Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (78 page)

I closed my eyes and tried to remember purple. My high school soccer jersey was purple.

Hey,” Ty said. “Isn’t that your friend from the bar out there?”

I got up and looked outside. Someone was standing in the street, looking at the house.

“What’s she doing here?” I said.

It was hard to see her face, but it was Paloma, dressed in a flowing skirt that whipped around her in the breeze. She just stood there, staring.

“I’m going to see what she wants,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

She must have been looking for me, but I couldn’t figure out how she knew where I was. 

“All right, but don’t be long. I’ll just be here missing you.”

I walked through a cloud of cigarette smoke and passed a group of people talking loudly on the front porch.

“Hey, Pal o’ mine,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

She didn’t say anything. She just nodded slowly and then held out her arms.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Look,” she said, her voice cracking. Black mascara streaked down her face. “Look at what he’s doing to me!”

I peered down at her arms in horror. I couldn’t be seeing it right. It must have been the moonlight or my mind playing tricks.

“Oh, my God,” I said.

On the inside of both arms, thick veins were bulging out of her skin from her wrists up to her elbows. And they were moving, creeping up and down, pushing up, like tiny snakes inside her. Whatever it was looked alive, using her arteries as passage ways and crawling through her body.

“It started an hour ago,” she said. “He’s in me, Abby! Help me! Please, help me.”

“Come inside,” I sputtered, not able to take my eyes off the moving veins. “Paloma. We’ll get you some help. Don’t worry.”

“Help me! He’s in here with me. He’s in me, Abby!”

I could feel the heat radiating off her body. I reached out and touched her forehead. She was on fire, a torrent of sweat pouring off her face. She started coughing, slapping at her forearms.

“Paloma,” I said. “Come inside. It’ll be all right.”

But looking at her arms I had a hard time imagining exactly how it would be all right.

“No!” she screamed, her voice echoing up and down the street. She started backing away, her crazed eyes darting back and forth.

I followed her. I could hear footsteps behind me. Ty caught up to me.

“You okay?” he said.

“Paloma’s sick,” I said. “She needs help!”

She screamed once more and then took off, sprinting down the dark street.

Down toward the river.

CHAPTER 28

We ran after her, following her down streets and alleyways. But we couldn’t keep up. She was too fast and we eventually lost sight of her.

“Where’d she go? Do you see anything?”

“No,” Ty said. “Let’s go check the river.”

The river bank was made up mostly of brush on our side and was hard to walk through. There was a park across the way. I stared at the dark black water sliding by, listening for any clues.

“Paloma!” I shouted.

“Ty, you should have seen her arms. She’s really sick. We need to find her.”

“It’s too hard to walk over here,” he said. “I’m going to cross the bridge and see if I can see anything from over there. You have your phone?”

“Yeah,” I said.

He squeezed my arm before taking off toward the footbridge.

I kept looking and calling her name, slowly making my way downriver through the thick brush. I heard voices coming from the park. It didn’t take Ty long to get over. I waved at him.

My phone buzzed a moment later.

“I see her, Abby,” he said. “She’s just around the bend, a little bit farther down from where you are. Keep going. She’s standing in the water.”

“What’s she doing?” I said, picking up my speed.

“She’s just standing there. She’s just standing in the water, looking up at the sky. It’s like she’s praying or something.”

I suddenly realized we weren’t too far from the spillway.

The spillway was the sight of numerous accidents. There were plenty of warning signs posted in the water, but every year a few people, usually in inner tubes or small rafts, got sucked into the waterfall. Once in a while, someone even drowned.

“She’s not far from you now,” Ty said. “Can you see her?”

I spotted her a second later.

“Paloma! Get out of the water!”

She was still close to shore, her face and torso illuminated in the moonlight. But as I got closer, she suddenly dove into the river and swam out toward the center.

“Paloma!” I yelled, but it was no use. She just kept swimming downriver.

I looked over toward Ty and noticed that a small group of people were now watching.

“Paloma!”

“Don’t do it!” I heard someone shout from across the way.

