Forster, Suzanne (45 page)

It was a glorious summer evening. The sun hovered over the foothills like a stage-struck entertainer, refusing to leave the proscenium before it lit up the indigo sky with one last burst of burnt-orange glory. Warmed by the conflagration, Jack skipped up the short flight of front steps to the mansion, a stuffed hippo tucked backward under his arms. He was puffing from having jogged up the long driveway, but luck was with him as he opened the front door and entered the house. The woman he was looking for was right there in the foyer, assaulting the bric-a-brac with a bright yellow feather duster.

"Where's the brat, Mrs. Brightly?"

Frances Brightly looked him over haughtily. It was clear she didn't approve of anything about him, from his well-worn chinos and black collarless shirt to the dark, spiky-soft hair on his head. The woman who'd sold him the hippo earlier that day had flushed visibly and told him he looked like the Diet Coke guy's evil twin. It had seemed to work for her, but apparently Frances B. didn't agree.

"If you mean Gus," she said brusquely, "she hasn't come in yet. She had a full schedule today, including a doctor's appointment."

"Doctor's appointment?"

"Annual checkup. I assume that's what's held her up. "

Gus Featherstone at the doctor? An unbelievably hot thought crossed Jack's mind that had to do with Gus in stirrups and him between her legs. He laughed and flushed as hotly as the Venice Beach vendor, which got another suspicious look from the housekeeper. "Actually, " he explained, "I meant the kid—Bridget. "

"Didn't you see her out front?" The housekeeper tucked the feather duster under her arm and slipped her hands into the pockets of her gray cardigan sweater. "She was on the front steps a moment ago. I was just going to call her for dinner. "

"I'll do it." He patted the hippo's rump. "I want to give her this anyway. "

Bridget wasn't on the steps or anywhere in sight as Jack descended the stairway and strode toward the fenced perimeter of the estate. As he reached the gate his uneasiness rose. It wasn't completely closed, and the night-duty guard wasn't in the booth.

"Bridget!" he yelled, spotting the little girl across the road. Somehow she'd gotten out, crossed the highway, and she was playing on the shoulder of the road.

"Hi, Jack!" She sprang up and waved. "It's a squirrel! Look, I'm feeding it peanuts!"

"Wait!" he called as she started across the road toward him. He could hear the roar of an oncoming car, but Bridget kept coming, seemingly oblivious of the wildly flashing headlights.

The car careened toward her, galvanizing Jack. He scaled the fence as if it weren't there and sprinted toward the road. But before he could get to the child, the car careened wildly and came straight at him.

"Look out!" he shouted, diving for her. He managed to shove her out of the way, but he couldn't save himself. REDHOTTT, the letters of a specialized license plate, ripped through his mind as the car ripped through his body.

He was wide awake as the car plowed into him. He was so agonizingly alert he could hear the crunch and snap of his own bones, and the shriek of the child's terror. The impact lifted him off the asphalt and flung him into the air as if he were weightless, and through it all, he was aware of everything, every bloodred streak of sunset pouring through the silhouetted trees, every gleaming white pebble on the roadside. There was a strange, joyous freedom in the flight, as if he might never come down, but as his body cartwheeled endlessly and began to plummet, he saw the ground leaping up at him like a howling black wolf.

He hit so violently he could feel his teeth shake loose from his head, his backbone snap like a bow, and his skull split wide open. He could hear every creak and crash of his terrible collision with the earth, but he could feel nothing. There was no pain, nothing but a dark, fleshy pressure.

It occurred to him as he lay there in the wetness that was seeping out of him that his own blood was rushing to warm and comfort and cushion him. It also occurred to him that he was going to die incomplete, without having kept his date with the blindfolded woman, Justice. The killers of his child would go free, they would never pay for their wanton destruction, and there was more agony in that realization than in whatever was happening to his body.

The last thing he saw before he gave in to the deadly black floodtide that was engulfing him was the red Mercedes speeding away from him. Gus's Mercedes.

