way out there in this kind of weather." She picked up the phone by the side of the bed and dialed. It rang. Then continued to ring. No out of service message, just the constant ring. She found herself trying to choose between telling Eva that there was no answer and lying that she'd gotten the out of service message after all.
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The bullet wound in his thigh wasn't fatal certainly and might not even be serious if he could have gotten to a hospital right away. It was an in and out through the fleshy part of the thigh and if he could only get a few moments to stand still, tear up his shirt, tie it off, he'd be all right until he could get to help.
But it didn't take Miles long to realize he was being hunting by someone who could have killed him many times over. He was being played with. He'd start to go to ground, try to deal with the wound and a well-placed bullet would flush him out like a quail, send him stumbling back into the rain. By the time he'd tried to circle back to the house three times he'd lost enough blood that he was starting to see things, hear music that couldn't possibly be there. A six inch unicorn dashed across his path, snorting at him, dancing to the strains of "Happy Birthday to You."
He was no longer sure how far from the house he was or how close to the highway when a pair of headlights speared a beacon through the rain. Shoving soaked hair out of his eyes, he ducked behind a stand of trees, nearly tripping over their twisted network of roots. By the time he'd staggered to his feet again the vehicle had pulled into the yard and only then did he realize how close to the house he'd gotten once more.
He was being herded in circles.
When the doors of the vehicle opened, he got a moment's glimpse of the driver and passenger and nearly called out in relief, but stopped himself at the intake of air.
If the gunman was somewhere behind him and he yelled out, he could draw attention to Frank and Stephen, make targets of them, instead of himself. He watched, despairingly, as they ducked into the house, the rain and thunder chasing them like an insult. Just make it that far, he told himself, just that far.
He took a step, went down to one knee when the leg buckled under him. He looked up and a squirrel with an old woman's face told him that he was in the wrong neighborhood, get out. For just a moment, he considered apologizing to the squirrel, then he reminded himself that it was an hallucination and he pushed himself up to his feet.
The car was empty by the time he could get a clear view of it again, and evidently Stephen and Frank had already gone into the house. Well, he wouldn't have to tell them that something was wrong. They'd be figuring that out on their own by now.
The leg no longer hurt, it had simply gone numb, which made trying to walk, much less run, treacherous over the uneven ground. His head was a cobwebby mass of dulled confusion, the blood leeching out of his system sending him into shock. It was hard to breathe, he was shivering uncontrollably, and he was sleepy, so sleepy. Thoughts kept tripping over themselves in his head and he wasn't able to hold onto any of them long enough to act on them any longer. He wondered how long it had been that he'd been staggering around in the rain lashed woods with a bleeding wound and a crazy killer prodding him on just a little further. It seemed like days.
To hell with him. He would either kill him or not.
Where the bravado was coming from he didn't know. Maybe one too many bad kung fu movies. He started toward the house, weaving on rubbery legs, when the next shot rang out. He had one brief glimpse of Frank and Stephen on the porch, nicely illuminated by a single lightning stroke before he stumbled back into the woods.
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