Heller's Punishment (13 page)

“Sorry, babe,”
he said to me, kissing each of my breasts. “Would have liked to get
to know you better.” He undid the gag, immediately clamping his
hand over my incipient scream. “Grab her arms,” he ordered Felicia,
and she climbed onto me, sitting on my legs, holding down my arms.
Taking the bottle of water from my bedside table, he carefully
undid it. I thrashed around madly, but to no avail. “Climb up on
her chest.”

Felicia
wriggled her way up until my arms were fully restrained. Paulie
pushed his fingers between my lips to open my mouth.

I bit him and
he slapped me hard across the face.

“Behave, bitch.
Licia, grab hold of her jaw.”

Felicia’s grip
was cruel and though I tried to resist, he forced my mouth open.
Paulie dropped in the two tablets, pinched my nostrils closed and
poured in the water. I spluttered and choked, trying to spit the
water out, but eventually had to swallow the water or die. I felt
the tablets sliding down my throat.

No!

He reapplied
the gag and retied my ankles together, but loosened my wrist
bindings slightly.

“There you go,
babe. A fighting chance. I can’t be fairer than that. It will take
you a while to get out of these restraints, but I don’t want you to
choke on your own vomit.”

Felicia
finished stashing all her possessions into his backpack, while he
pulled up the rope she’d made from our sheets and carefully tested
all the knots, tightening some.

“Lucky for us,
it’s only two stories and neither of us are heavy,” he laughed. “I
didn’t think it was going to hold me on the way up.” He looked at
Felicia. “Ready, Licia?”

She nodded,
smiling, finally happy now she was escaping from rehab. I fought to
keep my eyes open so I could see what they were doing. Felicia
demurred at the drop and had to be encouraged all way out of the
window and out of sight.

They were on
their way to Felicia’s parents and I had to stop them.

But how? I was
so tired.

Sluggishly, I
wriggled my wrists, soon realising that I had more give in the
bindings than he’d probably meant to allow.
Concentrate
, I
told myself, channelling all my energy into freeing my hands. I
squashed one hand into the smallest size I could and pulled it
through the bindings, worming it past the nylon, cutting into my
wrist as I did. I didn’t mind the pain – it was the only spark of
sharpness in my deadened senses.

And then it was
freed.
Thank God
, I thought tearfully, releasing my other
hand, pulling the gag from my mouth and undoing my ankles. At least
ten minutes had passed.

Reminding
myself how to walk –
one foot, then the other
– I plodded
over to the emergency button situated near the door and opened its
casing, pressing on it.

I have to
stop them
, I told myself groggily, finding it hard to focus my
eyes.
The window
.

I looked over
the sill to see that the length of knotted sheets hanging down the
side of the building almost reached the ground.

You can
manage that
, I coached myself.
It’s only two
stories
.

I threw one leg
over sill and clutched onto the sheet rope. Later, when I attempted
to explain what I’d been thinking to try something so stupid, I
didn’t know what to say. The truth was that I wasn’t thinking. I
was on auto-zombie, too tired to think, too tired to realise that I
wasn’t capable of sound decision-making.

I commenced a
reckless downward shimmy. About halfway down though, dizziness
swept over me. I couldn’t keep holding on, my arms and legs weak,
my body a burden. I couldn’t hold up my own weight for much longer.
I closed my eyes briefly and pressed my forehead up against the
sheet.

I didn’t know
what happened next.

Chapter 9

I cautiously
opened my eyes, only to see that I was in a familiar environment.
Yep
, I thought to myself,
back in hospital yet again
.
I wondered what had happened this time. I wriggled my fingers and
toes, and felt the telltale stiffness of something on my right
foot. I threw back the blanket weakly and sluggishly pulled my leg
out to have a look at the damage. It was heavy. Oh dear. It wasn’t
a cast, but some kind of brace. I was surprised at how much energy
that simple action took.

I checked over
the rest of my body and noticed I was hooked up to oxygen and an IV
as well. But apart from feeling generally bruised and sore,
especially on my chest, nothing else seemed to be wrong with me.
Maybe it was my brain
, I thought, so I reminded myself that
my name was Matilda Ann Chalmers, I was twenty-five-years old,
almost twenty-six, I was depressingly single, had two parents and
two brothers, and I worked for a beautiful man called Heller who I
couldn’t decide how much I loved.

