Perfect Victim, The (42 page)

"It's Jack," he choked. "Jesus Christ. They fucking got to Jack."

"Oh, my god." Her hand went to her mouth. "Please, tell me he's not—oh, God."

He couldn't look at her. Not when his control was slipping away. "I should have been there. I should have protected him."

"No—”

Randall slammed his fist into the dash. Plastic shattered. Pain zinged up his arm. "Why Jack, goddammit!"

“
Stop it. Please."

He couldn't breathe. Couldn't swallow. Panic gripped his throat, like a hangman's noose. Terror sent tremors through his body. He felt trapped. Panicked.

He felt dead.

God, he needed a drink.

"Randall? Are you okay?"

He heard her voice as if through a fog. Addison. He sucked in a breath, felt the panic release its grip on his chest. "I'm okay."

He looked at her, found her staring at him as if he were a ghost. Maybe he was. "I'm okay, goddammit. Don't look at me like that."

She flinched but didn't look away. "How bad is he hurt?"

"He's critical."

“
Oh, God, I'm sorry. Is he going to be all right?"

"I don't know." He punched the accelerator and sent the car screeching into the deserted street. "I should have seen this coming."

"It wasn't your fault."

Ignoring her, he drove like a madman through the silent streets of Siloam Springs.

"Your knuckles are bleeding. Jesus, you're shaking. Let me drive—"

The truck came out of nowhere. He mashed his foot down
on the brake. The car slid sideways, barely missing the truck, and screeched to a halt, jerking them hard against their safety belts.

Randall stared blindly through the windshield, taking short, shallow breaths. "They shot him. Then they fucking burned him."

"Oh, no. Randall
..
. I'm sorry."

He couldn't look at her
.
Couldn't look into her clear, dark eyes and see her innocence marred by horror and ugliness
.
But closer to the truth, he didn't Want her to see the blackness that lay in his own heart. The need for revenge. For murder.

For blood.

Chapter 17

At four A.M., the usually bustling halls of St. Joseph Hospital were hushed with a serenity too precarious to acknowledge. Though she'd never been seriously ill, Addison harbored an irrational dislike of hospitals. It had been in another hospital ten months earlier that she'd been informed of her parents' deaths.

She remembered with perfect clarity the mercurial silence, the buzzing of the overhead fluorescent lights, the smell of isopropyl alcohol and disinfectant, and other unfathomable odors as the on-call physician had relayed the news. She remembered the paging system blaring in the background, the squeak of a nurse's rubber-soled shoes against tile, the cool quiet of the room where she'd slowly lost control.

This was almost as bad.

She couldn't stop thinking about Jack. The terror he must have felt. The helplessness. The pain. She found it inconceivable that anyone could commit such a ruthless act, especially against a man in a wheelchair. She hated the dark side of human nature she'd witnessed in the last week.

She worried about the way Randall was handling it
.
He'd barely spoken durin
g
the endless flights that had taken them from Dayton to Chicago to Denver
.
Though he tried to conceal it, Addison sensed the fear and the barely controlled rage seething just below the surface. She instinctively k
n
ew contr
o
l was important to him
—
just as she knew he was clinging to its remnants by a thread. She supposed his need for control was why he'd had such a difficult time dealing with his diagnosis of post
-
traumatic stress disorder. It only
frustrated her more that she couldn't seem to reach him
.

Beyond exhaustion, she struggled to keep up as he strode into the su
r
gical intensive care uni
t
.
Once
t
hrough the set of double do
o
rs, he made straight for
the brightly lit nurses’ station in the center of the ward
.

H
i
s face looked strained
beneath the stark li
g
hts, the angles
and planes of his features giving him a menacing appearance
.
A day's growth o
f
black whiskers darkened his jaw
.
He looked like a man who'd been living on the edge for so long he'd forgotten how to find his way back
.

