Unbreakable (12 page)

The clock on the nightstand said it was only noon. I’d been asleep for all of twenty minutes and felt just as exhausted and rattled as if I hadn’t slept at all. But there was no going back to bed. Not now. I shuddered, threw off the covers, and swung my legs over the side. I inhaled and slapped my cheeks. “Come on. Keep going.”

I dressed in yoga pants and a t-shirt from my walk-in closet and headed downstairs.

There was a note on the kitchen counter from Drew.

Food’s in the fridge. I’m in the office. Love, D

I went to the stainless steel refrigerator and found a tuna salad sandwich from Mayberry’s on the top shelf. He must have gone out for it while I was taking that marathon shower. I opened the wrapping and stared at the food, my stomach both nauseated and growling hungrily. I nearly put it back but the memory of my gaunt visage returned to haunt me and I took a bite. It tasted so good...and then I nearly gagged.

I managed to swallow the bite and quickly rewrapped the sandwich and shoved it back in the fridge.

God, what is wrong with me?

Rashida’s clipped voice answered for me in typical Rashida fashion:
PTSD. You were a hostage for three days. Threatened with rape. Terrorized by a madman. You had a gun pressed to your skull. You were a millisecond away from death and then caught in a gunfight.
What, exactly, do you expect?

I took another a deep breath and then spat a curse. Inhaling deeply wasn’t working. Swearing like a sailor helped more. I wiped my eyes and went to find Drew in the home office.

He was on the phone, as usual, but began to wrap it up as soon as he saw me. In the meanwhile, my gaze wandered over the office: the bookshelves filled with law tomes, legal thrillers, collections of WWII biographies, histories, and encyclopedias. Drew was a history buff for that era and had even made a few models of bombers and U-boats several years ago, before he had given it up to devote even more time to his job.

“Yeah, I know but I have to call you back, Dan,” he said. “Give me an hour. Thanks.” He hung up and turned to me, a sympathetic smile on his face. “I thought you were going to nap. Feeling better? Did you find the sandwich in the fridge? It’s just to tide you over. Tonight, we can order whatever you want. Or would you like to go out…?”

I waved my hands to ward off the idea and sank down into the leather couch that made up one wall of his office. “I still haven’t found my appetite.”

“Okay,” Drew said cautiously, and waited for me to say more.

“I just...I’m not sure what to do next,” I said. “I know I should call Jon or Mr. Dooney, but I’m not ready to jump back into it yet. I feel like there’s…unfinished business with the whole bank thing, and I don’t know what it is. Or even what that means.”

“It’s a lot to process,” Drew said. “Telling the F.B.I. everything tomorrow will probably help.” His smile slipped from sympathetic to pitying. “You need closure, sweetie. Making that report will probably give it to you.”

I toyed with a stray thread on the seam of my yoga pants. “I guess so.”

“Well…you could tell me about it. Whatever you want.” His gaze strayed to his paperwork. “I’m here for you, Alex.”

For an hour anyway,
I thought with a bitterness I instantly regretted.

“I came in here to talk about it with you,” I said. “But now starting from the beginning seems like climbing a mountain and I just don’t think I have the mental energy for it.”

Drew nodded and glanced at his work again. He was itching to get back to it and irritation flared in me again.
Oh, why not let him work? You don’t want to talk anyway.

I uncurled from the couch. “I should call Lilah. Then try to sleep again.”

“Are you sure?” Drew asked, the relief in his voice only barely contained.

I paused at his desk to give his hand a squeeze. “I’ll let you get back to it.”

I shut the office door behind me and lingered in the hallway. Less than thirty seconds later I heard Drew’s voice. “Dan? Okay, where were we?”

I went back to the master bedroom. The bed was empty, of course—no lurking psychos. I forced myself to climb in. I didn’t survive sleeping on the floor for three days just to be evicted from my bed by a stupid dream. There was a landline for emergencies on the bedside table. I slipped back under the covers and called Lilah.

“Alex, oh my God, I’ve been worried sick. Drew texted me when you got out, but it’s so good to hear your voice. How are you?”

“I’m…” I started to say ‘fine.’ “I’m okay.”

“You don’t sound okay.” Lilah’s voice became stern. “Not that I blame you, but talk to me. Or do you want me to come over?”

I almost said yes, but the same reluctance to tell the whole story was still there. It was too exhausting to contemplate. Not to mention, I couldn’t trust myself not to tell Lilah
everything.
There was something about my best friend that demanded honesty. As with Cory, she had integrity ingrained in her like bedrock.

“No, no. I won’t be any good to talk to. I just need to sleep. Tomorrow I’ll be better. I just wanted to check in.”

A pause. “I know it’s early yet—you just got out. But if I hang up with you, I’m going to feel like it was the wrong thing to do.”

