Escaping Grace: A Turning Grace Novel

Escaping Grace

A Turning Grace Novel

J.Q. Davis

Copyright © 2015 by JoAnna Quintana-Davis
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission of the author except where permitted by law.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover Image used under license from iStock.com

For Cassie, My Big’N

Prologue

Damn it. This phone was really a piece of work. I needed to remember to find the time to get a new one.

I kept one eye on the road and one on the stupid phone, hoping that somehow it would just magically fix itself. But that was the problem with technology these days. People become so reliant on it and use it constantly, until that one day you need it the most. Then it won’t work.

I was never big on the technological era the world was embarking on. If it were up to me, I would probably just have my hospital pager. But Eve was always pretty good at making sure we were up-to-date. She handled all of this stuff, including the upgrade of a new phone. Unfortunately, I’ve been working so much that I haven’t had a chance to even have a normal conversation with her. If I did have the time, we argued about how I never had the time. It was a vicious cycle.

I missed Eve…and my baby girl so much.

It’s sad that I haven’t been able to watch her grow much over the past few months. It was almost unbelievable that she’s already five years old. It seemed like only yesterday Eve and I were in the hallway of the maternity ward, watching our newborn baby girl through a glass window. She was the only one out of all the other newborns quietly lying in her bassinet, not crying.

She was so tiny. And that full head of hair! I just knew she would have gorgeous hair when she got older…just like her mom.

The roads were pretty clear. Usually LA traffic began an hour away from the city itself, which was about how far I was from home.

Eve called me days ago to inform me of Grace’s illness. We spoke briefly, and only long enough for her to tell me that Grace had come down with some kind of flu. Then we got into a massive fight before my phone shut off on its own. I couldn’t even remember what the fight was about. She frustrated me sometimes. Although I loved her so much, she didn’t give me a chance or any credit. I worked hard for our family, not just for me. Should there be a balance? Absolutely. But right now, at this moment, my career demanded all the attention.

I tried to tell her it wouldn’t always be this way. It was just temporary. But of course, the conversation ended badly. I think I might have even said some choice words that I knew I regretted now. The D word even reared its ugly head, but I didn’t want to divorce Eve. I never wanted that.

Eve was an amazing doctor and mother; the best I’d ever known. I knew that she would take care of our little Gracie. But this morning, my phone finally allowed a voice message to come through that she left a couple of days ago. She was bringing Grace to the hospital.

Had I known then, I would have dropped all of these ridiculous seminars and classes that I was required to take for the new hospital position. It was a brand new hospital being built near Sacramento. A position to be on the Board of Directors and head of the Orthopedics Department was offered to me.

It didn’t take much convincing to sway Eve’s decision to move there. She was on board one hundred percent, on account of the horrid traffic and millions of people that lived in LA. She wanted a quieter place to live.

I threw the phone onto the passenger’s seat, frustrated as all hell that it wouldn’t allow me to call her. I wanted to let her know that I was almost home.

God. She probably thought I was avoiding her. Or worse…seeing another woman. Which, if you asked me, would be a complete waste. I was in love with Eve from the moment I met her. The moment we walked into the same patient’s room.

This poor patient had been in a terrible motorcycle accident. He was a young man, I think still in his teens. He was racing motorcycles with his buddies, something I used to do as a kid.

His sports bike drifted on a turn and he lost control, colliding into a tree. The kid was lucky to be alive, but his injuries were critical. Broke almost every bone in his body and required him to have multiple surgeries.

Eve worked on his back and spine. I worked on all of the other broken bones and torn ligaments. We were able to fix him up pretty nicely. And Eve…well, she performed a miracle of course; made the kid walk again.

We both walked into his room to do our usual morning rounds. All it took was one look. One look into her stunning brown eyes and I was hooked. She stood at his bedside in her heels, a dress perfectly tailored to her body, and a white lab coat. She was so professional, yet so unbelievably sexy. Her confidence radiated off of her while she concentrated deeply on examining the poor boy’s surgical wounds.

She didn’t even notice me. At least I didn’t think so. And it took days before I could muster up enough guts to ask her out. She was pretty intimating.

A few raindrops fell onto the windshield. I hoped and prayed it didn’t start to rain. It was enough that I was speeding. I didn’t need to add wet roads to the equation. I always remembered Driving 101: The road is most slippery upon first rain.

The truth was that I was desperate to get home. Or get to the hospital. If Eve brought Grace there, I knew it had to be serious.

