Pandora's Box (23 page)

Her eyes drifted open.
 
She blinked up at him, appearing confused.
 
She tried to roll to her side, but
Tyler
held her still, afraid she might be seriously injured.

“Don’t move until I have time to check you out,” he said.
 
“I’ll get you some ice.”

******

While
Tyler
was in the kitchen, banging what sounded like an old-fashioned metal ice tray against the counter,
Madison
assessed her situation.
 
Her head throbbed painfully.
 
She rubbed the back of her skull beneath the hair and tried to concentrate without causing her head to explode.
 
The last thing she remembered was warming by the fire.
 
Tyler
had gone out for some more wood.
 
How had she gotten from there to the floor with
Tyler
on top of her?

And what had caused that horrible expression on his face?
 
A look of fear, wary confusion, and concern all rolled into one.

Of course she’d experienced the same disoriented feeling once before.
 
She remembered waking in the bar with the waiter standing over her.
 
He’d insisted she’d been there for over an hour.
 
If it was true, if she’d blanked out not once but twice, it probably meant Grainger had been telling the truth.
 
Her chip was old.
 
It had deteriorated, causing violent outbursts.

She was part of the Pandora’s Box experiment.

Had her father known?

If so, why hadn’t he told her?

Tyler
returned with ice rolled in a towel.
 
He sat behind her and carefully helped her to sit up.
 
His fingers were gentle as he probed the site of the injury.
 
It still hurt like hell.
 
She winced and bit her lip to keep from moaning as he placed the ice against the back of her skull.
 
It felt nice and cool on the nape of her neck.

“I think you’ll live,” he said.

“What happened?”
 
She asked the question even though she didn’t want to hear the answer.

“That’s what I want to know.
 
When I returned with the wood, you attacked me.”
 
He shrugged his broad shoulders, trying to make light of it.
 
“Maybe you fell asleep while I was gone.
 
Have you had a problem with sleepwalking before?”

She shook her head and winced.
 
Bad move.
 
She sucked in a sharp breath.
 
Her hands went to her aching head, holding it between them as if she could stop it from coming apart by sheer will.
 

“Easy there,”
Tyler
said.

He tenderly rubbed her temples and the sides of her skull.
 
His fingers slid beneath her hair.
 
The gentle friction felt amazing against her tender scalp.
 
She rested her head against his chest.
 
Her mind shut down.
 
Letting someone else take care of her didn’t come naturally for her, but she was tired of fighting on her own.
 
Besides,
Tyler
had magical fingers.
 
The pain receded slowly beneath his skillful hands.

“Tell me about your mother,” he said.
 

She froze.

He explained, “I saw the newspaper clippings on her death.
 
Did you know about the suicide?”
 
His voice remained low, quiet, as if he thought talking to loud might send her over the edge.
 
“I’m not sure it has anything to do with what happened to your father.
 
I think you should probably fill me in, just in case.”

She stiffened.
 
He wanted to know about her mother, the last thing she wanted to talk about.

“Clippings?
 
My father kept them?”
 
She shrugged.
 
“I guess I must have missed them in my search.
 
Or maybe I didn’t want to see them.”

Tyler
went to the desk and retrieved the folder.
 
He dumped it into her lap.
 
Instead of returning to his position behind her, hands massaging her scalp, he went to the window and stared into the night, leaving her to search the file alone.
 
She flipped the cover open and gasped.

Her mother’s face stared up at her, surrounded by the unsettling truth.
 
She’d forgotten how young her mother had been at the time of her death.

“I was six,” she said.
 
Her voice sounded far away to her own ears, an alien voice totally detached from both past and present.
 
“I don’t remember very much about that day, and my father refused to talk about it even after I grew up and started asking questions.
 
He loved her so much.
 
Her death nearly destroyed him.”

“Is your father the one who found her?”

It was a reasonable question and probably what he thought of as the worst case scenario.

“Actually, I was the first one with the body.”

“You found her?”
 
Tyler
’s hands tightened at his side as if the idea was too terrible for him to contemplate.

“Not exactly.”
 
Madison
hadn’t shared this story with anyone before.
 
Part of her wanted
Tyler
to know, but the other part of her screamed in agony at the mere thought of confessing the truth with her mouth and hearing it with her ears.
 
“When my mother decided to kill herself, she locked me in the bedroom with her.
 
I guess I should be grateful she didn’t decide to take me with her.”

He cursed under his breath, but the words barely registered in her mind.

She continued, “My mother sliced her wrists wide open with a butcher knife and she bled to death on her pretty pink roses bedspread.
 
I remember the flowers turning red.”
 
Suddenly
Madison
was in the room again, looking down at her mother’s bleeding arms.
 
“I don’t know how long I was in the room with her…her body.
 