Nothing wrong
with my brain.

Then I
remembered Felicia and sat up in bed in alarm. I had to warn her
parents what she and her revolting boyfriend were planning to do. I
looked around for my phone but couldn’t see any of my possessions
near me.
That’s right
, I thought,
all my things were
still at the clinic
.

I pulled out my
oxygen tube and struggled to get out of bed, dragging the IV
trolley with me. But I’d forgotten about the brace and
automatically put my full weight on my right foot. A piercing pain
shooting up my leg banished every other thought from my mind. My
leg collapsed underneath me and I ended up on the floor, the IV
stand toppling over on me, pulled down with the momentum.

“
Fuckity
fucking fuck fuck!
” I expressed my feelings strongly and
loudly, writhing on the floor in agony, not knowing how I was going
to right myself.

Heller and
Clive picked that very moment to enter my room, holding a coffee
and a sandwich each. They stopped at the door in surprise at my
outburst and stared down at me for a moment. I stopped swearing and
squirming and looked up at them.

“Oh, hello,” I
said.

“Matilda,
you’re awake,” Heller said calmly, and putting his refreshments
down on my bedside table, carefully hauled the IV stand and me off
the floor and settled me back on the bed.

I scrunched my
face, knives of pain in my foot distracting me from every other
stimulus. After a while the pain faded to a dull throb and I was
able to communicate again. Only to find myself with nothing to say.
I’d screwed up the job badly – Felicia had escaped for a third time
and done God only knew what to her parents, and I’d been drugged
and injured – and I was afraid of what he was going to say to me. I
was definitely going to cry if he yelled at me.

He didn’t say
anything though, but merely sat on the bed next to me and hugged me
tightly. I clung to him for a while, before pulling away to look up
at him.

“What
happened?” I managed to ask, eventually.

“I’ve been
trying to piece together what happened to you from talking to the
clinic staff,” he said, gently pushing me back into a lying
position. His face was grim. “I’m still not sure about everything.
It appears that you were administered a double dose of barbiturates
– an overdose. Very dangerous, Matilda. You were in a bad way when
the clinic staff reached the room and spotted you after you fell
from that sheet rope. You were barely breathing and your heartbeat
was weak when the staff ran down to you. Then you stopped breathing
a few times. Thank God the clinic medics were there to give you CPR
while they waited for the ambulance. If you’d stayed in that room
alone . . .” He took a deep breath and squeezed my hand. Clive
watched on as he ate his sandwich, his face its usual stony
facade.

“Oh.” It was
all so overwhelming. But I guess that explained the sore chest. “I
don’t remember any of that.”

“Luckily the
ambulance arrived quickly. You could have easily died, my sweet,”
he said gravely, his eyes full of emotion as he stroked my hair.
“As it is, you’ve fractured your ankle from the fall.”

Great!
I
thought morosely. I hadn’t long recovered from having a broken
hand.

“I think
Felicia drugged my water, because I became sleepy after I drank it
and when I woke up I was tied up. She had drugs stashed in the hems
of her clothes. I’m pretty sure she was still using. Maybe she
brought a stash with her.”

I told him
everything I could remember about what had happened.

He listened,
not interrupting, his face an unreadable mask. “I informed the
clinic staff what you had told me about her running off into the
woods. They searched the area and found some heroin secreted in a
hollow in a tree. I think she met her boyfriend that day you heard
her talking and he left some there for her. Easy enough to slip
into a hem when you had your back turned.”

I felt so
stupid and incompetent. I couldn’t do anything right in this
job.

“I messed
everything up,” I admitted sadly. “I struggled so hard not to let
them give me more Heller, but I was too weak.” Tears prickled my
eyes and I took a shuddery breath.

He squeezed my
hand and leaned forward to kiss me on the forehead. “I’m sure you
did, my sweet.”

“I tried to
stop them.” I sat up. “They were going to Felicia’s parents’ house
to do something terrible to them. Someone should warn them!”