I smiled. “You’re the best, Lilah. Really.”

“You’re not thinking about work, are you? I hope to God you’re not stressed about that. Not now.”

“No, I promise. I’m just really tired. We were hardly given any chance to sleep.”

“Wow, I can’t believe it. What an ordeal.”

“Yeah, it feels pretty surreal. But I’m okay. I’ll sleep for about fifteen hours and call you first thing.”

“Okay,” Lilah said, though she sounded wary. “Anything you want me to tell the Posse?”

“Tell them I’ll see them on Monday. As usual.”

“Okay,” Lilah said again, lighter this time. “You get some rest and call me the second you can.”

“I will. Love you.”

“I love you, Alex. I’m really damned glad you’re safe.”

“Thanks, Lilah. I am. I’m okay.”

Only I didn’t feel okay. I felt lost. It was one o’clock on a Thursday afternoon and I had no idea what to do. I felt like I’d been plucked from the bank and dropped back into real life and I wasn’t ready.

I watched a little TV, I tried to read a book, but neither could hold me. Drew came up around four to check on me with the tuna sandwich. I managed to eat half while he sat with me, chatting about his work. To my complete lack of surprise, he’d been in his office at EllisIntel the entire time I was being held hostage. I couldn’t really blame him. There was nothing he could do, and as soon as it was over, they notified him. It’s probably what I would have done had the situation been reversed. Even so, I felt that irritation scratch at me, and when he went back to the office downstairs, I was glad.

I tried the TV again but the local channels were full of the bank robbery details and I shut it off and tried to force myself to sleep.

It would not come. Nagging disquiet hummed along my nerves and my thoughts rattled around in my skull. Finally, after hours of tossing and turning, I fell into a fitful doze, only to wake in the middle of the night from a bad dream that was one shade shy of a full-blown nightmare.

Drew lay beside me, on his side of the bed, his back to me, his breathing deep and even. The clock said it was only two a.m. but I knew I was done for the night.

What’s wrong with me?

The obvious answer floated up, but I dismissed it. The ordeal at the bank was a dark shadow over my mind and sooner or later I’d have to confront it. Likely at the police station, as Drew had suggested. But it wasn’t why my nerves felt itchy, or why a vague anxiety twisted my stomach into knots.

“Cory,” I said aloud, and immediately felt the coil loosen.

The hospital’s visiting hours were long over but that didn’t stop me. I threw off the covers and took up the message pad and pen by the bedside. I scribbled a hasty note for Drew and hurried downstairs.

At the grand entry, I threw on a light jacket and tucked my hair into one of Drew’s baseball caps from the coatrack. I doubted the press would be staking out the hospital at this hour, but better safe than sorry. Then I realized I had no car. Mine was either still parked at the bank or at some police impound.

“Shit.”

We owned a Range Rover for road trips we said we’d take and never did, but it was parked in the garage with Drew’s Porsche was parked behind it in the driveway. After a moment’s hesitation, I grabbed Drew’s keys from the entry table, vowing to be back in time for him to go to work.

Driving my fiancé’s car to visit Cory,
came the caustic thought as I sat behind the wheel.
Nope, nothing wrong with that.

I threw the car into gear and tore out of the driveway, leaving the thought in the dust.

Alex

Once out on the darkened road, I felt better, more clear-headed. Los Angeles streets were of a different breed at two in the morning; there was little traffic and I actually sped the sports car along the deserted roads. Not the brightest idea given that my ID was still in F.B.I. hands, but I wasn’t about to a let a policeman stop me now. I had to see that Cory was okay if I were to have any peace.
He was there. He knows. I don’t have to explain anything. I can just tell him I feel all mixed up inside and he’ll know why.

I realized that he wasn’t likely to be in any shape for talking, but it didn’t matter. It would be enough just to sit with him.

The hospital, even this late, wasn’t quiet or calm. Machines beeped constantly while nurses, doctors, and orderlies moved in and out of the rooms. The two nurses behind the desk on Cory’s floor gave me strange looks as I approached.

“I’m here to see Cory Bishop.”

“Ma’am, evening visiting hours are from six to eight,” said one nurse, a middle-aged woman with short dark hair and small, round eyes. Her nametag said Liz. “You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I have to see him. Tonight.”

“Are you family?” asked the other nurse, an older African-American woman who wore a warmer expression. Her nametag said her name was Nicole. “We’ve been trying to track down a wife or parents since he was admitted.”

“I’m not family,” I said. “I was one of the hostages in the bank.”

The nurses exchanged glances.

I had a small speech prepared. An argument that was calm, rational, and convincing. A textbook Alex Gardener jury speech.

