Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense) (100 page)

"You bit me," I sigh.

"You love it."

"Yeah, I do."

"When I bite you, you start fucking me harder."

"You like that?"

"Yeah. We should have done this before."

"I know. It wasn't your fault you had to leave."

"I wish I could believe that."

She's all sweaty again. We need another shower. I'm in no hurry. I slide my fingers through the sweat on her back and she rests her head on my chest.

"I like this," she says. "I'm still mad at you."

"I know."

"I don't care." She sighs. "I should’ve tried to find you as much as you should’ve come back to me."

I say nothing.

"We need to get away and start over again. We can make it like it was. I'll go anywhere, I don't care as long as I'm with you."

"Same. We do need to pick a place, though."

"Here's good for a while. Until this is all over."

She sits up, then slides off me and lays on the bed, and I can't take my eyes off her sweaty body. Then she stands and walks into the bathroom and the shower starts.

"I could go again," she calls from the bathroom, "but let's save our energy. If we're going to be here all week or whatever…"

Grinning, I follow her in.

When we're both cleaned up again, we dress. The clothes in the dressers are the wrong sizes but they'll get the job done.

May is in the kitchen, heating up a can of spaghetti and meatballs. She sees us and dumps a second and a third can into the pot.

"It's not home cooking, but it'll do," she says. "I know you two must be hungry."

"Right," I say.

"Because you were fucking."

"May!" Alexis snaps.

"Oh Hawk," she mimics, stirring the pot. "Harder!"

"Shut up," Alexis snaps, but there's no heat in her voice.

May sticks her tongue out at her sister.

Then something about the size of a baseball crashes through the front window. I stare at the little round metal ball in dull surprise for a moment, and then the grenade goes off.

Alexis

Now

I turn to May and start to say something I will never finish. There is a sound of broken glass, like chimes, and a dull thud of something heavy hitting the floor and rolling across the carpet in the living room. Then the world goes white and a thunderous sound stabs into my ears, and I can't tell which way is up until I hit the floor. I know I'm screaming, but I can't hear myself.

I think I'm dead until Hawk's hand closes around my wrist. I can hear his voice as an echo, distant like a memory half heard.

"Flashbang!"

I don't know what that means, what's flashbang? I hear boots, but I feel them more than hear, thuds rolling through the wooden floor. A high shrill sound that drills painfully into my skull, and I think it's May screaming. Hawk's hand tears away from my wrist and suddenly I'm floating, carried away, something crushing my wrists and my calves, the world sawing under me.

Hot air hits me and I land on something soft that smells like piss, and cold cuts into my wrists and I think I'm going to bleed out but I move my arms and I feel steel bracelets constrict my movement, and more snap on my ankles. A heavy thudding sound might be a car door, and it leaves a ringing, burning sound behind it. When I open my eyes there's only purple shapes, the vague outline of what might be the front seat of a car, but there's something floating in front of it. A pattern.

It's wire. Wire embedded in glass. The light is like daggers but I can see again, and I throw myself up, sitting upright, trying to swing my legs around but they've cuffed them with shackles and my hands are locked behind my back. There's someone sitting in the front seat. It takes me a few seconds of blinking to realize it's a Paradise Falls cop. I think I've met him before. His name is Jackson or Johnson or Jameson or something like that.
 

My own voice sounds tinny, distant.

"What's happening?" I shout, or maybe whisper, I can't tell. "I didn't do anything."

"Shut up," his voice is far away and muffled.

I blink my eyes a few times and spot May as they haul her into another car, shoving her into the back seat.

Jesus Christ, Tom is here. He's talking to someone, a cop. There must be fifty of them.

They carry Hawk down the back stairs by the arms. There's bruises on his face, his lip is split, and his feet are dragging as they carry and finally drop him on the ground. Tom walks over and stands over him as he looks up. They talk but I can't hear.

Tom kicks dirt in Hawk's face, turns, and walks my way. He strides over and opens the passenger door to the police cruiser, opens it, sits inside. He closes the door and nods at the cop and the cop starts the car, backs it around, and drives away from the house. I twist to watch it recede in the background.

