ON EDGE (Decorah Security) (3 page)

Would it do them any good if he knew?

He wished he’d never had that weird encounter last night. No, that was a lie. He really wished he’d had more control over it. And he wished he’d had more time with Ariel.

After breakfast, he reported to the PT room where they checked him out on his prosthesis, then had him work at upper body strength—which was important when a lower limb was missing.

By noon he was glad to take another shower before lunch, which he ate with Thompson and Wardell, two guys who were both married and going home to their wives and families when they got out of here. Would the wives stick with them? He wasn’t going to ask. But he was glad his own marriage had ended three years ago, and he wasn’t going to have to find out.

But how did you start dating again at thirty-five, with one leg. With his trousers on, maybe you couldn’t tell. But it wasn’t the kind of thing you waited to tell a woman when you were already at the stage of taking off your pants.

With free time in the afternoon, he went down to the computer room to do some research on what he knew about last night’s encounter.

He liked the new way of doing research, liked the easy access to information he would have needed a library for a few years ago.

He started with Ariel because he was more interested in her. On a personal level. It turned out that Ariel was the name of an angel who was known as the Lion of God. An angel of protection—which fit what she’d been doing last night.

Was she really an angel? Or had someone given her that name?

He clenched his hands into fists. He didn’t want her to be an angel. He wanted her to be a woman. Why? Because he was thinking about having a relationship with her? A woman he’d met on another plane of existence? But a woman who had responded when he’d kissed her.

With a snort he went back to the computer and looked up Lilith. That was the name of Adam’s first wife in Hebrew folklore. But the name was known as far back as Babylonian times. She was also an ancient demon of the night who supposedly kidnapped or strangled male children.

Had she switched from children to disable men?

He didn’t find anything in the mythology that helped him settle the question. But he kept poking through Web sites until dinner. Then he returned to his room, knowing he was waiting for the hours after midnight, because what had happened last night had seemed more real than reality.

Did he want it to be more real—because he longed to escape a life where his future had been taken out of his control?

Maybe, but he knew something else was out of his control as well. He had never been to that other plane of existence before last night, and he had no idea how to get back there. Maybe getting there had been a fluke. Maybe he couldn’t even do it again. That thought made his throat tighten painfully. He had met Ariel there. He wanted to meet her again. Well, it was more like an aching need. A void inside himself that only she could fill.

He made a rough sound. Only she could fill? And she probably wasn’t even real.

Chapter Three

Frank wanted to leave his prosthesis on when he went to bed. He wanted to meet Ariel standing on two feet, but he knew that was a bad idea. Because he had to rest the stump, he sat on the edge of the bed and reluctantly reversed the process of donning the leg.

He set it on the chair, then grabbed his crutches to get ready for bed. Last time he’d tried to hit the mind vampire with one of his crutches, which had left him dangerously off balance. This time he retrieved his Bowie knife.

Of course it was against regulations for patients to have a weapon at the Naval Medical center, but since his injury, he hadn’t felt comfortable totally unarmed. He’d paid one of the orderlies to bring him the knife, which he kept in back of a loose piece of molding at the bottom of his closet. He got down on hands and knee, retrieved the weapon and brought it to the bed, where he covered it with the top sheet.

As he lay beside it, he wondered what to do next. Gordon’s cry had awakened him from sleep. Should he try to sleep now? Or stay awake and figure out some other way to get into the other place?

If he focused on Ariel, would she come to him, or could he go to her?

He lay in bed remembering how she looked, focusing on individual features like her thick dark hair or her large violet eyes, then taking in the whole picture again and remembering what her lips had felt like against his—what her body had felt like in his arms. Why was he obsessed with her? Because she was a fantasy and easier to deal with than a real woman?

He fell asleep contemplating that question. And he awakened to the sound of the meds cart at seven in the morning.

“Damn,” he muttered as he pushed himself up in bed. He’d slept through the night.

Deep disappointment threatened to keep him in bed. Then he remembered that he had an appointment with Dr. Leonard, the shrink who’d been seeing him since he arrived at the Naval Medical Center. Since he didn’t want to report that he was too depressed to talk to the guy, he heaved himself up and got ready for the day.

He made it through breakfast, PT, lunch. And then he was on his way down to the psychiatric unit wondering what he was going to say. If he stuck with reality, he’d have to tell the doc that he’d had a psychotic experience. But he didn’t think that was true. He thought his interactions with Ariel and Lilith were real, but he couldn’t explain them in rational terms. Of course, that was the definition of being crazy, wasn’t it? You thought you were perfectly fine.

He snorted. He wasn’t going to argue that point with a mental health professional.

Leonard put down the folder he was looking through as Frank came into the room. “So how are you doing?”

“Pretty well,” he answered, trying to keep his voice casual.

“No problems?”

“Just the usual. Physical stuff.”

“What about the argument you had with Gordon in the cafeteria yesterday morning?”

His eyes narrowed. “What? Did somebody report us for talking too loudly?”

Leonard shrugged.

“I don’t like being watched all the time.”

“You’re in a hospital. It’s bound to happen.”

Frank shifted in his seat. “I was asking him about the night before. I heard him scream around two in the morning, and I got up to see what was wrong.”

“Yeah, a nurse saw you in his room.”

Frank felt his pulse rate go up. If Gordon had ended up dead the next morning, would someone have accused Frank Decorah of smothering him in his bed?

Not a comforting thought. He kept his gaze fixed on Leonard. “So how many of the guys who’ve come through this department had committed suicide in the past few months?”

