CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
IF THIS WAS a dream, it was the most realistic and yet unbelievable series of events Dexter had ever experienced.
“You didn’t have to drive. I was more than capable.” It was the first thing Charleen had said in the entire twenty minutes since he’d started losing his mind. Since he’d started questioning everything he knew. Every encounter. Every thought.
To be fair, he’d been unable to ask questions. Unsure what they should be. How they should be phrased. If he should hit himself over the head with something solid in the hopes that the third person tagging along with them was not present in any way, shape, or form.
But he couldn’t. He believed Charleen in the same manner he’d trusted her knowledge on the bomb.
And that third person was with them. There wasn’t any way to unsee the truth. It didn’t make comprehension any easier. Didn’t stop the confusion racing around his system.
The only thing he’d known was that he couldn’t let Charleen out of his sight. Not until he had answers to those questions he couldn’t yet ask. “Your car is a death trap. Once is enough for a lifetime.”
“So, I’ve been told.” Charleen followed him across the Mercy hospital parking lot and through the hospital’s ER doors. He should slow down. Let her catch up. Act like the gentleman his mother had raised.
He reached the elevator bank and hit the call button. “Since I’ve already died today, I’d like to avoid a repeat.”
Charleen’s green eyes swept the area, fire shooting from them when they landed on him. “You should say that a little louder.”
He resisted touching his forehead again. The slow motion image of a bullet headed for his brain had surfaced the instant Charleen’s ghost-guardian-angel-apparition had mentioned it. It had stopped every other thought, fear and regret registering in a millisecond.
“Right here, handsome.” The other woman crossed her arms over her chest. “Guardian angel. Not a ghost. Not an apparition. I’m here for a purpose.”
“You’re not helping, Beth.” Charleen tucked a strand of hair behind one ear, her movements slow and precise.
His gaze flicked to what looked like the woman they all knew as Bethany Markel. The dark hair, hazel eyes, and height was the same. The last time he’d seen her alive, she’d been in an orange jumper and prepared for lethal injection at the Central Prison in Raleigh. Not an off-white dress with a bow that trimmed her waist. She’d barely begun to care about purpose.
“You’re angry.” Beth stopped near Charleen, on the opposite side of the elevator doors. “It’s understandable.”
“No.” He wasn’t angry. He was…confused. Beyond that. The truth of everything he didn’t understand slammed into him with the force of a locomotive that never ended. “How long have you been dealing with this, Charleen?” He gestured toward Beth. “Days? Months? Years?”
It couldn’t be years, could it? Beth had only been dead seven months. He’d always been a firm believer in God’s time not being on the same plane as their own, but that didn’t explain Beth’s presence. At all.
Charleen moved toward him. Grabbed his hand and shoved it back to his side. Panic and anger swirled in heavy waves across her face. “A little louder. I don’t think everyone heard you.” Her voice lowered to a bare whisper as she moved into his space. Close enough that she could deliver one of those surprise head-butts. Render him speechless in the time it took to inhale.
“You might get to wave this off as being with the whack job, but I don’t have that luxury. This is my life. This has always been my life.”
She couldn’t seriously think… Wait. “Always?”
Charleen’s lips formed a firm line, not unlike the seriousness he’d seen all day. She punched the nearby call button in rapid succession. “I have a guardian angel I can see, Dexter.” Her gaze flicked around the space and came back to him. “News flash, no one else has ever been able to see her. This is new territory for me, too. It’d be nice if you didn’t act like a thirteen-year-old boy who’d seen his first pair of boobs full on.”
He couldn’t stop the scoff bubbling in his throat. “That would’ve been exciting. This is…” Like being zapped by lightening that didn’t strike a body dead but left it aware of every nerve ending. Every heartbeat. Every neuron buzzing up above. And no way to express or expel any of it.
Always.
“If you’re going for shock and awe, Vi, you’re missing the mark.” A smile graced Beth’s face. “You think the prisoners have clean vocabulary?”
Charleen tucked her lips inward. Took in a deep breath, her eyes never straying to the angel.
The doors to the elevator opened and he allowed Charleen to enter before he stepped inside. He settled in next to a guardian angel who might not exist.
Probably didn’t. Couldn’t. Not in this capacity.
He took in a breath of antiseptic and regurgitated air and resisted the urge to glare at them both like a petulant little boy as the doors shut. “I’m trying to survive four—three days of what I would classify as torture.”
