Lisa Childs – Damned (страница 4)

“Shh…” he said again, for the first time glancing uneasily around at the shadows bouncing off the walls of the buildings that flanked the alley. “I’m a private investigator. I told you—your family sent me.”

“I can hear you,” she said. “Not what you’re saying but what you’re thinking. I can hear you!”

His dark eyes gleamed eerily as he stared at her. “You can hear me?”

“I know what you did. I know what you intend to do,” she insisted.

But she wasn’t going to let him. She whirled around to the other side of the barrel, then kicked over the rusted metal cylinder. The barrel broke apart, and the flames leaped toward him.

Throwing his arms up over his face, he shrank back against the wall of one of the buildings. Cowering as the barrel rolled toward him, sparks flying, he screamed, “No!”

Taking advantage of his distraction and distance, she ran from the alley, the heels of her worn shoes pounding the asphalt and scattering tin cans and paper debris as she headed toward the street. Her long skirt tangled around her legs, slowing her frantic dash.

You witch! When I catch you, you’ll suffer. She heard his thought first, then his ragged breathing as he chased her.

Propelled by fear, she didn’t dare stop running when she reached the curb, so she hurled herself into traffic. Tires squealed, brake pads burning, but the driver didn’t stop in time. The metal bumper glanced off her thigh, knocking her onto the asphalt.

He would get her now; she couldn’t run anymore. As big hands reached for her, closing around her arms, she screamed, her throat straining, her voice rising with hysteria. “Don’t kill me! I’m not a witch! I’m not a witch!”

Chapter 2

Irina tugged on her wrists, trying to free her hands. But the bindings held her tight, trapped. Panic pressed on her chest, and her lungs labored for breath.

“Let me go!” she shouted, her throat raw from screaming. Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes from the pain. “Let me go! He’s going to kill me!”

But no one believed her. If they had, they wouldn’t have brought her here. To a psychiatric ward. She’d been in one before, but she hadn’t been strapped down to a bed as she was now. She’d been an intern, not an inpatient. Committed.

She couldn’t blame them for not believing her. She struggled to believe herself. Could she really hear other people’s thoughts? Was that possible?

Maybe her earlier fear that she was hallucinating was founded. Maybe she belonged here. She sagged back against the mattress, which wasn’t much softer than the thin cardboard over asphalt where she’d spent so much of the past few months. Even though an IV dripped saline into her arm, rehydrating her, she weakened, her lids drifting closed. Some doctor or nurse had injected her earlier with a sedative, which must have finally taken effect. Although her muscles relaxed and she breathed easier, her anxiety didn’t lessen.

She wished she still believed she was crazy, that she was making up the horror her life had become. But she’d already accepted her truth. And she knew her fate.

He’d be coming back for her.

The doorknob rattled, startling her into fighting against the restraints. She thrashed on the bed, the springs and metal frame creaking in protest of her frantic movements.

“Stop it! You’re going to hurt yourself,” a young woman cautioned as she entered the room.

“He’s going to hurt me. He’s going to kill me!” Despite the sedative, Irina’s voice rose as the panic pressed down on her chest, stealing her breath.

“You’ve been saying that since the police brought you here.” The woman wore the same green scrubs as the nurses but with a white coat. She wasn’t much older than Irina; she’d probably just begun her residency. Irina didn’t remember talking to her before.

“How long ago was that?” she asked—when she’d run in front of the police car, when a concerned officer had lifted her from the asphalt. She’d pleaded with them to save her from the man who’d been chasing her. But they hadn’t seen him; like the homeless people in the alley, he’d disappeared into the shadows. But Irina had still been able to hear his thoughts and had known he watched her. She’d screamed that at them, too, that she could read his mind, that she could read theirs. They thought she was crazy. And so they’d brought her here.

“Last night,” the doctor answered her. “So, tell me, who is this man you’re afraid of?”

“I don’t know.” She hadn’t even noticed the passing of time. He’d claimed to be a private investigator hired by her sisters to find her. But she knew he’d been lying.

“What’s your name?” the woman asked.