And believe it or not…I needed Eve. I’ve always needed Eve. I vowed to myself that I would fix all the problems we had. After all, she was the love of my life.

Feeling the need to hear her voice, I reached over to grab my useless phone from the passenger seat. It probably wouldn’t work, but I had to at least try.

I couldn’t feel the phone so I glanced over, just for a second, to find it. It was in the middle of the night, and the dim, green light illuminating the dashboard was not enough to light up the seat.

My peripheral vision spotted the headlights coming directly toward me like a train. I was confused. Why would a car be in my lane…facing toward me?

Thanks to my reflexes, I immediately turned my attention back to the road. I swerved to the right, trying to dodge the car heading straight for mine.

I could suddenly feel the entire car spin. I turned the wheel to the left, then back to the right, hoping to straighten out. But the tires weren’t even screeching, and I knew it was the first rain sliding me all over the road.

I was on a highway. Thankfully there weren’t many cars around for me to hit. On one side was opposing traffic. On the other side was a ditch. I knew I was going to end up on one of those sides because I couldn’t get a handle on my vehicle. It now had a mind of its own.

Wait, was I on a bridge? I wasn’t sure. My mind was clouded with some many thoughts that I couldn’t remember what the terrain was like before I reached for my phone.

But while I tried to figure it out, my body suddenly felt like it was coming up out of my seat.

