In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (28 page)

“Calm down, Edna,” Alec told her, patting her knee. “There’s nothing to worry about.” When her frightened eyes met his, he smiled, his own warm eyes raking over her face with an admiring glance. “Remember you’re a Southern lady. Southern ladies aren’t intimidated by anything.
They
intimidate!”

Doc Remington smiled. He winked at Kyle in the mirror. Kyle’s smile was shaky. His eyes slid away from Doc’s.

“You okay, Kyle?” Doc asked. He thought Kyle’s face just a tad too pale.

“David,” Alec corrected. “Don’t make such a mistake again, Doc. It could be lethal.”

Doc nodded. His hands tightened on the wheel and he could actually hear his blood pumping in his ears. It had been a supremely dangerous error on his part to call Kyle by his real name. Very dangerous for Kyle.

“I’ll be just fine as soon as I see Gabe,” Kyle answered quietly. “It’s him I’m worried about. Not me.”

Kyle Vittetoe hadn’t liked the looks of the mansion from the moment he spied it at the gate. The closer the limo came up the gravel drive, the uglier the thing looked to him. As Doc pulled up to the wide front steps and Kyle could look past Edna Mae to the double doors, a chill quivered along his spine and made the hair on his neck rise. He shivered.

“Just remember you’re only too glad to be here, David,” Alec reminded him. “It was either this or jail, and you chose The Chancel.”

Kyle grunted. Two men were coming down the steps toward the car and he tensed. One man, his skin so black it glistened, was in the white shirt and pants of an orderly. Every bad thing Kyle had ever heard or read or seen in films about mental institutions became centered on that man and his pristine white uniform.

Edna Mae, sensing the fear in her young friend, put her hand on his and squeezed.

“I’m fine,” Kyle repeated.

“Let’s go, baby,” Edna Mae said softly as Doc opened the car door on her side. She patted Kyle’s hand and swung her legs out the door, reaching up to accept Doc’s hand as he helped her from the car.

Hail Mary, full of grace...
Kyle silently began as he scooted toward the opened door.

Jamie fumbled with
the snaps on his pajama shirt. His hands were shaking, his entire body quivering. He was intently aware of Beecher standing at the door, watching him, his pale eyes steady. Once he had glanced up to find a strange look on the orderly’s face and he had quickly looked down again, not daring to think of what that look could mean.

“Hurry it up, Sinclair. I ain’t got all the bloody day to fool with you!”

He shrugged out of his shirt and turned to hang it on the peg outside the shower stall. Looking down at his bare arm, he saw goosebumps on the pale flesh and knew it wasn’t from the slight chill inside the shower room.

“You want me to take them pants off you?” Beecher snapped as he took a step forward.

Jamie looked up, true fear making his eyes wide. He furiously shook his head.

“Then hurry up and shuck them pants ‘fore I do!”

Quickly, his hands went to the snaps on the pajama bottom. He pushed them down to his ankles, stepped out of them, then stepped out of his briefs. His heart thundered in his chest as Beecher pushed past him and turned the water on inside the ceramic shower stall.

“Go on. Get in.”

Jamie, his head down, too afraid to look up at Beecher, glanced at the driving water. There were eight stalls on the men’s side of the bathing facilities, none with doors or curtains. They were set back sufficiently deep enough so the water could not spray onto the shower room floor, but they offered no privacy. Normally, Cobb brought him for his daily bath, bringing along with him a newspaper or magazine, or one of the many western paperbacks the man devoured, to read while Jamie was bathing, thereby allowing him some measure of privacy while still keeping watch over him.

“What the hell are you waiting for?” Beecher snapped.

Jamie could see no steam coming from the water as it cascaded down. He hadn’t seen Beecher even touch the hot water side of the faucets. The temperature of the shower water, pre-set so no patient would ever run the risk of being scalded, was never warm enough for Jamie even at its highest hot water setting. He somehow understood Beecher knew that.

“Do you want me to throw your ass in there?”

Jamie shook his head, took a deep breath and walked under the jet of the water. His gasp of shock brought a laugh from Beecher.

“A little too cool for you?”

