Dread curled her toes. What else had they said to him?
“He told me he could do a different ritual instead. An…an Aztec one where they would rip my heart out and show it to me before I died.” He made a motion with his hand in front of his chest. His eyes were wide and focused somewhere beyond the pillar.
She felt like she might vomit. No wonder he was so worried about Kern coming back.
“Then he put the knife against me and he…he stabbed me and I thought he was going to do it-that he would pull my heart right out of my chest.” His hand went to his stab wound and he rubbed it absently, his eyes a million miles away. “He said I was lucky because he didn’t put it all the way in.”
Jessie shuddered and closed her eyes. Now she fully understood why Mark had begged Kern to shoot him. “I’m sorry.”
He blinked and focused on her, his brows drawing together in confusion. “What do you have to be sorry about? You didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“I know, but I wish I could have prevented it from happening. Between the camera and Jim's dream, it seems like we should have been able to stop it.'
Mark shook his head. “That’s why I think it was a test. I had the photos right there on my camera, but I didn't bother to develop them. This was all my fault, nobody else's.'
Now he wasn’t making sense. 'Who do you think is testing you?'
'I don't know.' Mark sighed and circled the sofa, sitting heavily and rubbed his hand down his face. “The camera…it's part of all of this. I don’t know how or why, but for some reason, the camera uses me to show certain images that I can change. If I could figure out who controls the camera, I could figure out how it works.”
It was obvious to her who was in control, and she didn't believe God was testing Mark. Wasn't fifteen months as an enemy combatant test enough? 'I have no doubt where the images on the camera come from and who plants them in your dreams. What I do doubt is that it was some kind of macabre test. What happened was a glitch. A mistake. Nothing more. You were meant to see the film, but you were tired and didn't. It just means you're human. '
'You think I don't know that? Every time I screw up-and I've done it plenty of times, Jess-I look in the mirror and know that I'm just some idiot who's in over his head. God finally figured it out too. It doesn't surprise me that he's given up on me.'
'Fine. Keep thinking that, Mark, and you'll never get your gift back.'
He rose from the couch and crossed to the door. 'I have some things to do in my office.'
Mark took a sip of coffee. Lily hadn’t yet arrived and he was glad for a few moments of quiet as he sat at his desk. He looked through the drawers, noting that things had been moved around, but Lily had told him of the police’s initial efforts to find out where he was. As far as he could tell, Jessie was still upstairs. That was fine with him. He'd already embarrassed himself enough around her.
Taking out a pencil, he opened the account books, intending to do some bookwork, but after glancing through them, his mind wandered. His brain was too full of questions to continue working on the books. Was Jessie right? Had it all just been a colossal mistake? He could handle that. It wouldn't be the first time he'd failed to stop something, and he doubted it would be his last. The difference was he'd always tried before. He hadn't ignored the camera like he had the night of his kidnapping. He drummed his fingers on the desk. The urge to talk to someone was strong and he pulled out his wallet and retrieved Scott Palmer’s card.
As he lifted the phone to dial, Jessie knocked on the door and opened it. “Mark?” She tucked her hair behind her ear in the nervous habit that she had.“Can I come in?”
Mark dropped the phone and palmed the card. He slid it into the top drawer. Jessie’s eyes followed his movement, but she didn’t question him. “Since you're here already. You might as well come on in.”
She took a deep breath and let it out, her gaze darting to the left before settling on him. “I’m sorry if I sounded patronizing. I was trying not to upset you and I guess I failed at that.”
Mark didn’t let his face soften and he didn't speak. Did she think he was so fragile that she couldn’t be straight with him?
Stepping into the room, she crossed her arms and her eyes dropped to the floor. “Look, I’m a cop. I’m trained to be skeptical.”
“And you’re very good at your job,” Mark said, his voice hard.
Jessie bit her lip then said, “I thought I was good at it, but I guess I’m not as good as I believed. If I was good, I’d have found Kern already, and, well, anyway, I wanted to tell you that I called Dan and he’s going to send over a uniformed cop to keep an eye on the place.”
Mark relented. He couldn’t help it. Her distress and sincerity was plain as day in the expression on her face. Jessie was never this humble and he couldn’t stand it. He sighed and motioned to the chair on the other side of the desk. Propping one elbow on the desk, he swiveled to be parallel to the desk and tilted back in the chair. “Don’t leave. If I have to have a babysitter, I’d rather have you than some other cop.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I am.”
She sat and took a deep breath, and her shoulders visibly relaxed. After a moment, she glanced at the phone. “Were you getting ready to call someone?”
Mark felt the blood rush to his face. “Uh, yeah, actually I was going to make a personal call.”
Nodding, she stood and crossed to the door. “I’ll take a look around the place. Are you doing photo-shoots today?”
'I'm not shooting, but Lily has a couple. I have a ton of paperwork I can do.' At least one little piece of his life could get back to normal. He picked up the phone, and instead of calling Scott Palmer, he called Lily to ask her if she needed him to switch out backdrops. After clearing the air with Jessie, he didn't feel the need to call the psychiatrist anymore.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Mark ventured outside for the first time a few days later. He was so weary of being cooped up, and the weather was unseasonably warm. Cops patroled often enough that the crowd had thinned, and a fender bender down the street claimed the crowds attention for the moment.
He stood in the doorway and closed his eyes for an instant. The sun heated his face and a soft breeze tickled through his hair. It felt wonderful.
The snow had completely melted, even the dirty piles in the corners of parking lots. The sky dazzled an endless deep blue. Mark decided to head towards the lake front. He always liked watching the first sailboats of the season sail out on trial runs.
The second he stepped foot onto the sidewalk, someone spotted him, and before he knew it, he was surrounded. Mark held his arm out, trying to keep people away from his injured shoulder. “Hey!”
The hands touched him and his skin crawled. The sensation was so much like the night of his abduction that it was all he could do to keep from striking out. His breathing quickened. “Get back!” He reflexively swung his arm when someone touched his head.
Mark tried to duck away from the people, but a woman had a determined grip on his collar. The material pulled on his still tender neck, and he reached up to pry his shirt from her fingers. With a loud rip, the material gave way.
It was like a feeding frenzy in a shark tank. More hands reached in, tearing bits from his shirt and even his pleas that they were hurting him didn’t stop them. If they were so in awe of him, why would they do this? Only the whoop of a police siren, and the screech of tires as an unmarked sedan came to halt at the curb beside him kept Mark from hitting someone or being torn apart.
“Step away from the man!”
Mark had never been so happy to hear Jim's sharp commanding tone. He sagged as the crowd fell back.