I glanced over and saw Ty taking off his shirt and shoes.

“No!” I shouted but he was already in the water, swimming hard toward her.

I stood there paralyzed, almost too afraid to watch.

He was closing the gap but they were heading into the section where the current picked up speed.

I finally got my legs to work and stumbled farther down the shore.

“This can’t be happening,” I said out loud.

A moment later he reached her, grabbing her around the waist with one arm. For a few awful seconds, the current swept them downstream, but Ty kicked furiously at the water and slowly started making progress.

If he could just reach that boulder in the middle of the river. The water flowed fast on either side of it, but if he could make it to that rock, they would be rescued. They would be all right.

I could hear a siren in the distance above the sound of my pounding heart. 

If he could just make it a few more yards to that boulder, he’d be okay.

A few more strokes, Ty. Just a few more.

But he never got any closer to the boulder.

Instead, he turned and started heading for shore. Paloma didn’t seem to be helping, just floating there lifelessly.

Ty started losing ground. The spillway was getting closer. They weren’t going to make it.

No, Ty. No.

I screamed.

My vision blurred behind the tears. I couldn’t see them anymore. First Jesse. And now Ty.
Why, God? Why!

But the next thing I saw was Ty backstroking his way through a calmer stretch of the river. Near the far shore. Two men jumped into the water and began dragging them out onto the grass.

The siren was closer now. I ran back up to the footbridge and over to the other side. I pushed my way through the small crowd that was now surrounding them.

Ty was coughing and sputtering, trying to catch his breath. I squeezed him long and hard, his chest heaving, water dripping down my hair and face.

“Are you okay?” I said after a while.

He nodded and blinked.

“I’m gonna check on Paloma,” I said.

The paramedics had arrived and were asking her questions. Her eyes were open but she didn’t answer them. Then she turned and looked at me.

“Abby,” she said, her eyes wide and terrified. She pulled on my hand. “What happened? Why am I all wet? Where am I?”

I put my hand on her forehead again. But she was cool now. Cold even.

“Abby, I’m so tired. I don’t know what’s happening.”

She started sobbing quietly as the paramedics placed her on a gurney.

“You’ll be okay, Paloma,” I said, holding her hand. “You’ll be okay.”

“We’re taking her to St. Charles, miss,” the driver told me before they pulled away.

“Crazy shit, what that guy did, man,” one teenager said. “Even for a crazy hot babe like that, I wouldn’t have done that.”

“He saved her,” I heard a girl say. “He totally saved her.”

CHAPTER 29

A paramedic checked Ty over and gave him a blanket. He seemed okay, but looked completely exhausted. He was drinking from a small water bottle when I went back over to him.

“How are you doing?” I asked, hugging him. “Are you really okay?”

He shrugged.

“Yeah,” he said. “But I’ll sleep well tonight. That’s for sure.”

“I was so worried, Ty,” I said, my shaky voice betraying my intention to be strong for him.

“Worried?” he said. “Come on, with these guns?”

I smiled weakly.

“You saved her. She would have died if you hadn’t gone in and pulled her out of the river.”

“I guess. You know, she fought me at first,” he said. “When I was out there swimming over to her, she was screaming at me to get away. I was just going to take her over to that rock, get her out of the current. I figured the rescue team would have ropes and it would be better to wait for them. But she was so weird. She kept saying that I wasn’t in time. We were near the boulder and she looked at me with these insane eyes and then, like that, went out cold. Maybe it was the water temperature. I had to get her back.”

He suddenly started shivering and I wrapped the blanket tighter around him.

“We should get you home and into a hot shower,” I said.

“Let’s wait a few more minutes,” he said. “The cops will probably want a statement. I saw you talking to Paloma before they took her. What did she say?”

“She said she couldn’t remember anything. She didn’t even know what happened and was confused about where she was.”

We watched as a police car pulled into the lot.

“Listen, Abby,” Ty said. “Let’s meet up later. Go get lost in the crowd. There’s no reason you need to be here for this. You don’t need any more publicity. Okay? I’ll call you when I’m done.”

