CHAPTER 21
It was one o’clock when Laura stopped by Conrad
Weiser’s room in intensive care. She didn’t know the security guard
all that well but felt oddly responsible for his injuries because
of her connection to Justice. She wished she could have warned him
somehow of the coming danger, even though she knew that was
unreasonable.
Nina Perez was waiting for her as she
left the ICU and said, “No change,” less a question than a
statement of fact, and Laura nodded.
“Dr. Zellman is being released soon,”
the nurse then told Laura. “He still isn’t talking.”
“Have they determined whether it’s
definitely physical damage to the voice box or emotional
trauma?”
“I’d say a little of both, but I’m not
his doctor.” She looked troubled. “You think the police are any
closer to catching Turnbull?”
“I hope so,” Laura said, wondering if
even now Justice was on his way to find her. A shiver skated down
her spine. She was having second thoughts about calling to Justice.
Despite her earlier bravado, she knew that taunting him was
dangerous, even deadly.
As she was walking back to the nurses’
station, she happened to see Zellman being released into the care
of his wife. The trim woman had wheeled her husband to the door of
the hospital, per hospital policy, but the injured doctor
practically jumped out of the chair as soon as he was outside the
front doors, nearly kicking the offending chair into the
surrounding shrubbery. On his feet, he started striding across the
parking lot, bristling with outrage or anger or something, his wife
half jogging along behind him.
Laura watched them for a long moment.
The rumor was that Justice hadn’t been handcuffed when he’d been
escorted by Zellman to the van, and that his escape was mostly
Zellman’s fault. Underestimating Justice was something Catherine
had said everyone at Siren Song had been guilty of, once upon a
time. Laura didn’t plan on being a victim to it again.
Or had she already by tweaking his tail
last night?
Staring through the hospital’s front
doors, seeing her own watery reflection, a strange feeling creeping
across her skin, she backed away from the glass panes
automatically, her heart slamming into her ribs in a hard,
systematic beat.
He was out there.
Somewhere.
Waiting.
And it felt like he was right outside.
. . .
Justice stared, unblinking, through the
windshield of the woman’s compact. He was in a different world. A
world that swirled with emotion and half dreams and urgency that
racked his body with pain. Colors blended and shapes shifted, as if
he were underwater. He closed his eyes, and his mission pounded
through his brain. He needed to take them. All of them.
Soon!
They were miserable creatures, and
their old taunts ricocheted through his brain, reminding him of why
they were all doomed, why he had to defeat them. He felt the one
that was outside the gates like a living snake within him, twisting
his insides, curling around his guts, tightening and writhing,
sickening him. His skin crawled at the smell of her; that
nauseating scent filled his nostrils.
She was close. So close.
Then he knew.
She was inside the walls of this
hospital. This hospital.
Ocean Park.
Inside, tucked away, thinking she was
safe behind a curtain of fog and the concrete and steel walls. And
she was laughing at him.
Shaking with the effort to fight the
bile in his throat, he yanked himself to the present and gazed hard
at the front of the hospital. He was parked in the side lot with a
narrow, angled view to the front doors. She was in there. Just
inside the vestibule. Invisible with the fog.
But she felt him. This he knew. He
heard the pounding of her heart, sensed the blood pumping furiously
through her veins . . . hers and that nasty little incubus within
her. He smiled as he sensed her fear.
Good.
Let her terror rot her from the inside
out. She, who dared summon him!
I’m here, witch. Just
like you wanted!
He thought about the car he was
driving, a silver Nissan. How long was he safe with it? He’d left
its driver almost dead at Seagull Pointe, but they would learn who
she was and come looking for her vehicle. He’d switched plates with
old man Gerald’s Taurus, which would buy him some time, but he was
doomed to find another car.
A frisson disturbed the murky
air.
Suddenly he jerked to attention,
squinting toward Ocean Park’s entrance. Exiting the hospital at
that moment were Dr. Maurice Zellman and the woman whom Justice
guessed to be his wife. Justice’s gaze narrowed on her. Holding on
to her hair to keep it in place, she was hurrying to catch up to
the doctor’s longer strides to no avail. Zellman’s large steps and
ramrod straight back ate up the distance to a black Lexus that
crouched near a security lamp. Wifey barely managed to scramble
into the passenger seat and was still closing the door when Zellman
backed out in a tight turn, his tires giving a little broop against the pavement as he hit the gas and the
sedan leapt forward, narrowly missing a green minivan parked in the
next space.
Zellman half turned Justice’s way as he
passed, and Justice smiled coldly, wondering if the doctor could
feel him as he purposely sent the man a warning. But Zellman seemed
as oblivious as ever, glowering through the Lexus’s windshield. The
doctor had no ability to sense Justice at all.
From the interior of the Nissan,
Justice watched Zellman’s departing car with a sort of detached
interest, not the urgency the women of the lodge inspired, but a
kind of clinical curiosity. The doctor had counted himself as
Justice’s savior. This meaningless cockroach, this
self-congratulating piece of dirt, deigned to believe he knew
something—anything—about him!
And then Justice caught an overwhelming
whiff of Lorelei’s pungent aroma.
He swiveled his head so hard the
vertebrae in his neck cracked. He barely noticed. His nostrils
flared and his lips curled at her noxious odor.
Pregnant whore!
I’m coming for
you, he told her, but the wall she’d erected was tall
between them, one he couldn’t scale.
