Somewhere in His Arms (22 page)

             
There was an unexpected surge of warmth, and the agony ceased its torment. Her eyes closed and she was wrapped in blissful darkness once more.

* * *

              He was above her laughing evilly as he plunged the knife in and she screamed at the blade slicing into her flesh. She threw up her hand in a feeble attempt to block it and just as he raised the knife for another blow, her eyes flew open. He was nowhere to be found, and she was alive.

             
She was alive and in a darkened room. There was the faintest sound of rain as it pattered against the window. Moonlight peeked through blinds half drawn and the cloying scent of flowers assailed her startled senses. The heavy aroma of roses filled the air and she wondered groggily if she were in a funeral home. Then she heard it. Or more or less felt it. She glanced down to find herself hooked up to an IV, and saw
that
was the rhythmic beeping she’d heard in her delirium.

             
Lucy turned her head painfully and saw someone slumped over in a chair across the room. She couldn’t identify the person through blurry vision and her throat seemed incapable of speech. It felt raw and ached badly. But she still wanted some water as her tongue seemed dry and bloated. There was a small plastic pitcher on the bedside table and she tried reaching for it, only for it to crash to the floor and startle the person awake.

             
He awoke with a loud snore and saw that her eyes were open. He quickly rushed to her side with a look of abject relief on his haggard face. It was
Alec
.

             
Lucy’s eyes widened in shock and then it all came back in a violent surge and she reached out in blind panic. He caught her hand in his and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “It’s all right, love,” he soothed. “I’ve got you,” he raised her hand and kissed it gently. “I won’t let go.”

             
Tears came to her eyes. She tried to speak and found it oddly difficult. Lucy shook her head in frustration.

             
“Don’t try to talk love,” he pleaded softly, and gestured toward the bandage covering her neck. “They had to cut your throat to help you breathe. It’s liable to be a little sore.”

             
Lucy nodded and raised her hand toward her lips.

             
He blinked in confusion before realizing she was thirsty. “Here, love,” he said as he poured some water from another pitcher on a table. He placed a straw in the cup with trembling hands and held it to her lips. “Slowly,” he urged.

             
She winced as the cool liquid seeped through a swollen throat, choking a little as some went the wrong way. He took the cup and put it down beside her. “Better?” he smiled.

             
She nodded and reached down to feel for the baby. Her heart jerked painfully in her chest as the small lump was nowhere to be found. Her belly was now flat. A sob caught in her throat and tears poured freely from her eyes.
She’d lost the baby
. Lucy covered both eyes with her hands and sobbed helplessly. She could hear Alec trying to soothe her, knew that he was crying too, but it didn’t matter.               The baby was gone.

             
“Don’t love,” Alec pleaded hoarsely. “Don’t--” he tried again. He could sense her rising hysteria as her sobs rose in pitch. He knew that emotion well by now. He tried to restrain Lucy as she tried to sit up, and the monitors started going off as her heart rate spun out of control. They’d had to crack open her chest to stop the bleeding. She’d rip out the staples if she continued thrashing about. Alarmed, he rang for assistance and stepped aside as the doctors and nurses raced in and sedated her.

             
They turned towards him with an open accusation in their eyes. “
What
did you say to her?” they demanded.

             
“I didn’t
have
to tell her a thing. She figured it out herself!” he choked back in outrage and collapsed into a chair. Alec stared at his wife lying small and helpless in the bed, and he felt the sudden loss of his unborn child just then. He hadn’t allowed himself to feel anything since he’d gotten the call. Now he buried his face in his hands and wept openly, unashamed and utterly broken in his grief.

             
“Hey, kiddo!” Rudy grinned as he walked in with a fresh bouquet of flowers. “How’re you feeling today?”

             
Lucy struggled to sit up and winced at a sudden reminder of the stabbing. When she finally came to, there had been a nurse instead of Alec in his place. The tiny redhead told her they’d sent him packing to his hotel to sleep, as he hadn’t left her side since being brought in, and he was nearly comatose from exhaustion. Lucy missed him already.

             
“I’ve been better,” she grunted in discomfort. “What happened?”

             
Rudy put the flowers down and rushed to help prop her up with some pillows. He yanked out a chair and sat down. “You don’t… remember?” he asked uneasily.

             
Lucy shook her head. “The last thing I remember was closing the front door.” She picked at some random threads on the thin cotton blanket. “After that it kind of gets fuzzy,” she sighed in frustration and glanced at Rudy. “Do you know what happened?”

             
Rudy didn’t answer for a long moment. Her doctors were very insistent that he should keep those gruesome little details to himself. She’d nearly died from massive blood loss and then the subsequent miscarriage had pushed her fragile body to the brink. He didn’t think she could take much more. He drew a deep breath before answering. “They told me not to upset you,” he replied at last.

             
“U-Upset me?” Lucy muttered, confused. “How would you
upset
me?” She ran a bony hand down the front of her hospital gown and felt the staples that held her chest together. “Don’t you think I have a right to know who gave me these?” She tried to take a deep breath and nearly passed out from the pain. “I think I have a right to know
who
murdered my baby!” she nearly screamed.