The doctor reared back. “Why would you ask that question?”

“I’m trying to figure my survival chances.”

“Your chances depend on you—not a bunch of statistics.”

Frank looked down at his hands. Getting into a fight with the unit’s shrink wasn’t going to do him any good. And he was picturing how Leonard was going to write up this session.

“Is something specific worrying you?” Leonard asked.

“No,” he denied, hoping the lie didn’t show on his face.

“You don’t have to wait for your regular sessions. If you need to talk to me, you can always do it.”

“I appreciate that,” he lied again.

“Have you talked to your brother lately?” Leonard asked.

“No. Like I told you before, he always looked up to me, and he’s having trouble coping with my injury.”

“You may have to accept that your relationship won’t be the same.”

“I have,” he snapped.

Cooper was something else to worry about. Or to put it another way, something else he didn’t want to have to deal with. His brother had come to see him—once, before Frank had gotten the prosthesis. When he’d stared at the place where Frank’s leg ended in disaster, his face had gone white. And the meeting hadn’t gone any better from there.

At least Cooper had showed up. Sherry, his former wife hadn’t bothered, but Frank hadn’t been surprised. The marriage had been over long before he’d gone on his last assignment. She hadn’t been able to cope with a husband who was away for long periods—on dangerous assignments. And he’d understood, even when he hadn’t liked it.

Frank saw the psychiatrist look at his watch. “Our time is up.”

Thank God
.

He had never thought the sessions with Leonard did him much good, but this one was worse than usual.

“Do you want to schedule an extra appointment?”

“No.” He pushed himself to his feet and left the office, hating that he’d gotten himself into a stupid confrontation. Had it come from within himself? Or was some outside force pushing him?

An outside force? Did he think some paranormal being could manipulate his mind while he was awake? He hoped to hell not. And he hoped to hell the paranoid thought wasn’t a sign that he really was cracking up.

He snorted. Maybe he should make himself a tinfoil hat to keep out the bad vibrations.

But seriously, were his thought rational? Was he actually paranoid, or did he have something real to fear? He’d put money on Lilith being dangerous—and tricky. He didn’t know what to think about Ariel, but he found himself hoping she was a woman—and not someone unreachable.

He needed to find out, and he was determined that he wasn’t going to simply sleep through another night. But was there any way to force himself into the other plane? There damn well better be.

In a corner of the lounge, he pretended to watch the evening news. But he was really thinking about himself—about Frank Decorah, about his future and his past. Why had he stepped into a place the other night that wasn’t this earth? At least if he believed Ariel’s explanation for where they’d been. And why did he think he could get back there?

Was he different from the other men and women here? Had his injury triggered something inside himself that he hadn’t known he possessed?

Or had something come back to him that he’d had a long time ago and lost?

His mind ranged back to his early childhood—to when his memories came only in snatches. He’d lived with Mom and Dad on a farm in Iowa. Before Cooper was old enough to be his playmate, he’d spent long hours on his own. Big Bird and Oscar had been his friends. And Mister Rogers had given him a neighborhood, but he hadn’t been happy to sit in front of the television set all day. He’d spent as much time outside in the orchard behind the house playing pioneer or soldiers. And sometimes out there, weird things had happened. He remembered flickers of movement at the edges of his vision, like something . . . unexpected was just at the edge of the world he knew. He’d turn his head quickly, and nothing would be there; but he’d be sure that something
had
leaped away before he could see it clearly.

Had he seen glimpses of creatures from the other plane of existence? They’d never turned real and solid for him, and he’d been glad of that—because he sensed that they were dangerous.

Now that he was pulling up long-forgotten memories, he remembered something else that sent a shiver up his spine. He’d gone over to where he’d seen the creatures. The things themselves had vanished. But he saw tracks in the dirt, tracks of animals that even a little boy knew should not have been roaming around an Iowa farm. Maybe some of them were big cats. And maybe others were huge lizards. He couldn’t be exactly sure.

He clenched his teeth. At any rate, he’d outgrown the flickering images at the edge of his vision. They’d been replaced by the prints of Cooper’s little shoes when his brother had toddled outside to join him playing boys’ games.

He deliberately turned his mind to the good memories. Like the tree house Dad had helped them build in one of the apple trees. The puppy his parents let them adopt. The swimming lessons in the pond at the edge of the field. And was there anything that smelled better than the scent of gunpowder set off under the hammer of a cap gun?

oOo

He made himself stay up until after midnight that night, the last guy in the rec room when everybody knew they had a rough day at PT the next morning. Then he methodically made his preparations for bed, dressing in the tee shirt and shorts he liked to wear at night.

A few years ago he’d gotten some self-hypnosis tapes when he’d needed to quit smoking, and he remembered the techniques.

First he retrieved the knife from its hiding place again and put it under the covers. Then he made himself comfortable in bed and looked up to the line where the wall met the ceiling, repeating the trigger phrase he had used, “Relax now. Relax now.”

When he sensed the familiar relaxed, dreamy feeling stealing over him, he leaned back more comfortably into the pillows.

He knew he was in a light trance already, but he needed to go deeper, and he needed to go to that other plane where he had met Ariel.

He stowed the knife in his waistband as he pictured himself standing on rocks at the edge of a huge lake, probably Lake Superior, where his family had taken a vacation cabin for a few years. He imagined himself in bathing trunks, imagined his body whole again as he pushed off from the rocks and dove in, hitting the water and going down.