Fated (6 page)

Hart pressed his key fob, listening for the telltale chirp. A violent burst of heat washed over him, scorching his left side and part of his back as he turned away on instinct. The noise alone knocked him over, so loud it made him cry out. Then the world went silent, and when the pain overloaded his system, his mind went blissfully black.

“L
IEUTENANT
. L
IEUTENANT
,
can you hear me? Hart?”

If you stopped mumbling, maybe
. Hart dragged himself reluctantly from the depths of a profoundly satisfying sleep. Why was someone waking him up, and why did the voice sound like it was traveling through murky water?

“Temporary hearing difficulty isn’t unheard of after an explosion like that.” This came through much better on his right, and Hart had no trouble identifying that voice. “His left side took the brunt of it; you might have more success over here.”

“What explosion,” Hart mumbled, but it could’ve been just a groan. His mouth felt like someone had taken a sander to his tongue. Trying to blink sent a spike of agony through his brain, and he squeezed his eyes closed again. Not an improvement. Slowly becoming more aware of his surroundings, he noticed how stiff and uncomfortable his left side felt. His arm was oddly numb. His left cheek prickled and stung when he moved his head, and the light seeping through his closed eyelids seemed unnaturally bright.

“Don’t try to open your eyes yet.” Yep, that was definitely Toby. “You hit your head pretty hard.” A door opened, and Toby’s voice changed pitch like he’d turned away from Hart. “Close those blinds, would you please, nurse?” It became more pronounced again. “Freddie’s here with you. You’re in the ER at Brightly General.” Hart noticed Toby didn’t bother mentioning who he was and didn’t know whether to be annoyed or amused that Toby assumed Hart would recognize his voice.

“What happened?” he croaked. “And can I get a drink of water?”

“Your car exploded in the Main Street parking lot. You were thrown back by the blast. The heat burned your left arm, side, and cheek, but not badly. None of that should scar except the underside of your wrist. You currently have an IV with a mild painkiller in your right arm, and I’m afraid that will have to do until the ER doctor has seen your scans and X-rays.”

“My what?”

“To make sure there’s no brain injury or internal bleeding due to broken ribs or whatever.” That was Freddie, her voice sharp now. Hart risked blinking his eyes open. A shape blurred in his vision before it cleared. Toby looked pale as he hovered over Hart.

“How long was I out?”

Toby lifted his wrist and felt for a pulse, even though Hart had one of those things on his fingertip. “You woke up before the ambulance arrived, and then passed out again shortly before you got here. You’ve been slipping in and out ever since, but it’s normal that you don’t remember after a trauma like that.”

“I don’t remember anything. I went to—” buy a suit so he’d look less like a mess. His cheeks warmed.

“You all right? Do you need to throw up?”

He shook his head at Freddie, something he immediately regretted, and he closed his eyes again. It didn’t stop the bed from spinning.

“The temporary memory loss is perfectly normal, really. Nothing to worry about. And there’s something for nausea in your IV too. Why don’t I go find you some ice cubes, Lieutenant. Don’t try to get up yet. We’ll be right back.”

“Wait,” Hart said, everything finally sinking in. “My car exploded?”

He didn’t get an answer. Freddie and Toby had already disappeared through the white hospital room door. Dappled sunlight fell through the partly closed blinds, no longer hurting so much now that Hart’s eyes had adjusted. If there had been any doubts left as to whether or not the coma was related to the murders, the perp just erased all of those. It took some balls, though, to install a bomb in broad daylight in the middle of town. But why? What could they possibly gain from taking Hart out at this stage? He still had nothing: no suspects, no motive, no means. Nothing. The only thing that had changed was… the photographs of the marks.

Hart sat up carefully and waited. His head spun a little, but it settled after a minute or so, and he could blink and turn without becoming nauseated. Quietly rising to his feet, he studied the monitor next to his bed and flicked the off-button when he found it. The wires on his chest came off easily—he’d deal with the stickers on his chest hair later—and the thing on his finger had already fallen off. That left the IV. Part of him would’ve liked to remain attached to the source of his numbed side and arm, but he’d hardly be inconspicuous if he walked around with the stand. The cupboard over the sink revealed cotton wool and adhesive strips, and Hart grabbed a few of each.