Chapter 24

Jack couldn't open his eyes the sunlight was so ragingly bright. He turned his head into the ground to block out the blinding rays and slowly pushed himself to a sitting position, but even when he had himself there, with his arms fully extended, he couldn't seem to escape the white heat. What he could see of his hands looked as if they'd been bleached to the color of skeletal bones. What he could see of the world looked as if nuclear winter had taken place and left it in ashes.

There was noise. He could hear static hissing and buzzing in his ears, but he couldn't make it out.

Bridget.
Through slitted lids, he fought to bring the little girl into focus. She was curled up in a ball across the road, her head tucked into her knees, much like the position he'd found her aunt Gus in when he'd crawled out of the snakepit. The child hadn't been hit. He was reasonably sure of that, but she was probably suffering from shock.

There was pain now, deep, tearing pain that radiated mostly from his gut and chest area. He couldn't determine his own injuries because he couldn't make out the details. If there was blood it had been bleached as white as everything else. He did feel a terrible piercing force as he rocked to his knees and then to his feet, but getting to Bridget was the only thing on his mind. What mattered was that his body was moving. He could walk.

His eyes were watering copiously from the glare. Light ricocheted dazzlingly off the road, and the background noise in his mind was like white noise coming through a headset. It was growing louder, harsher. Beyond the static, there were bells and pinging, melodious sounds, voices whispering.

"Bridget?" he said as he knelt down next to the little girl. She sprang up and gaped at him. "Daddy! I thought you were dead!"

Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!
The word shrieked endlessly in Jack's head. The burning lights made him squeeze his eyes shut, and his heart pounded wildly. He dropped to his knees, to his elbows, and then he toppled over.

"Daddy!"
she shrieked.

Jack felt someone jerking at his arms, opening his clothing. There were hands all over his body and people were talking excitedly.

"His heart rate's going crazy!" someone said.

"He's lucky to have a heart rate, " another countered. "Christ, he should have been dead. "

"The wet grass saved him. It was soaked down from the sprinklers. "

"The grass saved his ass!"

Laughter erupted around him, and Jack tried to open his eyes, but could only manage it for an instant. The light was painful. Unbearable. He was surrounded by huge, grinning figures in white—dazzling blue-white—with halos as big and bright as the moon.

Was he dead?

Were there hospitals in heaven?

Something jerked at his arm.

"Blood pressure's dropping, " a voice announced.

"Palpate his abdomen for internal injuries. He could have a gusher inside. "

A door opened and slammed. A curtain zinged shut.

"His wife's out there, raising hell, demanding to know his condition. "

"Isn't she that model? Gus Featherstone?"

"The beautiful brat? He's married to
her?"

"That should give him something to live for."

Live for? Jack's heart surged again, wildly, as he remembered Gus's car coming straight at him, plowing into him head-on and flinging him thirty feet in the air.
She was the one trying to kill him.

"But I must see him," Gus demanded. "He's my
husband.
I have a right to know his condition, to talk to him. "

"I'm sorry." The nursing supervisor glanced at her watch and sighed, a clear indication that she was wearying of the battle to fend off Gus. "My orders are no visitors. I don't know how I can make that any more clear. Your husband doesn't want to see anyone, Mrs. Culhane, and I'm afraid that includes you. Those are the instructions he left with the attending doctor. I am sorry. "

It was nearly dawn and Gus had been at the hospital all night without food, sleep, or contact with anyone who was willing to give her information. She was frustrated enough to do bodily harm to the plumpish, graying woman, but she was determined not to cause a scene and risk having the place overrun with tabloid reporters. She'd been haunting the nurses' station since she found out about Jack's accident, hoping to talk to someone with the authority to override the supervisor's "instructions. "

She'd been told it was a hit-and-run, that his condition had stabilized, that he was out of recovery and resting in his room. Beyond that they would tell her nothing, not even the extent of his injuries.

"When can I talk to his doctor?" she asked, forcing a calmer tone, though she was anything but. She'd clasped her hands and nearly rubbed the skin under her thumb raw.

She simply had to see him, for so many reasons. "I was told he hasn't been here since admitting Jack last night. Doesn't he do rounds? What kind of doctor is he?"

