Key West (9 page)

The scream bubbled up. She opened her mouth and filled it with sheet, forced it inside until she gagged and rolled to let her head hang over the side of the bed.

“Sonnie.
Cara mia?
Look at me.”

Please, nο.
“Go away!”

“Do as I tell you. Look at me. You will do as I tell you. You will not do anything unless I tell you that you may. Do you understand? I will never let you go. Not alive. The only way you’ll be, free of me is in death.”

“Don’t hit me. Oh, don’t hit me.” All the air left her space and only heat and pulsing remained.

Α crack smacked her head back against the pillows. She started to pull herself up. A blow to the back of her head threw her forward, and she drew up her knees to meet her face and muffle the next scream.

“Look at me.”

She opened her eyes and stared. The window wall was a sheet of flame. She would die here.

“That’s right.”

Sonnie slid from the bed to the floor and curled up as small as she could. Frank’s face. Trembling, too weak to hold her head up, she raised her eyes once more and, through the flames, she saw a face. Frank. His lips drawn back from his teeth, his eyes glowing sockets.

She closed her eyes and waited, and the heat lost its intensity. Her body, bathed with sweat, turned cold. Her teeth chattered. When she opened her eyes, there was no flame, no leering face, no host of stabbing fingers.

But they had been there, hadn’t they?

They could come back.

Whatever she did, she must stay awake. She must never close her eyes and try to sleep again. She needed help or she would die here, alone, with only demon hallucinations to greet her.

Scooting on her bottom, she backed up until she sat against the bedside table. She kept her eyes on the window and managed to grapple the phone down into her lap. Romano would come at once. She should have listened to him when he warned her she was in trouble and needed help.

After several attempts, she managed to punch in numbers. What numbers? She usually forgot them. Did she know the number of the country club? She’d never liked the place. It had been for Frank, and for Romano when he was in Key West.

“Yeah?”

A cry worked from her lips and it took both of her hands to hold the receiver.

“Who is this?” The voice on the other end of the line sharpened. “Answer me. Who is this?”

“S-sorry,” she said. “Wrong n-number.” Chris had made her repeat his number before he’d left that afternoon, only minutes after Romano. She’d written the figures on a board by the kitchen phone, then put them in the little book beside her bed. But she’d dialed it automatically.

“Sonnie? It is you, isn’t it?”

Romano hadn’t wanted to leave her with him, but she’d insisted, and finally her brother-in-law had gone, but not before she saw how badly she’d hurt him. Chris had seemed anxious to leave soon after. He’d done his duty to Roy and checked on her, nothing more.

She hung up the phone. Her breathing was easier, but her head ached. What was the matter with her? She’d had another nightmare—one of many—nothing more. Just because her nightmares were so real, she’d managed to persuade herself there was something she had to find out, that they brought messages intended to send her on a mission for the truth.

Always in those desperate moments when the flames came, and the face, or sometimes faces, she expected tο die, then wanted to die.

There was no fire.

There were no faces.

Heaving, she hauled herself onto the bed and lay facedown, praying for coolness, for peace, for dreamless sleep.

“Hush little baby, don’t you cry.”

She covered her ears. She would talk to Romano in the morning, apologize to him, tell him what she feared, and ask him to help her. He would do that.

Time stretched while she lay there in her damp pajamas, among damp sheets. As one area grew warm, she moved to another, then another. She needed to shower and change the bed, but she hadn’t the strength.

From below came the sound of knocking at the door. Sonnie sat up and hugged her shins.

The knocking sounded again, and again.

“Go away,” she said softly. “Leave me alone.”

More knocking, insistent, steady.

On legs that threatened to collapse beneath her, Sonnie got off the bed and went into the upper hallway. She held the banisters with both hands and began to climb down the stairs, placing first one, then the other foot on the same step before taking another. Her injured hip trembled. The pain that never quite left her foot became sharp. She moved so slowly, and the knocking went on and on.

Another step. And one more.

The knocking stopped.

Sonnie sat down at once and covered her face. If she didn’t get some help, she wouldn’t survive, and she wanted to survive.