"What are you doing to him?" I shriek.

"You don't need to worry about him," Tom says, very calmly, very softly.

"Where's May? What did you do with my sister?"

"She'll come along with us. Don't worry, she'll be fine."

'Tom, don't hurt Hawk, please!"

He sighs. "Alexis, do you have any idea how disappointed I am in you? I thought you'd earned my trust, that you'd come around and started to understand the future and your place in it. Now you run off with Howard and Lance tells me you were doing something with my computer, and you encouraged Howard to beat him."

"That's not true," I shout, panting for breath. "Lance attacked me."

"Why?"

"He… he's a perv, I-"

"Because he caught you tampering with my computer. What were you doing?"

"I wasn't, I swear! Tom-"

"Dad," he says, very softly. "Address me properly."

"No," I snarl, "No! fuck you! You're not my father and I
hate you
. You hear me? I hate you and I hate Lance and you're going to prison, you sick sadistic bastard! I know what you did."

"Stop," he says.

The cop pulls over. He steps out of the car. He closes the door.

"Explain 'I know what you did.'"

"You killed your wife."

He laughs. "Is that what you think?"

I blink a few times. God, the light still stings. My ears are never going to stop ringing. My skull feels like it split open and the pieces are moving around.

"I don't understand."

"Of course you don't," he says.

"I'm not delusional and I'm not crazy."

"Everyone says that." He sighs. "Everybody who's crazy says they're not. You can't be crazy and know you're crazy, can you, after all? No, Alexis. After you spend some time resting and recuperating, you'll understand. My son, Howard, recognized how fragile you were and planted all these warped ideas in your mind in an attempt to seduce you and turn you against me. That's what happened."

"That's not true. You're a killer and criminal and a monster."

"That's your delusions talking. After you spend some time resting up in the hospital, you'll see the truth."

"No!” I scream, "No, you
can't!"

He motions with his hand and the driver gets back in the car.

"Stop!" I scream at him. "Listen to me, he's going to put me in a psych ward! I'm not crazy, you have to listen to me. Please, officer. This is wrong. There's nothing wrong with me. Listen to me. I'm begging you please listen to me." My words melt into sobs, and hot tears sting my cheeks. "Don't let him do this to me. Please. Please. Please."

"Shut up," the cop says coldly.

I sink back into the seat, sobbing.

The world rolls by, pressing in against the glass, and every bitter memory floods back into my mind. I feel the restraints on my arms, feel the needle slide into my buttock, the heat as the chemicals flush into my flesh. I remember every iota of anger and resentment I felt for Hawk and each drop of it is a tiny core of hate, not for him, for me. I held anger for him in my heart, and now this has happened. Someone help me.

Don't let them kill him. They'll kill him this time. Please God don't let them kill him. Somebody
help us
.

Nobody answers me.

I go quiet, sobbing softly to myself, lying on the stinking seat that smells like dried perspiration and rotten soda and piss. I curl up in a ball and resign myself to the inevitable, a dark pit of agonized dread forming in my stomach, and sink into it. They killed him. Hawk is dead, he's dead, he's dead.

No he's not. I can feel it. I don't know how I can but I can feel it, he is not dead and he is going to come for me.

"Where's my sister?" I croak.

"That depends on how cooperative she is," Tom says. “Instability seems to run in your family. Fortunately, May wasn't present when you and Howard attacked my son." He says it as if Hawk isn't also his son. "If she's cooperative and understanding, I'll give her a chance. If not, well, there's room for one more in the rubber room. Not that you'll be seeing her again."

I can't stop myself, I start crying again, curl up in the seat and watch as we drive through Paradise Falls, all the way through town. The cars behind us peel off, some heading for the police station. I didn't see Hawk after they threw him on the ground. They could have blown his brains out right there and there would be nothing he could do about it. When the idea hits me, the image follows and my mind paints a vivid picture of his blood painted across the earth, fanned out on the soil and tall grass, and I can't help but scream and pound my feet on the floor.

"She’s crazy," the cop says in a droll voice.

Let me out,
let me out
.