“Shit.” Blood dribbled from his forearm as soon as Hart pulled the cannula free, and as he tried to stem it with the cotton balls, he noticed clear liquid dripping from the end of the plastic tip. He shoved it in his sheets, slapped a Band-Aid on his forearm, and then found the little roller to turn the IV off. There was a large bloodstain on his hospital gown, but since he didn’t plan on wearing it for a second longer, he didn’t care. Pulling his pants on first, Hart peered around the door. Down the hall, Freddie stood talking on the phone; Toby was a little ways behind her, signing a chart. He had a cup full of what Hart guessed were ice cubes in his free hand.

Fitting back into his T-shirt was harder, not in the least because one side of it was stained and tattered, blood crusting off and falling to the floor. Stretching his arm sent a flare of pain up his shoulder on his bandaged side.

“Fuck,” Hart swore under his breath, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that. He’d run out of time.

Silently slipping through the door, Hart made his way to Toby’s office down the corridor. He’d let three people in on the existence of the marks right before someone tried to blow him up, and two of them belonged to the police force. While that didn’t automatically put Freddie or Miller above suspicion, his gut told him the answer had to lie with Toby somehow. Toby had witnessed Hart taking photographic evidence of the mark.

No one stopped him, not even when he pushed the door to Toby’s office open. It still sat as tidy and impersonal as when he’d last left it. Hart closed the door behind him with a snick and waited, but no one came. As fast as he could, Hart opened drawers and cabinets, letting his eyes fly over files and names that meant nothing to him. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, but when he found the
D
files, Drake’s wasn’t there. Hart let the file drawer slide shut. Maybe Toby kept active cases in his desk.

The door opened, and in walked Toby, head bent toward his pager or whatever doctors used these days. Worry lines spidered his forehead, until he looked up, and his eyes widened.

“There you are! God, Freddie’s calling reinforcements to look for you. Hang on.” He dug his phone out of his doctor’s coat, swiped it with his thumb, and held it to his ear. “I got him,” Toby said, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “Yeah, he’s in my office.” A laugh startled out of him, and to Hart’s surprise, his cheekbones flushed high and red. “I doubt that, but yeah, I’ll bring him back.” When he hung up and lifted his eyes to Hart again, the smile didn’t entirely fade, but it lost some of its light. “Looking for something in particular?”

“I—” To his horror, Hart felt himself beginning to redden too. What had he been thinking? “I’m—” He resisted the urge to rub his eyes. It felt like the explosion had left debris in them. “I’m not thinking straight. I got it into my head—”

“That it was me who planted that bomb?”

Hart stared at Toby, not knowing what to say. He seemed sad, but not surprised by the meaning of the silence.

“I get it, okay? You tell someone who’s got nothing to do with the case about your findings, and a few hours later you almost get killed. But if it means anything to you, I’ve been in surgery from the moment you left, literally until they brought you in. You can check with the nursing staff, my resident, and the anesthesiologist. The patient not so much, since I hope he was very much asleep.”

Hart felt like an absolute fool. He made his way back to the door, but he stopped when he stood side by side with Toby. Turning his head, but not looking up, Hart asked, “How come you happened to be in the ER when they brought me in?”

“This is a small hospital. Sometimes I’m on call for trauma cases.”

“Right.” Hart gave him a small smile. “Why did Freddie think I was here in your office?”

Toby laughed but shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, she was just joking. Come on, I’ll walk you back. Your CT scan was clear, but you look like you’re about to pass out.”

“I thought it took ages to get those test results back.”

Toby waggled his eyebrows. “Good thing I’ve got connections.”

T
HE
STREETLIGHTS
did nothing to lift the grainy black of a moonless night. Hart’s childhood home lay in shadow. The old porch lantern had blown a long time ago, so he had to fit his key in the lock by the light of his phone.

