Chapter Twenty-One

Sophie's POV

It couldn't be him. He was dead, Eames has watched him die. I was just being paranoid because of that poor woman's murder. I had been on edge ever since Eames had told me what happened to her, to this victim who looked like me, who'd been marked with my name. I'd had a hard time sleeping, and when I did manage to close my eyes for longer than an hour I knew that I did so with the promise that I would wake soon after, screaming and crying hysterically, just as I had the past three nights. I hated the fact that I'd come unwound again, and it hurt me, to know that Eames blamed himself for the state that I was in. I was trying so hard, to keep it all together, for both our sakes, but how was I supposed to do that, when I kept seeing, and hearing, things that couldn't possibly be real?

Don't turn around; I told myself, deliberately keeping my feet moving at a walk, when what they wanted, more than anything, was to break into a run. You don't want him to know that you're aware of him. He's just waiting for you to acknowledge him. He wants you to look in his direction, he wants you to walk faster, and faster, until you're running, and then he'll hit you and knock you to the ground. You'll hear his door open, you'll see his feet, and then he will have you again…..

"Stop being such an idiot," I hissed, consciously slowing my steps even further, until I'd reached the speed of someone who was totally at ease in their surroundings. "You know that he can't hurt you anymore, you know that he's gone, and he's never coming back. Yes, Jude is still out there, somewhere, but Garret McGill is dead, there's no way that he could be stalking you, so stop being so stupid….."

The car was moving closer to me, it was following me, pursuing me, and the feelings of so long ago flooded me, they consumed me, until I was choking back sobs and hurrying my steps, even though I'd sworn that I wouldn't. This was my fault. Eames had asked me to wait for him, he had said that he would be happy to drive me to the cemetery, so I could place flowers on the grave of my friend Della, but I hadn't wanted to wait for him to return from his meeting with Dom, I'd been too impatient, and had taken a chance on the old car that Ariadne had given me to use until I found something else. I knew that it was a rattling heap, at best, and Eames had told me, more than once, not to drive long distances in it, not until he had it fixed, but I hadn't listened to him. I was too damned stubborn, too headstrong, and foolish…..

I started to run, and whimpered helplessly when I heard the car behind me rev its engine, a cruelly teasing reminder that the one who was at the wheel had seen, and was enjoying, my distress. A quick and panicked glance over my shoulder confirmed that I hadn't been mistaken. It was the same car that McGill had been driving, an ugly light tan El Dorado, circa late seventies, with a stripe of dark tint across the top of the windshield, one that faded as it reached the center and concealed the face of the driver. The hands on the steering wheel were wearing the same smooth black gloves, and I could see the fingers tightening, then relaxing rhythmically, just as they had so many years before.

I paused for just a moment, then I began to run even faster, and the car accelerated as well. It chased along behind me, moving closer and closer, until I was sure that I felt its bumper barely touch the back of my leg. I was determined that I wouldn't fall, not this time, but then I felt it again, that cold metal touch to the back of my leg, a harder nudge that knocked me down, just as it had years before, and I hit the pavement hard, tearing open the flesh on my palms and my knees. I cried out in pain, and in fear, and rolled over onto my back, on the soft grass the rested beside the sidewalk, scrambling backward and trying to regain my footing, knowing that he would be out of his car and on me in moments…but he sped away at the last moment, and left me there, bleeding and terrified, to cry helplessly as I watched him drive away.

I don't know how much time passed, it might have been seconds or minutes, I suppose that it could have even been hours, I couldn't say for certain how long it was, but I did know that I was overtaken by a profound sense of relief when I saw another car pulling up to the curb beside me. The driver door opened and I saw a pair of legs making their way toward me, long, strong looking legs that were wrapped in grey trousers and ended in highly shined black wingtip shoes. They were nice shoes, well cared for, the sort that Eames would wear, but he wasn't the one who'd come to rescue me this time, though the face that I saw in front of mine as the man crouched down in front of me was almost as welcome as his would have been.