"The doctors generally do rounds after their office hours. He'll be in this afternoon, I'm sure. Excuse me, " she said as a soft bing sounded, followed by a voice echoing through the hospital paging system. "They're calling me. "

She was off down the hallway before Gus could say anything else, not that it would have helped. Since no one was willing to move the hurdles out of the way, Gus was going to have to find a way over them. She'd been eavesdropping on conversations all morning, hoping to pick up something, and at one point, she'd overheard the supervisor give a candy striper instructions to replenish the water pitcher in a patient's room. His last name had sounded like Jack's. Now all Gus had to do was find the room and enter unnoticed.

The room was on the seventh floor, and to her great relief, there was no one in the corridor when she found the number. Conflict flooded her as she let herself in and saw him lying in the hospital bed, unconscious. She simply couldn't sort out her feelings for the man. She was torn between a crazy desire to run away and an even crazier need to rush to him. She wanted to pour out her heart to his silent, sleeping form and tell him everything that was welling up inside her, hoping that he could hear her, and that he would understand her plight. She had things to tell him that she knew would astound and confound him, things she didn't know how to say. Worse, she was riddled with guilt and fear, and she loathed both emotions.

She'd had no idea how badly he was hurt, but the only injuries she could see now were a bandage on his forehead and a Styrofoam-like cast on his shoulder. Other than that, he seemed to be sleeping peacefully. At least he wasn't clinging to life inside an oxygen tent. Bridget had been so hysterical, the poor kid had made it sound as if he'd been torn limb from limb.

She walked to his bedside and stood there for a moment, watching him breathe and trying to decide what to do. There were multiple cuts on his face, and the large gauze bandage on his forehead looked as if it were covering a nasty bump. She was almost glad she couldn't see the disturbing blue glints of light in his black irises. They always threw her for a loop, his eyes. For now it was enough dealing with the way he looked as he slept.

She hadn't realized his lashes were quite so long or that the width of his mouth was as sensual as it was sensitive. But it was the lacerations on his face that pulled at her, stirring an entirely new contest within her. The cuts and bruises decorating his rugged features made him look surprisingly vulnerable and tender to the touch. It was all she could do to resist the temptation.

Her hand quickened a little with the urge.

Restraint, she decided, was a greatly overrated virtue.

As she bent closer, poised to glide her fingers over the proud flesh beneath his cheekbone, she saw his lashes quiver.

"Oh!" she cried, jerking back as his eyes flicked open.

She might have run if she hadn't been so startled. He didn't move, didn't speak. He simply stared at her with the eerie calm of a man who'd been waiting for her to come that close. Lying in wait. There was no confusion in his gaze, no drowsy remnants of sleep, just cold, deadly questions.

"What are you doing in here?" he asked, his voice as glacial as his eyes. Black ice, those eyes. That's how cold they were.

She moved back, seized again with the urge to run. "They wouldn't let me in.... I-I had to see how you were. "

He looked her up and down, taking in her Chanel suit and stiletto heels with undisguised contempt. "Who are we today? Dress-up Barbie?"

"I had meetings, " she started apologetically. "I came the moment I heard. "

"Really? Did you? Shame I'm not on life support, isn't it. You could have pulled the plug. "

She kept backing away from the bed. "What is it?" she asked him, unable to force her voice much above the whisper-level of his own. "What's wrong with you?"

With some effort he pushed himself up to a sitting position. "Someone ran their Mercedes into me and left me for dead. Excuse me if I'm not as chipper as usual. "

"They told me it was a hit-and-run, but you're all right, aren't you? Your injuries don't look that serious, I mean—"

"The doctor tells me it's a miracle I'm alive. The police report said I was thrown thirty feet into a ditch alongside the road. Fortunately it was overgrown with grass and soaked down with runoff water from the estate's sprinklers. "

"Thank God for that."

"I'm not done, Gus. The report also said I was hit by a red Mercedes convertible with a personalized license plate. "

"A red Mercedes... like mine?"

He stared at her long and hard. "Just like yours, Gus." His mouth twisted into an ugly shape as he added,
"Exactly
like yours. R-E-D-H-O-T-T-T? Ring a bell?"