Sugar stopped laughing. The glint of mischief in her blue eyes softened, and her breaths came faster. I dropped my gaze to her pink lips. They were plump and moist and they were calling to me, begging for me to kiss them. I lowered my face to hers, convinced that this was dangerous and yet knowing that my willpower was cracking. A knock at the door startled both of us and shattered the heated tension.
I motioned for Sugar to step out of view. There was no hard and fast rule about visiting each other’s rooms, but since everyone, including the damn bathing birds, knew how I felt about Sugar, it was probably better if people didn’t know she was in my room alone. I cracked open the door. It was Dr. Kirkendall. She looked pale and tired and more disheveled than usual. The night shift was obviously not her thing.
“Tommy, sorry to bother you, have you talked to Julian tonight?”
I peered through the opening at her but didn’t let her in. “Uh, no, I saw him around lunch time but then he took to his room. He’s been in sort of a dark mood lately. Doesn’t like to talk when he’s like that.”
She nodded. “Yes, I know. We’ve been delving into some stuff, and it has him a little rattled.” She took a deep breath and forced a smiled. “But it’s good. He’s moving forward,” she said the words to me, but they seemed more for her own reassurance.
“Why were you asking?”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing, really. It’s just that Dr. Hartfield left a note that Julian didn’t show for his last two sessions with her this week.”
“Maybe he only likes to talk to you. This switch in shifts looks like it’s been hard on all of you.” I looked pointedly at her. “If you don’t mind me saying so, Doc. You look like shit.”
Sugar snickered next to me, then quickly covered her mouth.
Dr. Kirkendall grinned. “Yes, I have mirrors at home. I agree. At the time, this seemed like a good idea. I’m realizing now that it wasn’t the best plan.”
“I’ll go over and see if Julian is up for a visit,” I said.
“That would be great. Let me know if you talk to him.” She left and I closed the door.
“I’ll come with you,” Sugar suggested. “Let’s go by the kitchen first. We can pop up a bag of popcorn and take it to him. He likes popcorn.”
I poked my head out the door. The hallway was deserted. We walked out of my room and headed toward the kitchen. Frank was in the dining room leaning against his mop texting someone on his cell phone.
His eyes rounded as he heard us step into the room. He looked equally shocked and pissed. He quickly shoved the phone into his pocket. “Kitchen is closed,” he barked. Just like Kirkendall, he looked off from having to work the late shift. But he looked jumpy instead of bone tired.
“Dr. Kirkendall knows we’re here,” I lied, but figured in a roundabout way it was the truth. “We’ll be out of here in a second.”
The mop looked like a toothpick in his massive hand as he gripped it angrily. “Hurry up.” His eyes seemed to deepen in his face as he watched us cross the room with light steps, making sure not to walk where he’d already mopped. For a ward assistant, they’d handed him a lot of the maintenance crew’s duties. It was kind of weird and confusing.
Sugar seemed to sense that something was up with him too. She reached discretely for my hand as we hurried into the kitchen, a gesture that made me smile. She flicked on the light and went to the snack cupboard. It was the only cupboard not locked and available to the residents. It had definitely come in handy for midnight snack runs.
“What the heck was that about?” Sugar asked as she reached for a popcorn package. The near kiss had been forgotten . . . for the moment. It was probably for the best. And there was that stupid damn phrase again. What a meaningless phrase it was.
“Don’t know but Jules sure had that guy pegged from the start.” I followed her to the microwave.
She stuck in the package and turned on the microwave. She leaned back against the counter. “I hope Julian is all right. He’s been so out of it lately. I went in to talk to him about my mom’s visit, but I could tell he was tuning me out completely.” Her lip tilted up “Even more than usual.”
“You went to talk to him about the visit?”
She reached forward and brushed her fingers along my arm, knowing full well that every time she touched me, it was a huge deal. Or maybe she didn’t know it. Sometimes it was hard to know if she did stuff intentionally or if she was just being Sugar. “What’s that hurt expression for, Tommy? You know I talk to Julian about my personal stuff all the time. You do it too.”
