Bridger had never before been so happy that Skipper was an incurable busybody.
His urgent phone call had come while Bridger was meeting with the weapons defense team at the UEO labs. The little bit of information that Skipper had provided – that Lucas' mom and stepfather had arrived at the island, and that Lucas looked none too happy about it – had been enough for Bridger to call an immediate halt to the meeting and dart back to his office. From what little Lucas had mentioned about his stepfather, Bridger had no intention of letting that man take the teen anywhere, even if his mom was involved. Bridger had called his house, hardly surprised when there was no answer. When he'd learned that Lucas had taken the keys to his motorcycle, his concern had only increased. Bridger hadn't wasted any time calling Westphalen. They had left the UEO labs five minutes later.
He'd never expected to find the horror that he now faced in his own living room.
"Lucas!" Bridger saw him a split second after walking through the wide open front door. After recognizing the boy, the next thing Bridger noticed was the blood. It was everywhere, seeping into the white carpet, the sofa, Lucas' clothes. He could even smell it.
Bridger ran to Lucas' side, barely aware of Cheryl sitting nearby or the other body in the room. "Lucas, my God, what the hell happened here?"
"What did they do to you?" That was Westphalen. She had dropped by Lucas' other side, crouching next to Cheryl, and already had a hand pressed against his neck to check his pulse. Bridger saw that Cheryl was crying softly, her own arms slick with blood nearly up to her elbows as she pressed a cloth into Lucas' side.
"You're going to be fine," Bridger said, gripping Lucas' right shoulder. He moved his hand up and ran it over Lucas' forehead, through Lucas' hair. The boy's face was pale and gray, even his lips nearly devoid of color. His blue eyes seemed dull and unfocused. "You'll be just fine."
"I know. I'm okay," Lucas whispered. He tried to smile at Bridger and failed miserably.
"My God, Nathan, the knife," Westphalen muttered, looking ill at the weapon still protruding from Lucas' shoulder. Bridger felt his stomach flip. The doctor shook herself slightly and moved into action, quickly assessing the rest of Lucas' body for further injuries. She had Cheryl briefly remove the cloth from Lucas' side so she could see that wound, then told the girl to keep applying pressure. She turned Lucas' head and studied the cut there. Most of the left side of his face was swollen and painted with dried blood.
"How does it look?" Bridger asked.
"How do you think it looks?" Westphalen spat angrily. She shook her head and gave Bridger a meaningful look. "I'm sorry. He's been stabbed twice and he has a head injury. But if we can get him out of here soon, he'll be fine."
"He'll be out of here in 15 minutes," Bridger said. "Skipper said a helicopter is on its way to airlift him to the hospital."
"You had to live on an island," Westphalen muttered, then added in a louder voice, "Stay here. I'm going to see to this man." She moved next to the second body on the floor. Bridger noted distantly that it most definitely was not Lucas' stepfather, and his mother was nowhere in sight.
When the doctor crouched next to Lucas again, her face was unreadable.
"How is he?" Bridger asked.
"He's dead," Westphalen said curtly. "Lucas, I need you to tell me if you're injured anywhere else."
Lucas didn't answer, his gaze unfocused but directed at the dead body near his feet. He began shaking in earnest, until his teeth were almost chattering. His face was pasty, his forehead misted with sweat.
"Lucas, look at me. Come on, focus." Westphalen's voice was sharp and demanding. She placed her hands on either side of his face, forcing his gaze toward her. "Stay with me. Can you understand me?"
He blinked at her in confusion, as if waiting for the words to make sense. Then he nodded slowly.
"Good," she said. "Are you hurt anywhere else?"
Lucas shook his head no. Bridger saw his eyes, pupils painfully dilated, sweep to the right, where the captain was still kneeling at his side, and then back to the left. He looked down, and as if noticing it for the first time, stared curiously at the knife in his shoulder.
"Take it out," he muttered, his voice shaking.