There was a dangerous recklessness in his eyes she'd never seen before. A wildness in h
i
s manner that made her wonder just how close he was to snapping. Something frightening and powerful had been unleashed inside him, and she feared for anyone who crossed him
.

Neither of the two nurses noticed when t
h
ey reached the station
.
Randall put his
h
ands o
n
the coun
t
er
.
"
I
need to see Jack Talbot," he announced
i
n a voice that dared either of the women to cross h
i
m
.

A nurse with pretty eye
'
s and short brown hair rose from he
r
stool and smiled tiredly
.
He
r
name tag identified her as Susan Morris
.
A button pinned onto her uniform read: I CAN BE DIFFICULT
.

"Are you fami
l
y?" she asked, coming
around the counter.

"He
'
s my brother," Randall's voice was hoarse and hosti
l
e
.

A quick look told Addison he was quickly nearing the end of h
i
s endurance. She wished she could do something to comfort him
,
bu
t
so fa
r
her efforts had been rejected
.

"How's he doing?" she asked.

The nurse grimaced. "They brought him up from surgery about three hours ago. He's awake and aware. Vitals are stable." She looked at Randall. "His condition is still critical, but you can see him if you want."

They followed her to a room down the hall. Outside the door, she picked up the chart, made a note, and then slipped into the room.

Randall turned to Addison. "Wait here," he said.

Before she could stop herself, she raised her hand and touched the side of his face. A jolt of emotion swept through her when he winced. Such a strong man, she thought. More vulnerable than she'd ever realized and in so much pain.

"Are you all right?" She knew he wouldn't tell her the truth. She knew he wasn't all right. That he wouldn't be all right until this nightmare was over. Looking deeply into his eyes, she wished there was a way she could ease his pain, take away the guilt, but there wasn't. All she could do was be there for him.

Surprising her, he closed his eyes and pressed his cheek into her palm. It was the first offer of comfort he'd accepted. A wan smile touched the comers of his mouth. "Better," he said and walked into the room.

Randall was sweating when the nurse guided him into the dimly lit room. His eyes were drawn immediately to the single bed, the indefinable heap beneath the white sheets that was his brother. Inwardly, he cursed, both fate and the bastard responsible.

Knowing he couldn't let his emotions get in the way of what lay ahead, he took a deep breath and kept moving. The room was high-tech, even for a hospital, and more closely resembled an operating room, equipped for emergencies, as if that sort of thing happened often in this ward.

Above the bed, two monitors beeped. Lower, an I.V. bag and two larger bags filled with bodily fluids and blood hung
like grotesque ornaments. The hiss of the respirator filled the silen
c
e with h
o
rrible sound.

The sight of Jack hit him like a fist to the stomach. He held his breath, knowing his brother's eye
s
were on him, kn
o
wing he couldn't allow himself to react
.

Jack was lying on his back with two small cylindrical pillows cradling his head. A quarter
-
inch-thick tube ran from the respirator into his mouth. A second, thinner tube protruded from his left nostril
.

Feeling a drop of sweat trickle between his shoulder blades, Randall peeled off his parka and draped it over the back of the chair beside the bed. Then he met his brother's gaze. The two men stared at each other for a full minute, weighing reactions, reining in their emoti
o
ns, giving the other time to do the same.
Only Jack would do that for me,
Randall thought, struggling to keep the fear and the rage at bay. This wasn't the place for it
.
He needed to be strong
.
For Jack. For the woman waiting for him in the hall
.

"Hi, big brother." His voi
c
e sounded normal as he moved to the side of the bed
.
"Goddammit,” he whispered as he drew near.

Jack managed a weak thumbs-up.

Randall's chest tightened. "Are you in any pain?"

Jack closed his eyes and shook his head
.
A thick section of gauze covered one side of his face from temple to chin. Another bandage ran the length of his arm, all the way to his fingers.

As the respirator pumped
a
ir into his brother's lungs, Randall watched, wondering how in the hell this could have happened, trying to convince himself it wasn't his fault
.