She pushed off the counter and pressed herself against me. This time she knew exactly what she was doing. “I was upset about my mom’s visit.” Her long hard body pushed against me, and she ran her fingers over the black stubble on my jaw. “I headed straight into your arms that day, remember?”
My pulse thrummed from having her so near, ridiculously near, but this time I kept my hands balled at my sides. “No fucking way I could forget that, Sugar. No fucking way.”
She stepped back. I sucked in the breath that had been lodged in my chest.
“I go to Julian sometimes to discuss things, talk things out. He’s a good listener— when he’s in the right frame of mind.” She stopped and glanced down at the floor before lifting her gaze to mine again. “But when I’m really upset or down,” she said, “it’s you I want to be near. Even if you’re in a bad mood,” she continued, a faint smile crossing her face, “which you often are, I want to be near you. Even if it’s just standing in the same room or sitting on the same couch or sitting next to you on the swings, I want to be there. You don’t do it consciously, and this sounds weird, but it’s like when you’re there, you absorb all the coldness, the sadness, like you were put here just for that, to take away some of the ugliness. Like I ended up here at Green Willow just to be near you.” She blinked up at me. It took me second to convince myself that I wasn’t imagining this whole damn moment.
Her words flowed into my brain and through my blood, straight into my rapidly beating heart. I worried that I might stutter, and I swallowed hard to keep from speaking. I reached for her hand just as she spun around toward the microwave. I lowered my arm.
“Damnit,” she huffed. “Why is there such a fine line of time between perfectly popped and charcoal black?” She pulled the bag out and stared at it. “Should I bother to take it to Julian?”
It took me a second to regain my composure. “Yeah, bring it. We can fish through the blackened kernels for the edible ones.”
Frank was no longer mopping the dining room. The room always looked sterile and uninviting when no one was sitting in it.
“Glad we don’t have to tiptoe past the giant’s ugly scowl again,” Sugar said.
We got to Julian’s room, and I gave the secret knock. He didn’t answer. I moved my mouth closer to the edge of the door. “Hey, Jules, it’s Sugar and me. We’ve brought popcorn.”
No answer. I looked back at Sugar.
She leaned closer. “Come on, Jules, let us in.”
The door opened. Julian walked away before we stepped inside. He plunked back down at his computer. He had a red cap pulled down over his forehead.
I shut the door. Sugar sat on the edge of his bed, and I sat down next to her. She put the popcorn bag on his desk. Julian peered up from the shade of his hat brim like a gunslinger staring up from beneath his Stetson. “It’s burned.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Sugar said.
He continued to tap away on his keyboard. His mouth was pulled tight, and his eyes were flat and cold.
“Hey, Jules,” I said, feeling slightly annoyed by the drama act, all the while reminding myself that he couldn’t help it. “What’s going on? You’re not yourself. Did that new guy say something to you?”
It took him a few seconds to respond. “I’ve been here too long, and it’s worthless. Need to get out of this place.”
I chucked him lightly on the shoulder. “Starting to make you
climb the walls, eh?”
Sugar laughed. Julian didn’t even crack a smile.
“That popcorn smells bad,” he said.
Sugar grabbed it. “I’ll throw it away.”
“Not in here,” he said grumpily. “My whole room will smell.”
“Fine,” Sugar sighed. “I’ll be right back.”
She walked out, and it was just me and Julian. The brim of his hat moved up and down as he typed. I watched him for a second and came damn close to shutting the laptop on him, but Julian wasn’t the type you did something like that to. He wasn’t some friend you could just get pissed at and treat with some degree of disrespect like throw some hearty cuss words at him or tell him to snap out of it. Julian couldn’t just snap out of it. “Look, buddy, whatever it is, tell me about it. You always listen to me when I’ve got something to gripe about.”
He shook his head. It seemed the stone face was all I was going to get tonight. Then he looked at me. “No way to undo things. They try in here. The doctors, the drugs, they try and take away the past, but it can’t be done. It’s the past. It’s permanent until I die and then it’s gone. That’s when relief comes. With death. My brother never had to go through any of this. He didn’t have to sit around in this toxic smelling hospital trying to take away a permanent past.”
