Authors: Patricia Rice
The closed door to Wyatt's office slammed open, and the Grim Reaper stalked through. Thick dark hair standing on end, a day's beard shadowing the harsh lines of his jaw, he appeared ready to behead the first unfortunate crossing his path.
As he turned his bleary glare on Pippa, she cheerfully passed him the fax.
He scribbled his consent without reading it. “Have you read the manuscript yet?”
“I told you I would type it but I won't read it.” Pippa sat back in her chairâa wonderfully supple leather with lumbar support and heated massageâpicked up the stack of paper on her right, and dropped it on top of his messages. “Here's yesterday's work for your approval.”
“Yesterday's work was crap.” He viciously plowed his hand through his hair, stalked up and down the narrow office floor, then slammed his fist into the wall, until the framed covers jumped. He swung his furious gaze back to Pippa. “How in hell am I supposed to talk plot with you if you haven't read the damned book?”
“I'm a nurse, Mr. Wyatt, not an editor. You knew that when you hired me. I am a very efficient administrator. I have typed up your scribblings, edited and formatted them, I've answered your phones, opened your mail, paid your bills, filed your invoices, and dealt with your irate mother.”
She twined her fingers together and rested her elbows on the chair's broad arms. “I'm perfectly prepared to sit here and let you throw slings and arrows at me if that will help. Why don't you tell me what the problem is, rather than make me read the gore?”
“It's not gore.” He gave her a disgruntled look, paced up and down some more, then decided to explain. “I write horror, not gore. The world is full of horrifying things, and people want the thrill of experiencing them as well as the triumph of controlling them. I can give them in the pages of a book what they cannot have in real life.”
“Mad gophers?” Pippa asked, raising a satirical eyebrow.
“Ha! So you did read it.” He swung around and glared at her, bristling with male rage and pride. “I've dug myself into a hole...”
“...a gopher hole,” Pippa murmured unrepentantly.
Seth ignored that. “A hero, by definition, must act heroically. He can't run, he can't cry, he can't wait for someone else to solve his problems. But in yesterday's pages I dug my hero in so deep he cannot possibly dig himself out. What do I have him do, carry explosives in his back pocket? That's patently ridiculous.”
She really hadn't read the pages. The reference to a gopher had briefly caught her fancy, but the material was far from whimsy, and shuddering, she had shut off her brain as she typed after that. But Seth's talk about heroes rescuing themselves struck another chord.
“Must heroes stand alone?” she asked diffidently, not at all certain of her thoughts. “Aren't heroes more heroic for having friends they can call on? Like Jimmy Stewart in
It's a Wonderful Life.
Alone, he was helpless, but with his friendsâ”
Seth flung the telephone book against the wall, quite a feat given the size of the tome, Pippa noted with admiration.
“I don't write sentimental claptrap, Miss Cochran. I write about the dark forces that inhabit this earth. About the only thing that could save my hero at this point is if an equally dark force...” Clenching his fists, he stopped in midpace and stared blankly at the wall. “That's it. An equally dark force. I can do that.”
Distracted, he swung back to the desk, riffled through the newly typed manuscript pages, and idly picked up his phone messages. “Where's Chad?”
He was reading the messages and Pippa didn't think he was listening, but she answered anyway. “He's resting. Mr. Brown is reading him a story.”
She was mistaken. Wyatt's shaggy head jerked up and his cold glare fixed on her at once. “Doug is reading him a story?”
Pippa shrugged. “It's better for him than moping around in his apartment feeling sorry for himself. Everyone needs to feel useful. And Chad's quite thrilled.”
“Doug reading storybooks,” Seth muttered, wandering toward his office. “The NFL's best linebacker reading bunny books. I swear...” The door slammed after him, cutting off any further commentary.
“And thank you so much, Miss Cochran,” Pippa mocked, glancing at the closed door. “Job well done, keep up the good work.”
The phone rang. Swearing, she picked up the other unmarked line, and heard Mary Margaret on the other end.
“Wow, Pippa! I found the number in the book but didn't think I'd actually get you. Why haven't you called? I've been worried sick.”
“Did you think he ate me for dinner?” she asked wryly. “No one's tried to push me in the oven yet.”
Mary Margaret laughed. “I'd think it far more likely if you pushed Wyatt in the oven. Have you?”
Pippa grinned. “You've always known me too well. It's been entertaining, to say the least. I'll tell you Sunday when I come to town. How are the kids?”
“They're fine, full of questions, but fine.” She hesitated, then asked cautiously, “I don't suppose you've heard if he has any plans for rebuilding the printing plant, do you?”
Understanding the importance of the question from Mary Margaret's hesitation, Pippa sought some reassuring reply, but there wasn't any. “He's working on something else right now. I don't think he's given thought to anything beyond that.” Uncertain as to whether the town knew of Seth's alter ego, Pippa refrained from mentioning book deadlines.
“Oh, well, it was only a thought. The plant was archaic and probably needed tearing down before someone got seriously hurt. We just hoped he might...”
“I don't think he's given to altruism,” Pippa offered dryly. “If he tore down the old plant, he had a reason; it's just not uppermost in his mind right now. I'll let you know if I hear anything else.”
After making plans for Sunday and hanging up, Pippa decided her duties included checking on Chad at regular intervals. Hearing only silence from behind the closed door and concluding Wyatt was writing, she turned on the elaborate voice mail system and hurried up the flagstone stairs. Why in the world anyone would make a foyer of wood, and stairs of stone, was beyond her comprehension, but she wasn't an architect.
She reached Chad's room just as Doug Brown tiptoed out, closing the door. The sight of a six-foot, two-hundred-something-pound man tiptoeing should have boggled her senses, but he did it with a certain degree of grace. She grinned as he looked up and caught her watching. “Did you tie him up and gag him?”