“I’m trying to do the same.” Charleen leaned against the wall of the elevator, her arms across her chest. She took a deep breath. “I understand that this is a lot to take in.”
“No. I die every day. I talk to guardian angels I’d met when they were alive. And you let people choke you out. You sit on the floor of houses just hoping to get pulverized into a million pieces. That’s a standard day.”
Everything inside him froze.
What if it was? What if this series of events was normal—filled with different players, maybe—not as frequent, but par for the course?
That would drive a person insane. Ruin their outlook on life. He turned toward her. “Please tell me this doesn’t happen every day, Charleen.”
“Don’t worry about it.” She didn’t look at him, her gaze following the numbers above the doors. “It’s not your cross to bear.”
Not his…what? “I’m trying to wrap my head around the fact that you can travel in time and you have a ghos—guardian angel following your every move.” Could she also move through time? “That’s not something you swallow in one little pill.”
“I’d rather you forget the entire thing. If there were a pill for it, I’d have shoved it down your throat already.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Fact of the matter was she didn’t have any of those magical pills and he didn’t want one.
He didn’t want one? What did that mean?
The doors opened to the third floor. Amanda stood near the end of the hall, a cup of coffee in hand. She gave a slight wave.
His step faltered. How was this supposed to work?
It was one thing to deal with Charleen and Beth. It was another to add Amanda—or anyone—to the mix.
He followed Charleen out of the elevator. “Always?”
She turned toward him. “Don’t wig out on me. Yesterday I could’ve rolled with that. Come up with some off-the-wall explanation. Today my ceiling is pretty low and I’m already above it.”
That explained the chaotic way she appeared to live. “We’re way past full-blown panic, Charleen. I’m in the needing-a-stiff-drink-phase of this.”
“You don’t drink. Haven’t had one in years.”
He stilled. He hadn’t. A choice that had been unconscious on his part.
Shock flitted across her face as if she hadn’t realized what would come from her mouth. Her gaze flicked up from the floor. “I think. Single malt scotch. There’s an aged bottle back at your house in Raleigh.”
It was tucked away in a cabinet. He’d gotten it on a trip overseas. Had it shipped back. “Is this one of those absorptions? Am I going to end up somewhere trying to remember exactly what I did the last time with no help from you?”
Hurt rushed across Charleen’s face.
It sliced through him with one white-hot swoop. He wanted to suck the words back. Say something to make that emotion disappear.
Charleen’s gaze hit Beth who leaned on the nearby railing. “What’s she doing here?”
Beth tapped the wooden surface. “Blake called her, because even though you act like a complete toolbag sometimes, he knows the beginnings of a loyal friend when he sees one. You could use more of those.”
“Thanks for that. You’re so sweet. You and Dexter both.” Charleen shook her head. Dug something from her pocket, reached for his hand and dropped it inside. “I can’t do this. Neither can you. It’s too much, too fast. Too strange.”
A silver band sat in his palm.
“I found that with a Jane Doe who, by all accounts, disappeared from under several nurses’ noses. Right in this hospital. Good luck finding Mrs. Knight. May she be as perfect as you remember. Don’t forget flowers.” Then she started for Amanda. Tugged her hair into a knot at the top of her head as she went.
The silver band stared back at him. He moved it in his palm, the overhead lights glinting off the stones. The letters inside jumped out at him.
La Relance
“Revival.” The image of slender hands popped into his mind. Sliding it across the third finger on her left hand. He’d been so nervous he’d almost dropped it twice.
Was that him? The memory was distant. Fuzzy. Disjointed.
She’d cracked a joke about him doing it on purpose so it would roll down the aisle and out the door. So he could do the same and forget about her before it was permanent. “Am I supposed to believe this means something?”
Next to him Beth shrugged. “Do you?”
Yes. No. “I don’t know. I don’t know about any of this.”
“Then with any luck you’ll wake up tomorrow—or yesterday—clean slate.”
Clean slate. No. He had enough of that to last him three lifetimes. He wanted clarity. “Why now?”
“Why not?” She turned toward him. “No more no thank yous. Remember?”
___
The words—her words, ballsy and crass—echoed in her mind. Charleen could’ve handed him the ring and been done with it. Instead, she’d opened her mouth, the ceiling in this disaster getting a little lower.
