CHAPTER FIFTEEN #3
I’d forgotten about the broken window I scraped past. My hand flies up to my temple, which I immediately regret, and comes back sticky.
“Oh, God,” I say, the mild sting flaring into acute pain.
“Is it bad? Do I need stitches, do you think?” A needle puncturing flesh.
Sutures looping through it. I’m going to throw up.
Grant frowns. “What? No, you’re—” He lightly takes my chin in hand, turning my head for a better look. My entire face feels feverish. “You’re okay. Just a scratch.” The softness of his voice downgrades my sense of impending vomit to a mildly threatening nausea. “But we need to call someone for—”
“Hellooo!” A chipper, accented voice interrupts him from the corner behind me. “I’m Princess Diana.”
I whirl around.
The person beaming at us is, in fact, not Princess Diana but a bearded middle-aged man handcuffed to another pipe at the far end of the room. He sports a Café Bombay T-shirt, a black eye, and what I can only assume is a traumatic brain injury of some kind.
“Apparently, we were part two of a doubleheader today,” Grant tells me sideways, keeping a worried eye on the man.
“I didn’t mean to!” whines Howard.
“Quiet,” I snap over my shoulder. The injured man in the corner isn’t looking so good. Speaking seems to have reminded him that he has a tongue, and he’s now busying himself trying to touch it to his nose.
“I think the Takeawayer hit him with his oxygen tank,” says Grant. “That’s what he tried to do to me, but I dodged it, so he freaked out and shoved me in here. I think that’s his whole thing—he just locks people up and leaves them to die.”
“No, I don’t!” Howard protests. “I didn’t hit anyone. He fell down!”
I hiss out a breath like kettle steam. “I swear to God, if you say one more thing—”
“This isn’t even my house! I got lost and—”
I elbow him in the face without even turning around.
Uri wouldn’t like that. Only in response to an active threat! he would say. But in my defense, Howard was actively threatening my last goddamn nerve.
Anyway, it works to shut him up. Too well, actually. I turn around to see that against all odds, he’s unconscious, dangling limply from his cuffs, and snoring. Somewhere in my bewildered mind, I send a harsh You cannot be serious to Anna Matthews.
I turn back to Grant. “I need you to know that that would literally never happen in real life.”
“Understood,” he says uneasily. “So what are we going to do about …” He flashes a nervous glance toward the other victim.
We move cautiously toward the man, walking on eggshells in light of his fragile state, but he just grins at us with a glazed look in his eyes.
“Hello, sir,” I say. “Do you know where you are?”
He chuckles. “I know, right?”
Grant tries. “Do you remember what happened to you?”
He beams, nods emphatically, and says, “Hello!”
“Hello,” sighs Grant. “Okay. Just sit tight, we’re going to get help.”
He digs his phone out of his pocket and makes for the hallway. I snag him by the arm before he gets too far.
“Where are you going?”
“There’s no phone service in here,” he says, pointing a circle around the room. “Something in the walls, probably.”
“But … who are you going to call?”
Grant looks at me dubiously, like he’s wondering if I’ve misread the room badly enough to make a Ghostbusters joke. “An ambulance …?”
He begins to dial, and I snatch his phone from him. He levels a flat look at me. “Think about this, Grant. What are we going to tell them?”
The injured man chimes in. “Yes, what are we going to tell them?” He appears to think hard about this, scratching his chin with his free hand, then nods with an air of great wisdom. “Probably words.”
Grant’s eyes widen with alarm, but he plasters on a smile. “That’s a great idea, Princess Diana,” he says gently, then starts leading me away by the elbow. “Excuse us just a second?”
The man laughs brightly. “Please,” he says, with a lazy waggle of his hand. “Princess Diana is my father. You can call me Raj.”
We debate in whispers by the doorway.
“Are we sure he needs medical help? He’s a fictional character,” I say. “For all we know, he’ll be magically healed the moment we leave this scene.”
“But right now, we’re in this scene with him,” Grant says. “Would you really be willing to leave him just because he’s not technically real?”
All the argument drains out of me at once.
“No,” I concede. This is just like any other story.
There are the little fictions, and then there are the big truths—the things that stay with you long after you’ve forgotten the characters’ names.