Julian had, one day, in passing, brought up the horrid fact that his twin brother had been still born because Julian’s umbilical cord had been wrapped around his neck. But he’d told it to me almost as if he had been just reading me an article from a magazine, no real emotion. This was the first time he’d mentioned his brother since.
“Yep, that past isn’t going anywhere. I guess they think if we talk it out, and you know, analyze shit, then it will help us deal with the present.” His mention of relief coming with death had me freaked. I leaned closer even though we were the only ones in the room. “Hey, Jules, you’re not thinking of offing yourself, are you? Because you know how it is when the blues hit. We all get that feeling from time to time.”
“Not thinking about suicide, Tommy. Just want to get out of here.”
“Why don’t you talk to your dad. Sugar and me would be real sorry to see you go, but maybe he could get you released. If you think you’re ready.” Of course, he was far from ready, but maybe the guy just needed to get out from within these walls for awhile.
He snorted a dry laugh. “My dad doesn’t want to help me. He only cares about himself.”
Julian rarely talked about his dad. “I think if you called him—”
He went back to his keyboard signaling that this conversation was at an end. I leaned back on my elbows and stared at the rocks on his wall. “Hey, it looks like your numbers haven’t changed too much since the last time I was in here.”
“Just don’t feel like climbing to nowhere anymore.”
I sat back up. “When we’re both clear of this place, I’ve got to take you to California. There’s a place called Yosemite, where—”
“Why is Sugar taking so long?” he asked suddenly. He was obviously not in the mood to talk about trips or anything else for that matter.
“Maybe she decided to go back to her room. I’ll go check on her.” I got up. This visit had been a waste of time. I was good at constructing a stone wall around myself when I didn’t want to face something or talk about something, but Julian constructed an entire fortress. “I’ll leave you to your computer, Jules. If you want to talk, you know where I live.”
No response. He continued to plunk away on his keyboard.
I stepped into the hallway. Most everyone was asleep, and the corridor was so quiet, I could hear the lights overhead buzz with electricity. Half of them were turned off, an energy saving policy. As I headed to Sugar’s room just to let her know I’d given up on Julian for the night, a tiny, muffled sound came from the end of the hallway. It was such a small, insignificant sound that at first, I waved it off as nothing, but then something about the entire eerily quiet stretch of hallway in front of me sent a rush of adrenaline through my body. Something was wrong. It was too quiet.
I turned the corner. Kirkendall’s office door was ajar, and the light was out. She must have gone to the dining room for coffee, I reasoned. But as I stepped past the office, I heard a noise. I pushed the door open and stepped inside. My shoe slid through something slippery. My heel crunched something metal. That’s when I saw a large silhouette standing motionless in the corner of the small waiting room. I reached back and flicked on the light. For a brief second, I was sure I was back in my bed stuck in a bad dream, a really bad fucking dream.
The liquid my foot had sloshed through was a pool of blood, and the crunched metal was tiny gold earrings. Dr. Kirkendall’s lifeless face stared up at me from the floor. The silhouette in the corner filled in with color. The man was dressed, head to toe in black, with a black beanie pulled low over his head.
The silver blade of his knife gleamed in the light as he lunged at me. I jumped back, skidding through the red puddle as I grabbed the doorknob. The guy slammed into the door as I jumped into the hallway and pulled it shut. I held it tightly, thinking about a dream I used to have as a kid where I was holding shut my closet door to keep a monster from jumping out. And now it was happening for real, and I was losing my grip.
With all my strength, I shoved the door open. It slammed into the murderer on the other side. He stumbled back and fell over his victim’s body, dropping back against the chairs. I skirted around the macabre mess on the floor and delivered a solid kick to the man’s face before he could get up. Blood spurted from his nose, and he groaned in pain. I kicked him again, this time in the neck. He gasped for air as he flung the knife-wielding hand wildly toward me. I grabbed his arm and wrenched it hard into an unnatural position. He dropped the knife. I kicked it clear of his reach. It went sliding past Dr. Kirkendall’s body and into the blood.
My stomach knotted. I swallowed back a bitter taste that was a mix of fear, adrenaline and the metallic scent of blood. Sugar, the name flashed through my brain like a bolt of light. Where the hell was Sugar?
