Desolation Point Read online

  *

  “Are you sure you’re okay to continue, Officer Pascal?”

  Alex set the plastic cup back down on the table, all too aware that the tremor in her hand must have been noted by the detective sitting beside her.

  “I’m fine.” She really wasn’t fine. Her lower back burned constantly, the pain exacerbated by the infection that had taken hold over the past twenty-four hours; apparently, weapon cleanliness was not something that gangbangers considered a priority. The IV antibiotics were strong enough to upset her stomach. She had gone cold turkey on the morphine in preparation for giving her statement, and—to add insult to not inconsiderable injury—the detective investigating the case looked as if she had just walked out of a fashion shoot.

  The detective raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow, but finally nodded and un-clicked the pause button on the small tape recorder.

  “So, just to confirm, it was Tomas Alvarez who had the knife and Manuel Alvarez, his brother, who was holding you down on the floor.”

  Alex gave a small nod before realizing that wouldn’t be enough for the tape. “That’s right. I tried to fight them, but I didn’t have any strength left.” She cleared her throat and reached for the water again, shame at the admission of her own weakness making her cheeks hot. “I couldn’t do anything to stop them…”

  *

  The door to Alex’s hospital room had opened almost soundlessly, but the low whistle from her visitor was a good deal less subtle.

  “Well, you look like hammered shit.” Jack was standing in the doorway with his arms full of flowers. He grinned toothily and made his way to the bedside.

  “Thanks, partner, I love you too.” She smiled as he planted a wet kiss on her cheek.

  “Still a little warm, Officer Pascal.” His hand rested on her cheek and then her forehead, the pleasant coolness of his palm the only reason that she made no attempt to swat him away.

  “Doc said the fever’s on its way out. I actually felt like eating something earlier.”

  Jack set the flowers down and pulled up a chair. “I swear, you losing your appetite was like the first sign of the fucking apocalypse. I told Burke and Toledo, and they were both genuinely freaked out.”

  Alex laughed. “Idiot,” she said without malice, her fingers tracing the edge of a petal. “These are beautiful.”

  “Guys had passed the hat, and I think”—he lifted the larger bouquet and pulled out a spray of roses—“these are from the paramedics who came out that night. They’re glad you’re doing okay.”

  “They didn’t need to do that.” She closed her eyes before they could tear up and took a breath of the sweet scent. “Tell them thanks, if you run into them.”

  “Of course.”

  “So, you coping without me?”

  He gave her a look that set her off laughing. “You know they paired me with Rookie Road.”

  “I know.” She was trying to keep a straight face, but she wasn’t trying all that hard.

  “He’s a rook, Alex.”

  “I know.”

  “He eats ice cream. Constantly.”

  “I know.” Her shoulders were shaking. “Hence the nickname.”

  “I hate you,” he growled, not at all convincingly. “Please come back soon.”

  *

  Awareness returned to Sarah in a series of fractured images. Lights blinked on monitors, numbers flashing, their values never static but constantly fluctuating in response to the slightest change in her condition. Her right leg was suspended in traction, weights keeping the shattered bone in alignment. A plaster cast prevented her left ankle from moving no matter how hard she tried. Intravenous drips and blood transfusions hung in a line alongside syringes in pumps that bleeped shrilly whenever the tubing became kinked, like infants demanding attention.

  Gradually, as she managed to stay awake for longer periods, she began to recognize the faces of the medical staff: nurses with singsong voices and gentle hands, doctors who peeled back her eyelids and spoke in terms too convoluted for her to understand. As soon as someone deemed her strong enough, and with a nurse standing solicitously by the cubicle door, a police officer confirmed what Sarah already remembered even through the haze of drugs, the condolences he offered, professional but utterly sincere. She nodded and thanked him politely for taking the time to visit. The nurse hovered, waiting for Sarah’s inevitable breakdown, but it never came. She hurt too much to move. Crying would have been unbearable.

