A Kiss of Revenge (Entangled Ignite) (4 page)

He’d been turned recently. She could tell by the tightly rolled pillow behind his back. After a few minutes it would start to open and he would twist, his shoulders or hips drifting back. She always wondered if somewhere, lost inside his damaged brain, he was screaming in discomfort.

She pulled a chair up close to the bed and tugged at one hand the nurse had curled in to his chest. His eyes were open but blank. Except for the faint rise and fall of his breathing, he looked dead.

Her heart squeezed. They’d been happy for such a short time. She’d finally felt loved for herself and hadn’t been compelled to mirror Brian. He’d never taught her to fly, and she’d never asked. He’d done his thing and she’d done hers, and then they’d done other things together. Their life had been characterized by love and respect, and she’d
thought
they’d achieved the balance she’d always been seeking.

Until she found out he’d been lying to her. That he’d betrayed her trust. He’d put whatever crime he was involved in above her, allowed his silent partner to draw him into something nefarious—or had willingly gone into it. If he’d died, as the partner apparently intended him to, that would have been the end. She’d have moved on. She supposed some women still would, even divorcing him. But everything in her balked at that. Brian had broken them, but she intended to be the one to fix it. In a way.

During the half hour she sat with him, none of the staff bothered them. The machine at his bedside beeped with reassuring regularity, displaying acceptable vital signs. She fixed the pillow when it started to unroll and held Brian’s hand, talking about the bakery and bringing him up to date on the Alpha Corporation discovery. She watched his eyes when she mentioned it, but as with every other moment she’d spent with him, he gave no sign he heard her.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t. “I’m getting closer,” she told him. “But he’s buried his existence. No closure for us yet.” She snagged a tissue and wiped the drool from his slack mouth. “Closure. Nice word. I’ve had a lot of it in my life.” She rested her elbows on her knees. “Every change has been final. Abrupt, but that just defined the parts. The Joey part. The Erik part. The Chris part.” She exhaled, trying to release the rage churning inside her at the limbo her life was in now. “The Brian part doesn’t look like it’s going to end any time soon.”

“That’s good,” a woman said from the doorway. “We encourage families to talk to their loved ones.”

Annoyance sparked in Reese as she turned. “I know. I’ve been coming here a long time.”

She’d never met the woman leaning on the doorjamb, though she wore a white coat and carried a clipboard. Gold wire-frame glasses matched hair pulled back into a loose knot. She smiled warmly, but her gaze belonged to someone with a goal and a plan to achieve it.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m new here.” She stepped into the room, holding out her hand. “Dr. Langstrom. I’ve taken over Brian’s care.”

Reese stood and shook her hand. She’d known Dr. Mitchell was retiring but hadn’t realized they’d replaced him. “Reese Templeton.”

Dr. Langstrom nodded and consulted her clipboard. “Not Treget?”

“I kept my name when we married.” She hadn’t changed it since Erik died, tired of the paperwork.

“I see. I was hoping you’d be visiting this week. I’d like to talk to you about some new treatments.” Animation lit her face, but Reese was confused.

“Treatments?” Brian was a vegetable. There was no hope of recovery.

But apparently no one had informed Dr. Langstrom. “I’ve looked at his records and done some analyses of his condition.” She folded the chart into her arms across her chest and leaned against the table. “Actually, Brian’s the reason I came here. There’s an experimental surgery being performed in Germany. The surgeon has been looking for candidates in the U.S., and surgeons to train. It deals with stimulator implantation…”

She explained the procedure, but Reese barely heard it; all she could do was stare. Her world had irrevocably shifted in those three seconds.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”

Dr. Langstrom stopped talking and looked as surprised as Reese at her words, but she couldn’t stop them. “I’ve been waiting for a year for him to die. Even if you can restore some function, he’ll never be the man he was. I don’t want that for him!” The hair on her arms prickled, then the tiny hairs on her scalp. Tingles raced over her skin.
Damn
it! Her emotional upheaval was affecting her physical control. The hospital room was full of electrical equipment, far more important and expensive than the switch on her coffee maker. Monitors, lights, the bed—the low hum of the equipment rose. Her heartbeat and breathing increased, and panic crept in, feeding the surge. Electricity seeped out of its confines, seeking her body, and she wouldn’t be able to contain it. Both Brian and Dr. Langstrom were in danger.