I started to argue. I didn’t want to leave him, but he insisted.

“Go,” he whispered. “Before it’s too late.”

I kissed him hard and then walked away slowly. There were still a lot of people around, some talking to Ty and calling him a hero.

***

I saw a news van from the television station drive up. I waited in the dark for a little while before I left. A couple almost bumped into me as they stared at the flashing lights.

“Do you know what happened?” the woman said to me.

“No,” I said. “No idea.”

I walked over to Galveston, then up to Ten Barrel and ordered a beer. I found an empty chair outside and tried to make sense of the evening.

Paloma was burning up, that much I knew. She had a fever and seemed delirious. But what kind of illness would make her veins crawl around like that in her arms?

It was good that she was going to the hospital. Maybe the doctors would be able to come up with a logical, medical explanation.

I texted Ty, hoping he hadn’t jumped into the river with his phone, and told him where I was. Then I called Kate and told her what happened.

“She would have gone over the spillway if Ty hadn’t gone in after her. I’m sure of it,” I said. “I think she’s okay now. They took her to St. Charles.”

“That’s terrible,” Kate said. “Do you think she tried to kill herself?”

“I dunno. She had a pretty high fever. I think she was out of her mind with it. Maybe it’s something like the plague.”

I wouldn’t normally have come up with a theory like that, but I remembered hearing some customers talk about a few cases of it in a neighboring county.

“Or maybe it’s drugs,” Kate said. “I’m sure they’ll do a tox screen at the hospital.”

Somehow I didn’t think it was drugs.

“I’m glad Ty told you to stay out of sight. Do you need anything? I’m coming down to get you guys.”

“No,” I said. “I’m okay.”

“What are you thinking?” Kate said, after I was quiet for a minute.

“I’m wondering if something else happened to her tonight. Something worse.”

“Worse, how?”

“The ghost that was haunting her. I’m wondering if he tried to kill her.”

CHAPTER 30

In about half an hour, Kate and Ty arrived. I ran up to the car.

“How are you doing?” I asked, getting into the back seat.

He turned and nodded, but his eyes looked a little vacant.

“I need a hot shower and a pillow,” he said yawning. “I talked to the cops but they still want me to come down to the station. I told them I would stop by in the morning. I don’t know what else I can say. I already told them what happened.”

“At least they didn’t have you go in tonight,” I said. “Did the press talk to you?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “The guy was a real deep thinker. He seemed more interested in finding out how old I was than what happened. But it was no big deal. I just told him I swam out and brought her back. I kept it vague.”

He eased his head back and closed his eyes while we drove. When we got to his house, I helped him out of the car, my arm around his waist as we walked slowly up to the door.

“She really flipped out, Abby. I keep thinking about it, remembering more. The things she was saying when I got to her. She was calling me all sorts of names. Things a crazy person would say.”

“Like what?”

“I’d rather not repeat it, Abby. It was really ugly stuff.”

An avalanche of dread rolled down inside me.

“And then she, I don’t know. I guess she fainted. But the more I think about it, the more I’m not sure. I mean, it’s all starting to feel like a dream.”

I reached up and hugged him again, taking the keys from his hand and opening the door.

“It’s been a long night,” I said. “You need to get some rest.”

But Ty seemed like he was still thinking about it.

“I think she was dead, Abby,” he said. “She was dead in my arms as I swam with her back to shore. She was dead.”

I had never seen him so shaken up before.

I took his hand and kissed it, my heart full and grateful that he was still here.

“Do you want me to stay with you tonight?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I’m fine. Really. I’ll call you in the morning.”

“No,” I said. “I’m staying. I’ll just go tell Kate and I’ll be right back.”

He smiled and shuffled inside.

I helped him into the shower and went out to the kitchen. I looked in the refrigerator. There wasn’t too much to work with. Beer and some empty take-out cartons. What used to be a hunk of cheese inside some foil. Some more beer. Three eggs. Just enough for an omelet I thought.