Chapter 21
21
“She’ll be fine, right?” Ani couldn’t stop worrying about poor Sergeant Thomson. All she’d done was try to keep them safe. Now the unconscious woman was on her own in a Blackbear hotel room while she and Gil ran for the hills. Help was on its way, but it still went against all her doctor’s principles to abandon a patient.
“You said she needs a hospital. Dr. Christianson will know what to do. She knows more about the virus than we do.”
She pulled her baseball cap, which had come from the hotel’s lost and found, over her face and slouched deeper into the passenger seat of the 1999 Chevy pickup that Gil had purchased for eight hundred and fifty dollars.
He’d noticed it on their way to the Wagon Wheel, parked for public view with a “for sale” sign in the window. Talk about thinking ahead. Luckily, the Wagon Wheel had an ATM machine in the lobby so they didn’t have to take time for a trip to a bank.
She just hoped the rattletrap vehicle didn’t fall apart before they got out of Blackbear. Its struts were shot, there was a hole in the muffler, but overall, it seemed to blend in with a certain genre of Alaskan vehicles.
“You really think Victor is back in Fairbanks?” she asked Gil, who wore a golfing visor that he’d plucked out of the housekeeping cart. Their hope was to slip away from the hotel without being noticed by either the military or whoever had attacked Thomson.
“I don’t know, but it’s a good place to start. We can check his office at the university, see if anyone’s seen him. Hell, maybe he’s even been back to his house.”
That made sense. As much as anything made sense right now.
I’m going to protect you. That part makes sense. I like the smell of your hair, too. That makes sense.
The memory made her smile, then sigh. It felt like so long ago that they’d been snuggled in Bob’s little cabin, another lifetime. And yet it was just…yesterday? She couldn’t even keep track anymore.
“Have you tried to call him again?”
“Yup, a few times, both his cell and his home phone. Got nothing.” He glanced in the rear view mirror again. He kept doing that, she noticed, watching for anyone following, or any sign of danger. Always on guard, Gil McGowan.
“You should get some sleep,” he said, glancing over at her. “You never did get that nap you were craving.”
It wasn’t exactly a nap that she’d been craving. But she was beyond exhausted by now, so she tilted her seat back and did her best to ignore the rusty suspension and deafening engine noise.
Gil set a hand on her thigh, just above her knee. Its warmth offered comfort, and its weight grounded her. She sighed and let herself drift into a dream.
But it gave her no rest, because it was a chaotic, vivid dream filled with violent images. A bullet caught Sergeant Thomson in the chest and sent her tumbling off a high-rise building. Victor was locked in a cage, clawing at the bars, foaming at the mouth. He ripped at the skin on his own face. Bloody gashes opened up. Then he was out of the cage and running into the Blackbear airport. She saw herself as if through his eyes, saw her own long dark hair, her sadness. Help me. Help me.
But dream-Ani wasn’t taking him seriously. She was offering him water and Tylenol when he needed something more. He needed her attention. He needed her to listen. Everything red, everything dead. Everything red, everything dead. He kept repeating it, over and over.
She woke up with a gasp.
For a wild moment she had no idea where she was. Where was her comfortable king-size bed with the white leather headboard? Where were the sliding doors that led onto the side patio? Where was the framed image of Ganesha that her grandmother had given her to bless her marriage?
In storage. That was where. All of it in storage. Possessions, packed away. House, sold. Marriage, undone.
A hand tightened on her thigh. Gil. Right. The mists cleared and she adjusted her seat so she was upright again.
“You okay?”
“Yes, just…I was dreaming about Victor.” She took off the baseball cap and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. “I think my subconscious thinks we’re missing something.”
“Any hints?”
“It has to do with Victor and the notes he was writing.” She looked out the window and saw a nearly empty highway and an open landscape of tall grasses and wildflowers, with foothills rising on the horizon. “Where are we?”
“Halfway to Fairbanks. The good news is that no one is following us.”
“What’s the bad news?”
He gave her a rueful smile. “Basically all the rest of it.”
No, she thought. It wasn’t all bad news. Gil was sitting next to her, relaxed but alert, one strong hand on the steering wheel, the other on her leg. Her injured leg, the one that had endured so much, but still served her as well as it could.
I’m in good hands , she realized. And I’m not sure I’ve ever felt that way before.
“My leg,” she said abruptly.
He glanced at her and pulled his hand away. “Sorry, is it hurting?”
