Chapter 5

It was approaching dusk when Mark woke up, stiff and sore, to find himself lying in a partially hidden ravine beside the lake at the base of the drop-off. His mind was fuzzy, his mouth was dry, and he ached all over. Confused, he raised himself carefully to a sitting position, fighting the nausea that washed over him as he did so. He gazed around at his surroundings, trying to orient himself, his confusion growing as he tried to figure out how he had come to be lying in the scrub beside the lake. He concentrated on analyzing his physical symptoms, and his confusion increased even more. Headache, dizziness, nausea, general fuzziness of mind – and mouth, sensitivity to light, shakiness … if he didn't know better, he'd figure he was suffering from either a severe hangover or a case of the flu. But he never drank to excess, and he didn't remember being sick. He glanced down at himself, checking for signs of injury, and was startled to see blood on his hand and staining his jacket. A quick check confirmed the fact that he was not bleeding – although he did seem to be badly bruised in various areas. So whose blood was it? And what had happened to whoever it was?

Struggling to clear the mists that still clung to his brain, Mark stumbled to the edge of the lake and cupped his hands to draw water to splash his face. The shock of the icy water helped him to focus, and he concentrated on trying to remember what had happened to him. As he stared at the blood that had generously splattered his jacket, he felt a cold dread invade him. Something was very wrong … something to do with a gun… He suddenly remembered entering the cabin to find himself facing a gun. The memory of his confrontation with Skylar flooded back into his mind. He remembered convincing Skylar to give him the gun, and their subsequent conversation. But then his memory seemed to grow hazy in the extreme. Surely Skylar had left? As Mark struggled to think, he found he could only bring up flashes of images. Something about wandering in the woods, but also something more about the gun… Had he really been wandering around the woods with a gun in his hand? Had Skylar been with him? He had a feeling there had been somebody in the woods with him… As he focussed on identifying the shadowy figure in his mind, he had a sudden clear vision of his son. Steve. Steve had been there, confronting him, and he had been holding the gun. Terror suddenly gripped him, clenching a tight fist around his heart, burning in his stomach, as Mark realized that his last relatively clear image was of himself holding a gun, facing his son – and now he was here spattered with blood and Steve was nowhere to be seen.

In an agony of desperate fear, Mark staggered to his feet, the only coherent thought left in his mind the urgent need to find his son. He tried to scramble back up the slope down which he had tumbled, but it was too steep. Frantically, he started to skirt around the base of the drop-off, heading away from the cabin in the direction that seemed to offer the closest point that looked climbable.

In the noise made by his own hasty progress, Mark didn't even notice the sound of someone approaching until a large man in a sheriff's uniform stepped out of some bushes in front of him.

"Hold it," the sheriff ordered sharply, pointing a gun at him.

Mark halted momentarily in surprise, but almost immediately moved to approach the officer, hoping to enlist his help in finding Steve. He was brought up short by the sound of the sheriff disengaging the safety on his gun and threatening harshly, "I said hold it right there." Mark stopped, perforce, not understanding why this was happening, but too focussed on his need to find Steve to give it much thought.

"Please," he said, a shade of desperation creeping into his voice, "I need to find my son… he may be hurt…"

"Are you Mark Sloan?" asked the sheriff, continuing to keep the gun trained on him.

"Yes," replied Mark, even more confused. "I'm looking for my son Steve…"

"From the looks of the blood on your clothes," said the sheriff dryly, "I'd say it's all too obvious that you found him." Mark glanced involuntarily down at the blood stains on his jacket, but his head jerked back up as the sheriff continued. "Mark Sloan, I'm arresting you for the attempted murder of your son…"

The world seemed to swim in front of him, as Mark reeled at this shock. Murder? Thoughts and fears crowded into his already dazed brain too fast to be processed. He never even realized that the sheriff was still talking, as a horrible image of his son lying bloody and lifeless at his feet popped into his mind, and the fatal word 'murder' echoed relentlessly in his ears. It wasn't until he felt handcuffs being snapped over his wrists that he managed to pull himself together enough to try to think. Forcing his brain to focus on what the sheriff had said, he seized on one word: 'attempted'. Surely he had said 'attempted' murder…

"Is he alive?" he managed to croak, his eyes desperately searching the sheriff's impassive face for information. "How badly is he hurt?"

The sheriff cast him a look of contempt. "He wasn't quite dead when we brought him in," he replied coldly, "but he probably won't last the night."

The anguish that washed over Mark at this blunt announcement was almost more than he could bear. He had to get to his son – had to help him somehow…

"Please, I have to see him," he pleaded. "I have to help him…"

"You've done enough already," was the hard reply, as the sheriff steered him none-too-gently toward a 4-wheel drive vehicle with a county sheriff's insignia that had been parked a short ways down a rough path that circled the lake.

The ride to the sheriff's office passed in a nightmarish blur for Mark. He tried to concentrate on making sense of the flashes of memory and images that rose in his mind. The only possible explanation for all this that he could come up with was that he must have been drugged. Somehow, Skylar must have drugged him; things were pretty clear up until sitting down with him at the table. And in his drugged state, somehow, through some horrific twist of fate, Steve had come upon him while he was holding the gun he had taken from Skylar, and he had shot his son. The agony of that realization was intense enough to preclude any further rational thought. Between the after-effects of the drug and the emotional anguish of knowing that he was responsible for possibly fatally injuring his son, he endured the rest of the trip with his mind floundering in a morass of confusion, anxiety and guilt.

The sense of nightmare continued as Mark was hustled into the sheriff's office, stripped of his blood-spattered jacket, which would be used as evidence, tested for traces of cordite on his hands from firing the gun, and subjected to a cursory but hostile questioning by the sheriff, who was obviously skeptical of Mark's claims to have been drugged by some errant teen.

"You don't deny that you shot your son?" the lawman asked in a tone that clearly indicated his disinterest in anything beyond that basic fact.

"No." Mark could barely get the word out through the overpowering sense of guilt and despair that were choking him. The only thing that was keeping him from simply succumbing to the guilt and accepting whatever consequences they could throw at him was the burning need to be at his son's side – to see for himself that he was receiving the best possible care, to be there for him and with him, in case the worst happened, to tell him how desperately sorry he was. Between the confusion in his mind, the sickness and aches of his body, and the overwhelming anguish of his anxiety and grief for his son, any type of logical thought seemed to be completely beyond him. He tried to tell the sheriff about Skylar and his suspicion that the boy had drugged him, but the officer clearly didn't believe him. Apparently, there was no boy of that age with that name in Clear Valley, and in his current state of confusion, Mark stumbled over his tale, failing to present any kind of coherent defense. In the end, he found himself still under arrest, being led off to a cell, the only concession the sheriff was willing to make being an agreement to call a nurse or med tech to draw his blood for a drug test.

Before being locked in the cell, however, Mark was given the standard opportunity to place one call. By now it was late in the evening, and Mark knew that he probably didn't stand much chance of getting hold of his lawyer. Nor was his legal plight his main concern at the moment – what he wanted most desperately was to be sure that everything possible was being done for his son, to know that there was someone with Steve who would stay with him, look out for him, see that he wasn't left alone. Praying that he would get an answer, he dialed Jesse's cell phone.