I closed my eyes, preparing for the fall. It felt like I would never land…like I was flying and there was no ground underneath me. I tried to think of Eve’s face…of Grace’s face. I tried to remember all of the good and happiness they brought into my life. I tried to remember what it felt like to kiss Eve’s lips or to see Gracie smile and—

~~~~

My eyelids felt like bricks. I couldn’t open them all the way, only enough for a little sliver of light to burn my retinas. My body was a different story. It felt like it was being weighed down by an 18-wheeler.

I could feel that I was lying on something soft and there was a beeping nearby. I tried to move my head, but that was unsuccessful. A terrible pain shot down from my neck to my lower back, causing me to moan out loud.

“Ah, Jack. You’re awake.”

I knew that voice.

I fought against my heavy eyelids and pried them open with every muscle my face would allow me to use. Once they were open, a blurred man in a white lab coat came into view.

“How are you feeling?”

That voice sounded so familiar.

My eyelids were threatening to close, but I managed to somehow keep them open. I focused in on the man standing beside me. His face began to refine out of the blurriness, like the pixels of a digital picture uploading on a computer. My mind was slowly registering who it was.

“You must be thirsty.” He lowered a cup with a straw down to my face.

He read my mind.

After taking a large gulp of the water, I swallowed a few times to clear the dryness.

“Mark?”

“Yeah, buddy. It’s me. Dr. Mark Roberson.”

Chapter 1

The Trip

Alone.

In my seventeen years, being alone was not a concept that I thought about often. Sure, I was an only child. Sure, I really didn’t have much family. Just my mother. And recently I found out that I had an aunt. But, I never
really
felt alone
.

I made friends along the way. I always had someone to talk to. Phoebe was around for the majority of my life. She was my best friend from the moment we met in grade school. And when we realized that we were “Soul Buddies”, there was no question that she would be around forever.

When Tristen Miles came into the picture, it was short…but oh so good. I could honestly look into his eyes and see a future with him. Crazy, I know! We had only been whatever we were for a total of…three days? Okay, maybe seventeen years wasn’t long enough to even grasp seeing a future with only one person, but I didn’t care. The fact that it was a possibility was enough.

But now, there was no one. I was alone.

I sat on a brown leather couch in the yacht, staring out into the ocean. I slept for most of the thirty-two hours we had been in the middle of what seemed to be nowhere. But the scenery was stunning. Miles and miles of water, seeming as though it was dropping off the Earth where the sun met the edge. I glanced down at my hands. The wire from my earbuds was tangled in my fingers. My iPod was resting on the vacant spot next to me. I took them off about thirty minutes back, feeling the need to think without the sound of Coldplay blaring in my ears. I listened to them particularly when I was in a…thinking kind of mood.

I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder. “Grace, we are going to be docking in about twenty minutes. If you look over that way, you can see the bay.”

I nodded and turned in the direction of where Dr. Roberson was pointing. I felt him turn his gaze to me, but I didn’t return it. As a matter of fact, I didn’t talk to him much at all throughout our travels. Not that I was upset with him. I just didn’t know how to feel about any of this just yet.

Two days ago, I was told that I was a zombie.

Okay…well, Dr. Mark Roberson said otherwise.

A person that ate stray, domestic animals right off the street? Well, maybe that could happen. And I was sure that happened in other countries on a daily basis.

A person who bites a girls arm almost clear off in the middle of a tousle? Maybe that person was defending themselves. What’s the name of that boxer who bit off the other boxer’s ear? Mike Tyson?

A person who wakes up in the middle of the night to eat their best friend? Hmm…yeah. That person was a zombie.

However, according to Dr. Roberson, that term was from the movies and he didn’t like to use it. Instead, I was “Patient Zero”.

When I first heard that name, we just boarded the bus in San Jose. Dr. Roberson was on his satellite phone, I was assuming with his personnel, and stated that, “We just boarded the bus and will be there with Patient Zero in another day or so.”

I instantly hated the title. For some reason, the name made me feel like I wasn’t even a person. Like I was some kind of…thing. Or like I wasn’t human.

But I guess I
wasn’t
human. Not completely anyway. Half of me was human, functioning in all the ways it should be. The other half was zombie, constantly demanding the right food to function like a human would.

Unfortunately, the fact that I decided to keep to myself and hardly speak a word to anyone around me during the trip caused my mind to wander off into all of the dark and secluded areas hidden within. I thought about the days before I left. The horrible scenes replayed over and over in a constant loop. The cat. Sonny Westwood’s arm. Phoebe.

The fresh smell of blood and flesh still lingered in my nose. I could feel little Fluffy’s neck shattering in my fingertips. I could see Sonny’s pained expression clearly, along with everyone else’s fear that night at the party. I could hear Phoebe’s boyfriend, Eric, sobbing in the corner of his bedroom for his girlfriend while I straddled her lifeless body and held her guts in my hands.

Those memories would be seared into my brain for as long as I lived…or didn’t.

I could feel the waves under the boat, carrying it to the dock. Everyone inside the cabin began shuffling around, packing all of their belongings. There were only five of us, two of which were Dr. Roberson’s secret agent-like bodyguards, and the other was a woman who spoke to Dr. Roberson the entire time we were traveling. Every chance they had, they were going over folders of documents and discussing God knows what. I didn’t care to eavesdrop. 

Dr. Roberson came over to me once again. “Are you about ready to finally get off this boat?” he asked with a chuckle.

I nodded and stood up.

“Are you hungry?”

“No, not really,” I mumbled.

“Okay, well I will ask you that question again once we get to the facility. I’m sure your mind will have changed by then.”

I nodded again, completely agreeing with him. The days of constantly feeling as though I hadn’t eaten in months were gone. Since the moment we began our journey, Dr. Roberson kept to his word by making sure I was fed. As soon as we boarded the first private plane from New Orleans to Miami, he pointed me in the direction of a giant buffet table of food (yes, on the plane). Even though I was not that hungry because of the large um…meal I had the night before, I was still curious to try out what he was offering.

