Beyond Suspicion

64

•

Each breath carried Cindy more deeply into sleep, though it felt like something beyond the realm of sleep, a numbing paralysis that tingled all the way to the tips of her fingers. A simple effort to raise her heavy eyelids was enough to send the room spinning. A burning sensation tinged her nostrils. It wasn’t that she couldn’t remember what had happened. It had all just happened so fast, the moment she’d stepped into the master bathroom-the blur of motion behind her, the muscular arm around her waist, and the pungent rag that covered her mouth and nose. In a matter of moments, she felt limp. But she was battling it, refusing to be overpowered.

She’d managed to hear most of what Jack and Katrina were saying. The living room was down the hall from her, but sound traveled well in their little two-bedroom house, especially in the stillness of morning. She’d heard enough to know that it was time to dial 911. That was when she’d grabbed the cordless telephone on the nightstand and run into the bathroom. It was suddenly coming clearer to her now. The perfectly round hole that had been cut into the glass door that led to the solarium outside their bathroom. The ambush from behind her. And something else was coming back to her, too.

She seemed to recall that there had been no dial tone.

Yes, the phone was dead. That much she definitely recalled, and the fear that flourished in that brief, lucid moment gave her another kick of adrenaline. Part of her knew that she should have been completely unconscious by now, but she wouldn’t allow it. Instinct was taking over. It was an almost inexplicable, involuntary, high-gear response to the realization that someone had broken into their house and that Jack was with Katrina, completely unaware. He was in danger and she needed to help. She liked to think it was love that drove her, a kind of love she’d harbored for a long time, as long as she could remember. The feeling was familiar to her, but she was somehow finding it easier to associate that feeling with the distant past than with present events. She tried to resist whatever it was that was pulling her in that direction, fought off the effects of the drug. But she could feel her mind slipping. She found herself retreating to that time and place long ago, where she’d first been tempted to act on her impulse, the God-given instinct to protect a man she loved. Or at least to protect his name.

It had happened when she was nine years old, just two months after her father had committed suicide.

•

A grinding noise emerged from behind the bathroom door, the girls’ bathroom on the second floor. Cindy stepped out of her room and listened. It definitely wasn’t an electric hair dryer or anything else she’d ever heard coming out of the bathroom. She started down the hall and tried the door knob. The noise stopped.

“Go away!” her sister shouted.

“What are you doing in there?”

“Get out of here!”

The grinding noise was back. Cindy shrugged, then took a bobby pin from her ballerina-style bun and stuck it in the key hole. The lock clicked, and the door popped open.

Celeste grabbed the blender and screamed. “You idiot!”

Cindy was unfazed. She walked in and inspected the mess on the counter. “What are you making?”

“A milkshake. Now will you get out of here, please?”

“Can I have some?”

“No. But if you’re going to come in here, at least close the door.”

Cindy pushed the door shut, and Celeste locked it. Cindy leaned over the blender and smelled the concoction. “Yuck. It smells like fish.”

“Things that are good for you never smell good.”

“Is there really fish in there?”

“No, genius. It comes in a bottle.”

Cindy checked the label. “Is it really good for you?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s pour in some more,” she said as she tipped the bottle.

Her sister grabbed it, stopped her. “No. A little is good for you. Too much can kill you.”

“Kill you?”

“Yes. Too much is like poison.”

“What’s in it?”

“Medicine.”

“What kind of medicine?”

“None of your business.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“One of the high school girls. A senior.”

Cindy grabbed the bottle and read the label. “E-R-G-O. What are you taking that for?”

“I said, it’s none of your business.”

“Tell me or I’ll ask Mom.”

Celeste shot her an angry look and snatched the bottle back. “I’m taking it because I think I’m pregnant, okay?”

Cindy’s mouth fell open. “You were with a boy?”

“No.”

“Then how’d you get pregnant?”

Celeste lowered her eyes and said, “I’ve been having dreams.”

“What kind of dreams?”

“About Dad. He comes to me.”

Cindy felt her blood begin to boil. “And?”

“At night sometimes, I hear him outside my bedroom window. The leaves crunch every time he makes a step. Then I get up, but I’m not really awake. I can see myself walking down the hall, downstairs. I go to the back door and open it. I see nothing but these swirling leaves in the wind. But then suddenly he’s there, and I don’t know how, but I’m naked, and he’s there, like it used to be, and-”

“Stop it!”

“He pulls me on top of him, and-”

“Celeste, you’re a liar!”

“I’m not lying! You were just too young. He would have come for you too, if he hadn’t killed himself. He might still come.”

“Girls!”

They froze. Their mother was outside the door.

“What’s going on in there?”

Celeste went to the door and opened it a crack. “It’s okay, Mom.”

Cindy listened as her sister and mother talked it out through the slightly opened door. Celeste had turned her back on her sister, and Cindy felt a sudden urge to grab something and hit her over the back of the head, exactly the way she’d felt when Celeste had ruined their father’s graveside service with her lies. Cindy could even see it in her mind, Celeste falling to the floor all bloody and unconscious. Celeste and her false accusations. No one had ever spelled it out for her, but Cindy knew it was true: Celeste had driven their own father to suicide, taken him away from her.

Celeste was pleading with their mother, trying to assure her that they weren’t up to any mischief and that there was no reason for her to barge in. Cindy grabbed the bottle of ergo and took a good, long look at the label. She wasn’t sure what it was, but Celeste had given her all the information she needed. A little was medicine; a lot was poison. She glanced at the “milkshake” on the counter, and a thought came over her.

What might happen if she poured Celeste a little more?

•

“Welcome back,” the man said.

Cindy looked up into his cold, dark eyes. Her face was right in front of her, then gone, then back again. It was as if each blink of her eyes lasted several seconds. He put something beneath her nose, and she jerked back violently. Smelling salts, she realized. Slowly, she felt her body coming back to life.

“I need you to stand on your own two feet now,” he said as he pulled her up from the bathroom floor.

Her legs wobbled, and she braced her body against his.

“That’s it,” he said. “You’ll be fine in a few minutes. Unless you do something stupid.”

Cindy tried to speak, but her mouth couldn’t form words. He pried her jaws apart and shoved something long and cold into her mouth until it pressed against the back of her throat. She could taste metal. She could smell the powder from a gun that had been fired many times before. She saw the evil look in his eyes. It felt a lot like a place she’d been before, five years earlier, with a madman named Esteban-a place to which she’d never wanted to return. Her heart pounded, and she was suddenly alert.

“Nothing stupid, you hear me?”

Cindy nodded.

“Okay,” he said as he nudged her forward. “Let’s go.”