They keep driving. Over the bridge, beyond. Onto the highway. People look at me. People in other cars. They see me with my running tears and red eyes, they see me scream through the glass and they just drive on like I'm not here. I'm locked up in the back of a cop car, I must deserve it. I lean my head on the glass and sob, and the car just keeps rolling.

By the time we finally stop, my arms are on fire, my shoulders raw knots of paint, my wrists scraped and bruised, my ankles throbbing. The cop gets out first and Tom follows, and there's men outside, orderlies in scrubs, big men and they have a gurney. As they come for me, I scoot to the other side of the car and curl up, try to push into the door and get away but it's no good. I kick with both feet and they just grab my ankles and yank me bodily out of the car.

"I'm not crazy!" I wail. "How can you
do this?
Somebody help!"

There are others here, other people. A couple walks into the front of the hospital, headed for the big slowly revolving doors, and they stop and look and shake their heads, heavy with pity, and keep walking. They think I'm nuts. They think I'm supposed to be here. It's happening again and I can't stop it, help me, help me,
help me!

I'm up in the air and I flop face down on the gurney. The cuffs snap loose from my wrists and ankles and I try to scramble loose even if it means planting face first on the pavement, but it doesn't matter, they turn me over, five men hold me down and tighten leather cuffs around my arms and legs and pull nylon straps over my chest and hips and they tie me down to the gurney and roll me inside.

The sweltering heat passes into ice cold and florescent lights slide over my head, each one that much closer to hell. The gurney turns, a sickening lurch in my stomach following it, and heads down another hall. I don't remember this place, I don't know if I was here before, but I feel it, feel the walls reaching into crush me, the lights overhead sliding down to grasp me in red hot fingers and choke out my life. I beg and I plead, my words melting into a wordless blubber as the gurney wheels into a plain white room and stops, and then everyone leaves.

They turn off the lights, leaving only a pale thin rectangle of white casting a glow across the room. I start screaming.

I scream until my throat burns and goes hoarse, and I can't anymore. I lay there sobbing silently until the door opens and my mother walks in.

I pull against my bonds.

"Mom," I rasp. "Please listen to me." She brushes a lock of hair out of my face and caresses my cheek. "Mom," I beg her, "Please. Please. You have to get away from him."

“From who, sweetie?"

"From Tom, I'm begging you. He's a monster. He killed his first wife."

My mother laughs softly, and sighs.
 

"What are you laughing at?"

"I have to laugh, or I'll cry," she says, caressing my arm. "Your delusional, honey. Tom isn't some kind of criminal. It's all in your head."

"Hawk will come for me-"

"Hawk was destitute," she says, smiling. "He came begging for a place to stay, and Tom caught him trying to force himself on you, the way he forced himself on you when you were younger. Don't you remember?"

"No, no that's bullshit and you're lying. I love him. I've always loved him. He came back for me."

"It's okay, dear. He's going to go away for a long time. He'll never hurt you again."

"He never hurt me," I hiss at her. "
You
hurt me, you cold evil bitch. Tom killed his first wife, and I hope he kills you too."

She laughs.

"Tom killed his wife. Is that what you believe?"

She leans down, to whisper in my ear.

"That's insane."

"It's not, we have proof."

She laughs, so close to my ear I can feel her breath.

"No, you stupid little slut. Tom didn't kill his wife. I did."

She stands, still smiling, and strides out of the room.

The door slams closed, and swallows my screams.

Hawk

Now

They're going to shoot me in the head and kill me.

Or so I think. Instead they pick me up, two Paradise Falls cops. They pull me up by the arms, torquing my shoulders, and drag me to their cruiser.

"You're fucked," one of them says, calmly.

"I'm asserting my right to remain silent," I rasp.

My head is splitting, my ears are shrieking, my eyes are burning, and I feel like I just got tumble dried again. They throw me in the back seat and I barely get my feet out of the way before they slam the door.

The pair get in the car, and we drive. I sit up and watch Alexis' car in front of me. I can see her, just barely. The world is swirling around me. Eventually the ringing and the blindness will stop.