The water was so cold it was numbing. The initial impact of it had literally taken his breath away. Even as he stood there, beginning to shiver, his teeth to click together, he could see his flesh turning a mottled blue. Water fell over his head, plastering his hair to his forehead, pooling at his feet, and he shivered so intensely he couldn’t even lift his hand to reach for the soap.

“How do you like it, James?” Beecher cooed.

Through the pinprick pain of the shower’s iciness on his flesh, Jamie could feel the heat of Beecher’s gaze as it swept over him. He feared that gaze even more than the pain the electric shock had caused him. It was that fear that galvanized him into action and he forced up his trembling hand to grab at the soap, lathering it down his chest in slick spirals of acute coldness. He scrubbed vigorously at his flesh, lifting his legs, scouring his thighs and calves, his feet, dragging the soapy bar down his arms. He started to put the soap back when Beecher’s voice stopped him dead under the flow of the chilled water.

“Ain’t you forgetting a portion of your anatomy, James?”

An instant lurch in his chest made Jamie drop the soap, step to the very back of the shower stall, his head up, eyes wary, like a cornered animal, his wide-eyed stare fused with Beecher’s sardonic leer.

“Want me to finish your bath for you?” the man asked in a husky, menacing tone.

Jamie stared at the man, his heart thudding in his chest. He was trembling from the cold, from the flow of the icy water, from the fear that kept him plastered against the shower stall’s tiles. When Beecher took a step forward, a wild, keening scream of pure primal terror forced its way up from the bottom of James Tremayne’s being and echoed through the shower room.

“What the hell
was that?” Kyle asked as he instinctively stepped closer to Doc. The sound had made the hair on his neck prickle even more than it had when he had first got a close look at the mansion.

Dr. Bruce Lassiter frowned and he turned his eyes to Martin Cobb. “Would you see what’s happening?”

Martin Cobb had a damned good notion what was going on as he turned away and his large body moved purposefully toward a long corridor off to the left of the main reception area.

Doc glanced toward Edna Mae and found the old woman’s eyes squinted. Lassiter’s explanation didn’t take the worry out of those aged eyes.

“I think one of our patients must be having an episode. Several of our male patients are manic depressives.” His ingratiating smile was directed to Alec. “You know how it is. We keep them on medication, but every now and then, despite our best efforts, they lapse.”

“Yes,” Alec said. His eyes were steady on Lassiter and the other man looked away, unable to meet that too-knowledgeable stare.

A young woman, pretty and neat in her pale lavender housecoat, came shyly forward, her eyes on Edna Mae. In her arms she held what appeared to be an infant, its blanket a pretty swathe of pastel colors. The young woman’s smile was engaging, her lovely eyes warm and inviting. Before Lassiter could stop her, she held out her bundle to Edna Mae.

“Would you like to see my baby?” she asked. Her voice was soft, gentle, deeply Southern.

Edna Mae smiled. “Well, of course I would, darling.” She looked at the wrapped bundle. Inside was a pretty little doll, its cobalt-blue eyes staring glassily up at the older woman. Edna Mae’s smile wavered only a little before she lifted her eyes to the young woman. “What a lovely baby you have, my dear. What’s her name?”

There was a wistful sigh from the young woman. “Angelina.” She brought the bundle up to her chest and patted the doll’s blanket-wrapped back. All the while her eyes were on Edna Mae. “She’ll be a year old tomorrow.”

Edna Mae’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you going to have a party for her?”

The young woman’s smiled faltered and her eyes slid to Lassiter. At the doctor’s reluctant nod, the smile returned to the young woman’s face and she nodded vigorously. “Will you come to my baby’s party?”

Lassiter let out a small grunt of embarrassment and stepped forward, putting his arm around the young woman’s shoulders. “Now, Rebecca, you shouldn’t ask Mrs. Boudreaux to interrupt her schedule for Angelina’s party. There’ll be plenty of people here to attend.”

“Can Jamie come, too?” the young woman asked, her eyes wide. “Please, Dr. Lassiter? Can Jamie come, too?”