"I can't, not right now," Westphalen said.
"Take it out," he repeated.
"Lucas-"
"Take it out." He was pleading now, his voice hitching in panic. "Please, get it out of me." He started to struggle, lifting his right arm as though to remove the knife himself.
"Lucas, stop it," Westphalen demanded. "If we take it out now, the wound will start bleeding. You can't lose that much blood. Do you hear me? We can't take it out now. You have to wait until the hospital."
"No," he insisted. "Get it out!"
"Damn it," Westphalen swore as she and Bridger tried to restrain the boy without hurting him further. "He's in shock, Nathan. It's the blood loss. He's confused. I need you to calm him down before he injures himself."
Bridger nodded and grasped Lucas' right hand. "Lucas? Look at me, kiddo." He placed his other hand on Lucas' face, turning his head away from the offending knife. "You're going to be just fine. Just look at me, and you'll be okay."
Lucas' eyes started to swivel back to the knife.
"Lucas, can you tell me what happened here? Who did this to you?"
Lucas seemed almost reluctant to stop looking at the knife, but he finally turned his eyes toward Bridger's face.
"My father…" he started.
"What about your father?" Bridger asked.
"He's dead," Lucas said. His eyes filled with tears. "My father's dead."
Bridger frowned in confusion, but didn't ask for further information.
"I know," he said, squeezing Lucas' hand. "I know, and I'm sorry."
Lucas nodded and closed his eyes until tears leaked and dropped down his cheeks. Bridger leaned close to Lucas, running his hand through his hair, doing what little he could to comfort the distressed boy.
Westphalen stood and gathered a blanket from the couch, which she used to cover Lucas and chase away some of the chills. From the kitchen she retrieved an armful of dish towels and began carefully packing the area around the knife. Cheryl continued to press on the wound at Lucas' side, adding more towels as blood soaked through each layer.
"Lucas, what happened here?" Bridger asked again.
"Frodo," Lucas said simply, as though the answer was obvious.
"Frodo?"
"They wanted Frodo. I gave it to them." Lucas laughed uneasily. "I gave it to everyone."
Bridger glanced at Westphalen, who shook her head and continued to delicately treat the shoulder injury.
"I don't understand," Bridger said. "What's Frodo?"
"Lord of the Rings," Cheryl supplied.
"What?"
Cheryl looked up, as though surprised anyone had heard her.
"Frodo. He's a character in Lord of the Rings."
"Lucas, what does Frodo have to do with what happened here?" Bridger asked.
Lucas just closed his eyes and moaned softly. His forehead crinkled in pain.
"Nathan, he's in no condition to explain anything right now," Westphalen said gently. "Try talking to him about something else."
"Like what?" Bridger asked, frustrated at feeling so helpless.
"It doesn't matter what. He's too out of it to understand anyway," she said. "Just talk to him, keep him awake, keep him distracted."
Bridger closed his mouth and frowned thoughtfully.
"Hey, Lucas. Hey, look at me," he said, and waited for the teen to open his eyes. "Did you see Lisa today?"
Lucas stared blankly at the captain before a look of mild panic flashed across his face.
"Your motorcycle," he slurred. "I'm sorry I took it, Sir. I know where it is."
Bridger smiled kindly.
"Don't worry about it, kiddo," he said. "That's not what I meant. Did you see Lisa?"
Lucas nodded slowly.
"Did you see what she was wearing?"
He shook his head.
"That little red skirt. You know the one I mean?"
Lucas looked confused again, then a small smile ghosted across his lips.
"The leather one?"
"That's the one," Bridger agreed. "It's about six inches too short."
"I don't think-" Lucas started, grimacing past a stab of pain, "she wears anything underneath it."
Bridger actually laughed out loud
"You boys," Westphalen scolded. "She's not even here to defend herself."
"You know what she called me?" Lucas muttered, ignoring the doctor.