“They’ve
already been, Matilda. We were too late. I sent a couple of men
around to their house to check on them when the clinic rang me
about you. They found them trussed and badly beaten. Their house
had been ransacked, furniture smashed and everything of any value
stolen. That pair did sickening things to them. Both were raped
with various objects several times in front of each other. And they
did other degrading, appalling things that I don’t wish to tell
you.” His face was neutral, but I couldn’t hide my disgust when I
heard that. What kind of a person would do such a thing to her own
parents? “As you can imagine, they’re extremely traumatised by the
experience. But her parents don’t want to press any charges.”

“No! That’s not
fair!” Thinking about what Felicia had done agitated me. I flopped
back on the bed. “I completely screwed this assignment up, didn’t
I? I’m so thick. I had no idea what she was up to. I should have
known. I was with her
all the time
!” What the hell use was I
if I couldn’t even control a forty-kilogram junkie? Worst.
Security. Officer. Ever.

“Nothing that
happened was your fault, Matilda. It was always going to be a
lose-lose assignment for both her parents and us. Some people just
don’t want to change, and she’s one of them. She and her boyfriend
are heading for a bad end, and I only hope her parents are prepared
to face that. Especially now that she’s shown them such
disrespect.” A savage expression slipped through his composure.
“I’m going to find out about when you can leave. You’re too far
away from home here.”

“Where am
I?”

“You’re in the
local hospital. You needed emergency care and were too unstable to
take back to the city.” He looked down on me, a pained expression
crossing his face, his hand on my cheek. “I thought I was going to
lose you, my sweet. I’ve never driven as fast as I did to get here
after I received that phone call from the clinic.”

“Hey, I’m
tougher than I look,” I said, giving him a watery smile. “It will
take more than an overdose to do me in.” I covered my eyes with my
hands, too emotional continue. “I just hate the thought that I’ve
had all those drugs in my body. I feel so unclean.”

“I know, but it
should all be gone by now. It’s been twenty-four hours. You’ve been
out of it for a while.” He dropped another kiss on the top of my
head and then sat back down and took my hands in his, a serious and
therefore scary expression on his face. “Matilda, we need to
talk.”

“What about?” I
asked, my heart thumping.
Oh God
, I thought,
he’s had
enough and is going to fire me
. I flicked my eyes to Clive, but
his impassive features gave away nothing.

“The clinic
staff found a used syringe in the room. Were you injected at
all?”

I breathed a
sigh of relief at his question. “No. They just shot up in front of
me. I guess Felicia didn’t pack everything up properly and left the
needle behind.”

“My sweet.” He
looked away for a lengthy moment.

“Heller? What’s
the matter?”

When his eyes
returned to me, his face was blank again. “I was so concerned that
they’d injected you. They’re both at huge risk of having HIV.”

“Oh.” I thought
about that for a moment. “Oh. They could easily have done that. I
was helpless.”

And after they
left, that thought consumed my mind for the rest of the day and I
spent a sleepless night brooding over what could have been.

When Heller
returned the next day, he had a kowtowed doctor firmly in his
grasp, demanding that I immediately be assessed for release. I
think the poor doctor was too afraid of Heller not to agree that I
was ready to leave and as I’d passed the observation period for
overdoses, he fast-tracked the paperwork and handed me a week’s
worth of painkillers. So in less than an hour Heller was pushing me
in a wheelchair, despite my embarrassed protests, towards the
entrance. He had brought with him some crutches and a hideous black
boot that I had to wear for the next six weeks at least. It was
heavy and awkward and looked like part of an astronaut’s uniform,
but as Heller pointed out, it was better than a cast, and could at
least be taken off at night when I went to sleep.

In his
Mercedes, speeding back to the city and to home, I relaxed against
the front seat. Normally with Clive in the car, I’d sit in the
back, but as I needed room for my new space boot, for once Heller
promoted me to the front. I couldn’t tell how Clive felt about that
– he could have been cool about it, he could have been pissed off,
but all I received in return for my ‘sorry’ smile was a flat stare.
I reminded myself not to ever be tempted into a poker game with him
because I’d surely lose the shirt off my back. Not that he was
interested anyway.