The guy reached for my leg, and I turned on him. I pounded him. I was back in the locker room, plowing my fist into Alex Yardley’s face. Only this guy wasn’t a school bully. He’d slit the throat of a woman, a woman who’d spent her work day trying to help others out of the ditches they’d dug for themselves, a woman who didn’t deserve the end she’d just been handed. My knuckles hit bone the first few rounds. Then it felt as if I was punching a bag of gravel. Then sand. Blood was smeared all the way up my arm to my elbow. I hit him over and over, even though he was as limp as a rag doll in my grasp now. I had to mentally yank myself out of the trance I’d sunk into, the dark state of mind where it seemed this guy’s death was the only appropriate response to Dr. Kirkendall’s violent murder. Sugar, I reminded myself. Make sure Sugar is all right.
I gave the man’s half-mutilated face one more hit. He slumped back against the chair and folded over to the ground. I had no idea if he was alive or dead. I didn’t give a fuck either way. My knuckles were numb from pummeling the guy and a sharp pain shot through my shoulder as I shook some of the blood off my hand.
I stepped into the hallway. It was quiet and deserted and clean, a complete contradiction to the horrid carnage I’d just left behind in the doctor’s office. I needed to find Sugar and get to Nurse Greene, so she could call the police. As I ran toward Sugar’s door, I heard that tiny muffled sound again. It was coming from the front room. Like in a nightmare, the hallway seemed to stretch on forever, and my feet felt as if they were filled with lead. I ran past the closed doors of the other residents, most of them sleeping peacefully in their beds, with no idea of what was happening right outside their rooms.
I glanced back to make sure the murderer hadn’t somehow miraculously recouped from the beating I’d just given him. My red shoe prints covered the white tile floor. I flew around the corner and my stomach tightened again. Nurse Greene was draped over her desk unconsci
ous or dead. Blood stained the back of her head.
My own bloodied hand shook with fear and fatigue as I reached for her arm. It was still warm. Her back rose and fell with a breath. She was alive, but barely, it seemed. A whimper behind me made me freeze. Slowly, I turned toward the farthest corner. Frank’s big head jutted up above the top of a tall file cabinet. He stepped out. His massive hand was over Sugar’s mouth. He had a pistol pressed against her temple. Her eyes and nose were red from crying, and the color had washed from her face.
She clutched at Frank’s arm, but it was futile. He had an iron grasp on her.
My heart slammed against my ribs as I lifted my hands up in surrender. “Let her go, man. Whatever the fuck this is, she’s got nothing to do with it.”
“You’re both here, so you’ve both got something to do with it now,” he sneered. Apparently, Sugar and I had stepped into his murder plot and messed things up. What I couldn’t figure out was what the hell the motive might have been. Had Kirkendall crossed him at some point? That explanation seemed farfetched. He moved his hand from Sugar’s mouth but kept his arm around her shoulders. The gun stayed pressed against her head.
I looked at her and the terror in her face sent a jolt of pain through my stomach. “Tommy,” my name pillowed out from her lips on a wavering breath, and tears fell from her eyes.
“I’m here, baby.” I tried like hell to sound reassuring, but it was hard. After seeing what had happened to Kirkendall, I knew these guys had already signed their tickets to life in prison. A few more bodies weren’t going to make a difference. “Look, switch me for her,” I suggested. “Put the gun against my head. Let her go. If you let her go, you’ll still have a chance to get out of here alive.”
Frank’s big face twisted with a cold laugh. “I’ll be getting out alive. I’ll just have to leave behind more victims than I’d planned.”
I stepped closer, and he tightened his grip on Sugar. I stopped and shook my head. “No, see, I wouldn’t be so sure.” I spoke calmly, and as pissed as I was that he had a gun against Sugar’s head, my humiliating stutter stayed in control. It wasn’t the time to show weakness of any kind, except for the weakness I had when it came to Sugar. That, I had no control over. “Because if you hurt her, I will fucking tear you apart. Long before you can turn that gun on me, I will have you bleeding out of those giant fucking ears of yours. If you don’t believe me, then go check in on your partner.”