Evan Arden 03 Otherwise Unharmed (4 page)

“
Come on, Arden—scheduled appointment.”

I didn’t remember having one, but at some point a couple of the guards and the unit manager came in and dragged me down to one of the
private visiting rooms.  The handcuffs around my wrists were checked, and then the other end secured me to the arms of a chair.  I lifted my hands slightly, but they weren’t able to move far.

I pressed against the floor with the balls of my feet and tried to keep the panic at bay as the metal lay across my wrists, but the movement wasn’t distracting enough. 
I frantically tried to think of something to keep my mind off the restraints.  I tried to think about what I would do if there was an itch on my nose.  I thought about the last soccer game I had watched and wondered if I would be able to watch any of this season’s games from inside.  I wondered what Lia was doing right at the moment and if Odin liked staying with her.  I was sure he did and was comforted by the idea that he would like living with Lia.

A few minutes
after I was placed in the chair, Rinaldo Moretti walked into the room with a tall, lanky guy in a suit behind him.  The look in my boss’s eyes was stern and closed—nearly unreadable, except I knew exactly what he was thinking.  I was supposed to come to him if I got to the point of breaking, and I hadn’t.

The problem
was once you have crossed that line, you don’t exactly think rationally.  It was sort of the definition of breaking.

My throat seized up.  I couldn’t look at him and
opted to look straight down at the table instead.  My lungs couldn’t seem to get enough air, and I had to force myself to breathe through my nose.  I balled my hands into fists to keep them from shaking and making the chains rattle.

Rinaldo cleared his throat, and I glanced up.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said with an uncharacteristically shaky voice.

Rinaldo just stared at me, his eyes flickering from the emotionless façade he was trying to maintain to fury.
  There was tightness around his eyes and definite tension in his forearms.  His fingers flexed once as he leaned back in the metal chair.

“
We’ll have that discussion another time,” he said with promise.  “Don’t doubt that.  For now, I’m here to introduce you to your attorney.”

“
Michael Beard,” the young man said.  “I specialize in cases where the defendant has suffered from PTSD.  I understand you’ve been given this diagnosis?  Can you tell me precisely when?”

I looked over the man in the suit.  He wasn’t much older than I was, and I doubted he was beyond thirty.  For a moment, I considered that Rinaldo had found me a shit attorney to make sure I went away for a long time, but that didn’t make sense.  If he wanted me out of the picture
, he wouldn’t be here at all, let alone with a lawyer in tow.  He knew all my money was cash and inaccessible from inside, and he would have just left me to rot with a public defender if he wasn’t serious about getting me out.

What he’d do to me after I was release
d, well, that was anyone’s guess.  He wouldn’t have spent the time and effort to get me out to kill me, though.  That would be a waste of money when he could accomplish the same thing cheaper with a bribe to a guard or an inmate.

Michael Beard was all business
—that was for sure.  He waited patiently for me to answer his question and didn’t seem to be the least bit nervous or rushed.  Considering Rinaldo must have told him who I was to his organization, I was somewhat surprised at how calm he was.  Often, when I was first introduced to someone, they would be all fidgety around me.

“
Answer him, Arden,” Rinaldo commanded when I didn’t respond right away.

I tried not to focus on the use of my last name as I swallowed, nodded, and faced the lawyer.

“When I returned from Germany,” I told him.  “That was three years ago.  I was discharged in May of that year.”

Michael made some notes on his legal pad.
  I could almost see him in one of those little school desks, jotting down notes during an English Lit class with his knees all tucked up underneath the desktop.

“
Were you medicated as part of your treatment?”

“
Yeah, for a while.”

“
Do you still take drugs as part of treatment, either prescribed or illicit?”  Michael’s eyes watched mine as I answered, and I had the distinct feeling he was watching for any untruthfulness.

“
No.”  I leaned back in the chair and planned on keeping my gaze on his, but the clang of the handcuffs distracted me.  I clenched the arms of the chair and took a couple of deep breaths.

“
Do you have nightmares or recurring thoughts about what happened to you?”

I swallowed hard.

“Yes.”

“
How often?”

“
Every time I close my eyes.”

I didn’t miss Rinaldo’s narrowed eyes as I admitted this to the attorney.  Yes, I had been too broken to come to him after I had killed Terry and Bridgett, but it was obvious the
nightmares had been getting worse for a while.  I hadn’t told him about those.  Even when I confessed that Bridgett had slept in my bed with me, I never told him the reason why.

“
Do you ever feel numb?”

“
Most of the time.”