“Well, I suppose he can if he feels like it,” Lassiter said in an aggrieved tone. “But we’ll have to ask him, now won’t we?” He turned his attention to Edna Mae. “Rebecca doesn’t understand what a busy woman you are, Mrs. Boudreaux. I’m afraid she—”

“I’d be delighted to attend Angelina’s party,” Edna Mae informed the man and felt an inner thrill at the slight scowl that seemed to mar his carefully-controlled, fatherly smile. “May I bring her a present?”

Rebecca squealed with pleasure. “Can she, Dr. Lassiter? Oh, please, can she bring a present? Can she, Dr. Lassiter?”

Kyle, sensing the man’s anger, feeling the fury building in him, looked at Doc and something silently passed between them. Bruce Lassiter wasn’t at all what he appeared to be. He moved to avoid the denial he could see forming on Lassiter’s lips.

“I’d imagine Mother will find more delight in buying the baby a present than you could imagine, Dr. Lassiter.” He feigned boredom, looking around him with a studied air of arrogance. He even managed a yawn. “Since she isn’t going to be getting any grandchildren from me.”

Lassiter obviously didn’t want to alienate such a wealthy client. “If you’d like to bring a gift, I don’t suppose there’d be a problem.” He looked at Alec and saw the faint nod of approval. “I would venture to say Angelina would certainly appreciate a gift, wouldn’t she, Rebecca?”

“Does Angelina have a baby crib?” Edna Mae asked. Her smile widened as the young woman literally jumped with happiness.

“Oh, I’ve wanted one for her for so long!” She hurried forward and wrapped her arms around Edna Mae’s neck. “Oh, thank you, ma’am. Thank you!”

A nurse, at Lassiter’s quiet command, came forward to gently help the young woman back to her room. The two women, heads bent over the doll, seemed to be discussing the coming party.

“What caused her transference?” Alec asked.

Lassiter looked up at the elderly physician, schooling his face into the proper sad visage of professionalism.

“Rebecca was the unfortunate victim of a rape last year. It was a brutal attack that left her unable to communicate for several weeks. When it became apparent she had conceived during the rape, her mother sought a court order under which a therapeutic abortion could be performed.”

“But poor little Rebecca wanted to keep the baby,” Edna Mae said quietly.

Lassiter shook his head. “That was quite out of the question, Mrs. Boudreaux. Her mother is an important woman. Such a scandal would’ve been devastating to the lady’s career.” He smiled that ingratiating smile he had used on Alec. “They were able to conceal the rape from the press, but the media would’ve had a field day with a pregnancy. Can you imagine the speculations of who the father might be?” He shook his head. “No, the abortion was the wisest choice.”

“Abortion is never the wisest choice,” Alec said stiffly. His eyes raked over Lassiter. “Especially so, if the mother was unwilling.”

Lassiter blushed, swallowed and nodded as though he had never considered the possibility of being in the wrong. He stammered as he flung his hand toward the staircase off to the right.

“I’ll have someone take David’s bags up to his room. He’ll be in room two-thirteen.”

“Will I have a roommate?” Kyle asked in a bored yawn.

“All our rooms are private.”

“Good.” Kyle glanced around. “I snore.”

“Edward, my chauffeur, will take up the bags. If we can go to your office, Bruce,” Alec said, “we’ll discuss David’s case. Can one of your nurses introduce him to the other patients?”

“Yes, of course. Abby? Will you take David and his mother to his room, then escort them to the day room? Introduce them around, if you would.”

A red-haired woman, gum popping as she came toward them, swept her eyes over David and smiled. Obviously, she liked what she saw. She took his arm and started forward, propelling him toward the spiral staircase.

“You all are gonna like it here, sweetie.” She turned her batting eyes up to his. “I can just about guarantee it.”

“He likes it anywhere he goes,” Doc mumbled as he followed behind Edna Mae, Kyle and the ass-wiggling nurse. He grinned as the nurse glanced back at him and winked.

“We do try to accommodate.” Abby sighed.

“I just bet you do,” Edna Mae snapped. At the nurse’s puzzled look, she arched one patrician brow. The younger woman turned red and her eyes darted forward.