Without another word she ran from the room, all the way out to her car. She felt like a charged balloon as she ran, her hair flying behind her, her clothes clinging, and more and more electricity trying to get to her.

She reached for the car door handle, which wirelessly connected to the key fob in her pocket. Electricity arced between the door and her hand. She cried out at the shock and jumped back, bumping into someone behind her.

“Holy—!”

She whirled. Dr. Langstrom had chased her to the parking lot. She caught Reese’s hand and flipped it back and forth. “Are you all right?” No marks marred her skin, and Langstrom narrowed her eyes at the car. “What was that?”

Reese had to distract her. “I’m so sorry, doctor.” She drew in an extra-shaky breath and tried to pull herself together. “You surprised me. I reconciled myself to Brian’s death long ago, and your ideas just…shocked me. I wasn’t ready for them.”

“I understand.” She released Reese’s hand and stepped back, pulling out a folder and handing it to her. “Why don’t you read this over, then come inside and talk to me? I’ll go over data on the procedure and explain what we can and can’t do, based on Brian’s trauma and the limits of the new procedure.”

Reese hesitated. After the way she’d just acted, she really should do as the doctor suggested and counter that awful first impression. “Of course.” She felt the thickness of the folder and its contents. “Is half an hour okay?”

“Perfect. I’ll see you inside.”

Reese thanked her and slid into the car, glancing in the rear view mirror to watch the doctor go back into the building. As soon as the woman was out of sight, Reese slumped in her seat and tilted her head forward against her hands on the steering wheel. The electricity drained away with her tension, seeping out of her and going—wherever. The hair on her arms and back of her neck settled, and she could finally breathe normally.

The procedure the doctor proposed was a game changer. Reese had resigned herself to losing Brian. This whole vengeance quest helped keep the limbo of his condition from driving her insane. As she’d said to him, she’d grown so used to her life having definitive markers. It wasn’t hard to change things when nothing was the same. But she couldn’t move on from him as long as he was alive, and if pressed, she’d probably admit that deep down, she thought once she found their attempted killer and ended this, Brian would end, too. That he was lingering only because he wanted to see justice done.

In that same deep, dark well, she knew “ended” had only one meaning. The preliminary investigation had focused harder on her than any other theories. After all, she had two dead husbands already, and Brian’s survival was miraculous. But so was hers. Even if she wasn’t supposed to be on the plane, she
had
been, and they’d been unable to prove infidelity or other motive for her to tamper with the controls. She doubted she’d be able to find definitive evidence of Brian’s partner’s involvement in the crimes, never mind his intent to kill them, but she was afraid
he
had enough to frame
her
if investigators got too close. If she thought that was a viable backup plan, why wouldn’t he? Or he might just decide to kill her outright, forget trying to make it look like an accident. As long as the possibility was out there, anything she tried to do with her life would feel tenuous. So she needed to confront her enemy, and how it finished would be how it finished.

Except…what if Brian had this surgery and it worked? Then there would be no ending. She’d be married to a man who’d lost her trust and most of her love, and any remaining relationship would be based on duty and obligation. She didn’t want that. She never had.

She skimmed the literature the doctor had provided, then went back and read it more carefully, but it was full of sales talk that didn’t tell her much. She stared at the building, half considering driving away so she didn’t have to face making a decision today. But that was childish and would serve no purpose in the long run.

She went inside and asked at the desk for directions to Langstrom’s office, where she found the door open and the doctor just hanging up her phone.

“Ms. Templeton, great! Please, come in and sit down.” She motioned to the chair next to the desk. “You’ve read the literature, then?”

“Yes.” Reese shifted on the squishy chair. “It was a little vague on how it actually works.”

