Taken

Chapter 11

Morning came gray and fuzzy, and her alarm clock sent up one shrill shriek after another. Sophie pried one eye open and was faced with a choice: an extra fifteen minutes in bed, or a long, very hot shower to take the curse off the song of stiff pain her body had become.

She ended up hitting the snooze button, then decided a shower would be better and dragged herself off her mattress. It was a chore struggling to her feet, and she stood swaying for a few moments. The more she thought about it, the more just unplugging the alarm clock and climbing back under the covers seemed like a better idea than anything else.

But she had to make rent. If she didn’t, her problems would be bigger than werewolves.

The bitter little laugh that called up bounced off her blank bedroom walls. What problems could be bigger than werewolves and vampires?

Don’t think of Unpleasant Things, Sophie. The next thing is taking a shower. Just do the next thing, and the next. After all, she knew what the bigger problem would be. It would be homelessness, or getting thrown out of her degree program, or the police pounding on her door demanding to know what happened to Lucy.

So Sophie flicked her alarm clock off and shuffled in to take a shower. It was all she could do. And after that was dry toast for breakfast, and the usual hurry to catch the bus.

Her back ached, and the side of her head hurt even though the bruising had gone down a bit, helped by a good twelve hours of unconsciousness. She was muzzy-headed and scratchy-eyed from crying, and she kept her hair down to hide the swelling—an old trick, and one that rarely worked, but all she could do. Her left hand throbbed with pain whenever she answered the phone or input patient data.

And a very nice homicide detective named Andrews came by the office and asked to speak to her.

“Sophie?” Margo, her blue-tinged hair piled in a fantastic beehive held up with several coats of hair spray, appeared in her cubicle door. “There’s a man here to see you.” Marge didn’t wiggle her eyebrows, but she did look concerned. “A police officer,” she amended, mistaking Sophie’s wide-eyed stare for fear. “I don’t think it’s about your ex-husband.” Her stage whisper needed a little work.

“Oh, God.” It wasn’t work to sound tired. Sophie pushed herself up just as the phone rang again. “I don’t know what else it could be about.” The lie sat heavy in her mouth. Everything was too vivid today—lights too bright, smells too intense. She hadn’t even been able to go into the bathroom, for Christ’s sake. It was just too awful.

“He’s in the conference room.” Margo folded her thick arms across her ample chest. Today it was hot-pink scrubs, and her earrings were garish Carmen Miranda fruit bowls, tapping her red-apple cheeks. “I’ll go in with you.”

Great. I’ll have to fool two people at once. “Okay.” Sophie followed Margo, her fingers worrying at the pressure bandage on her left hand. Thank God she was in long sleeves today.

She’d spent a lot of time in long sleeves. The fingersize bruises on her arm where Zach had grabbed her in the alley were familiar, too. Even if he had been trying to get her away from that…thing.

A bolt of something hot went through her entire body. Don’t think about that. Don’t think about him, either.

There were actually bands of different smells in the halls. Passing Margo’s office was like walking through cheesecloth veils of hair-spray reek and old-candy smell from the dish of stale M&M’s on the Battle-Ax’s desk. The front office boiled with exhaled sickness, and Dr. Marcus hurried past, his deodorant barely covering a dusting of a billing specialist’s perfume. They were a hot item, Dr. Marcus and Amy. Office gossip had it that Marcus’s wife knew and didn’t care, since she’d get half of everything, anyway.

Sophie almost wished she could shut her nose off. She’d always been sensitive, but this was ridiculous. And she was craving a French dip, au jus so hot it scorched—not that she could afford anything other than a batch of cheap fries to go with her ramen today, if the fast-food place two blocks away wasn’t too jammed for her to grab something in the middle of the day.

Pull yourself together, Sophie. She blinked and tried to focus, put one foot in front of the other.

Margo paused, her hand on the conference-room door. Her small, faded blue eyes dark with worry. “Soph…you know, if you don’t want to talk to this guy, if it’s about your ex, we can always get Dr. Brunner to throw him out and take up a collection for bail.”