"What'd she call you?" Bridger asked.
"Kiddo," Lucas said with a scowl. His voice was growing fainter. "I blame you."
"Sorry about that, kid-…er, I mean, Lucas," Bridger said. "But you know she's way out of your league."
"Maybe," Lucas muttered. "Maybe not."
With that, he passed out.
xxxXXXxxx
The crowds had thinned out in the hospital waiting room, but Bridger still leaned against a wall as though there was no room to sit. He'd stopped pacing at least. He held a cup of coffee long gone cold, but he needed something in his hands, something to grip or tap his fingers against, and the cup was all he had.
It had taken nearly 45 minutes to get Lucas to the hospital, and to Bridger's great concern, the teen had remained unconscious for much of that time. Westphalen – along with two paramedics on the helicopter and several doctors and nurses at the hospital – had assured him that Lucas would be fine, that his blacking out was not unexpected or a problem. But until he saw the boy for himself, Bridger couldn't be at ease. He hadn't seen Lucas since he'd been shut into the helicopter with Westphalen, allowing the doctor to continue treating him while Bridger drove her car to the hospital. Once he'd arrived there, Lucas had already been raced into a trauma room.
Now, nearly five hours later, Bridger was wired on stress and caffeine. He rubbed a hand across his gritty eyes, and barely even aware of what he was doing, began pacing again.
As he marched across the room, Bridger tried to make some sort of sense of everything he'd learned in the past eight hours. He suspected that some of it would never make any sense. Surely no one could hope to understand exactly what kind of evil had attacked Lucas. Bridger knew now that it wasn't just the physical injuries of this afternoon – the evil had assaulted Lucas for weeks, taking advantage of a teenage boy at one of the most vulnerable times in his life. It was disgusting, and Bridger couldn't even begin to comprehend how or why it had happened.
Less than an hour after arriving at the hospital, Bridger had been mildly surprised to receive an emergency call from Noyce. Bridger understood that the near killing of a boy in a UEO captain's private home was no insignificant matter, but he hadn't expected it to draw the attention of the secretary general so quickly, even if the boy and captain were personal friends. But instead of calling in sympathy of concern, Noyce had been calling with information.
It turned out that Lucas had sent a file to no less than 36 top UEO officials, Noyce and Bridger included, that afternoon. Bridger hadn't seen his message before Skipper had called with word about Lucas' arrival with his so-called mother and stepfather. But several other recipients of the message had opened theirs and almost immediately recognized the file for what it was – a confidential and potentially very damaging UEO document. Noyce told Bridger that the report had been commissioned as part of a massive internal study on the environmental impacts of various UEO projects. Under the weight of bureaucracy, and perhaps with a few payoffs to lower-level UEO officials, no one had noticed when the report had never actually showed up. Meanwhile, the scientist responsible for overseeing the entire report, and for writing the World Power Project missive, was now dead.
After Lucas had sent his messages, it hadn't taken long to alert Noyce to the document. It had taken even less time to connect the document to the attack on Lucas and the dead man in Bridger's house.
Brian Sullivan. He had once been a widely respected physicist, and was now suspected of attempted murder and lying dead in a county morgue. His had been one of half a dozen names listed in the UEO report as responsible for what would likely be a global environmental disaster at the World Power Project. Lawrence Wolenczak was on the same list, along with three other scientists who had died when the project had failed. Bridger had recognized the last name on the list: Jordan Mathers. She was the one who regularly denied Lucas access to his father. Now she was missing.
The file called Frodo had been the least of the shocks that afternoon. Even as Bridger had been leaving his home to speed to the hospital, police had started swarming the house. After sweeping the living room where the actual attack had occurred, investigators had turned to Lucas' bedroom, and soon enough, to his computer. It was there that they had found more than a dozen messages Lucas had written to his father in the past six weeks. Further searching had revealed 13 messages saved on Lucas' laptop – 13 messages from his dead father. They'd been deleted, but not yet purged from the laptop's hard drive. One of the police investigators had read several short passages to Bridger over the phone, and the words had made the captain's stomach turn.