“
Have you ever thought about hurting yourself or someone else?”

I actually laughed, which caused Rinaldo to smile slightly as well.

“Evan’s right,” he told the attorney.  “That’s a seriously stupid question.”

“
Moving on,” Michael muttered.  “Do you have trouble focusing?”

“
Yes.”

“
Do you ever talk to your family or friends about what happened to you?”

“
Fuck no.”

“
Are you going to diagnose him or get him the fuck out of here?” Rinaldo growled as his patience waned.

“
I’m just trying to understand his state of mind at the time of the incident.”

“
He was fucked up—temporary insanity brought on by the stress of one of his co-workers and friends being found dead, right, Arden?”

“
Yes, sir.”

“
Please, Mister Moretti, let me do my job.”  Michael reclined in the plastic chair and looked into Rinaldo’s eyes.

He was a brave man
; I’d give him that.

Rinaldo glared for a moment but finally waved his hand dismissively.

“Whatever.  Continue.”

He asked me a bunch of other questions, which I answered
the best I could.  After the final question, he took his finger and traced it down the edge of the page as he reviewed his notes, nodded once, and stood up from the chair.

“
That’s all I need for now,” he announced.  “If I have further questions, we’ll set up another meeting.  I’ve given your unit leader my contact information if you think of anything you believe is pertinent.  I don’t think we’ll have any trouble having you released on bail as long as the Marine psychologist doesn’t have any major objections.”

“
I’ll meet you outside,” Rinaldo said.

Michael closed his notes into his briefcase and left the small room.  I glanced at my boss and tried not to feel too emasculated as he stared down at me with disappointment in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated.

“
I know you are.”  He let out a big sigh as he leaned forward and placed his elbows on the table.  “One way or another, this will all work itself out.”

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be more concerned with the
one way
or the
other
, but I was positive I wasn’t completely cleared in his eyes.  His next words did have a calming effect though.

“
I’m going to get you out of here, Arden,” Rinaldo said with conviction.  “You’ve been far too valuable to let you rot.  You have also left me in the awkward position of not just missing you, but also missing your backup.”

“
Sorry, sir,” I said again.  I couldn’t argue with what he said—I’d removed myself to jail right after killing his number two hit man, Terry Kramer.

“
You aren’t sorry for that,” he muttered as he stood up.

I couldn’t even pretend he was wrong.  I’d hated Terry Kramer from the moment I set eyes on him.  When I found out he had lured my hooker-slash-girlfriend into giving him information I had inadvertently told her, I’d lost it completely, killed them both, and then landed myself where I was.

“We’ll be back,” Rinaldo promised.  “Hang tight, son.

Nothing could have
satisfied me more than hearing that word from his lips.

Only a few moments after Rinaldo
walked out the door along with Michael, the adolescent attorney, one of the guards came in to take me back to my cell.  As he started to unlock the cuffs from the chair, one of the unit leaders stuck his head in and said I had another visitor.

I tried not to tense up so much as he tightened the restraints to the chair again and went to the door to let in whoever was coming to see me. 
My head was throbbing and felt like it was covered with a thick fog.  As the door swung open again, I looked up to see
her
.

Lia.

She was dressed in tight-fitting blue jeans, tennis shoes, and a long sleeved T-shirt.  I could see the chain around her neck which held a quarter made into a pendant—the same quarter I’d left for her in the cabin with a lame-ass note apologizing for running out on her.  She’d used that quarter to prove my ass was as tight as military-style bed sheets, which had made me laugh harder than I had in years.

Was that the point when I fell for her?

There was a warm coat tossed over her arm, and I wondered how cold it had gotten outside.  The sun had been shining into my cell window, but I didn’t know the temperature outside.  Chicago should have been in the full swing of spring, but apparently nature had another plan.

Her chest rose and fell as she took a long breath and then a short step
toward me.  I couldn’t seem to move my lips to actually say anything to her at first, but when she hesitated, I found my tongue.

“
Is Odin okay?”  They were probably the wrong first words, but nothing else came to mind.  The fog rolled in over my head again, and my stomach lurched.  For a second, there was nothing but dizziness in my head and static in front of my eyes.

“
He’s doing all right,” she said.  “They let me get into your apartment to find his food dish and bed.  He chewed up his rubber bone the first day I had him at my place, but I found him a new one.  I think he misses you.”

Lia took the last couple of steps to the chair opposite mine and sat with her hands folded in front of her.  The movement caught my attention, and I stared at her fingers.  I recalled the way they felt wrapped around my shaft, and even as I sat there, incarcerated, with cuffs around my wrists and a head full of vile dreams, I was starting to get a little hard.