Apparently, I had been eating
humans
since I was a little girl. Mom confessed to me before I departed that she was secretly cooking with it. All the way down to her famous pomegranate juice. After giving it a whole lot of thought, the pieces of the puzzle began to fit perfectly. Reasons behind her actions rose to the top of the pool of lies, such as her working as an assistant to a forensic pathologist (which was only to be close to the recently deceased bodies in order to steal their flesh), never wanting to eat anywhere except at home, and always cooking.

Dr. Roberson’s food did not taste or look much different than my mothers. When I approached the buffet table, I scanned it thoroughly, out of curiosity really. In my mind, I was expecting to actually see brains and body parts covered in a bloody sauce and lined with hair. That’s what zombies ate, right?

But to my surprise, it all looked the same. Just like Mom’s chicken pot pie and bacon-wrapped fritters and roast beef and fried chicken.

And when I decided to taste a cocktail meatball, I was pleasantly pleased. It was almost exactly like Mom’s! This made me feel a tiny bit better about agreeing to move to Costa Rica for further treatment of my “condition”. I could at least hold on to something familiar.

I could feel the boat halt suddenly, and I knew we were docked. Anxiety crept up through me, similar to what I felt when I was boarding the plane in New Orleans. I was getting ready to embark on something new. Something unknown. And I was scared out of my mind.

The raindrops felt nice on my skin as I stepped off the boat. My eyes instantly darted to the beautiful waterfall that cascaded down the side of a cliff. I squinted as I looked up, trying to keep the rain from falling inside of my eyes.

“Miss Watkins, here!” Secret Agent Number One came rushing to my side with an umbrella, although a part of me didn’t want him to. The cool beads of rain were refreshing.

“Thank you,” I said.

I didn’t know their names. Like I said, I kept to myself and my earbuds the entire trip. I could tell the two bodyguards apart simply because Number One was bald, the other wasn’t. Also, Number One seemed to be quite kind to me. He stuck by my side through most of the time I’ve known him: opening doors for me, asking me if I was hungry, and sitting near me most of the way here. I briefly wondered if maybe he was assigned to me or something.

We walked together down the pier, reaching two Jeep Wranglers with a driver in each, ready to go. Dr. Roberson, the woman, and Number Two hopped into the first one. Number One laid a hand on the small of my back, gesturing me for the second Jeep. I allowed him to lead the way. He opened the door for me, and I took a seat in the back. He walked around to the other side, opening the door and sitting beside me.

I took note of this, adding another really nice thing he had done for me, considering the front seat was empty.

I glanced at the driver from the side. He was dark-skinned and thin, wearing a hat that reminded me of something people wore during an archeologist excavation. He kept quiet and started the car once we were in.

We began our drive, following Dr. Roberson’s Jeep down a muddy trail.

I admired the waterfall again before it was out of view, realizing then that it was the first time I had ever even seen one in real life. As we drove closer, I leaned toward it, hoping that I could hear the sound of the water crashing at the bottom. However, the window on Number One’s side was closed and the rain was drowning it out.

Number One noticed almost immediately what I was trying to do, and found the button on his door for the window to come down. He powered it down all the way, allowing the tranquil sound of water rushing to surround the inside of the Jeep. I hadn’t smiled in days, and this moment changed that.

I glanced at him while he continued to face forward. Raindrops were colliding with his face, but he kept his serious composure.

“You can roll it back up,” I said, feeling a little bit guilty for making him get all wet.

I reached down into my Hobo bag to find my travel-sized baggie of tissues and handed him one.

“Thank you, Miss Watkins.”

“You can call me Grace.”

He blotted his face.

I turned to look out of my window. We were entering what seemed to be the beginning of a vast forest. Green was all I could see.

“So, are you assigned to me?” I asked without looking over in his direction. I decided to just come out with it already. Maybe I should get to know at least one person while I was here.

“I guess you could say that, yes,” Number One responded.

“Oh.” I was right. I had my own personal bodyguard. Hmm…this made me wonder. Was there a need for me to have a bodyguard? What was he guarding me from exactly?

The rain seemed to be coming down harder, making it difficult for me to sightsee. I decided to turn my attention to Number One.

I examined him for a moment while he looked ahead. He sat stiffly in a well-fitted navy suit. He was a big guy, a really big guy. His height reminded me of Phoebe’s boyfriend Eric, about six feet or so. I obviously couldn’t see what was underneath the suit, but by the way his chest firmly jutted outward and his arms seemed as though they could be about the size of both my thighs put together, I assumed he was a body builder of sorts. His bald head glistened from the rain that came in through the window. His facial features were strong and very masculine, almost like a sculpture made of stone.

He turned and glanced at me, probably because he felt I was looking at him, and I stared into his eyes for the first time. They were as blue as the ocean we were just on.

I quickly turned away, feeling a bit awkward that he caught me. I thought about asking him what his name was, but decided not to. I was sure I’d find out sooner or later.

We drove for another twenty minutes before we finally came to a halt in front of a large steel gate. Dr. Roberson’s Jeep pulled up to a tollbooth. After about a minute, the steel gate opened and an arm reached out of the booth’s window to wave the Jeep through.

Our Jeep rolled forward, stopping next to the booth.

“¿Cõmo estãs, Jose?” our driver asked.

“Muy bueno, Carlos. La lluvia es malo hoy, ¿eh?”

“Los mismo que cualquier otro día,” our driver chuckled out.

Jose gestured for us to proceed. “¡Que tengas un buen día!”

Man! I needed to learn Spanish.

We drove through the gate and pulled to a stop in front of what I was assuming to be the facility. Although my nerves were killing me, I was happy to finally be somewhere.

I peeked out of the window as Number One stepped out to open the umbrella. I couldn’t see much due to the dark, gloomy weather and rain that was bearing down on us. However, what I could see was a small, one-story brick building with an arched entryway. Above the arch, large, brown letters protruded out of the brick wall that read: EVERLASTING PARADISE.