Now, pacing the hospital waiting room, Bridger found himself clenching his coffee cup until the cool liquid was splashing over the top and dribbling on his pants. He swore softly and marched to a trashcan to toss out the cup.
Bridger was only just beginning to figure out what had happened over the past several weeks that had led to the violence of this afternoon. He was beginning to figure it out, but he would never understand it.
"Nathan." Westphalen called softly to him from the other side of the waiting room. He walked directly to her, studying the tired lines around her eyes and the way her hair fell in messy strands around her face. He gripped her elbow and guided her to a seat, sitting down next to her.
"What can you tell me?"
"He's going to be fine," Westphalen said. That much Bridger already knew. Within an hour of arriving at the hospital, a doctor had told Bridger that Lucas' wounds were not life threatening. Westphalen glanced wearily around the waiting room. "Did everyone else go home?"
"Yeah," Bridger nodded. Almost all of Lucas' coworkers on the computer systems team had arrived at the hospital when they'd heard about the attack. Several former members of the seaQuest crew had also waited for a while, but they'd finally left when Bridger had informed them that it was unlikely they'd be able to see Lucas until the following day.
"He's really going to be all right," Westphalen repeated when she saw Bridger studying her. She squeezed his hand.
"Tell me everything," Bridger said.
She sighed.
"He lost a lot of blood, but you saw that for yourself," Westphalen began. "We had to give him a transfusion, but he shouldn't suffer any complications from the wound to his side. We were concerned at first that the shoulder injury might have been more serious. If it had sliced an artery or nerves there, Lucas might have been in trouble. He could have bled dangerously, or even lost some use of his left arm. But we were lucky, and the blade mostly got muscle tissue. He won't need surgery to repair it. It's a deep cut though, very deep, and we'll have to immobilize the arm for several weeks. He'll need some minor physical therapy. But he will recover."
Bridger nodded, closing his eyes in relief.
"We were actually more concerned about the head injury," Westphalen went on, and Bridger's head shot up in concern. "He'll be okay," she quickly reassured him. "But he's got a very serious concussion. We ran several tests, to rule out a skull fracture and make sure he had normal brain activity. The tests look good, but they'll keep him under strict observation for a day or two, just to be sure."
"To be sure of what, exactly?"
"Brain damage. But really, Nathan, we think that highly unlikely," Westphalen insisted when Bridger looked crushed. "This is standard procedure. Lucas took a hard hit to the head, but everything looks normal. I suspect he'll be pretty disoriented and have a nasty headache for a few days, but he'll be fine."
Bridger stared at her for a moment, trying to decide whether she was holding anything back, and decided to accept what she said.
"When can I see him?"
"In a few minutes," Westphalen said. "They're getting him settled in a private room, and you can sit with him then. They'll need to wake him up every few hours to test his cognizance, and he'd probably like to see a face he knows."
"Good," Bridger said, nodding.
"Nathan…" Westphalen started, then seemed unsure what exactly to say.
"What?"
"I heard about what happened. With the file and Lucas' father and the messages."
Bridger looked at her in surprise.
"Bill Noyce told me," she explained. "He called to ask about Lucas' condition, and he filled me in. He thought it important that I know, for Lucas' sake."
"Well, at least I don't have to repeat it all to you," Bridger said, deflated.
"It's just sick," Westphalen hissed. "How someone could do that to a boy, or anyone for that matter, I'll never understand. It's cruel."
"And Lucas was all alone. He was carrying that secret around for so long, and no one knew," Bridger said. "I wish he'd told me."
Westphalen rested a hand on his knee. "He's not alone anymore," she said softly. "He needs you."
Bridger took a deep breath and nodded sharply at her.
"I know," he said. "Let's go see him."