“No no. Not at all. You can put your hand back.” When he hesitated, she grabbed his hand and planted it back where it was. Maybe a little higher on her thigh. “I want to tell you what happened.”
“You don’t have to, I shouldn’t have pried when I asked about it.”
“Do you want to know?” She didn’t tell the story very often. John had already known, of course, because everyone at school knew. So did her friends. When she’d started fertility treatments, her doctors had needed a complete medical history. They knew. Occasionally one of the children at the clinic would ask her why she limped. She always told them that she’d gotten hurt as a child, and so she knew what it was like to need some help.
“Yes, but only if you want to tell me,” Gil said. “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”
“Are you okay feeling uncomfortable?”
“I’m used to it. Ever try standing guard outside a marathon diplomatic session at The Hague that might not ever end?”
“Obviously not. But I’m not talking about physical discomfort. This is a hard story.”
“Lay it on me. I can handle it.”
Okay then. If he thought he could handle it, who was she to say otherwise? “At the age of twelve, I was…well, someone tried to snatch me off the street. I was walking home from school with my earbuds on. I guess he yelled something at me first, but I didn’t hear or understand. Then he pulled over right in front of me and tried to yank me into the car.”
She stopped to take a breath. Her heart was hammering away the way it always did when she talked about it.
“He yelled horrible things at me like I wasn’t even human. I knew he wanted to hurt me, or kill me, or both. He had a gun on the seat next to him and I had no doubt that he’d use it.”
She didn’t dare glance at Gil, but kept her gaze fixed on the curves of the highway unfurling before them. Hills rose on either side of them now. They must be approaching Denali Park.
“I knew that if I got in the car, I’d be dead. Somehow I managed to get loose from him but he put the car in reverse and chased me onto the sidewalk and ran me over. He crushed my leg under his back tire. I didn’t go unconscious, I don’t know why. I should have, just from the pain. I was screaming, frantic. Then he rolled forward, off of me, and I heard horns honking and tires screeching.”
She paused again, checking to make sure he was still with her.
“Go on,” he said grimly.
“Someone ran toward me and said an ambulance was coming. I still keep in touch with that kind man, Billy Ellis. He was a farmer taking a load of pumpkins to a market. Anyway… he stayed with me until the ambulance came, and then my parents met me at the hospital. I was in the hospital for almost a month while they did a bunch of surgeries on me to reconstruct my hip.”
She paused to take another long breath, and this time she shot a quick glance at Gil. His jaw was set, his knuckles tight on the steering wheel. “What happened to that fucker?”
“He was convicted, with a hate crime enhancement. He’s still in prison. I get updates from the DA’s office. He was a repeat offender who had a record of drug use and racist hate crimes. When he abducted me, he was very high on meth.”
“Did you testify against him?”
“Yes, but my identity was protected. There were nasty threats phoned into the courthouse. My parents tried to keep that from me, but I knew.”
“Jesus, Ani. And you were only twelve?”
“Yes. It was…traumatic, obviously. But I also had a lot of help. I’ll never forget Billy Ellis. I still write him letters, and he writes back. The nurses and surgeons at the hospital, the physical therapists. The prosecutors. The judge. It’s incredible to watch good people try to repair the damage one fucked-up person left behind. That’s why I decided to become a doctor.”
“Pay it forward?”
“Yes, more or less. So many people were there for me. I wanted to do the same. My friends really rallied around me. After I went back to school, Molly and Lila never let me be alone. Other kids would tease me because I had to wear a brace for a while. Plus, I was different. Before the attack, I was very happy-go-lucky, I never worried about anything except, like, can I carry off a studded leather belt, or is it cooler to wear one earring or both. I ate lunch with the popular girls and wanted to be a cheerleader in high school. After I got home from the hospital, I wasn’t as much fun. I found out who my true friends were. Molly and Lila.”
“Not Charlie?”
“Charlie moved to our town later, when her father went on trial. Lucky her, that’s when she got to join our little crew of misfits.”
He smiled at that, and they drove for a while in silence while he absorbed the story she’d just told. “You’re not bitter,” he finally said.
“What makes you say that? I used to stay awake at night imagining how I’d get revenge. Or reenacting it, but this time grabbing the gun and shooting him in the knee. In med school, I hated the ER and surgery rotations. Very triggering, seeing gunshot wounds. I think about how my life changed after what happened, and how much that fucker has to answer for.” She heard the anger running through her voice. “And I wonder if the experience affected…well, you don’t need to know about that.”