The hope. The wisdom. The importance of helping a concussed delivery man. These are the things that matter.
Still, as I point out to Grant, this situation will be hard to explain to emergency responders. And if the police get involved … well, that’s about the top of Lesley’s list of things to avoid. I’m not even sure dying outranks it.
Grant blows out a breath and pushes a hand through his hair. “Maybe we could just walk him to the nearest hospital?”
We look over at Raj. He has begun to quietly sing to himself, a lilting rendition of “Space Oddity.” It seems to be going great until he gets caught in a lyrical loop in which Ground Control literally cannot stop asking Major Tom if he can hear them.
Resigned, I hold Grant’s phone back out to him and nod toward the hall. “Call them. I’ll keep our friend company.”
· · ·
WITH EMERGENCY SERVICES on the way, Grant is now pacing the hall as he argues on the phone with Lesley, who seems predictably not stoked about our decision to involve law enforcement.
Grant isn’t having it. It’s like a one-man courtroom drama out there, all stony-faced defiance and sharp gestures as he says things like “No, you listen to me” and “End of discussion.” I can barely hear half the conversation, and I’m trying to pay more attention to Raj’s attachment to consciousness, but it’s hard not to be inspired.
I’ve never seen Grant get so passionate about anything.
Focused, yes. Argumentative, always. But this—this conviction to do the right thing, to be a champion for someone in need—is really something to behold.
It’s almost, dare I think it, a little bit hot.
“I like him,” says Raj, with a look toward Grant that is somehow both blank and sincere. “He is a very mice nan.”
“He is,” I agree. “A very mice nan indeed.”
Raj turns his sweet, empty gaze on me and places his hand softly on my shoulder. “And you,” he says, “have a most beautiful mustache.”
A crash reverberates through the house, followed by shouts of “Police! Stay where you are!” Grant utters a rushed “Igottago” into the phone just as a pair of cops charge in with guns drawn.
Howard jerks from his slumber right on cue, immediately blurting, “It wasn’t me!”
We’re ordered to keep our hands visible while the police sweep the scene.
The officers make quick work of checking the room—one, a ponytailed policewoman, and the other, a young freckled man who looks a bit like a boy in a Halloween costume.
The former radios for EMTs while the latter nervously steps forward to pat Howard down.
“They did it!” Howard argues, jerking his head in my direction. “I’m a victim. Look, they’re the only ones not handcuffed! They assaulted me!”
“Did they also build a terror dungeon in your house before calling the police on themselves?”
All heads turn toward the deep voice coming from the doorway.
The brawny goateed man standing there draws a hush from the room.
He’s in plain clothes, a shirt-and-tie combo starched and pressed to perfection, but from his commanding posture and steely glare, there’s no mistaking that he’s the boss of this operation.
He enters the room with his hands in his pockets, eyeing the scene like a sergeant preparing for inspection, then nods to Freckles.
“Proceed,” he says, crossing his arms.
“Er, Howard Armstrong,” Freckles says in a nasal voice, “you are under arrest on suspicion of abduction as well as assault and battery.”
“Try several counts of murder,” I scoff.
“And hacking,” Grant adds from the hall, a little too proudly.
“Nuh-uh!” whines Howard.
The young officer glances from me to Grant, swallows hard, and says, “Right. Abduction, assault, et cetera.” He finishes reading Howard his rights and then falls silent.
The only sounds in the room are Howard’s whimpering, the female officer softly questioning Raj, and Raj responding in what sounds like assorted birdcalls.
The boss man shifts impatiently, crossing his arms tighter. “Uncuff him,” he orders Freckles.
“Right, sir. Sorry, sir. Only—I seem to have left the key in the car.”
The boss throws up his hands in exasperation. “Fuck’s sake, Harris. Go get it.”
Harris shuffles out, leaving a trail of yes, sirs and sorry, sirs in his wake, and then the boss turns his dark eyes on me.
“You can put your hands down now. You too,” he adds to Grant, beckoning him over. “DI Walter Akinyemi,” he says. “We’ll need statements from each of you, of course.”
“Oh my God, Wally?” It’s out of my mouth before I can think better of it.
The shift in his expression is subtle but dangerous—like watching an icicle form where there was once only a cold drip.