Detective Hollis' brows were drawn together, and his eyes were filled with what I would have sworn was genuine concern as he looked at me. I could only imagine the picture that I was making at that moment, sitting in the grass, with the skirt of my dress bunched up to show my scraped kneecaps, makeup smeared from crying, and shaking helplessly from head-to-toe, but he didn't give any indication that he thought that I'd possibly lost all of my senses. He reached out his hand instead, very slowly, giving me time to tell him no, if I was so inclined to do so, and then, when he saw that I wasn't, he touched my cheek, very gently, in a way that comforted me, though not as completely, or as pleasantly as if Eames had done so.

"Are you alright, Miss Evans?" he asked quietly, in a soothing tone that worked on me in the same way that his hand had, calming my frazzled and scattered nerves somewhat, but not as much as Eames would have. "What happened? Who did this to you?"

I knew then that a fair amount of time had passed, if he hadn't seen the car that had knocked me off of my feet. "I don't know who it was exactly," I said shakily, knowing that it was best to keep as many of the particulars to myself as I could, because he would undoubtedly think that I was a little unhinged in the head, if I told him that Garret McGill was responsible for the injuries to my body, not to mention my emotional wellbeing. "All I know is that a car hit me, and knocked me down and….."

"It hit you?" he asked, clearly upset, and then he moved to stand, very abruptly, without waiting for me to answer, and bent down to pluck me up off of the ground, holding me tight against his chest as he closed the distance between where I'd been laying and his car. He opened the door with one hand and helped me into the seat, then buckled me into the seatbelt, as if he was working under the impression that I was completely helpless and unable to do anything for myself. "Why were you walking by yourself? Where were you coming from on foot?"

"I went to the cemetery to visit a friend," I said defensively, jerking on the seatbelt, to settle it between my breasts, as opposed to across them. "I should have waited for Eames to come home, because he said that he would take me, but I was impatient and wanted to go right away, so I took an old rattletrap of a car, and it wouldn't start when I was ready to go home…and I'm still ready to go home, if you wouldn't mind giving me a ride, Detective Hollis."

He smiled at me and shook his head, in a way that suggested that he thought that I was joking with him, when the truth of the matter was that I was dead serious. I knew that it sounded very alarming, to say that I'd been struck by a car, but I knew, from previous experience, that I didn't have any broken bones, just scrapes and contusions, therefore I didn't need to go to the hospital. Unfortunately for me, the person who'd come to my rescue was a cop, and it was unlikely that he was going to be content to take my opinion, that is, my diagnosis, as the final word on the subject.

"I'm going to get you checked out at the ER," he countered, laughing at me when I scowled. "Those friends of yours, particularly Mr. Eames, would likely raise hell if I brought you home the way that you are now, and I don't particularly want to be on the receiving end of one of those punches that we both know he can dole out at the drop of a hat. Where is he anyway? Did you call him and let him know what happened?"

I had called Eames, on the home phone and his cell, after my car had died, but they'd both gone to voicemail. It made sense that he didn't answer the phone at the house, because he'd gone to meet with Dom, but why wasn't he answering his cell? I'd been worried about him to begin with, I thought that something might have happened to him, but as more time went on my thoughts took on manner that I didn't like, one that had me doubting him, and Detective Hollis wasn't helping me to feel any better with his questions. I loved Eames, and I trusted him completely, but what could have happened to make him ignore my pleas for help? Had he finally come to his senses and realized that he would be better off without me? Was he trying to tell me to leave him alone? What would I do if….?

"Well, don't worry, we'll give him a call once we reach the hospital," Detective Hollis said quietly, bringing me out of my thoughts, and back to the reality of a bruised and battered body, along with torn and tattered knees and palms, the one that had a psychopath risen from the grave, to chase me through town, just in case I was starting to get a little too comfortable with the idea that I could have a somewhat peaceful life. "He's going to be furious when he sees what happened, and I have to admit that I feel sorry for the son of a bitch who ran you down, if Eames finds him before I do, though, to be perfectly honest, that's a show that I'd pay good money to see…and I'd wager that you feel the same way, don't you, Sophie?"