  After another week of fading in and out, she turned her aching head to see her stepfather sitting at her bedside. Caught unawares, he dropped his gaze from her face, and then looked up a few seconds later with a relieved smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Even doped up on morphine, still half-anesthetized from whatever surgery her doctors had deemed necessary the day before, Sarah had been able to decipher his initial expression. He left soon afterward, the question still unvoiced but lingering in his eyes: why had she survived, when his wife and his little girl had died?

  *

  The gentle drift of oxygen from the tubing beneath Alex’s nose wasn’t enough to hide the scent now wafting through the room. Heady and expensive, it might have been pleasant in lesser quantities, but its wearer was more concerned with announcing her wealth than with the subtle effect that a more judicious application might have achieved. Only hours out of surgery, Alex was still nauseated from the anesthetic, and the smell was enough to tip her over the edge. She reached for the bowl that had been positioned strategically near her by the nurse who had cared for her after her first two surgeries, and had barely managed to tuck it beneath her chin before she began to vomit. Through a fresh onslaught of pain, she dimly heard an exclamation of distaste from the person at her bedside. An urgent buzzer sounded, followed by a series of sharp clacks as her visitor rapidly exited the room in a pair of designer heels. Shortly afterward came the welcome approach of someone wearing shoes that were far more appropriate. Alex nodded gratefully as gloved hands kept the bowl in place for her and then wiped her face and her mouth clean.

  “Same old, same old, huh?” Ella, the nurse who always seemed to draw the short straw—the post-surgery shift—offered her a spoonful of ice chips before injecting another drug into her IV port. “Should help with the nausea.”

  “Thanks.” Unthinking, Alex took a deep breath before she realized her mistake and had to fight not to gag again. Desperate to distract herself, she shifted slightly in the bed, wincing at the now-familiar pinch of fresh sutures in her back. “How’d they do?”

  On this occasion, the skin graft had been taken from her right thigh, in the third and hopefully last stage of a painstaking process to cover up the legacy Tomas Alvarez had left her with. She would still have scars, her plastic surgeon had already warned her of that, but at least the epithet Alvarez had cut into her would no longer be legible.

  With a smile, Ella gently but firmly lifted Alex’s hand from where it was straying toward the dressing on her back, and placed it onto the sheets.

  “They did good. Dr. Rachman was really pleased. He said he’ll come by just as soon as you stop puking.” She held her hands palm up in apology. “His words, not mine.”

  “Yeah, sounds about right.” Alex crunched an ice chip between her teeth and then grinned as Ella shuddered at the noise.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  “I wish you’d let me have a beer,” Alex countered without hesitation.

  Ella made a show of ignoring her. She took a quick note of the vitals displayed on the monitors and then tucked her pen into her pocket. When she dared to look back up, Alex greeted her with an expression of complete innocence. Ella shook her head in exasperation. “For the last time, Alex, I am not smuggling beer in here for you!”

  “You’re no fun.”

  “Yeah, yeah, and you’re stalling.”

  “That obvious, huh?”

  “’Fraid so, hon.” She ran a hand through the unruly mess of Alex’s hair, smoothing it back from her face i
n an attempt to make her a little more presentable. “You want me to send her in?”

  “No,” Alex said, “but I guess you should.”

  The door closed behind Ella, only to reopen seconds later. Celia Pascal stood in the doorway, her hair and makeup immaculate, her clothing unruffled by her time spent sitting in a hard plastic hospital chair. The draft from the corridor brought her familiar scent rushing back toward Alex. Clutching a fresh bowl, she swallowed hard and managed a weak smile.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “I came as soon as I could, darling. Your father and I were in the Mediterranean when we heard.”

  Alex nodded but made no reply as she watched her mother dab a handkerchief beneath eyes that were yet to actually shed a tear. She knew that Jack had contacted her parents on the night she had been assaulted, and she had been in and out of the hospital for almost a month now, yet her mother’s sun-bleached hair and freshly suntanned arms strongly implied that she had chosen to finish her cruise before putting in an appearance at her daughter’s bedside.

  “My poor baby, what they did to you…” Loud sniffles were added to the face blotting.

  Alex closed her eyes, too tired to deal with her mother’s histrionics. She wondered whether another bout of vomiting would be enough to get her a reprieve, and then cursed the anti-nausea meds for having finally worked.