A scraping sound reached her, and she raised her head to look downward. Only an instant passed before the front door swung inward and a large figure stepped quickly inside. The door closed again.

She opened her mouth but no sound would come past her aching throat.

A flashlight beam shot across the foyer, swung from side to side, then upward, upward to hit her face. Sonnie crossed her forearms to ward off the glare, and she did scream then.

Seven

Chris ran to the stairs and took them two at a time. “Sonnie, sit still. Don’t move or you’ll fall.” She looked as if she were about to slide downward. “Gotcha. Hell, what’s happened to you? Hey, relax, I’ve got you.”

He gripped her beneath her arms and started to lift. She struggled against him, tried to fight him with thin hands, and arms encased in damp satin. Suddenly jerking up to stand, she almost sent them both down the stairs. He was no stranger to the kind of strength adrenaline produced. She pummeled him, kicked at him, even though he knew she must be hurting herself.

“Sonnie? Hey, hey.” Holding his flashlight and the banister with one hand, he wrapped his other arm around her and held on while she struggled. “Sonnie, it’s me, Chris. It’s
Chris.
You’re okay.”

She was crying, sobbing. He knew she was trying to say something but couldn’t understand a word.

“Okay, that’s it.
Enough.
Do you hear me?”

“I won’t die for you,” she said, her eyes huge and glassy. “Kill me again, but I won’t just die.”

He cataloged every word. She could be sleepwalking, but he didn’t think so.

Her bare feet raked his shins repeatedly. Beneath satin pajamas her too-thin body was slick, and he released the banister long enough to hike her over his shoulder before she slithered away from him altogether.

Taking her upstairs seemed the only thing to do. She must have been in bed. And to have made the call he was now sure she had made, she must have been very frightened. The question was, by what? Or who?

The house was in total darkness. Had she dialed his number without putting on a light?

Moonlight shone through a domed skylight. When Chris reached the top of the stairs, he swung Sonnie down from his shoulder and carried her in his arms. She slumped there, limp, her head lolling to one side. That didn’t mean he got careless. With the hand he’d passed under her shoulders, he kept a grip on her arm. Now that the fight seemed to have gone out of her, she might not pack much of a punch, but he didn’t want to find out.

One door stood open, wide open, to a room on his left. He carried her in that direction, then inside and directly to a large bed. Nothing more than moonlight was needed to show sheets tangled into ropes and trailing to the floor.

French windows were pushed wide onto the balcony outside, and pale curtains filled softly with the breeze. He smelled the unmistakable scent of jasmine.

She moved slightly in his arms, but only to curve toward him and press her face against his chest. Did she know who he was? Did it matter who he was? Her breathing was quieter, but she still hiccuped.

“Sonnie,” he said quietly. “Sonnie, can you hear me? It’s Chris Talon. You called me, so I came. Can you hear me, Sonnie?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I think you’re ill. I’ll call—”

“No.” She didn’t, as he expected, resume writhing. Instead she grasped the collar of his shirt and tugged. “I’m sorry I woke you up. I dialed the wrong number. I’m not sick at all. I’m just fine. Please put me down and go home. It was a nightmare, that’s all. Just a silly nightmare. You can go—”

“Hush,” he said. “Hush, Sonnie. It’s okay. I’m not going to call anyone if you don’t want me to. Now I’m going to set you down on the bed. Is that all right?”

Again she began to pant.

“On a chair? Do you want to sit on a chair?” He felt her nod and took her to a chair near the windows, put her down, and fumbled to switch on a floor lamp.

Light burst across the chair. The woman who sat there was bent so far over at the waist that her face rested on her knees. Her pale hair was damp and clung to her head and neck, her too-fragile neck.

She shook. Chris raised a hand and let it hover over her back. One wrong move and she’d fly at him, and maybe hurt herself—if she hadn’t already hurt herself. He looked rapidly around the room. Apart from the wildly disordered bed, there was no sign of struggle.

He dropped to his knees and leaned clοse to her to ask, “Was there someone here? Did someone do something to you?”

Her response was to resume crying, but softly this time. She cried and trembled, and he saw the line of her spine through moist white satin. Α web of shiny, discolored scarring extending from beneath her short left sleeve. Where her collar gaped, the raised welt he’d already noted continued and widened.