Eames' POV

I suppose that it was a sin, for a son to loathe his mother, but heaven knows that Helen Eames has spent the majority of my life giving me ample reasons to do so. She had always been a hateful woman, a malignant presence that I'd excised to the best of my abilities once I was old enough to do so, but apparently I had not eradicated her as thoroughly as I'd believed, because I was experiencing a relapse, of sorts, one that had her ensconced in the passenger seat of my car, loudly filling my ear with my numerous failings in life as I sped to the hospital to be with Sophie. I would have been happy to leave her at my home, where she'd shown up, unannounced and unwanted, earlier that afternoon, to be perfectly honest, I would have been overjoyed if she disappeared altogether, but she wasn't about to be left behind, not when she could pass the time bitching and moaning and taking the piss out of me every chance that she got, was she?

"Slow down, Archibald!" she screeched, batting at my arm with her purse, until I was tempted to snatch the damned thing out of her hand and toss it out of my window, followed closely by her, if I could have managed such a feat without crashing. "You're driving much too fast, and recklessly, like a hooligan fleeing from the authorities. I'm certain that you are used to that sort of thing, given the lifestyle that you have chosen for yourself, but I have no desire to die in a fiery crash, just because you're trying to reach the bedside of this Sophie….."

"Not another word, Mother," I growled, turning to glare at her, and pressing the gas pedal a little closer to the floor, taking a good deal of pleasure in the flash of answering anger that I saw in her eyes. "It's your fault that she's there without me. You're the demented old bat who took my phone off of the hook and spent the afternoon babbling way on my mobile, which you nicked, deliberately ignoring the beeping sound that told you that there was another caller, and you have the temerity to berate me for exceeding the speed limit?"

She stiffened her shoulders and looked away from me, actions that I recognized as those that meant that she found my behavior to be displeasing. In my childhood I would have been moments away from a paddling, courtesy of poor Nanny, who would have cried more than me. When I was an adolescent I had been made to go without dinner as punishment, and I would have been denied my pin money for a week, at least, but I wasn't a child any longer, I wasn't a juvenile either. I was a grown man, one who possessed no tender feelings for the woman who was sitting beside me, and I dared her to try to strike me, or to say anything unkind about my Sophie. I was not the sort of man who would hit a woman, no matter what the circumstance might be, but that didn't mean that I wouldn't do my best to decimate her verbally, and my skills in that arena had definitely improved as I'd aged, as she would see, if she were to give me the cause, and opportunity, to display them for her.

"You ought to have sought employment as a thespian, Archibald, given your flair for the dramatic," she said quietly, in a tone that was fairly dripping with sarcasm. "I do believe that you behave more like your father with every year that passes, and, no, that is not a compliment. I did not take your telephone off of the hook; I simply turned off the ringer. And I did not 'nick' your mobile; I borrowed it, as you well know. How was I to know that those vexing beeping sounds meant that someone was trying to reach you? I am not familiar with cellular telephones, I prefer to place my calls in the old-fashioned manner, but your home phone had too many buttons, I could not work it…and it kept making that dreadful, piercing noise….."

"That was its ringtone, Mother, the one that was designed to tell the owner of said phone that they are receiving a call," I said slowly, in a manner that suggested that I was explaining something to a small child…or to an adult who wasn't very bright. "And you somehow managed to operate my mobile, the one that you nicked, quite well, in spite of the fact that you lack the proficiency to do so. The truth of the matter is that I don't care what you did, or what your reasons were for doing these things. The only thing that I give a flaming damn about is Sophie, and the fact that your actions this afternoon hindered my knowing that she needed me has infuriated me to such a degree that I have a good mind to open the door, and kick you outside, and watch carefully in the rearview mirror to see how many times you bounce off of the pavement before you come to a stop. Now, then, Mother dear…do you still think that I'm being overdramatic, and, if so, would you care to test your theory, or would you rather sit still and keep your mouth shut instead?"