Stirred (12 page)

McGlade didn’t answer. I hoped that had finally shut him up.

But after a few miles of silence, I began to feel shitty for snapping at him. Was that who I’d become? A gigantic bitch who treated the people who cared about her like trash?

“I understand fear,” McGlade said, jolting me out of my self-pity party.

I stared at him. “I know.”

“Do you?” He briefly met my eyes. “You’ve been through the wringer, Jack. No doubt. No one ever said you had it easy. But how much do you know about what Alex did to me?”

Alex Kork was another psycho from the past I didn’t want to think about
. But she’d hurt McGlade as much as me. Maybe even worse.

“I remember being tied to that chair, helpless. Phin ever tell you about it?” McGlade asked.

“Not in detail.” Phin had been there as well. They’d been bound, back to back, at Alex’s mercy. And Alex had no mercy.

“She was cutting my fingers off,” McGlade said, holding up his mechanical hand. “Stopping the bleeding with a blowtorch. Lemme tell you—the pain was unimaginable. But you know what was worse than the pain? The loss of all hope. Knowing I was helpless, that it wasn’t going to end. That was worse. I’d take a bullet for that man of yours. Phin is the only thing that kept me sane while it was happening. And then you came in, saved my ass. I owe you both. And I’m sorry I piss you off all the time. You’re family to me, you know.”

Ah, hell. I hated Harry when he got real. It made me feel even worse about myself.

“Got any more of those parenting tips?” I managed to say, trying to break the maudlin mood.

“Just one. Love your kid. Love her as hard as you can. Because you don’t have forever. You only have a short time.” He frowned. “It’s always too short a time.”

I let that sink in. Then said, “Christ, McGlade. That’s almost profound.”

“Yeah. And also, teach her how to suppress the gag reflex. That’s the single most important trait in chicks.”

I felt a headache coming on. “You can go back to shutting up now.”

The GPS piped in to inform us that our exit was coming up. McGlade turned off the highway, and soon we were cruising through a residential area. Townhomes and cul-de-sacs. The neighborhood wasn’t affluent, but it had a homey Mayberry, USA, vibe going on. It was nice to see trees again after an hour of flat, barren plains.

We were nearing the residence of Violet King, and I was thinking about what I was going to say to her when McGlade broke my concentration.

“Promise not to freak out?” he asked.

I didn’t like his tone, and it made me freak out a little. “What?”

“I’ve been keeping a close eye on the rearview mirror, for obvious reasons, and the same beat-up Monte Carlo has been behind us since we left Chicago.”

March 28, Three Days Earlier

T
he pain was constant.

Unrelenting.

It didn’t even let up during sleep—what little sleep he could get between nightmares.

That’s how it had been for years.

He was hooked on narcotics. Always wore two codeine patches on the ruins that were his legs. Thrice-daily Vicodin and Norco. Ativan to help him sleep. His lungs were scarred, making each labored breath a wet, raspy wheeze. He had six fingers left, and only four of them still worked properly.

Sometimes, it got so bad he couldn’t stop trembling, shaking for hours on end. If he’d been the type of man to believe in karma, or justice, or some higher power that dished out retribution, he might have drawn the obvious conclusion and realized this was what he deserved.

That’s what the judge, and the jury of twelve, had said while sentencing him to this hellhole.

Him and his partner.

Partner.
What a joke.

A joke that became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Though he’d killed many, and was widely known as a monster, the extent and permanence of his debilitating injuries deemed him no longer a threat to society, so this medical facility wasn’t even maximum security. Sometimes, they forgot to lock the door to his room at night. One of his doctors even had the balls to tell the court that there was zero concern about escape, because that would mean being away from the pain meds.

The court agreed. Their mistake. One they’d pay dearly for.

Groaning, he shuffled down the hospital hallway, supporting himself with the rolling IV stand, his backless gown exposing the latticework of scars covering him from neck to heels. Nurses didn’t even bother looking at him. To them, he was as harmless as a toothless puppy. Even with full doses of various medications swirling through his system, walking was agony, each step an electric jolt of pain, firing the nerve endings he still had left—an unremitting reminder of the horror he had endured.

He reached the end of the hall and then paused to catch his tortured breath, which rattled in his chest like a BB in a can of spray paint. He was getting close to his stamina’s limit and contemplated leaning against the wall to rest for a moment. But rather than give in to the fatigue and pain, he pressed onward, turning the corner, limping down four more doors until he reached her room.

She was sprawled out in bed like a broken, violated angel. Pretty once. Now an apocalypse of scar tissue and skin grafts and tubes and stitches. Her latest operation had been a week ago—a setback that had cost them a lot of precious time.

He pushed his way inside, seeking the nearest chair, collapsing into it with a sigh of relief even as his nerves flared in unison.

“Hey,” he rasped. “How you doing?”

She peeked her remaining eye open. “Aces. You?”

He cupped a hand to the hole where his ear used to be and said, “Louder.”

She repeated at a higher volume. “Aces. You?”

“Each sunrise is a gift from the Lord. We still on for two days from now?”

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. As long as your fat ass doesn’t gobble up all our pills.”

The
fat ass
comment was a nod to the past. He hadn’t been fat for some time. Fat required the ability to eat solids.