My heart throbbed along with my head, and I turned my gaze away as I closed my eyes.  It was entirely possible I was going to get out of here and might even have the opportunity to feel her touch again, but I was about as fucked up as they came, and she didn’t need to be subjected to that.

Besides, there was no telling what Rinaldo had planned for me when I was released on bond.  He could exile me again.

I felt fingers against my arm and opened my eyes to find Lia had moved from her seat to stand on the left side of the chair where I was chained.  Her fingers traced up my forearm, and I shivered as I took in another deep breath.

With her touch on my arm, and my inability to return it, my head began to swim again
, and the fog inside my mind felt like it was trying to push me to the ground and suffocate me.  Her presence and contact should have soothed me, but I needed more.

“
I wish I could touch you.  I need to touch you.”

Lia stepped to one s
ide and shoved the table back a little with her hip. She positioned herself so that her leg was right in front of my hand.

I reached out and wrapped my fingers around her thigh.  Sitting up and leaning forward, I pressed the side of my face against her stomach.
The touch of her fingers on the back of my neck and scalp as she cradled my head to her body was alarming. The warm, dark feeling of near unconsciousness from lack of sleep seeped into me again, replacing the fog, but I pushed it off as I inhaled her familiar scent and let the emotions cover me.

She saw me.

She saw me like that—rifle in hand, firing at strangers in a park. She saw me in cuffs, being hauled away like a deranged lunatic.

I
was
a deranged lunatic.

My body started shaking, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. 
It all came out as I pressed my face against her belly and let go—allowing the shaking to turn into sobbing.  The haunted looks of those I had killed just before my bullet entered their brains, the bodies of my unit as I was taken prisoner, the sounds of those who begged me to show mercy.

I never did.

“It wasn't always this way,” I cried into her shirt. “I wasn't supposed to be like this.”

“
What happened?” I heard her whisper.

I shook my head from side to side, still pressing tightly against her body.
  Though there was a little part of me that might have wanted to go for full disclosure—everything from my profession to the slaying of the woman I slept with—most of me wasn’t anywhere near that stupid.  Even in my current state, I wasn’t going to say anything to make her run screaming from the room.  That was what she would have done if I had told her everything.

No doubt about it.

Without the ability to tell her all of it, I had to go with the basic, high-level view of the situation.

“
I can’t…I can’t sleep,” I finally said.

“
Why not?”

“
The dreams.”

“
Tell me what you dream about,” she said softly.

I turned my head to gaze up at her.  I didn’t know what I saw there, but I knew it wasn’t just morbid curiosity or nosiness.

“I was a POW,” I told her.

She nodded, and there was no surprise contained within her eyes.

“I know,” she replied.  “I read about it.  Is that what you dream about?”

“
Most of the time,” I said.  Flashes of Bridgett’s body on the ground flickered in my brain, and I bit down on my lip to stop myself from blurting it out.  “I usually dream about being tied up and shoved into a hole in the ground.  And the sand.  Just constant, fucking sand.”

“
How long has it been since you’ve slept?”

I shrugged and shook my head.  I had no idea.

“I can’t sleep by myself,” I said.  “It’s been…a while.”

“
By yourself?” Lia asked.  “But you can sleep if someone is with you?”

Whirling
nausea swirled in my stomach.  I hadn’t meant to say anything about it at all, and now she was likely to press for a better answer.  What would I even tell her?  I do my best sleeping after a little anal with a hooker?  Oh, by the way, I might have shot her when the mood struck me.

How about a nice night on the town?

“I guess,” I said quietly.  My heartbeat pounded in my temples as I started to sweat due to the energy it was taking not to tell her what happened.

Lia’s fingers trailed slowly over the side of my face.

“If I was with you, would you be able to sleep?”

The feeling that came over me at the very idea could have easily knocked me to the floor if I hadn’t already been secured to the metal chair.  My fingers tightened on her thigh as the reality of the situation hit me.

If I had just held out another day—maybe even another hour—I could be sleeping with her right now.  I could be in my bed with Lia in my arms and Odin making disgusting saliva trails on my arm when I overslept.

I’d fucked it all up.

“Shit…shit…shit…”

“
Evan!”

“
So fucked up…”

“
I know,” she said with a rush of air from her lungs. “It’s as fucked up as anything ever has been.”

“
It’s worse,” I responded.  I squeezed my eyes shut and considered biting down on my tongue.

