raised, and then Isobel’s, and then a third voice — not Meredith, who never shouted if she could help it, but what sounded like Isobel’s voice, only slowed down and distorted.
Then, finally, there was silence, and Meredith and Dr. Alpert came back carrying a limp Isobel between them. Meredith had a bloody nose and Dr. Alpert’s short pepper-and-salt hair was standing on end, but they had somehow gotten a T-shirt onto Isobel’s abused body and Dr. Alpert had managed to hang on to her black bag as well.
“Walking wounded, stay where you are. We’ll be back to lend you a hand,” the doctor said in her terse way.
Next Dr. Albert and Meredith made another trip to take Isobel’s grandmother with them.
“I don’t like her color,” Dr. Albert said briefly. “Or the tick of her tocker. We might as well all go get checked up.”
A minute later they returned to help Jim and Bonnie to Dr. Albert’s SUV. The sky had clouded over, and the sun was a red ball not far from the horizon.
“Do you want me to give you something for the pain?” the doctor asked, seeing Bonnie eyeing the black bag. Isobel was in the very back of the SUV, where the seats had been folded down.
Meredith and Jim were in the two seats in front of her, with Grandma Saitou between them, and Bonnie — at Meredith’s insistence — was in the front with the doctor.
“Um, no, it’s okay,” Bonnie said. Actually, she had been wondering whether the hospital actually could cure Isobel of infection any better than Mrs. Flowers’ herbal compresses could.
But although her head throbbed and ached and she was developing a lump the size of a hard-boiled egg on her forehead, she didn’t want to cloud her thinking. There was something nagging at her, some dream or something she’d had while Meredith said she’d been unconscious.
What was it?
“All right then. Seat belts on? Here we go.” The SUV pulled away from the Saitou house. “Jim, you said Isobel has a three-year-old sister asleep upstairs, so I called my granddaughter Jayneela to come over here. At least it will be somebody in the house.”
Bonnie twisted around to look at Meredith. They both spoke at once.
“Oh, no! She can’t go in!Especially not into Isobel’s room! Look, please, you have to—” Bonnie babbled.
“I’m really not sure if that’s a good idea, Dr. Alpert,” Meredith said, no less urgently but much more coherently. “Unless she does stay away from that room and maybe has someone with her — a boy would be good.”
“A boy?” Dr. Alpert seemed bewildered, but the combination of Bonnie’s distress and Meredith’s sincerity seemed to convince her. “Well, Tyrone, my grandson, was watching TV when I left. I’ll try to get him.”
“Wow!” Bonnie said involuntarily. “That’s the Tyrone who’s offensive tackle on the football team next year, huh? I heard that they call him the Tyre-minator.”
“Well, let’s say I think he’ll be able to protect Jayneela,” Dr. Alpert said after making the call. “But we’re the ones with the, ah,overexcited girl in the vehicle with us. From the way she fought the sedative, I’d say she’s quite a ‘terminator’ herself.”
Meredith’s mobile phone beeped out the tune it used for numbers not in its memory, and then announced, “Mrs. T. Flowers is calling you. Will you take the—” In a moment Meredith had hit the talk button.
“Mrs. Flowers?” she said. The hum of the SUV kept anything Mrs. Flowers might be saying from Bonnie and the others, so Bonnie went back to concentrating on two things: what she knew about the “victims” of the Salem “witches,” and what that elusive thought while she was unconscious had been.
All of which promptly flew away when Meredith put down her mobile phone.
“What was it? What?What? ” Bonnie couldn’t get a clear view of Meredith’s face in the dusk, but it looked pale, and when she spoke she sounded pale, too.
“Mrs. Flowers was doing some gardening and she was about to go inside when she noticed that there was something in her begonia bushes. She said it looked as if someone had tried to stuff something down between the bush and a wall, but a bit of fabric stuck up.”
Bonnie felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her.“What was it?”