“About what? Tell me. Why stop now? We still have a long drive.”
But she’d shared enough of her trauma without delving into baby-land. “Nope, I think I’ve blabbed on enough for now.”
She could tell he was disappointed. Too bad. She’d spilled her guts, now it was his turn.
“I just told you a very personal story, and you have to pay up. Fair’s fair. Tell me something that changed your life forever.”
“Give me a minute, I need to think on that one.”
As he pondered, she let her gaze linger on his strong forearms, the scatter of dark hair, the corded muscles. He was so fit, and she was so…broken.
Not broken , whispered a stubborn, secret part of her. You’re here, aren’t you?
“Being born,” Gil finally said.
She let out a gurgle of laughter. “Being born changed your life forever? I suppose that’s hard to argue with.”
“I know it sounds funny, but it’s true. I was born first. Then came Lachlan. My entire life was shaped by that fact.”
“The fact that you were born first?”
“Yes, because I felt responsible for Lachlan. But also because of Lachlan. He’s brilliant and a genius. Dreamy, always working on something in his head. We didn’t fight. If I tried to, if I was angry about something, he just wouldn’t fight back. I’d have to go take it up with the punching bag our dad got me. Lachlan is like…I don’t know, a natural-born saint. He’s better than most other human beings. Definitely better than me.”
She couldn’t agree with that, not for a second, not after everything Gil had done for her. “But you’re the one who protects him.”
“Yes, at least I did when we were growing up. I still do when he needs me. But he’s a grown man now and it doesn’t happen that often.”
She thought about how Lachlan had fought off his ambusher thanks to a move Gil had taught him. Gil was still protecting him, even from a distance.
“Why aren’t you married?” The question slipped out without her thinking about it. It had crossed her mind before now, but it had always felt inappropriate. Then she sucked in a breath. “Or are you?”
Looking mildly offended, he shot her a frown. “Have I been acting like I’m married?”
“No. Sorry. Go on.”
“I’m not married. My job always kept me on the move. Hard to form a relationship like that, at least not one that lasts.”
“Did you try?” she asked tartly.
He gave a reluctant laugh. “That obvious, huh? Not really, no. I usually kept things about as casual as it gets.”
“A woman in every port, that kind of thing?”
“I have a few phone numbers in my contacts,” he admitted.
The shock of jealousy surprised her. A man as fit and good-looking as Gil McGowan would obviously have women swooning over him wherever he went. And that was before they knew all of his amazing qualities—protective, smart, caring, loyal. This was a man who’d spent his whole life watching over his brother.
Maybe not his whole life; let’s not forget the punching bag, she thought. Gil wasn’t just a human shield. He had strong emotions. He went deep.
“You’re the opposite of me, then. I married my high school boyfriend. We were a few years out of high school by then, but I’d only been with one other man in the meantime. I thought I’d be with him forever.”
He grunted, and she realized, with a fizz of elation, that he was feeling the same jealousy she had a moment ago. “Maybe you’ll get back together.”
“No. That won’t happen. I tried. He tried, sort of, in a half-assed kind of way. I’m not going back. The only reason I’d go back to Indiana is to see my parents, and maybe get my things out of storage.”
“Sounds like it’s really over.”
“Oh, it’s over. I think even John believes it now that we’ve signed the paperwork and it’s officially filed with the state of Indiana. Dissolution of marriage due to irreconcilable differences, meaning he’s an ass and I finally saw him for what he is. I just can’t believe it took me so long.”
“I can.” That soft comment made her swing her head to look at him in indignation.
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t give up on things easily. You’re determined. You’re persistent. I knew that when you landed on Smoky Lake in a floatplane. You’re loyal. Why else would you fly to Alaska to take care of your friend? You work hard, the way you did to be able to walk after your injury. You don’t give up on things when they get hard. I see you, Ani Devi. You might look sweet as honey, but you’ve got pure steel behind those gorgeous eyes of yours.”
He gave her a wink that sent a jolt of energy racing through her. I see you.
Rocketing down a highway in Alaska in a 1999 pickup, their location unknown to everyone else in the world, in pursuit of answers from a stranger… John would never have believed it. Neither would her parents. Even her friends would be surprised. But Gil…Gil saw her.
She threw her head back and laughed from the sheer wild miracle of it.