Dr. Brunner was a big bear of a man, endlessly patient with his pediatric patients but not so patient with anyone else. Sophie’s heart gave a massive squeezing leap. “Thanks, Margo.” I take back every mean thing I ever thought about you. “Let’s just see what he has to ask.”

“All right.” Margo’s chin came up and her beehive seemed to swell like a frilled lizard’s warning signal. “You just remember you don’t have to say a thing, honey.”

“I know, Margo. Thanks.” Oh, believe me, I’m not planning on saying anything. I need to stay out of custody. Sophie braced herself as the door opened. A wave of scent—small, brown and male—flooded out, and the image of a smallish man in a rumpled mackintosh took over the inside of her tired skull.

It was too much. What is happening to me?

The blinds were drawn, so the fluorescent light made everything pale. The table was clean, a sterile mirror-black surface; all the chairs were lined up except one. The man half rising from the table looked exactly like the image in Sophie’s head, right down to his narrow nose, slumped shoulders and grubby raincoat. A battered leather attaché case stood to attention at his end of the table, and a blank, new manila folder was settled next to his right elbow. His hands were broad and short-fingered, and he was dwarfed beside Margo. His tie was wilted, the suit jacket under his mackintosh an indeterminate brown, and it was a good thing Sophie’s stomach was empty. The conflicting odors of man, wet raincoat, paper, and hair spray made her queasy.

“Sophie, this is Detective Andrews.” Margo had drawn herself up to her considerable, breast-jutting height, her arms folded. She had not, Sophie saw, offered him coffee. “I checked his ID. But you might want to see it yourself.”

Her throat was dry. “That’s okay,” she managed, and wondered if she sounded as sick and unsteady as she felt.

“Miz Harris.” The man put his hand out, and Sophie was suddenly very sure that if she touched him she would break down crying. She tried to copy Margo’s pose—head up, shoulders back, chin jutting proudly.

“It’s Wilson,” she heard herself say for what had to be the five hundredth time. “I’m no longer married.” The words tasted like ash.

The detective’s hand dropped. “Okay. Miss Wilson. I’m just going to be asking a few questions.”

Come on, Sophie. Her face felt like a mask. “Is this about Mark? My ex-husband? I don’t want anything to do with him.”

The detective looked pained for a moment. “No, ma’am, it’s not. It’s about your friend Lucy Cavanaugh. At least, her coworkers said you were her best friend.”

“Lucy?” It wasn’t hard to sound stunned. All she had to do was think about the alley, the purple-faced thing, and the horrible gurgling noise as Lucy died. “Yes, she’s…we’re friends. She is my best friend. What’s going on?”

His face didn’t change, but a thread of urgency like a metallic wire slid through the warp of his fusty, frowsy smell. “When was the last time you talked to Miss Cavanaugh?”

“I…” Do it like you practiced, Sophie. “Friday afternoon, I think. She was going out dancing. I told her I had to study.” Which was partly true—that had been her first excuse, but Luce had just rolled right over the top of it.

“You’re going to have some fun, Soph, if it’s the last thing I do.”

Oh, Lucy.

His gaze was entirely too sharp. He indicated a chair, and she moved mechanically toward it. “Miss Wilson, something happened Friday night. Miss Cavanaugh— Lucy—was attacked.”

The world swayed under Sophie’s feet. A funny haze had begun on the mirrored surface of the table, streaks of mist like clouds. She tore her attention away, tried to focus on the detective. “Attacked? Is she all right? What happened?” You’re never going to guess what happened to her. Not in a million years. And I can’t tell you, either. She folded herself down gingerly in the chair he’d motioned her toward, guessing he wanted her there because he turned out to be the only thing she could look at unless she craned her neck and stared at the window.

Margo inhaled sharply. She swept the door closed and stood like a guard, almost bristling with protective indignation. As soon as the door shut, the smell of hair spray and unclean raincoat intensified.