“It was a duffel bag, full of shoes and clothes. Boots. Shirts. Pants. All Stefan’s.”
Bonnie gave a shriek that caused Dr. Alpert to swerve and then recover, the SUV fishtailing.
“Oh, my God; oh, my God — he didn’t go!”
“Oh, I think he went all right. Just not of his own free will,” Meredith said grimly.
“Damon,” Bonnie gasped, and slumped back into her own seat, tears welling up in her eyes and overflowing. “I couldn’t help wanting to believe…”
“Head getting worse?” Dr. Alpert asked, tactfully ignoring the conversation that had not included her.
“No — well, yes, it is,” Bonnie admitted.
“Here, open the bag and give me a look inside. I’ve got samples of this and that…all right, here you go. Anybody see a water bottle back there?”
Jim listlessly handed one over. “Thanks,” Bonnie said, taking the small pill and a deep gulp. She had to get her head right. If Damon had kidnapped Stefan, then she should be Calling for him, shouldn’t she? God only knew where he would end up this time. Why hadn’t any of them even thought of it as a possibility?
Well, first, because the new Stefan was supposed to be so strong, and second, because of the note in Elena’s diary.
“That’s it!” she said, startling even herself. It had all come flooding back, everything that she and Matt had shared….
“Meredith!” she said, oblivious to the side look which Dr. Alpert gave her, “while I was unconscious I talked with Matt. He was unconscious, too—”
“Was he hurt?”
“God, yes. Damon must have been doing something awful. But he said to ignore it, that something had been bothering him about the note Stefan left for Elena ever since he saw it. Something about Stefan talking to the English teacher about how to spell judgment last year. And he just kept saying,Look for the backup file. Look for the backup…before Damon does.”
She stared at Meredith’s dim face, aware as they cruised slowly to stop at an intersection that Dr. Alpert and Jim were both staring at her. Tact had its limits.
Meredith’s voice broke the silence. “Doctor,” she said, “I’m going to have to ask you something. If you take a left here and another one at Laurel Street and then just drive for about five minutes to Old Wood, it won’t be too far out of your way. But it’ll let me get to the boardinghouse where the computer Bonnie’s talking about is. You may think I’m crazy, but I need to get to that computer.”
“I know you’re not crazy; I’d have noticed it by now.” The doctor laughed mirthlessly. “And I have heard some things about young Bonnie here…nothing bad, I promise, but a little difficult to believe. After seeing what I saw today, I think I’m beginning to change my opinion about them.” The doctor abruptly took a left turn, muttering, “Somebody’s taken the stop sign from this road, too.” Then she continued, to Meredith, “I can do what you ask. I’d drive you all the way to the old boardinghouse—”
“No! That would be much too dangerous!”
“—but I’ve got to get Isobel to a hospital as soon as possible. Not to mention Jim. I think he really does have a concussion. And Bonnie—”
“Bonnie,” Bonnie said, enunciating distinctly, “is going to the boardinghouse, too.”
“No, Bonnie! I’m going to run, Bonnie, do you understand that? I’m going to run as fast as I can — and I can’t let you hold me up.” Meredith’s voice was grim.
“I won’t hold you up, I swear it. You go ahead and run. I’ll run, too. My head feels fine, now. If you have to leave me behind, you keep on running. I’ll be coming after you.”
Meredith opened her mouth and then closed it again. There must have been something in Bonnie’s face that told her any kind of argument would be useless, Bonnie thought. Because that was the truth of the matter.
“Here we are,” Dr. Alpert said a few minutes later. “Corner of Laurel and Old Wood.” She pulled a small flashlight out of her black bag and shone it in each of Bonnie’s eyes, one after another. “Well, it still doesn’t look as if you have concussion. But you know, Bonnie, that my medical opinion is that you shouldn’t be running anywhere. I just can’t force you to accept to take treatment if you don’t want it. But I can make you take this.” She handed Bonnie the small flashlight. “Good luck.”