She’d make sure the next absorption fixed the problem. She’d make sure Dexter didn’t have to deal with the turbulent mess of her life.
She’d find a way to erase this entire day.
Charleen finished tightening her hair into a bun. Moved toward Amanda as if she had all day to get there and not one care on the horizon. Like she hadn’t blasted through all of the trust the other woman had ever laid out with her lack of information regarding her sessions with Dr. Hicks.
Not that it was any of Amanda’s business.
He knows the beginnings of a loyal friend…
Charleen didn’t have any of those. Couldn’t afford them. Maybe she’d erase all remnants of Amanda too. Just forget both of them meant anything to her. Then she wouldn’t have to figure out how to smooth over the rift. Wouldn’t have to wonder what information Beth was sharing with Dexter. Wonder how to make this foreign nagging in her chest go away.
Charleen stopped near the nurses’ station ten feet from Amanda. “Blake called you?”
Amanda sipped something from a travel mug. Probably her eighteenth cup of coffee for the day. “Try to be a little less happy about it, Davis. He thought you might want backup.”
Damn Blake. “For a guy in the hospital?”
“He called. I came. It’s not like I don’t have better things I could be doing.” Her gaze flicked beyond Charleen. “What’s with Dexter?”
A noncommittal answer danced on her tongue. “We were at Knight House when I got the call. He insisted on coming with me.” Likely to pepper her with questions he’d never asked. “He wouldn’t let me drive, because my car is a piece of junk. He thinks I’m certifiable, because instead of asking for his help like a normal human being I kissed him. Not the good kind.” The culmination of which meant she could probably kiss her job goodbye regardless of anything sane she told him. “It was a fun drive.”
The most silent and awkward one she’d spent in forever. She’d tried to come up with the perfect ice breaker and failed. Tried to channel her inner Amanda and found nothing. Because Charleen Davis didn’t dig deep, pull up her big girl undies and march forward. No. That was too easy. She dragged herself through the mud to safety with her eyes squeezed shut and her ears plugged.
Change didn’t happen if she wouldn’t let it. The quicker they got through the hole, the sooner they saw the sun.
Amanda laid the back of her hand across Charleen’s forehead. “You sick? That was…a lot of info, some of which needs clarification. What do you mean by not the good kind? Was it unwanted? Too much tongue? Not enough?”
Charleen drew her lips inward. “Forget I said that. Professionally. Personally. Just erase it. Please.”
Amanda’s eyebrows shifted upward. “You are sick.”
“Just trying to atone for this morning.”
“Don’t go changing the rules on me, Davis. I’m only starting to get the sarcastically angry way you view life.” A hint of a smile lit the other woman’s face. “It’s growing on me. Can’t say I hate the new sharing of information, however.”
Of course it would. What did Charleen have to do? Send in her guardian angel to tell this woman to get a clue? Ship’s sinking, honey. Jump while you can. “I’m sure that makes Mr. Hunk-of-Love immensely happy.”
Amanda sobered. “Robinson said you were looking for a video of the hospital from two years ago.”
“Yup.” Charleen had known asking Amanda’s husband for information meant Amanda would hear about it in some way. Had known there might have to be an explanation. Taken the risk anyway.
You know why.
“What are you looking for?”
Everything. Nothing. Where was that mud when she needed it to swallow her whole? “A woman. Possibly pregnant. A favor for a friend.”
Amanda nodded as if she understood everything, but she didn’t ask questions. Then she dug something from her pocket, held up a USB stick. “It wouldn’t have changed anything this morning—the fact that you weren’t cleared. I still would’ve believed you. I don’t have any reason not to.”
Give them a reason to trust you.
Charleen ground her teeth together. Planted her feet in that squishy mud. Prepared to army crawl. The other woman forgave too easily—a fact she’d already pointed out.
Amanda handed over the device. “Anything I can help with?”
Yeah. That was what Charleen needed. Amanda snooping around things that made little sense.
“I think what you’re looking for might be on that.” Amanda shoved her hand in her pocket. “Along with some other things I’d prefer not get splattered in the media again.”
The plastic in Charleen’s hands seemed so fragile—was so important. If this woman was the one Dexter was looking for…
No. She didn’t know that. This woman could be anybody. Likely didn’t have anything to do with Dexter’s past. The timing was off, his accident a full two years before the woman Blake had helped appeared in the ER.