“Miss Wilson, Lucy Cavanaugh is dead. I’m sorry.” He sounded sorry, too. His mouth pulled down like he tasted something bitter as he dropped into his own chair and touched the folder. “I’m trying to find out all I can about her, so I can catch her attacker. Can I ask you some more questions?”

The clouds on the table’s surface swirled together, and Sophie’s empty stomach trembled as if she was going to throw up. The air in here was stifling, the walls suddenly shrinking, closing up on her. A rattling started in the center of her head—a buzzing, like copper-bottomed pans striking one another. “Dead?” she whispered.

Somehow, hearing him say it made everything too real. The all-too-familiar pressure of secrets to keep squeezed her entire chest until a black hole of panic opened up in front of her. She had to watch where she stepped, or she would fall off the narrow thread of safety.

Margo stepped close and put a beefy hand on Sophie’s shoulder. The clogging reek of hair spray crawled up her nose, and her eyes flooded.

Oh, Jesus. What do I do now? She looked up from the table’s surface and found the detective watching her avidly, tense like a dog before the leash is unclipped. His fingers drummed once on the folder, and she could see paper stuffed inside it.

There were probably pictures, too.

Sophie did the only thing she could do. She burst into tears.

It wasn’t too hard to break down crying and pretend to be confused. If Sophie was used to anything, it was cops asking her questions. Yes, Lucy was her best friend. No, she hadn’t heard from Lucy all weekend, and what exactly was this about, anyway? Oh, my God, no, not Lucy. No, she had no enemies. Everyone loved Lucy. How could you not love her? Well, except for Mark, but he was angry because Luce had testified during the divorce hearings, and—

The pudgy detective listened, jotted notes on a little tiny steno pad, and patted her shoulder awkwardly once, before Sophie flinched away from the sudden wave of his smell. Margo glowered, arms and legs crossed, in a chair just to Sophie’s left.

It wasn’t that Sophie wanted to lie. But she knew very well what would happen if she started talking about being kidnapped and ranting about vampires and werewolves. She’d end up in the hospital, under “observation,” and Mark would find out and all sorts of Unpleasant Things would happen.

No, if Sophie wanted to stay out of the psychiatric ward and in her degree program, she had to keep her mouth shut hard.

The instinct to hide things from the police wasn’t that far away even at the best of times. She’d spent a long time hiding what Mark did to her.

“Well,” Andrews finally said, “that about covers it. I’m sorry, Miss Wilson. Here’s my card.”

Sophie stared at the rectangle of white paper on the table’s lacquered surface. It looked innocent and two-dimensional, compared to whatever trick of light was making the table run with cloudy streaks. She was too goddamn exhausted to figure out why she was hallucinating. It had to be something wrong with her glasses, or something.

Margo leaned forward and scooped the business card up. “Thank you, detective. You can find your own way out.”

“That I can, ma’am.” He stood and swept the manila folder into a battered leather attaché case. She was suddenly beyond certain that folder had pictures in it, pictures of Lucy.

Fresh sharp grief welled up. The detective shuffled off, and as soon as he closed the door with a quiet click Margo started fussing at Sophie to “let it all out, and here’s a tissue. My, he certainly won’t win any prizes for tact, will he? Oh, sweetheart, you need some lunch. Here, I’ll tell Amy to run down and grab you a sandwich—”

It was actually a relief to give in and let blue-haired Battle-Ax Margo have her way. Sophie finally escaped to the ladies’ room, and the smell in there was almost enough to drive her back out again if she hadn’t needed the sanctuary so badly. She locked a stall door behind her and cried until she threw up the toast she’d managed to force down for breakfast.

The grief keening inside her head was full of black, tar-thick guilt. It shouldn’t have been Lucy on the floor of that alley. The rumpled little detective would never catch her killer. Life wasn’t fair.

And the worst unfairness of all was that it wasn’t a dream. Lucy was really dead.

Now Sophie was truly alone.