Doug eyed her uncertainly. “Nah, the cold medicine knocked him out pretty much. And he insisted on hearing one of his dad's books. That had him snoring quick enough.”
Pippa raised her eyebrows in surprise. “I should have thought one of those would have had him up with nightmares for the rest of his life.”
Doug shrugged. “They ain't exactly kids' literature. He didn't understand half the words.” Shifting from foot to foot, obviously uncomfortable in her presence, he blurted out another topic on his mind. “Did you do something about calling them other doctors you talked about? That kid needs to get out of here.”
Pippa beamed. “I surely did. I've even made an appointment for the day after tomorrow. Do I take him in Miss MacGregor's car or will you drive?”
“The Beamer's still in the shop, and the Jag's too small for Chad's chair. I can clean up that old Rolls, if you like. Kinda been wantin' to take it out for a spin.”
“A Rolls? He has a Rolls?” Pippa rolled her eyes in delight, then grinned mischievously. “I don't suppose he'd let me drive, would he?”
“No, sirree, ma'am,” Doug answered emphatically. “Ain't no way. That old car belonged to his daddy and ain't nobody touches it. I figger I'll have to get down on my knees and crawl before he'll let me get it out. And he'll probably give me a sobriety test before he hands over the keys.”
Pippa wrinkled her nose. “One hint of alcohol on your breath, Mr. Brown, and you'll not even come close to Mr. Wyatt. I have a nose for liquor better than any test mankind can develop. And as much as I disliked it, I worked enough emergency room shifts to recognize drugs when I see them, so don't bother with those either. This is a family outing, and if you need sedation for a family outing, we don't need you.”
Brown drew himself up in an intimidating stance that should have sent her screaming down the hall, given that he could have bench-pressed her just as easily as weights.
“I don't do drugs, Miss Know-It-All, and I ain't about to hurt that kid none neither, and just you remember it.”
Well, perhaps she had been just a little hasty in calling this one, Pippa reflected as she took a step backward. Nah, she decided a moment later in Brown's own inimitable words as she watched him rumble down the hallway, book in handâin a household of egotists, maniacs, and admitted alcoholics, she had to give as good as she got.
She had learned something about survival in these past months.
“Why don't you just die, Seth?”
The voice whispered sibilantly through sluggish brain cells. The steady drip-drip that had filled untold nights and days registered more clearly than the whisperer. The drip had provided his only companionship in the absence of human voices. Sweat broke out on his brow as he struggled to understand the whispers.
“If you died, it would make life easier for all of us, Sethâfor me, for your son, for your employees, for everyone. Even your mother would be happier.”
Some word or inflection in this string of sounds connected. Urgency gripped his breathing. He struggled to recognize the voice, but pain shot like an arrow bolt through his head, driving conscious thought into hiding again.
“I wonder what would happen if I pulled out this little needle in your arm?” the voice asked wonderingly.
The sheer shock of that innocent tone rocketed another warning through his brain. Again, sluggish brain cells fought for coherence. The drip-drip echoed louder. A siren in the distance screamed closer. Only sound registered. Blackness wrapped the void of his consciousness.
“Or what if I just loosened it a little? I don't suppose you would be so obliging as to knock it free, would you? You were never obliging in your whole life. I'm not sure you even know the rest of us exist.”
Bitterness roiled up inside of him, an ancient bitterness accompanied by a deep despair.
“The only thing that ever interested you was your damned work. Do you see any of your books sitting at your bedside now? If I didn't have to pretend concern in case you die, I wouldn't be here either. If you dare live, I swear I'll take your son away.”
Fury sprang full blown through his entire core, parting the bitterness and despair like storm clouds flung by the wind. His son! What had they done to his son? Where was Chad? He couldn't think, couldn't open his eyes, couldn't move, but he fought for consciousness. The urge to grab the whisperer by the throat surged through him.
“I could loosen that for you,” the voice said thoughtfully. “I could tell them it bothered you and I just meant to help. Do you know what you've done to your son, you bastard? Do you have any idea?”
Icy fingers gripped his arm. He could feel his arm. He stretched his fingers, then balled them into a fist as unseen hands worked the strap until it loosened. Pain shot straight through every muscle. The word “Chad!” screamed in his throat. He couldn't persuade the sound past his tongue. The woolly haze of drugs seeped through his brain again, but the terrifying emotions wouldn't die. He fought against the drugs and the pain.
“You've turned Chad into a vegetable,” the voice continued pleasantly, relentlessly. “He'll never walk again. Maybe never talk. It would have been better if you had killed him outright. It would have been even better if you had just killed yourself!”
Agony
! He writhed in semiconscious pain, fighting off this nightmare. If he could just scream, maybe it would go away. But he couldn't. He had to get up, had to run to Chad's room, check that he breathed, as he had a dozen times a night since his son was born.
He had to touch that cherished little face with its serious expression, the dark brows all drawn down in deep baby thoughts. He would tuck the covers over the rounded posterior hunched up with knees drawn under. He'd never understood how the child could sleep like that, but Chad had since he'd learned the trick of rolling over. The doctors had said babies should sleep on their backs, and he'd turned him over countless times during the night. But Chad determinedly returned to his favorite position until Seth couldn't bear disturbing him again.
He would go to Chad's room, see that he slept soundly, that his favorite teddy awaited his waking, that he didn't get cold from the drafts in that spacious, elegantly decorated emptiness his wife called a nursery.
“Damn you, Seth, I hate you. I despise you, do you hear me? You've destroyed my life, destroyed your son, destroyed everything you've ever touched. You deserve to die. I'm taking everything, do you understand? I'll take everything. No judge in the world will deny me. Do everyone a favor, including yourself; give up and die.”