  She let her breath out between her teeth. “I’m fine, Mom. They’ve got me fixed up, mostly.” She tried to ease the pressure on a sore spot by tucking her knees up, but all that did was make the pain from the donor site on her thigh more pronounced. Even though she managed to repress a moan, she saw her mother eye her suspiciously. She forced herself to smile. “I think they’re letting me go home in a few days.”

  As if this was the cue her mother had been waiting for, she abandoned the handkerchief and handed Alex a small business card she had taken from her purse. “Your father plays golf with this fellow once a month. He’s an absolutely wonderful surgeon. He reshaped Effie Thayer’s nose, and honestly, you’d hardly recognize her.”

  Alex arched an eyebrow, certain that she wouldn’t recognize Effie Thayer if the woman were the next to turn up in her hospital room. Her mother had never introduced her circle of friends to her, and Alex had her doubts that the more recent additions were even aware of her existence. She placed the card face down on her bedside table without giving it a glance.

  “I have a plastic surgeon, Mom. I don’t need another.”

  Her mother pursed her lips and huffed with exasperation. “Well, we’ll see what he has to say about that during your first consultation.” With a flourish, she opened a leather-bound diary and used a dampened finger to flick through the pages. “I have it all set up for the eighteenth. That will give us plenty of time to get you settled in at home.”

  So far, counting the drops of saline steadily falling into the chamber of her IV had been enough to keep a check on Alex’s temper, but she felt that control slipping as she stared open-mouthed at her mother. Digging her fingers into her palms, she shook her head. “I’m not going back to Boston with you, Mom.” It took a lot of effort to keep her voice level, but she was just about successful, though the soft flesh of her palms stung from the force of her nails.

  The diary closed with a snap. “Of course you are. Your father and I had a long discussion, and we have both decided that it really is for the best, Alexandra.”

  The all-too familiar tone her mother had wrapped around Alex’s full name made her flinch as if she had been slapped.

  “I haven’t spoken to my father in over five years.” She sounded each word deliberately; it was the only way she could force them out. “He made his feelings perfectly clear before I left, and I am not going back.”

  Her mother patted her arm lightly. “But you’re all over that business now, darling. You aren’t even with that girl anymore.”

  For a long moment, Alex wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. In the end, she merely lifted her mother’s fingers away from her arm. “That doesn’t mean I’m sleeping with men. Being gay isn’t something I’m going to grow out of.”

  Her mother’s face paled beneath its bronzed façade, but she quickly managed to compose herself and gave a high, short laugh. “Well, your father doesn’t need to know that, does he?”

  “He does know that, Mom. I’m guessing it’s the reason you’re here on your own.”

  The laugh again, wilder this time, a little more desperate. “Oh, you know how busy he is. He had a meeting that he really couldn’t reschedule and then he has a series of conferences in England and France next week.” Her mother’s voice faltered slightly, and when she spoke again, she sounded tired and defeated. “He’ll probably be away for the next month—”

  “Mom—”

  Ignoring Alex’s attempt to interrupt, her mother continued to speak, her words falling over each other in feigned enthusiasm, even though she was unable to meet Alex’s eyes. “But we have it all arranged for you, and he’s happy you’re coming home. Really.”

  “Mom, it’s okay.” Alex took hold of her mother’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I’m okay.”

  This time when her mother managed to look up, the tears in her eyes were genuine. “You don’t look okay.” Her bottom lip trembled and a tear spilled down her cheek. “I wanted to come straight away, but your father…” With a shake of her head, she tucked a loose piece of hair behind Alex’s ear. “I like it like this, longer. It suits you.”

  “Yeah?” Alex smiled and relaxed back into her pillows. “I’m glad you came, Mom.”

  “But you’re staying here, aren’t you?” Her mother already sounded resigned to the inevitable.

  Alex nodded. “Yeah, I’m staying here.”

  *

  “You have got the worst case of bedhead, my darling.”

  The brush caught on a tangled strand of Sarah’s hair, but it was the familiar voice of her best friend and not that small discomfort that made her open her eyes.