“I did a search for this Elliot character. Came up empty.”
Charleen pocketed the small rectangle. Resisted the urge to shove it into one of the hospital computers. “Me too.”
The other woman nodded. “I set up a patrol.”
“For where?” Dexter came to stand next to Charleen, his stance tight. He didn’t make eye contact. And Beth was nowhere in sight.
What had she told him?
“Knight House. Had to promise to read through and respond to three thousand letters to get it done. Davis volunteered to help.”
Charleen shook her head. “You don’t want me dealing with the citizens of Charlotte. I don’t have your finesse, Nettles.”
Amanda shrugged. “With what Josiah was saying, the patrol makes sense. This guy could easily be watching him. Waiting.”
“Right.” Dexter’s violet eyes hit Charleen’s, his face darkening. “A patrol.”
Amanda’s gaze flicked between the two of them. “Josiah said this guy—Elliot—blindfolded him and put him and his sister in that room. Told him help was on the way. Why bother? Sort of insinuates that Josiah would be able to identify him. If the bomb had gone off earlier, that wouldn’t have been possible.”
Something swirled in Charleen’s stomach. The sight wasn’t anything she wanted to see again.
“I’d venture to say the end game is not an unspecific tragic set of events that calls in as many officials as possible for the high of a chase, but something precise that he or she needs to accomplish. He only needs one opponent. All the others are pawns.”
Beth had said the same thing. Casualties. Replaceable. Was Charleen predictable enough to allow this to happen?
Amanda crossed her arms over her chest. “Then we fight him at his own game. Figure out what he wants. Snuff him out.”
“No.” The people around her were not an easy dispensation straight to her. Not now. Not ever.
Dexter’s warm hand found the middle of her back. Steady. The contact sent a buzz of excitement through her. Made her suck in a stilted breath. Any other day she might have shaken off the contact. Let the person on the other end of it know it was unwelcome and unwanted.
Right now she couldn’t find that detachment, because there wasn’t one part of her careful life that wasn’t falling apart. Wasn’t one part of her that didn’t crave the touch.
Didn’t envision backing him against a wall and placing her lips on his.
Get a grip.
The door to their right opened. Charleen’s heart skyrocketed as if the person on the other side knew her thoughts.
Blake stepped through it. “Hey. Thanks for coming.” He handed a plastic hospital belongings bag to her. “Thought you might want to see that. We sedated him, but he’s fighting the meds and asking for Simone.”
Amanda shifted. “Simone?”
Charleen opened the bag and pulled out a worn brown leather wallet. Inside, a picture of Dr. Michael Hicks stared back at her, gray hair pristine and parted left, a pressed black suit against the DMV’s white background as if he’d gone to renew his license right from work.
That was likely the case. He had a no-nonsense air about him and prided himself on being able to see others in a clear, unjaded light while holding himself to a standard that embodied honesty, punctuality, and faith.
There was no way Charleen was his next of kin. She’d made it a point to research her heritage on both sides a long time ago. “Simone is my birth mother.”
“I know.” Amanda stepped closer. “I ran into her—or someone using her name—this morning in the ER.”
What?
“We think he stole the wallet.” Blake’s voice snapped Charleen’s attention to him.
“Why?”
“That picture was only taken last year, and while the man in the bed beyond this door is the same height, build, and similar in age, he doesn’t share the same facial features—at least not the side of his face that isn’t purple. He doesn’t answer to that name.”
“Dr. Hicks took a leave of absence as of yesterday.” She flipped through the credit cards all bearing Dr. Hicks’ name. A receipt for a deli sandwich paid for by one of the cards only yesterday, and twenty-six dollars in small bills were all neatly organized without the usual creases that came with handling. A separate lining held two photographs, the first a younger version of himself and what had to be his wife in a park. The second was a Polaroid of a hand against a brown background, the edges of a black tattoo present but not all the way in focus. A business card was wedged behind the pictures. She pulled it out, the logo of a popular jewelry store jumping out at her.
Forever Yours.
“That’s identical to the ones we found inside that house this morning.” Amanda plucked the photo from between Charleen’s fingers. “The edge of the lettering on the tattoo are the same.” Amanda pulled out her phone and tapped something into it.
Charleen palmed the card.
“I don’t need a doctor.” Something hit the ground in the room beside them, a clang filling the space. “I need someone to call Simone Archambault.”