Irina. She hadn’t been called that in twenty years, not aloud, but now, locked in a psychiatric ward, with voices in her head, she felt more like Irina Cooper than she ever had Heather Bowers.

Since Irina hadn’t answered her, the pretty young doctor probed, “Don’t you know your name?”

For the first time in a long time, Irina felt as if she did really know who she was. But with the witch hunt resurrected, she wasn’t about to admit to being Irina Cooper.

“I want to help you,” the woman insisted, her dark eyes earnest.

If not for the voices, Irina would have been her. She’d been in her last year of medical school, after having already completed her master’s in psychology, when the first scream had torn through her mind and torn apart her world. “I wish you could….”

But if she told the psychiatrist everything, the young doctor would think her even crazier than she already did.

The woman’s face flushed with pink color. “Someone’s been asking about you. At least I’m pretty sure you’re the woman he’s looking for. Maybe he’ll be able to help you remember who you are.”

He already had. But he didn’t intend to let her make any more memories. God, how had he found her so quickly? He must have followed the police car to the psychiatric hospital.

Irina strained against the bindings at her wrists, trying to vault out of the bed. “You can’t let him in here! Don’t let him near me! He’s going to kill me!”

“Why do you say that?” the psychiatrist asked, her face tight with concern. “Has he hurt you?”

Irina shook her head, tumbling her hair around her shoulders. Citrus shampoo wafted from her curls. The minute she’d been brought in, they’d washed her. Maybe he wouldn’t recognize her from the dirty street person she’d been. Maybe she could convince him she wasn’t who he thought she was.

She wasn’t a witch.

Drawing in an unsteady breath, she admitted, “He hasn’t touched me.” Yet. “But I know he’s hurt other people. He’s killed them.”

The young doctor’s mouth pulled down at the corners. “He probably has, but only in the line of duty. He’s a police officer.”

No wonder he’d found her so quickly. Even if she somehow managed to free herself and escape, he would track her down again. She had to convince him she wasn’t Irina Cooper. If she couldn’t, she was damned.

As the psychiatrist opened the door and stepped into the hall, Irina tested the restraints, tugging on her wrists. Desperation to free herself renewed her struggle, and the straps dug deep grooves into her skin.

“She doesn’t want to see you,” the young doctor, her voice soft with apology, told someone in the corridor.

Irina held her breath as she listened for his response. But she couldn’t discern his words, only the low timbre of his raspy murmur. Through the partially opened door she watched the psychiatrist’s face, which flushed pink as she gazed up at the man who stood just outside Irina’s line of vision.

The woman shook her head, shifting her braid against her back. Her hair was dark and long, like Irina’s. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “I don’t want to upset her any further.”

Unable to see or hear him through the door, Irina closed her eyes and listened for his voice inside her head. But now, when she actually wanted her mind invaded with the thoughts of others, it remained empty. Instead of blackness rolling in, she squinted against the stark glare of the fluorescent lights as she opened her eyes again. What had they given her?

She struggled anew against the restraints, wanting to pull out the IV as badly as she wanted her freedom. She needed to hear the voices now; she needed to know what was going on if she had any hope of protecting herself.

“Send him in,” she yelled as the last of her strength drained from her body. The sedative had worked on her muscles as well as her mind, relaxing them so much that she couldn’t even form a fist now. But even weak, she could fight him…if she could read his mind. He wouldn’t dare to try to kill her here, in the hospital. And she’d be able to identify him. Maybe if he got close to her again, as he had in the alley, she could test her power.

Not that she’d ever had to have someone close to read his or her mind. She had no idea where those women were that he’d killed, but she’d heard their every terrified thought throughout their last moments. She shivered; her struggles to free herself had knocked her blankets to the floor, and she wore only a thin cotton gown. But her reaction was more from fear than cold.

She drew in a deep breath, reminding herself that she’d decided back in the alley that she was through running. Of course, a short while after making that decision she had run out in the street and into the path of that police car. The police officers hadn’t helped her. Since he was one of them, there was no way she could trust them. Or anyone else. She had to help herself.