“Flores,” he calls calmly to the remaining officer, not taking his eyes from us. “I suspect Harris has locked himself in the car again. Go and help him out, please.”
After she leaves the room, Wally fixes us with a deadly stare. “Change of plan,” he says, his voice like gravel. “I don’t need your statement. In fact, I’ll give you one of my own: stay the hell out of my investigation.”
“But we just caught you a criminal,” Grant argues.
“I’m not a criminal!” Howard sobs. “I’m misunderstood!”
“SHUT IT,” bellows Wally in a pyrotechnic outburst of fury that leaves Howard curled and shaking against the wall.
When he turns back to me and Grant, he’s eerily calm.
“I know why you’re here. There’s only one person who calls me Wally, and he belongs nowhere near the criminal justice system.
Which means neither do you. So you will cut all ties with Lesley Burns henceforth, or else. ”
An involuntary snort escapes me. Chilling as this all is, no one can pull off or else. Not even Inspector Hard-Ass Walter Akinyemi.
“Oh,” I say, seeing his frosty glare. “You’re serious. Sorry.”
Wally leans toward us, and his voice drops to a dangerous rumble.
“How’s this for serious?” he begins. “Your darkest night terrors could not fathom the things I’ve seen in the line of duty.
So if you halfwits have any survival instinct, you’ll turn round, pack your bags, and march yourselves straight back where you came from.
Or else”—this he pronounces with a particularly malicious flash of his teeth—“you will very likely be delivered there in a little box labeled human remains. And that’s if my colleagues are able to find whichever dumpster you wind up in and fish you out, bloodied limb by bloodied limb.
” He stands back, crossing his arms. “Better?”
After a nauseous, frozen moment, all the air rushes out of me in one fell swoop, and I have the most awful feeling Anna is going to describe this as “She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.”
I glance at my arm. “Yeah, wow. I have actual goose bumps, look.”
Harris and Flores hurry back in with paramedics in tow, and Howard immediately resumes his bellyaching.
“Fine,” he gasps as Harris swaps his cuffs for police-issue ones. “I did it. But it wasn’t my fault! I was ordered to! I’ll tell you any—”
“Do. Not. Say. Another. Word.” Wally’s voice carries the imminent threat of a rumbling volcano. He turns his piercing gaze back to me and Grant. “Especially in front of these idiots.”
He continues pinning us with his stare until a yodeling Raj and a sniveling Howard are escorted from the room, then gruffly orders us to go.
Grant books it toward the hall, and I follow a bit more reluctantly. I’m glad Raj is okay. I’m glad Howard’s out of commission. But still, this isn’t how this was supposed to go.
And now we’re out of time and it’s next stop, Anna Matthews. Soon this will all be a thing of the fictional past. I’ll be back to temping and living for the breaks between jobs. Grant will be back to his beloved coworkers and his cat.
Sounds like a better deal for him.
“Hey,” Wally calls before we turn the corner, and we meet his sinister glare. “Tell Lesley. No. More.”
On our way out of the house, Grant stops by the back window, studying the discarded gnome and the shattered glass on the floor.
“This is the window you broke in?”
I toe a jagged shard out of the way. “Yep.”
“Right next to the unlocked door?”
I look up. Sure enough, the door has only a single dead bolt, and it isn’t latched.
“Oops.”
He looks at me, mystified, then walks away shaking his head, and I swear he lets out the quietest half laugh.
The EMTs out front have transferred Raj to a stretcher and are preparing to load him into the ambulance. For all I know, he has no memory of meeting us five minutes ago, but I wave goodbye anyway.
He waves back. “Thank you, Shrek,” he calls.
Grant walks over to him and the medic, wishes Raj well with a careful hand on his shoulder, and comes back to me peeling open a Band-Aid.
“Here,” he says, gently pressing it over the cut on my temple. “Now you can look in a mirror without getting sick.”
My stomach does a strange little flip-flop anyway.
On the way to Anna’s event, I can’t stop wondering what exactly will happen if we manage to get through to her. Will my head be healed? Will the bandage mysteriously disappear? Will I eventually forget the feeling of Grant’s fingers smoothing it over my skin?
Somehow, I don’t think I could.