“Help me.”

Chris held his breath. “Tell me what you need.”

“Not like this.”

He frowned. “I don’t understand you.”

She kept her face down, but pushed her hair back. “Wait for me. Say you won’t go away.”

“But”—he glanced around again—”where are you going?”

“Shower,” she murmured.

“Shower?” He puffed up his cheeks. He was the man who wasn’t ever getting close enough to another woman to be considered involved. He was also the man who had vowed to avoid anything that felt sticky enough to drag him in, to make him care. He was finished with being responsible—for anyone but himself.

She turned her head enough to peer at him with a swollen, reddened eye, and she put a hand on his shoulder while she pushed to her feet. “Please don’t leave.”

A wise man would contact that schmuck Romano, as Flynn would call him, and put Sonnie into the hands of someone who was at least some sort of relative. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, maneuvering himself into the chair she vacated. “Maybe you should just go to bed. You’re...you’re not real steady on your feet.”

Her laugh scaled upward. A vaguely hysterical laugh. “I haven’t been steady on my feet for a long time.” She laughed again, before the sound choked off. “But I’m on my feet, aren’t I? They didn’t...I’ m a miracle.” Raising her arms, she used them like wings and crossed the room with her awkward gait. “I can’t just walk, I can almost fly. One day I’m going to fly. I’m going to fly away where no one will ever he able to catch me again.”

Chris set his flashlight on a table beside the chair and rubbed a fist over his mouth. The sensation in his gut wasn’t completely new, just all but forgotten. Desperation. Wanting to help, but not knowing how.

She opened a drawer and pulled something out. Then she went to the door of what must be the bathroom and, just before she went inside, wagged a finger at him and said, “Now, you won’t go away, will you, Chris? You don’t want to be here, but you won’t leave me alone?”

“I’ll be here. Are you sure you’re up to the shower?”

“Oh, yes.” Her smile wobbled and failed. “Oh, yes.”

A second later the sound of water burst forth. Soon steam issued into the bedroom. He smelled lavender—her soap, he guessed.

“Hush, little baby, don’t you cry. Hush, little baby, don’t you cry. Hush, little baby, don’t...” High and clear, and so sweet it tightened his throat, she sang the same words again and again; then her voice faded.

A short time longer and the sound of gushing water ceased. A shower door slid open. He moved farther toward the front of the chair, straining for the sounds of her falling.

Water poured again, probably into the sink.

Then she appeared, her hair slicked straight back, and wearing a fresh pair of white pajamas—silk, not satin—and with a spray of yellow roses embroidered from her right shoulder and diagonally across her breasts to the left hem of the top. The pajamas were too big.

He got up and waved her toward him. At first she stopped and frowned, but then she came, although she stopped again just out of his reach.

“Sit here,” he said, mustering a dο-you-think-it’s-going-to-rain voice.

Without waiting for her to agree, he went to the bed, touched the sheets, and found them as damp as he’d expected. Quickly he removed them and tossed them aside.

“I can do that,” Sonnie said, and he heard her coming up behind him.

“You can, but you’re not going to. I did as you asked and stayed put. Now you do as I ask and sit in that chair. Where are the clean sheets?”

“I don’t want—”

“Humor me, please. Where?”

“Second door to the left outside this one. Linen cupboard. Queen size. Top two shelves.”

He went, whipped out the first set he came to, and returned to make the bed in record time. When she came to put the pillows into their cases he allowed her that much. He was a hardheaded son of a gun, and he knew another one like him when they met.

“What a mess,” she said when they’d finished. “I’m so embarrassed. What did I say?”

Chris regarded her speculatively. “You think you said something to me but you don’t remember?”

Tears welled in her eyes and she gasped as if shocked by them. She put her fists on the mattress and breathed through her mouth. Her eyes closed.

He was around the bed in two strides. She didn’t shrink from the hand he slipped about her waist. “You’re...Sonnie, I don’t know what you are, but it isn’t good. Help me out here. Tell me what’s happened. And what’s going on. Should I call your brother-in-law?”