“It’s based on the premise that when one portion of the brain is damaged, other portions can take on some of those tasks.” She pointed to a cutaway drawing of a brain on a flip chart. Her voice grew more and more animated as she talked. “We’ve always been stymied in our attempts to make this happen, though, probably because of our lack of understanding in how it works. What Dr. Studtgart does is implant a stimulator to create pulses of electricity—just like what travels through your nerves—so other areas of the brain think the damaged area is still working.” She flipped to the next diagram, which showed a red device inside the brain and yellow lightning-bolt shaped symbols, presumably meant to demonstrate the stimulator working.

“How many surgeries has he done so far?” Reese asked.

“A few dozen. Ninety percent of the patients have shown some functional improvement. This man—” The doctor fumbled through files and papers until she found a thin binder, then a page with before and after pictures. She held up the book so Reese could see. “He damaged the same area of his brain that your husband did.” She pointed to the first picture, where the man was lying on his side, fists curled into his chest, one of Brian’s frequent positions.

Brian didn’t injure his brain, someone else did.
Anger rose. To douse it, Reese concentrated on the “after” picture. The guy was still in bed, but now he was sitting up and smiling. The smile looked crooked, and his eyes were still vacant, but there was obvious improvement.

“Is it worth it?” she asked. “I mean, he’ll still never have a normal life, right? Won’t increasing his awareness just make him more affected by the horror of it?”

“This was the fifth surgery Dr. Studtgart did,” Langstrom said, holding up a finger. “Take a look at the twentieth.”

By the time Reese left, the doctor had shown her enough data to convince her it was worth investigating. Even with the costs she’d have to pay herself, even with the risks involved, they had to try.

Even though the nature of the implanted electrical stimulator meant Reese might never again be able to go near her husband.

There were tests to be done, evaluations and planning, so there was time before she knew if the surgery was even possible, never mind what would come after. But it still set a ticking clock on her activities. If Brian woke up, if he remembered her and what had happened, she didn’t want to have to tell him there’d been no justice for them.

She used the drive home to refocus on the job. Griff’s lack of progress frustrated her, even though she hadn’t really given him much time yet. She wanted to break into the
Alpine Nirvana
house immediately, certain, despite logic, that as soon as she did, she’d know her enemy’s name. But she tamped down her eagerness. Taking advantage of opportunity was one thing; going off half-cocked would put her in jail.

Since starting this quest, she’d set certain rules. Never break into homes more frequently than once a week, usually a lot further apart. Never ignore Griff’s advice…unless it was “don’t do it.” “Do your homework,” however, was as basic as it got. She needed to scope out the area, the house, decide on a plan of action.

Jogging on her injured knee was a bad idea, and Andrew had probably increased patrols in The Charms because of the Snakewell break-in. So she’d have to wait, she decided, pulling into her driveway. In a few days, she could start her own patrols.

In the meantime, she’d mow her damn lawn.

…

The biggest obstacle she saw in getting into the Alpine house was the Rottweiler. Three nights later, after her knee had recovered, she started jogging up there again, her route keeping her away from the Snakewells and taking her past the new house twice. The place seemed unoccupied, since, on her first run-by, she saw the front gate was still secured by the shoelace she’d tied it with after blowing through.

On the way back, she stopped to tie her shoe and scope out the front yard she’d barely seen when she blew through it the other night.

Just inside the gate was an old-fashioned guardhouse. Judging by its coating of grime, the door hanging crookedly ajar, and missing shingles on the roof, it hadn’t been used in a long time. She couldn’t tell if the door was locked, but there was no evidence of electricity to the tiny building and the windows were empty, no glass in them. Property records showed this house was one of the first ones built in the neighborhood, so she guessed either they hadn’t employed a guard full time, or hadn’t cared if he was cold or wet.

The house was set back fifty yards or so, and there was no sign of the dog on the wide lawn dotted with tall trees. Someone had been caring for the property, but not frequently. The grass was on the short side, but branches had fallen to the ground and not been removed. She wondered who fed the dog.

There was no mailbox, not even a locked one. Like many of the residents of The Charms, the owner must get mail at the post office, assuming they got any at all. She’d asked a couple of innocuous questions at the bakery, but no one had ever seen anyone here. She hadn’t expected anything different, given the reclusive purpose of the area.