             
Rudy closed his eyes in anguish. Lucy had not been the target of such mindless rage. She’d merely been a substitute. He’d thought it had all been taken care of those many years ago. He’d put him away and had simply forgotten. He’d tried to forget the murders. He’d tried to forget all those children lying broken in their lonely graves. And he’d tried to forget the screams of the parents, pleading with him to stop it all. He’d tried to forget and look what happened. The son of a bitch tried to find Rudy and when he failed, he tried to hurt him by snatching away what he loved most. “It was…
Reese
,” he answered finally.

             
“Milford Reese?”
Lucy repeated incredulously. “
You
put him away!”

             
Rudy rubbed his eyes. “He… escaped.”

             
“Come again?” she demanded angrily. Lucy’s voice was shrill, on the verge of panic. Even now across time and space, the man’s name was still enough to conjure childhood fears of darkened closets, the bogeyman, and being snatched from your bed. “How…?”

             
Rudy stood up, nearly taking the chair with him. “They were taking him to get stomach surgery. He went to the window and peered through an opening in the blinds. “They left him alone in his room, and someone helped him escape. He jammed his hands into his pockets. “He vanished without a trace.”             

             
“H-How is that possible?” Lucy said, more to herself than him. “I don’t understand! He
killed
all those children! How could they let him out?”

             
Rudy turned around. “That’s the way the world works,” he said with a bitter laugh. “He kept whining about his goddamned ulcer. I guess they couldn’t take it anymore.”             

             
Lucy didn’t want to hear it. “So he decided to pay you a little visit?”

             
He nodded. “What
were
you doing there?”

             
“I had to pick up some things.” She shrugged  “I was going to leave.”

             
“Leave?” His heavy brows arched in surprise.

             
“Yeah,” she said sadly. “I had it all planned out.”

             
“And go where?”

             
“Canada,” she whispered before the tears made their reappearance. “I was going to start over, just me and the baby…” her voice trailed off as she wept. “I lost the baby!”

             
“Lucy--”Rudy began but was cut off as she slid back down into bed, burying her face into the pillows and weeping hysterically. He tried to comfort her, but she waved him off, wanting to be alone. He felt lower than any common criminal at that moment. Rudy couldn’t bear to hear her cry and left to fetch a nurse to sit with her. He slunk off to a bar and did the only thing he seemed good at lately: getting smashed.

Chapter Fifteen

“Hola!”
familiar voices cried in unison. Diane and Eddie came in smiling holding several Mylar balloons in various animal shapes and colors. But her favorite was a large pink Hello Kitty. “How’s our favorite patient?”

             
Lucy grinned up at them. But when her eyes met Eddie’s, he refused to meet her gaze. Surely he wasn’t blaming himself for what happened? It wasn’t his fault. He glanced uneasily at her before whispering to Diane that he was going down to the cafeteria and then he was gone.

             
“Hey, girl!” Diane smiled and sat down on the edge of the bed. “How are they treating you?”

             
“Better than can be expected,” Lucy grimaced as she sat up. “What’s with Eddie?”

             
Diane glanced up at the ceiling. “They should really fix that before the whole thing comes crashing down on your head.”

             
“Diane!”

             
Diane really didn’t want to rehash the whole incident. Eddie had had enough to deal with being the one to find Lucy lying in a pool of her own blood, Then to complicate matters, Dean had somehow found out and damn near strangled Eddie right there in the emergency room. If it hadn’t been for Alec swooping in like a knight in shining armor, throwing the little bastard out on his ear, and keeping everyone calm, there might have been more bloodshed. “Eddie found you,” she said quietly. “They had…to…um…” she closed her eyes at the sight of her husband screaming, “sedate him.”

             
“My God!” Lucy gasped. “Diane, I---”

             
“Forget it,” Diane said, smiling weakly. “If it hadn’t been for Eddie we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

             
Lucy’s eyes filled with tears. “Will he talk… to me?”

             
Diane rose and busied herself with changing the water in one of the flower vases. She came back and rearranged the bouquet of mums that someone had sent. “There was quite the scene in the emergency room,” she said at last. “Dean rushed in screaming your name and started in on Eddie. If it hadn’t been for Alec---” she broke off, tears filling her eyes at the memory. “If it hadn’t been for Alec,” she continued, “we probably wouldn’t have gotten through the first twenty-four hours.”

             
“
Alec
did that?” Lucy asked, surprised.

             
‘Sure he did!” Diane smiled. The smile was genuine. “He was the first one I called and the first one here besides Eddie. Didn’t you know?”

             
Lucy shook her head in shame. “No…before it all happened we had an awful fight.”

             
“He seems to have forgotten all about it.”

             
“I hope so,” Lucy glanced around at the room. They’d moved her to one of the private suites as soon as she was stable. “Where is he?”

             
“He refused to leave your side, even for a minute,” Diane reported with glee. “They finally had to threaten him with the snooze juice if he didn’t leave and get some rest!”

             
“Oh.” There was a tinge of disappointment in Lucy’s voice.

             
“Miss him, do you?”

             
“Maybe,” Lucy replied with a reluctant smile. “He was there through it all, wasn’t he?”

             
Diane nodded. “Even when they had to open you back up when they found a clot.”

             
“Oh, God!”