Held & Pushed (2 book bundle) (28 page)

“Well
this doesn’t feel normal to me.”

“How
does it feel to you?”

I
swallowed the lump that was beginning to form in my throat and sighed.
“Like I’m suffocating.
Like there’s this huge, heavy weight
bearing down on me and I can’t do anything about it. I can’t lift it, can’t
move it,
can’t
scream for help. I feel…helpless. I
know that it’s my fault, that if I’d been stronger and just kept Austin, I
wouldn’t be feeling this way. But I just couldn’t. I couldn’t do that. I
couldn’t take that chance.”

“What
chance?”

“The chance of keeping him.”

“Why
would keeping him be a chance?”

“For
one thing, had I kept him, I would’ve been running the risk of hurting him.”

“You
wanted to hurt him?”

“No, of course not.
I didn’t want to hurt him, but I was
afraid that I might. You know, eventually.”

“Why
do you think that?”

I
hesitated to answer. These were all things we’d gone over before, in previous
sessions, so this wasn’t new territory. That didn’t make it any easier to talk
about though.

“Because I’d already thought about it.”

“You
thought about hurting your baby?”

I
nodded as the tears fell from my eyes. “I did. I didn’t want to. I really
didn’t. But there were times…I heard my name in his cries, spoken in the voice
of his father. When he looked at me, I saw Ron looking at me through his eyes.
I know it’s crazy and it was all in my head, but it’s what I thought and felt
at the time. Had I kept him, I don’t know what would’ve happened. I don’t like
to think about it.”

“And
this is what caused Wade to worry about the safety of Mason?”

“Yeah.”
I sniffed, the crying causing my nose to run. Dr.
Loyd leaned forward and handed me a tissue. I wiped my nose before continuing.
“I told him that I would never in a million years hurt Mason, but even as I
said it, I doubted myself. I don’t think I would. I had no reason to. But in
that state of mind, I couldn’t be certain that I wouldn’t. Like I said, I was
unstable and I needed help.”

The
doctor nodded. “Yes you did. I’m glad you came to us, and I’m glad we were able
to give you the help you needed.” He smiled warmly at me.

I
returned the gesture, smiling through the emotional pain I was enduring even as
we spoke.

After
discussing prescriptions and outpatient care, I left his office, returning to
the long, bright hallway.

Again,
I kept my head low and my eyes lower as I walked down the hall, thinking about
the conversation I’d just had with Dr. Loyd. Talking to him always put me in a
foul mood. I hated bringing up the past, thinking about the decisions I’d made,
reliving things I’d seen and done, and remembering all that had happened in the
previous couple of years. Every session was like tearing the scab off a wound,
preventing it from healing. I always walked away feeling exposed and
vulnerable, both of which were feelings I hated.

Before
I knew it, I was three quarters of the way down the hall.

“Hey.
There you are, Nicky. I’ve been wondering about you. You
wanna
do something later?”

Ignoring
her, I planned to pass her by and go straight to my room, but it didn’t happen
that way.

“Huh?
Nicky?
You
wanna
do
something?
Nicky?”

In
a flash I had my hand wrapped around her throat, squeezing as I pushed her back
against the wall. I felt her pulse throbbing beneath my fingertips as her heart
raced.

She
looked at me with wide eyes, but her arms remained at her sides. She didn’t try
to fight me off or pull my hand from her neck. She didn’t try to scream for
help, though it wouldn’t have done her any good even if she had. The hallway
was empty except for the two of us.

“I
told you,” I said through clenched teeth. “My fucking name is not Nicky. If you
ever call me that again, I’ll cut your throat while you sleep and watch you
die. You got that?”

Linette
tried to speak, probably tried to agree to never
call me Nicky again, but she could only gurgle an unrecognizable grunt under
the pressure of my hand as it constricted her neck.

I
gave her throat one final squeeze, pushing her head back and thumping it
against the wall before I let go, turned, and walked away.

At
the end of the hallway, I turned right and made my way to the room that had been
mine for three months. I curled up on the bed in the fetal position, closed my
eyes, and waited for the anger to die down inside of me.

It
was a process that would take a long time.

3

A
fter
returning the water hose to its place on the wall, he straightened the tools on
the work table, washing away the blood and chunks of flesh before drying and
returning them to their rightful place on the pegboard above the table.

Behind him, Candy groaned, a sign that she was
coming around.

He continued the task as the news came back from
commercial break. They opened this time with a story that captured his full
attention.

“You may
remember the story of a local woman who was kidnapped from this mall two years
ago.”

Turning his head, he looked at the television screen,
watching as a photo appeared in a box next to the news anchor’s head. He stood
motionless, frozen in place with a bloody hammer in his hand. He stared at the
photo of a mall he knew well, a mall that would always hold a special place in
his heart because that’s where he met her. The only woman he’d ever loved.

“This story
captured our attention back then and we’ve been following it closely ever
since, updating you in the search for the alleged kidnapper.”

Behind him, Candy’s moans grew louder, bordering
on hysterical sobs. Ignoring her, he focused harder on the TV, trying to hear
every word the news anchor spoke.

“The woman,
Nicole Lee of St. Louis, disappeared from the parking lot of the St. Louis
Galleria Mall, kidnapped at gunpoint. This is a police sketch of the man
accused of the kidnapping.”

The photo of the mall was replaced by a black and
white sketch of a man who looked remarkably like Ron. At least, the way he used
to look, before the gray hairs took up residence around his temples, and before
the weight gain that filled out his cheeks and made his face rounder.

Ron took a step closer to the TV, putting his back
to the table on which Candy lay, fully conscious now and screaming at the top
of her lungs.