There’s a rush of blood into my throat just after a sharp blow to my chin causes me to bite down on my tongue. 
For a moment I think I’m choking on my own blood, but once I manage to swallow, I can breathe again.  My tongue throbs in my mouth…

“
Evan?”

As my thoughts were interrupted, my lungs started screaming at me to fill them up with some air before I passed out face-first on the table.  I tried to inhale but couldn’t and started to panic.

The blood in my mouth mixes with the sand as I’m thrown back to the ground, and for a moment I am choking on it…

“Evan, stay with me.”

“Can’t breathe.”

“Calm, baby.”
  Her fingers traced the edge of my jaw.  “Just listen to my voice, and take a slow breath.”

I wanted to listen to her badly enough that I
forced my diaphragm to flex and pull air into my lungs in a sharp gasp.

“
It’s okay.”  Lia’s voice pulled me from the panic the same way it had managed to pull me from the memory.  “It’s all right, Evan…  You’re all right.”

With nearly violent
effort, I inhaled again.  The act itself nearly made me fall out of the chair.  I wondered if it was the restraints or Lia’s touch that was keeping me from landing on the floor.  After a few more tries and a lot of focus on her skin against mine, I managed to start breathing normally again.

“
Where did you go?”  Lia’s fingers continued to run from my temple to my chin.

“
Back there,” I responded.  I swallowed past the growing tightness in my throat before continuing.  “When they first tried to put me in the hole, I’d struggle.  It was stupid—there were too many of them to fight.”

“
But you kept trying.”

“
For a while.”  I nodded.  “Eventually, I figured out there wasn’t any point.  Once I didn’t respond that way anymore to whatever they were doing, they’d try to come up with other ways to get a reaction out of me.”

“Shit,” Lia whispered
as her arms tensed.  “You were there a long time, too.”

I could only nod.  Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to keep the memories shoved to the back of my mind, but I was really too tired for such an act of will.  They were going to be back
—with force.  My hands began to shake uncontrollably, and I gripped Lia’s thigh a little harder.

“
Evan, it will be all right.”  Her voice echoed around the small room. “We'll figure it out. I'll help you figure it out.”

I laughed. It was hollow and without humor.

“Figure it out,” I repeated sarcastically. “I shot up my neighborhood park. I'm going to prison.  I should go to prison.”

Her hand stroke
d the top of my head.

“
We'll figure something out,” she said again.  “I don't know what that is yet, but there has to be something.”

“Can’t think,” I told her.  “Can’t think when I can’t sleep.”

“You have to sleep.”

“No.”  I shook my head against her body.  “It’s too much
—too real.”

The door
across the room opened abruptly, and Mark Duncan stepped in.

“
Were you serious about your offer?” he said immediately to a confused Lia.

She shook her head, her look quizzical.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have to admit I’m a little anxious to see how much this helps.  Evan hasn’t slept more than a few minutes at a time in the past two days, and I believe it’s largely to blame for his breakdown.”

Breakdown.
  Is that what it was?

“
Who are you?” Lia finally asked.

Mark shook his head like Odin does when he gets a bath.

“I’m so sorry, Miss Antonio.”  He extended his arm, and I flinched as Lia’s touch left my skin briefly to shake his hand.  “I’m Mark Duncan, Evan’s psychologist.  I’ve been observing both of you through the monitor.  I assume you are the young lady Evan has spoken to me about.”

I’d said nothing to him about Lia as far as I could remember.  Not that my memory was all that great, but I had a pretty good idea he was really thinking of Bridgett.
  I hadn’t told him much during the few sessions we had actually had, but he had guessed that the person I was sleeping with was a hooker, and I hadn’t denied it.  I tensed, unsure about what else he might say.

If he called Lia a prostitute, I was going to rip off the chains and beat him to death with them.

Apparently, the doctor-patient privilege still held because he said nothing else about it.

“I want to help,” Lia confirmed.  “What do you want me to do?”

“Sleep with him.”

Her eyes narrowed a little, and her hand stilled against my cheek.

“Where?” she asked.

“Here,” Mark said.  “
Visitors aren’t allowed in the cell units, so there isn’t any other place, and this is a bit of a desperate situation.  He’s in serious danger if he doesn’t get proper sleep.  I can see what I can do to make it more comfortable.”

Lia looked around the room while I tried to make sense of what Mark was suggesting.
  I wasn’t successful; it was too hard to keep track of what was going on around me in my present state of mind.  Inferred reasoning wasn’t going to happen.