“Felicity,” I insisted. “Let me go before this gets any worse.”
“NOW!” the voice demanded again.
My wife rolled her face toward me, bringing her eyes to meet mine.
“You’re right,” she said as her mouth spread into a wicked smirk. “I win.”
For a brief instant I saw what I could only describe as a purely evil sparkle behind her jade green irises. Then, with only that smug grin as warning, she let out a terrified scream.
A split second later my world stopped making any sense at all, and pain racked me to the core. The water bottle flew upward, emptying itself across the console as well as both of us. Every muscle in my body simultaneously convulsed, and I stiffened for a moment then fell forward.
As I lay there across Felicity, unable to move, my brain was desperately trying to understand what was happening to me. My senses were muddled, and I seized on the first thing I could; that turned out to be the rhythmic thumping of my own heart. However, behind the slowing cadence there was another beat, much more frantic and uncontrolled, and it seemed to be coming from beneath me.
A fleeting instant of clarity dashed through my brain, and I realized that the racing flutter was Felicity’s heartbeat. As other sounds began to flood in, joining the pair of heartbeats was a high-pitched whimper and behind it, the sound of choking sobs. In that moment I feared that my actions must have truly terrified my wife. I tried to call out her name but couldn’t get my mouth to even move, much less form a word.
I suddenly felt my arms being wrenched behind my back, and I was pulled backward then unceremoniously placed face down on the cool asphalt. I could feel a knee in my back as my other senses started to haphazardly return in no particular order. Cold metal bit into my wrists amid the ratcheting sound of handcuffs being applied and tightened.
I was positioned such that I was facing the open door of the Jeep, and I watched as an officer helped Felicity from the vehicle. She stood shakily, leaning back to steady herself against the doorframe. From my present angle, I could only see her from the mid-chest down, and though she was certainly disheveled, she didn’t appear any worse for wear. Her actions, however, didn’t prove that out as fact.
While I was able to see what was going on, I still couldn’t get my muscles to execute the functions my brain wanted from them. Based on the various sensations that were now reporting in, I suspected that I had been shot with a Taser. A random memory of a story Ben had told me about the devices flitted through my grey matter, and it reminded me that it would most likely be at least a few more minutes before my nervous system fully recovered. How that got past the disorientation, I will never know. However, since there was nothing else I could do, I simply watched and listened.
Staticky radios blurped in the foreground, all underscored by the sounds of traffic out on the street and the rumbling of the police cruiser’s engine a few feet away. Through it all I could hear Felicity continuing to sob. As if punctuating her staccato of whimpers, I heard her say “Why, Rowan, why?”
I finally allowed myself to relax.
She was using my name. Maybe the shock of what had just happened had been enough to interrupt the ethereal connection that was in possession of her. If she settled down, then she could tell them that I wasn’t trying to hurt her, and then maybe we could put this behind us quickly. The sooner we could get home, the sooner we could regroup and figure out how to handle what was happening.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” the officer asked.
“No,” she sobbed.
“Are you injured?”
I didn’t even get a chance to blink. In a flash my wife stepped toward me and kicked me hard in the ribs while screaming, “You bastard!”
The cops reacted quickly and pulled her back before she could strike again, but it really didn’t matter. The physical pain she had just inflicted was nothing compared to the mental torment that set in the moment I realized nothing had changed.
I felt my jaw moving in random patterns as I tried to talk, but heard no sound come from my own mouth. All I could hear was my wife continuing to sob as she fell against the officer in a grateful hug and blubbered, “Thank you… Thank you… I… I thought he was going to kill me this time…”
I still couldn’t see her face, but I was willing to bet that somewhere behind that Oscar-winning performance, even if just on the inside, she was still wearing that wicked grin.
CHAPTER 23:
“Jeezus, Rowan, you look like shit.”
It was Ben Storm’s voice that split the relative silence of the sparse room. I had lost track of how long I had been staring at the wall. At first it had simply been an exercise to keep calm, but as the passing minutes accumulated, it eventually became nothing more than a method of surrender. So, by now, my state was almost one of a self-induced catatonia. I wasn’t sure, but I fully suspected that Felicity was already hell and gone from the police station. Something told me she probably didn’t head for home, but if she did she wouldn’t be there for very long.
I finally blinked then broke off my empty gaze and turned to find my friend staring at me through the bars of the holding cell. At least one of us was on the outside.
“What time is it?” I asked quietly.
He gave me a confused glance but looked at his watch and answered the question. “It’s a few minutes after six.”
I did the math and came to the conclusion that I had been sitting here for the better part of three hours. I guess that wasn’t too bad when you considered the fact that I didn’t think they had even listened when I had repeatedly asked them to call Ben.
With a sigh I rocked forward and stood up from the bench then hobbled on aching legs over to where he was standing.
I’m sure his observation was correct, but I was also certain that my appearance couldn’t come anywhere near the way I actually felt. My shoulders were killing me from the constant strain, and I could already feel the raw spots on my wrists where the handcuffs were still biting into my flesh. The rest of my body wasn’t any better either. I hadn’t fully recovered from the muscle spasms brought on by the Taser stun-nor the beating I had taken at the hands, and feet, of my wife.
The side of my face was stinging from the gashes her fingernails had left, and I was limping on what I imagined were severely bruised legs. I just hadn’t had the opportunity to check. It was also a good bet that her last kick, when I was prone on the parking lot, had cracked a rib or two. At least, that is how it felt.
To top it all off, I had a headache the size of Rhode Island, and it was being fed by very insistent sources unknown but most assuredly not of this plane of existence. I just had no idea what they were trying to tell me. I now found myself wishing I would just seize up, channel someone, and be done with it. Then maybe the pounding in my skull would subside, even if just for a while.
On the bright side-if you could call it that-I was the only one in the cell at the moment, so I was able to brood in relative peace. Of course, I suppose this was all really just about on par for my life. It seemed like every time I got involved in a murder investigation, I ended up getting the crap beat out of me.
It just wasn’t usually by someone I knew.
“Thanks,” I finally said with an overt lack of emotion. “And, trust me, I don’t feel any better than I look. So… Obviously someone actually called you. I was beginning to wonder. They didn’t act like they were going to.”
“Yeah, well, guess it was a good thing ya’ had a get-outta-jail-free card.”
He held up his hand and the object of reference was tucked between his fingers. It was his official police department business card, worn and tattered, but with a still-readable handwritten series of numbers and note on the back requesting that he be called immediately if it was presented. Years ago he had given them to both Felicity and me with the caveat that they were only for emergencies.
When I was placed under arrest and they didn’t seem to care much what I had to say, I considered it just that, an emergency. I was just glad that the thing had still been in my wallet and moreover, that I had remembered
