Page 72 of Danger Close
I dropped my hand to her abdomen over the blanket. Beneath my palm, past the duvet, and the MIT sweatshirt I’d put her in to sleep.
Those letters were carved into her skin. I’d seen them when they changed her bandage, as clear as fucking day. I had to step out of the room, my vision blurred, I was so fucking angry.
I had no idea what they meant, but they were nothing good.
“I’m protecting her from me,” she said, her tears pouring down. “From becomingme.”
I froze. The gears in my head came to a screeching halt, unable to understand what the hell that was supposed to mean.
“I can’t tell you any more,” she said again. I growled, and she winced. “Please, know that I’m protecting you, too, Joe.”
Joe. not Cobra. Joe. The sound of that nickname, the one that only she’d ever used, sent a flutter in my dormant heart. It was a small ember in an otherwise cold soul.
“If I tell you, he’ll hurt you.” She covered her lips with the blanket again, as if to muffle her own words. “He’s already hurt Charlotte. I can’t let him hurt anyone else. Not for the sin of simply being kind…”
So I could confirm that it was ahe. Ray wasn’t short for Rachel or whatever else. That simplified the problem.
“You don’t know what he’s capable of.” She wiped her tears with the duvet. “He can get away with anything… witheverything.”
I could work with that. It was like a toehold on an otherwise smooth wall I needed to climb.
“Explain it to me,” I whispered, as my fingers traced down to her hip. “What willhedo?”
I swallowed, trying to summon what was left of my patience.
“What didhedo to you?” Instead of going for a name, I was asking about his actions. I exploited another angle. “What do these letters mean?”
I’d seen them too many times for it to be a coincidence. They meant something.
“Intensive Care Unit,” she whispered. “And also… Iseeyou. He’s got eyes everywhere.Friendseverywhere. He can reach out and touch me. He can hurt me, wherever I am. He can do as he likes with me, and he always has. He’s…” She cut herself off, and looked away in shame.
Shame, not embarrassment. Those were two very separate emotions, and I didn’t like it.
I swallowed, trying not to go rigid from the need to strike something. To strike the headboard, the wall. Feelings that belonged to a much, much younger man.
“He can hurt the people around me, too.” She looked away. “He sent me to the hospital for a broken rib, concussion, and… other things. I was in the ICU for days.”
She shut her legs, bringing her knees together.
What else had he done?Christ, I wished she’d just tell me. Talk to me. Before my imagination ran wild.
I’d seen too much of human depravity, I could imaginea lot.
“There was a doctor, Annie Zhou. She didn’t push, or lecture. Mostly, she just took the time to talk to me. She talked about her life, going to school at Johns Hopkins, and her family. So I… over time… opened up as well.” Her watery eyes shined as they looked at me with absolute sorrow. “She was kind to me. She saw the signs. She said that I could get out. That I could get my daughter out. I believed her. We made a plan.” She swallowed. Her throat bobbed as she shut her eyes. “The day before I would call the police, the day Trinity would have visited me, and I would have taken her and run, hidden away somewhere, away from him… Annie didn’t show up for work.”
She covered her face with her hands, bowing into them as a small, pained wail left her throat.
“She was in the E.R. beaten raw, and… and…”
“And what?” I gently pulled her hands from her face, because I needed to see her eyes and the secrets her lips wouldn’t tell me.
“Her nephew was here, in the United States, as a refugee. He was waiting for a court hearing to gain legal status. They were close. So close. They were ready to celebrate but…”
A high whine escaped her throat and her lips trembled. She swallowed the lump in her throat again, and I waited.
“He disappeared before his hearing. They just took him, and maybe sent him back to the very place he was running from. To the one place a judge had said he could not be deported to…” She shook her head. Her hair swished over her shoulders as the tears began to fall, leaving a glistening line over her blue and purple cheek. “I don’t think she found out what happened to him.”
Another tear fell. Then another. Until it stopped being a rivulet, and turned into a stream.