“Two days then,” he said, nodding to himself. “Then we’re out of here.”

Over the last six months, the duo had been stockpiling medication. Soon they would have enough to survive on the outside for two weeks without needing to find another supply.

Two weeks would be more than enough time to do what needed to be done.

“You scared?” she asked.

“Of getting out? Or of what we have to do?”

“Both.”

“Hell no. It’s my only reason for living.”

“Me, too.”

He stood up, waited for the pain to abate a bit, and then headed for the door.

“Just two more days, Donaldson.”

“Two more days,
Lucy
. Then we go after the bitch.”

He twisted what was left of his face into a smile.

Jack Daniels, here we come…

March 30, One Day Earlier

W
hen the knock finally came, Lucy opened her remaining eye and struggled to sit up in bed. She took several shallow breaths, waiting for the lightheadedness to abate, but it wouldn’t leave. It was the three codeine patches, she figured. Had to be. Enough narcotic-punch to knock out a good-sized dog. But for someone like her, who needed pain relief more than oxygen, it only made her dizzy. She typically got by on two patches. It didn’t kill the pain—nothing could—but at least it brought the level down to a point where it wasn’t
all
she could think about, where she could sleep, and sometimes, dream. But tonight was a three-patch night, because finally, after three years, she was getting out. And this meant walking.

She scooted her toothpick legs off the side of the bed and eased the soles of her feet down onto the cold linoleum.

He was knocking again, the impatient jerk. Wasn’t like she could just hop out of bed and scamper over to the door, and he knew it.

This was work.

Slow, agonizing work.

The first two steps were the worst—like someone driving spears up the middle of her legs, but by the fifth and sixth steps, she had steeled herself to push through the oceanic pain.

She crossed the dark room, moving slowly toward the door.

The only light came from a streetlamp outside her window, filtering in through the glass behind her and casting eerie shadows of the bars across the floor.

Lucy reached the door, panting and already more exhausted than if she’d run a marathon back in her prime.

The door was unlocked—their angel had seen to that—and she turned the handle with her three-fingered claw.

Donaldson stood in the low-lit corridor just outside her door leaning against the wheelchair, looking positively naked without the rolling IV stand that had come to define them both as much as the hideous hospital gowns.

“What took you so long?” he whispered.

“That’s a good one, fat ass,” she said.

“You ready?”

“Hell, yes.”

Lucy had been through the more recent surgery—just nine days ago—and as bad a shape as they both were in, the skin grafts had left her far weaker.

She took three agonizing steps and then collapsed into the wheelchair, every last nerve she still owned screaming out in a chorus of blinding, white-hot pain that was so intense, she leaned over the armrest and vomited on the floor.

“Lovely,” Donaldson said and started to push.

“How we doing on time?” Lucy asked, wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her gown.

“About a minute behind, thanks to you.”

“But he’ll wait…right?”

“What we’re paying this asshole, he better.”

The progress down the corridor was slow, and after ten feet, slower, Donaldson panting, and Lucy feeling drips of cold sweat raining down off the end of his prosthetic chin implant onto her hairless skull.

“You gonna make it, D?”

“Go to hell.”

The clock over the nurses’ station read 7:15
P.M.
, and Donaldson nodded to the young nurse writing in her charts, wrapping up the tail end of second shift.

“Evening,” he rasped.

She ignored him.

Donaldson pushed the wheelchair down the hallway and into the rec room. As usual, it was mostly full after dinner. Various formerly dangerous psychopaths with various physical health problems huddled under an old TV that never played anything stronger than PG-rated comedies. A few glanced at Lucy as she rolled in. One, a paraplegic named Briggs, who’d killed his caregiver for making him green beans instead of his preferred creamed corn, flicked out his tongue at Lucy like a serpent. She would have loved to have finished the job God had begun and fully paralyzed the prick, but there were more pressing things on her mind at the moment.

They passed the empty table with the painted-on checkerboard. The checkers were still absent, having been confiscated by the staff a month prior, following a fatal bludgeoning over a disputed move. Why couldn’t habitually violent and insane criminals just play nice?

They headed toward the door at the back of the room, Lucy watching the large, mean orderly named Gary out of the corner of her eye. He wasn’t paying attention to them, engrossed instead in an issue of
US Weekly
.

Donaldson wheezed heavily as they approached the door. Felt like cold, salty drizzle pattering on the top of Lucy’s bald head, and though it disgusted her, she didn’t say anything. In truth, she felt sorry for him.

Which was odd. Lucy hadn’t thought she was capable of pity.

She leaned forward, struggling to push in the door handle.

“How’s the coast, D?”

“All clear.”

As rehearsed, Lucy said loudly, “I really have to pee.”

“Seriously? You take forever.”

“Screw you then. I’ll do it myself.”

Donaldson grunted a “whatever” as he pushed the wheelchair into the bathroom.

Their angel, a dour-looking Cuban named Henry, stood waiting behind a laundry cart.

Henry quickly shoved a screwdriver in the door jamb to stop it from opening.

“What took you so long?” he said.

Lucy flashed a smile—one that had once been inviting, but was now monstrous. “We came as fast as we could.”