  “Well, look at you.” Ash was standing at the side of the bed, her face lit up with a grin.

  Sarah managed her own tremulous smile, ignoring the sting of slowly healing wounds.

  “Didn’t mean to wake you up,” Ash said, gingerly extricating the brush from where it had become ensnared. “I’m crap at this. It’s been years since I had long hair.”

  Ash had had short, spiky hair for as long as Sarah had known her, and the thought of her with anything so overtly feminine as a ponytail made Sarah start to giggle.

  Narrowing her eyes, Ash folded her arms indignantly. “I don’t know what you’re finding so funny, young lady. I’ll have you know I had a beautiful perm in the eighties.”

  Sarah’s hand flew to her left side, trying to splint fractured ribs and a fresh surgical wound as she laughed harder. “Oh fuck, please don’t. Oh, you bugger, that hurts.”

  Ash steadied the morphine pump Sarah was fumbling for. The dose Sarah administered had been long overdue, and she lay completely still until she felt the drug slowly begin to take effect.

  “Better?” Ash asked. She stroked the back of Sarah’s hand, encouraging her to relax her grip on the pump.

  “Mm, yes.” Sarah sighed with relief. “Thank you.”

  “For what? Busting your stitches open?”

  “No.” Sarah passed the brush back to Ash, who resumed the task of unknotting her hair. “I can’t remember the last time I laughed.”

  “Hardly surprising, love. You’ve had a pretty terrible few weeks.”

  “I know.”

  Ash set the brush down and pushed the last few strands of sweat-damp hair from Sarah’s forehead with her fingers. “Richard phoned me, said he’d arranged for me to be allowed to visit you in here.” The intensive care unit had a strict immediate family only policy, which meant that Sarah’s stepfather had been her only visitor since the accident. Ash, often forthright to a fault, now looked unusually reticent. “He said to tell you that he was going away for a while, that he
didn’t know when he’d be back.”

  “But that…” Sarah frowned in confusion. “That means he’ll miss the funerals.”

  Ash was already shaking her head, her expression stricken. Sarah stared at her in disbelief.

  “I’m so sorry, Sarah.”

  “No. No. I wanted―”

  “Your mum and Molly were buried two days ago.”

  Sarah slammed her fist against the side rail of her bed, her body trembling with rage. “He must have known…” Anger gave way instantly to grief, and she started to cry, the words choking off in her throat as she sobbed. “He must have known and he did it anyway.”

  Ash perched on the bed and gathered her close.

  “I just wanted to say good-bye to them,” Sarah whispered, tears soaking the front of Ash’s shirt. “He couldn’t even give me that.”

  *

  Cruel hands held Alex to the floor, pressing her face into the ground and forcing the breath from her. She couldn’t shout for help, she could barely breathe, and she couldn’t fight them off. The hands moved lower, a man laughed, and a blade dug into her back. With the one breath she managed to take, she started to scream.

  “Oh fuck…”

  She covered her face with her hands and fought to stop herself from hyperventilating. Thin, early morning light was already creeping in beneath her drapes and the air in her bedroom was stifling. She kicked her legs, freeing them from the mess of twisted sheets, and then pushed herself into a sitting position, her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them. She shuddered as she tried to rid herself of the residual terror still clinging to her. The nightmare was always the same; sometimes she managed to wake herself up before the cutting started, but more often, she failed.

  The water in the glass on her bedside table was warm and stale, but she drained it regardless, pulling a face at the taste. Her alarm clock ticked over to 3:17 a.m. In the corner of her room, her police uniform was just about visible, neatly laid out over a chair. Feeling more exhausted than she had when she’d gone to bed, she closed her eyes and rested her chin on her knees. For the past week, she had been attending sessions with the departmental therapist, a mandatory step on the road back to active duty. He had been reassuring her that nerves were only to be expected, that a sense of trepidation was normal and healthy, and that he would have been more concerned if the trauma she had suffered hadn’t affected her. As cold sweat soaked her tank top and set her off shivering, Alex wasn’t so sure that she wanted to be normal. She wasn’t sure what she wanted anymore.