Already the house had begun to lose its lived-in scent. A mild dampness seeped up from the basement, not strong enough yet to bother him beyond an indistinct ache of loss. Hart walked through the hallway, over the thick Persian runner that had been new when he was five and now frayed at the edges, and flicked on the kitchen light. At least in here it smelled like scorched coffee. He rinsed out the coffeepot and refilled the machine with fresh water, even though sleep tugged at the edges of his awareness. A study filled with books patiently waited for him, and after he was done with that, a houseful of sentimentalities. With a defeated sigh, he switched off the coffee machine and pulled a bottle of red wine from his father’s rack instead.

The reason he’d wanted to start with the old study was simply because he thought it would be the easiest. He’d been wrong. Here the scent of pipe smoke still lingered strongly. A presence permeated the shape of the old armchair and the shadows the desk lamp threw over piles of books and papers. Hart downed the first glass of wine and refilled it. Unwise with the day he had behind him, but no one came forth to judge him.

Once this desk had belonged to both his parents. It was one of those double deals two people use at the same time. His mother’s side had always been meticulous. An antique fountain pen holder stood on the right, next to an inkwell that had long since dried out. A notebook rested in the middle of the brown leather desk pad, always straightened after use.

Dad’s side in comparison looked like a hurricane had passed through the house and dumped every single piece of paper on his side of the desk. It happened to be a particular kind of irony, then, that it was his mom who never could find anything. The inkwell and penholder were still visible, but over the years his father’s things had migrated from his side to cover the whole surface.

Hart took after her, with a bit of his father’s brilliant mind thrown in. The combination had made him number one at the police academy, not that his father had ever acknowledged the achievement for what it was. His father’s disappointment, while never verbalized, still hung heavy like a cloak, dragging Hart’s shoulders down.

“Goddammit.” Hart softly placed his empty glass on a ripped book cover without the actual book in it, and he walked over to a cabinet that stretched from the door all the way to the end of the room. The first six shelves behind the glass doors would be emptied easily. Hart had no interest in his father’s collection of Greek and Roman philosophers. The secondhand bookstore on Main Street would be delighted with those. If it still existed after that blast.

The next two shelves were his mother’s romance and mystery novels. He’d go through those quickly, keep a few of the Agatha Christies maybe. The rest of it, though, hundreds and hundreds of books, he would have to look at one by one. There were real treasures in there. First editions, autographed books by his father’s friends and colleagues, gifts autographed by famous authors now long dead. If he dared throw one of those away, his dad would rise from the dead and haunt him.

Grabbing one of the empty boxes he’d put together earlier, he began to pull the philosophy books from their shelves, inhaling the faint vanillin scent their brittle pages released. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle left the biggest dust marks behind like they’d been left on their shelves the longest. Made sense, Hart supposed, since his dad had probably known them all by heart. In English, Latin, and Greek.

He grabbed a handful of books at once, so he never would find out which one the paper fell out of. As he stooped to collect it from the box, he noticed it was yellowed and empty, apart from one line written in a hand he knew oh so well.

A father’s heart swells with pride. It’s difficult to only want the best.

The piece of paper drifted from Hart’s fingers again, coming to a silent stop on top of Aristotle’s sketched face. He couldn’t do this. Not tonight, not after being awake for so long. Not after dealing with Drake and Toby and on top of that nearly being blown to pieces. He grabbed the half-empty wine bottle, downed one more glass, and poured the rest into the sink. This could wait until tomorrow.

Hart made his way up the stairs, avoiding the books piled on each step. When his mom was still alive, she’d endlessly complained about his father leaving books everywhere.
I don’t know how it happens, sweetheart. It’s like they have a mind of their own.
She’d said she felt like a Border collie trying to herd them all back into the library. But ask Jonathan Hart where one of his books was and he’d hand it over within two minutes.

Hart was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, mouth white with minty foam as he eyed the red mark on his cheek, when his phone chimed in his back pocket. He fished it out and swiped the screen.

Are you up?

Isaac.

Yes
, Hart replied, spitting into the sink and rinsing his mouth, eyes on the little bubble telling him Isaac was replying.