Hours perhaps.
 
I just remember watching her mumbling and rocking herself on the bed while holding a doll until it was finished.”
 

Madison
drew her knees up, wrapped her arms around them as she continued to talk.
 
Her eyes focused, unseeing, at the far wall.

Tyler
closed the distance between them, but he didn’t speak or try to touch her.
 
He simply stood nearby and waited for her to finish.

“Like I told you, I don’t remember very much.”

Unable to sit still any longer,
Madison
struggled to her feet.
 
She rubbed the back of her aching skull and looked around the cabin.
 
Telling her story was easier here because this had been her father’s favorite place.
 
She felt strangely safe.

“Do you know why your mother took her own life?”

“No clue.”
 
She shrugged her shoulders.
 
Big mistake.
 
Sharp pain stabbed her between the shoulder blades.
 
She winced, closing her eyes for a moment.
 
She caught a flash of her mother lying in a pool of blood, eyes open and staring.
 
“My memories are in bits and pieces like fragments of a puzzle that simply don’t fit.
 
I remember her laughing, spinning around in a pretty dress, soft music, raised voices, and a monster.”

“A monster?”
 
Tyler
raised an eyebrow at her.
 

She made an I-told-you-so face.
 
“What do you expect?
 
I was six then, so my memories were corrupted by time.
 
The things I think I remember from that night could have happened at another time or maybe they didn’t happen at all.
 
I might have seen a good movie that made a deep impression on me, or the monster could be a symbol for something else.”

He nodded, scratching his five o’clock shadow covered chin.
 
“Have you considered hypnosis?”

She had.
 
But why bother?
 
Her mother had killed herself years ago and knowing why she’d done it wouldn’t bring her back.
 

She stood and stretched with a deliberate yawn.
 
“Look, it’s late and I’m dead on my feet.
 
Let’s get some sleep.
 
I’ll see you in the morning.”

He didn’t say a word, but his eyes remained on her as she climbed the stairs until she vanished from view.
 
She went straight to her old bedroom, unable to face a night in her father’s bed.
 
She fell on the bed, fully-clothed, and hugged a pillow to her chest.
 
A tear slid down her face.

After all these years she still missed her mother.

******

As soon as
Madison
went upstairs,
Tyler
was on his cell phone.
 
He sat on an uncomfortable wooden chair and punched in Brett’s number.
 
Earlier he’d asked Brett to dig up everything he could on Boracci and Grainger.

Odd,
Tyler
thought, his brow wrinkling.
 
His Navy buddy took his cell phone with him everywhere he went, including the bathroom, so why wasn’t he answering?

Because
he’s probably taking a shower or something, you paranoid ass.
 

Tyler
set his cell on the coffee table and headed for the hearth.
 
The flames were barely flickering now, and the room was growing cold.
 
Although there was an available room upstairs, he decided to sleep on the couch.
 
He wanted to be near the door in case someone from Grainger’s camp came for them.

A sound from behind caught his attention.
 
He smiled.
 
So
Madison
had changed her mind about going to bed.
 
Good.
 
He hadn’t liked the idea of her going to bed sad.
 
Maybe he could cheer her up, tell her some stories about his days in the Navy.
 
Tyler
hunched in front of the hearth and moved the logs around with the poker to get the fire going again.
 
He tossed a few more sticks into it.
 

The flames leaped higher.

******

First thing in the morning,
Madison
went for a run.
 
The car was gone, so she assumed
Tyler
had gone to town for supplies.
 
She hoped he would bring back coffee, strong coffee and something to eat.
 
She’d be starving after the workout.

Madison
stopped cold, breathing hard from what must have been a five-mile run.
 
She bent over, hands on knees.
 
Her lungs ached, yet she felt more alive than she had in days.
 
Adrenaline coursed through her veins and her mind enjoyed the peaceful nature of her surroundings.

It was cold in the hills overlooking
Reno
,
Nevada
, but
Madison
had her inner rage to keep her warm.
 
Perspiration mixed with the cold air, a dangerous combination.
 
She’d need to get out of these damp clothes, take a warm shower, and change into something from earlier days when she’d come to the cabin for fun.
 
It was time to head back.
   

She heard an animal rustling in the underbrush.
 
The chilly wind played with falling leaves, turning them in the air and sweeping them upwards only to let them fall again.
 
It was almost as if she was the last person on earth.
 
She righted her body and pulled in a deep breath.
 
She should run more often.
 
Her problems seemed to melt away once she’d hit the second mile.

However, her troubles had a way of finding her.
 
The fact that she didn’t have a gun on her hit her like a two-ton boulder.
 
She’d spent a great deal of time in these parts alone, never had a problem, but instinct told her this time would be different.
 
She wasn’t alone anymore.