I’m coming for
you!, he screamed. Sick witch! You can’t
hold me out forever!
She was inside the hospital.
Right there. All he had to do was slip
inside . . . !
Blinded with need, he slammed out of
the car and moved to the side door of the hospital, stopping just
short of the security camera, shaking with a desire to kill so
intense it stole his common sense. The middle of the day was no
time to attack her, but he didn’t care. He wanted her. Now.
With a frustrated scream caught in his
throat, he dug at his scalp, ripping at his hair. He needed the sea
. . . a cold Pacific breeze . . . the lighthouse. . .
.
He took a step forward, into the
camera’s range, then pulled back. Ducking his head, he returned to
his vehicle, slid inside, and slouched in his seat. Flexing his
fingers on the steering wheel, he attempted to regain control. He
couldn’t, wouldn’t, let the bitch win.
He wanted her badly. Could almost feel
his hands clenching over her soft throat as he felt the life seep
out of her. He imagined watching her naked whore’s body burn in a
foul and malodorous stench that would rise to the heavens in thick
black smoke as her body was condemned to hell.
Lorelei.
Above all else, he needed to snuff out
her life and that of the life she’d spawned.
Could he charge inside and just take
her? Could he?
Zellman’s Lexus was stopped at the end
of the parking lot. He and the wife were arguing, apparently, and
the vehicle was stalled while they yelled at each other. Then it
jumped forward again, and Justice watched Zellman drive to the end
of the lot and turn onto the main, tree-lined drive that accessed
the hospital from Highway 101.
Glancing back, Justice stared at the
hospital until it felt like his eyes were burning in his skull.
Then, grinding his teeth with impotent fury, he shoved his car into
gear and hit the gas. He’d follow the doctor.
“You all right?” an impatient voice
demanded in Laura’s ear.
She’d dropped into a chair in the front
reception area, her legs practically collapsing beneath her. That
feeling . . . that recognition . . . Though she’d had her mental
wall held high, she’d sensed Justice on the other side, his
malevolence nearly smothering her.
It was Dr. Loman who’d questioned her,
his blue eyes cold ice as he glared down at her.
Of course she would run into him. A
brush with the older doctor was even worse than one with her own
ex-husband. Loman was imperious and arrogant and
dictatorial.
What was it with the doctors here at
Ocean Park? Most of them seemed to be egomaniacs, well, except for
calm Dr. Hanson and funny Dr. Charles, one of the few women
surgeons on staff. But the docs at the top. Imperious,
self-inflated jerks.
“I’m fine,” she said to
Loman.
“You’re not fine if you’re sitting down
on the job,” he pointed out, frowning darkly.
Oh, great. Of course.
“Just catching my breath.” Laura got to
her feet and bit her tongue to keep from saying something sarcastic
as she sidestepped the man.
He followed after her, soft-soled shoes
squeaking on the tile. “I know who you are,” he said, surprising
her. The hairs on the back of her neck lifted. “You’re one of them,
and I know them.”
Laura glanced over her shoulder to
catch a glimpse at him. He seemed like he was on the verge of
exploding, as if something she’d done had sent him over the
edge.
She knew what he meant. Dr. Dolph Loman
and his now deceased brother, Dr. Parnell Loman, had been the
doctors who’d attended Laura and her sisters when they were
children. Laura recalled Dolph, though Parnell was a distant
memory. She half recalled something salacious and unpleasant in
regard to Parnell and her mother, or maybe it had been Dolph, or
maybe it was all faulty memories, a fabrication she’d concocted
from the lore she’d garnered about her promiscuous mother. All this
time she’d worked at Ocean Park, she’d hoped Dolph hadn’t
recognized her. Now she knew that hope had been in
vain.
“So, you’re diagnosing patients now?”
he said with a faintly disguised sneer.
“Was there something specific you
wanted, Dr. Loman?” she asked him coolly.
“Mind yourself,” he snapped. “You’re a
nurse here, not a doctor. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Is it?” She reveled in his look of
surprise. “Seems to me you’re saying a lot more.”
“We both know about your family,” he
said, recovering quickly. “Soothsayers and nuts and
quacks.”
“Quacks,” she repeated, eyeing him
hard. “Is that a new medical term?”
He flushed, the barb hitting home. “My
reputation is impeccable.”
“I remember your brother,” Laura said,
though it was nothing short of a lie.
That left the old man speechless. He
opened his mouth and shut it twice before saying quickly, “My
brother was an excellent surgeon! His death was a
tragedy.”
He seemed to want to say more, but he
was definitely flummoxed by Laura’s decision to confront him right
back. He strode off, muttering about her rudeness, and she wondered
what exactly had gone on between her mother and Dr. Parnell Loman
and/or Dr. Dolph Loman. Would Catherine tell her, if she asked?
Would she even really know?
Laura headed back to her rounds,
feeling a bit overwhelmed by the events of the past few days, but
since there was no way to explain, and because she wasn’t about to
blame her weakness on her pregnancy, she drew several deep breaths
and soldiered on.
She was beginning to wish she’d
listened more to Harrison. She’d been so sure she’d be safe at the
hospital, but now she longed to be with him, safe within his
protection. Grabbing her cell from her locker, she placed a call to
his and wound up with his voice mail. She hesitated, frustrated,
but instead of leaving a message, she replaced the phone and
determined she could get through the rest of her shift without
talking to him. It was just a case of mind over
matter.