mask covering her mouth and nose.
She tried to inhale and instantly started to cough. Her lungs seized until it felt that someone was sitting on her chest. Eventually the spasms stopped and her chest eased a bit.
A hospital. She was in a hospital. Which meant somehow she had survived.
She blinked again, and this time a looming figure moved into her view. She pushed herself back into the bed, but when her eyes finally adjusted to the light, she could see that it was Dougie.
“What happened?” she whispered. But with the mask over her face she had no idea what he might have heard.
“Cass, can you hear me?”
Slowly, she nodded.
“You’re in the hospital. McDonough got you out. Do you remember?”
She had heard someone call her name. She had seen Chris’s eyes go lifeless. Her grandfather had told her it was going to be okay. But she hadn’t really believed him. How could she? She had felt so close to death. After that there had been nothing.
Guess her grandfather was right after all.
“McDonough broke through the window over the futon and managed to get the front door open. He pulled you out.”
“Spook. Nosey.”
“I had an officer take them to the vet. They’re going to be fine.”
Malcolm broke through the window over the futon to get to her. Something about that didn’t sound right. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the apartment and what it had looked like at the end. Fire had consumed the futon and had progressed to the carpet. Smoke had filled the room so that she had barely been able to make out her hand in front of her face.
“No futon,” she whispered. “Fire. Too much fire.”
“Yeah.” Dougie grimaced. “He got pretty burned up.”
Frantic, Cass tried to sit up, but her body rebelled and she began to cough. It was as if her whole body were filled with smoke that was leaking out in spurts.
“Hey, easy. Easy. He’s okay. It’s just his arms. He’s down on the third floor getting patched up. I tried, Cass. I tried but I couldn’t get the damn door open.”
“Good locks,” she wheezed after a time, reminding him that he had been the one to suggest the extra dead bolt. The dead bolt that if she had only remembered to engage it when she had first gotten home would have prevented everything. Cass made a mental note not to let Dougie know about that.
She saw him smile at her answer and was pleased that the guilt-stricken look was gone. She knew Dougie enough to know that he would have hated to take the backseat to Malcolm, that he would have rather been burned than be considered less heroic.
He was a good man despite his faults.
“Can I see him?”
“Sure. He’ll be up soon, I imagine. Do you feel strong enough to tell me what happened?”
“She was from the institute. Dr. Farver’s patient.” The mask began to irritate her so she pushed it up and off her head. Gingerly, she took shallow breaths and found that as long as she didn’t inhale too deeply, she was okay even though her voice was limited to nothing more than rasps.
“She was Wallace Rockingford’s daughter,” Dougie told her. “I didn’t even consider her. She was only a kid, fourteen, when her father was killed. The cops closed the case on the wife, and she killed herself before sentencing.”
“Chris killed her father. She took out his tongue. She was abused. Raped. Beaten. God only knows. But she was also a medium.”
His eyes sprang open. “Are you shittin’ me?”
As if now would be the time to bullshit him. “No.”
He seemed to struggle with that.
“It’s how she ended up at the institute. With Dr. Farver. He promised her that there were others like her. He told her I could help her.”
“You’re saying she heard her father. In her head.”
“He was the monster,” Cass revealed. “Evil. She heard that there was someone that could help and she tracked me down. Dr. Farver didn’t have my new address until recently.”
“And the ticket to Baltimore?”
“She went back to my grandparents’ house. To look for me there.”
Cass waited for all the pieces to fall into place for him. Eventually, he nodded, satisfied. “Would you have been able to help?”
She could see his face scrunch in a way that suggested he probably didn’t want to know all the answers. “She said I distracted him. She wanted me to go away with her. It’s why she set the fire. But we struggled. She fell on me and the knife…Oh, Dougie. It was horrible.”
He reached for her hand, but instinctively she pulled it away. As soon as she had, she felt bad about it. It wasn’t her intent to dismiss him but to avoid contact. She didn’t have the strength for contact with anyone right now, and she was too skittish to risk what might have been a harmless touch.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “It’s not like you think. I just can’t…”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. Not really. I don’t want to be enemies, Dougie.”
He looked away, then looked back and smiled softly. “We’re not enemies. We’re friends. Good friends, but just friends. If you can forgive me?”
She wanted to. She very much wanted to. “Friends. Just friends. Really?”
“Really. In fact I can’t stay with you much longer. Steve set me up with his wife’s sister. Apparently, Marilyn has decided I’m ready to get out there and date again.”
“Good for Marilyn,” Cass said.
“Okay. Well, I’m going to go. You sure you’ll be okay on your own?”
“Yep.”
He stood and walked to the door but looked over his shoulder at her. “I really hate to leave you alone.”
“She’s not.” Malcolm walked in at the same time Dougie was voicing his concern. Dougie took that as his cue to leave. Apparently joining together to rescue her hadn’t brought them any closer. No male bonding going on there at all.
“Later, Cass. I’ll be in touch if we need anything else from you.”
The door swung closed behind him, and Cass watched as Malcolm moved toward her. Her chest tightened and her throat clogged, but she doubted it had anything to do with smoke inhalation.
His forearms were covered in white gauze, and there was a clear gel smeared on his left cheek. There were other bright red marks on his forehead and chin but nothing else bandaged.
“Your face,” she whispered.
“It hurts like a son of a bitch,” he quickly confessed.
“My hero.” She smiled.
“No,” he said. “You’re mine. You did it, Cass. You held them both off. Just long enough for me to get to you.”
“How? I mean how were you there?”
“As soon as I hung up with you, I started pacing. I couldn’t stand it. I just knew something bad would happen, and this time I could try to stop it. I got in my car and drove over. Figured I would stand watch in case anyone tried to break in, but it was too late. She was already inside. I didn’t know anything was wrong until I saw the smoke.”
She saw his jaw clench and reached out to touch his arm to assure him it was okay, but this time he was the one to draw back when she made contact with his covered forearm.
“Sorry.”
“It’s all right. They’ll heal.” He wore an enigmatic expression on his face as if he didn’t know what to think of