Over his shoulder, he told her to be quiet. She
ignored him, screaming loudly enough to drown out the sound of the television
and leave him clueless as to what was being said. For all he knew, the police
had figured out who he was and had his house surrounded at that very moment.

The thought of being captured, put on trial, and
sentenced either to death or to live out the rest of his life in a cage—which
in essence was also a death sentence—angered him and sent him flying into a
rage.

Determined to silence the filthy bitch’s screams
so he could hear what the news anchor was reporting, he turned around and
rushed at her.

With the bloody hammer raised high above his head,
he swung, sinking the claw end into the pale meat of the terrified whore’s
neck.

Still trying to scream, she emitted sounds of
gasping and gurgling. A quick jerk on the hammer ended those sounds, the forked
claw tearing out her esophagus and vocal chords, quickly suffocating her as the
blood gushed from her neck in rhythmic spurts, pumped out with each frantic
beat of her heart.

The front of Ron’s shirt was spattered with blood,
as was his face. He didn’t notice. He didn’t feel the heat of her life force as
it cooled against his skin. Didn’t notice and didn’t care.

With the screaming bitch now silenced, Ron turned
his attention immediately back to the television, listening intently as the
story continued.

“Before
escaping and immediately alerting the authorities, the woman claims to have
watched as her captor tortured and murdered numerous women, many of whom were
prostitutes, though the bodies of those women have never been found.

“Mrs. Lee
was released today from Alpine Grove Mental Health Facility, where she checked
herself in three months ago.”

The news anchor disappeared, replaced by a video
of a woman walking out of a building and descending concrete steps. She kept
her head low, her hair covering most of her face. The cameraman remained on the
street, zooming in on Nicole as she emerged from the large hospital.

Nicole didn’t seem to notice the camera as she
walked purposefully down the sidewalk.

“The ongoing
search continues for this man.”

The video cut away just as Nicole lifted her head.
For a second and no more, he saw her face, her eyes, and felt as though she was
looking at him. Then, the police sketch zoomed in, filling the screen.

“If you know
this man or believe you have seen him, please call the number at the bottom of
your screen.”

The news anchor threw it over to Bob with the
weather, but Ron had already stopped listening. He didn’t care about the
weather. All he could focus on was her face.
Her eyes.

He suddenly didn’t care that he had killed Candy
before completely using her body. He didn’t care that he’d spent months
touching the hideous and grotesque feet of filthy, drug-addicted prostitutes.
Nor did he care about the profound loneliness he’d suffered over the past two
years. None of that mattered now.

Only one thing mattered to him and that was
Nicole.

4

I
t
was bright outside the cold stone walls of the Alpine Grove Mental Health
Facility. I stood just outside the front doors, lingering at the top of the
steps, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the sunlight. When the shock wore off
and I no longer needed to squint, I looked around, peering into the depths of
every shadow, watching for movement in every parked car, and studying the faces
of the handful of people milling around the hospital grounds.

Across the street from the hospital was a white
news van with a large, blue 5 on the side. My stomach knotted at the sight of
it and my palms grew damp with perspiration. Fortunately, there wasn’t a
reporter on the scene, just the van with a cameraman. Still, the thought of
being on television made my heart race. I didn’t know why the news van was
there, but I did my best to ignore it, even though I had to walk toward it to
get to my car.

I descended the concrete steps and followed the
sidewalk to the hospital’s parking lot where my car set exactly where I’d left
it months earlier. It was parked beneath a light, askew between the white lines
that identified the space. Rushing into the parking lot that night three months
ago, I’d been frantic, in a hurry to flee from my situation, my past, and
myself.

That wasn’t the case now. Now I had plenty of
time, and it showed in my cautious approach to the car, which was now covered
in a layer of dust.

I steered clear of any large vehicles such as vans
and SUVs as I traversed the maze of cars occupying the parking lot, keeping an
eye out for anyone sitting in vehicles along the way. Luckily, all cars were
empty.

After unlocking the driver’s door, I tossed the
suitcase onto the back seat and slid in behind the steering wheel. Immediately,
I hit the button to lock all the doors, I looked around, making sure no one was
approaching my vehicle or watching my every move. Satisfied that no one was
near me, I breathed a sigh of relief and buried my face in my hands.

This was going to be a lot harder than I thought.

As I pulled out of the parking lot and drove away,
I watched in the rearview mirror as the imposing gray building—a building with
four levels and over a hundred problem-riddled patients—faded behind the trees
and out of view.

It felt good to leave the hospital. The farther
away from the building I got, the thinner the air seemed to become, and I
finally felt as though I could breathe again. It was as though a huge weight
had been lifted from my shoulders and left in my room on the second floor.
However, leaving the hospital did nothing in the way of lifting the weight from
my mind, no matter how much I wanted it to.

If Dr. Loyd had any idea of what was really
happening in my head, of the nightmares that came when I finally managed to
sleep, he would lock me up in a padded room and throw away the key. So I’d had
to lie to him, to make him believe that while I wasn’t completely cured, was
far from back to normal, I had made enormous progress toward that goal.

And I suppose in the grand scheme of things I had
made progress. Though I still woke up drenched in sweat and screaming in
terror, I no longer woke to find myself huddled in the corner of the room with
my fists flailing. I was still paranoid and traumatized and burdened with
guilt, but I’d learned to hide it better, which was surely a step in the right
direction. If I could hide it, that meant I could deal with it. If I could deal
with it, that meant I could make it go away. And if I could make it go away,
I’d be cured and everything would return to normal.

At least that’s what I told myself.

With nowhere to go, I drove around the city for a
while, thinking. I needed some sort of plan and I needed one soon. Night was
coming and the thought of sleeping in my car didn’t appeal to me. That would
put me in a vulnerable position. Never again would I allow myself to be in a
vulnerable position. Not if I could help it.