Instead I blurted, “I haven’t seen him since the ambulance ride, and then there was so much blood…so much…and he was hardly breathing, so they stabbed him to help him breathe—they
stabbed
him—and there was more blood, and I just…I don’t want to remember him like that. Please. I…I can’t sleep. I won’t disturb him, I promise. I just want to sit with him for a little bit. Please.”

The older nurse smiled gently and looked to the other. “It can’t hurt.”

“Fine,” Liz snapped. “You have twenty minutes. He’s probably sleeping.
Do not wake him up
. And sign in here.” She put up a clipboard and a pen.

“Do you need anything, honey?” Nicole asked. “Our chaplain is here…”

“No,” I said, scratching my name on the paper. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“Room 146,” Nicole said warmly.

“Twenty minutes,” warned Liz.

I walked down the hallway, which smelled of disinfectant and cold linoleum. I passed dark, open doors where machines breathed for patients, or beeped their pulses. I kept my eyes averted, looking only at room numbers, not wanting to witness some stranger’s pain.

Room 146 was toward the middle of the corridor. The room had two beds but the one closest to the door was unoccupied. Cory lay near the window; a slant of silvery moonlight fell over the white bedding.

I approached slowly. Flashes of the robbery and its aftermath jumped out at me, making me flinch. I saw blood splatter the bank floor as Cory coughed, a jouncing, bumping ambulance ride, and then him being wheeled away. It all faded when I saw him alive and breathing with my own eyes.

They had him inclined into a half-sitting position and he slept with his head turned toward the door. Tubes trailed into his arm and a nasal cannula breathed into his nose, but I was relieved to see he had no ventilator, and that the tube the EMT had jabbed into his chest was gone. I pulled a chair to his bedside, trying to remain as quiet as possible. But when the wooden leg scraped the floor and Cory’s eyes opened halfway, I wasn’t sorry at all.

The smile that split his face when he saw me made my heart ache, though I couldn’t fathom why. “Hi.”

“Hi,” I said. “It’s late, but I wanted to see you. To make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m glad,” he said, and his voice was a hoarse whisper, likely from the ventilator. “Glad you’re here.”

He sounded so weak and I felt terrible for waking him. For being so selfish. “Don’t talk. Your throat needs to heal and if the nurses found out I woke you up, they’d have my head. And they’re right, I should go…”

“No, don’t.” He smiled his crooked smile, but tiredly. Everything he did or said was in slow motion. “Stay.”

In an instant, I was back in the bank, holding him and begging him to stay with me. A coincidence? Or did he remember those awful, blood-soaked memories? I hoped it was the former.

He watched my face and his smile faded. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. It all ended so quickly, and now I’m supposed to pick up where I left off. Everything feels alien now.” I took off the baseball cap and studied it a moment, then let it drop to the floor to rub my eyes with both hands. “I’ve never felt as out of control as I have lately.
Lately,
god, it hasn’t even been a whole day…”

“Hey,” Cory whispered. “It’s okay. I get it.”

Of course you do.
Tears threatened but I pushed them down. “And here I am, blabbing about my stupid shit when you’re lying here, in pain, because some bastard
shot
you …”

“Frankie shot me.”

My head snapped up. “What? He did? I thought it was in the lobby, at the end…”

Cory shook his head, smiling dryly. “Frankie, before that. Broken fingers and all.”

“Broken…? You broke his fingers?”

He nodded again. “I warned him not to touch you.”

“But Cory, god, he
shot
you for it.”

“He wanted to shoot me anyway.”

“Yes, but—”

“I keep my promises, Alex.”

The silence that fell between us was thick with memories. It occurred to me that aside from the bloody chaos of the standoff, the last time I had seen Cory was in that darkened office. After we’d had crazy, magnificent sex, he’d made another promise. To find a way to me, to keep me safe.

“You kept both promises,” I said softly.

He nodded. It hurt him too much to talk, and it hurt me too much to relive any of it. It was all too raw and painful, and I was so tired. If only I could sleep.

“You saved my life,” I told him. “You saved everyone’s lives, really, but you saved mine first. Thank you. I guess that’s what I came here to do, but I should go. Let you rest, and try to get some too.”

“Can’t sleep?”

“No. Or if I do, it’s…bad.”

“Be my guest,” he murmured. His dark eyes were getting heavy.

“I can’t sleep on your shoulder,” I said. “You just had surgery.”

He held out his hand. “Next best thing.”

It looked like a lifeline and I took it.

I rested my head on the side of his bed, pillowed it on our clasped hands. “It’s not the same as your shoulder.”

“It’s….nice,” he said, and then drifted off, a ghost of his smile on his lips.

I tried to get comfortable, thinking I would never fall asleep in such an awkward position, and that was my last thought before warm, comforting dark descended.

And there were no dreams.