“Any chance you’d be coming along?”
“Hah,” she said, rubbing my wrist some more. Her fingers were firm and strong. “No chance, I’m afraid.” Lynn stopped and wiped her fingers dry with a piece of tissue paper. “We don’t get official word, just rumors, but it seems the State thinks you’ve done some bad things. True?”
I pondered that for a moment and then said, “According to the laws of New Hampshire, I guess I did.”
“You don’t seem too worried.”
“It was the right thing to do.”
She smiled, took away my dinner dishes. “I sure hope you’re right.”
“Me too.”
Later that night I had to use the bedpan, and Lynn did her work quickly and professionally, and she offered me a sponge bath, which went just as quickly and professionally. As she helped me get back into my hospital slacks and shirt — being quite careful around my bandaged thigh — Lynn said: “Some interesting scars you got there, Lewis. I’d guess this isn’t the first time you’ve been in a hospital.”
“You’d be right.”
“What happened to you, then, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Lots of random thoughts came up for air in me mind, all revolving around that day in Nevada years ago, when I’d been the lone survivor of a training accident, when my DoD section had unintentionally crossed into a classified testing range and had been sprayed with something that, officially, the DoD wasn’t even supposed to have. Everyone in my section had died except me; but as a lasting gift, I had been plagued with non-cancerous tumors over the years that would suddenly appear and have to be cut out.
Eventually it would no doubt kill me.
But not tonight.
“I got them in the service of my country,” I said.
She got up, bent down, kissed my forehead. “God bless you, then. Sleep well tonight, and… I do wish I could be there for you at the county jail.”
My eyes were open. My hospital room was dark, save for a few lights associated with monitoring equipment. To the right was the window, overlooking the distant mountains. There were no lights up on the peaks. Below was a parking lot for the hospital. Nothing was moving. In front of me was a television, off, hanging from a stand set in the ceiling. Empty chairs and a table on wheels flanked my bed.
My heart was thumping. Mouth dry. I felt like I couldn’t move.
The door to my room was slowly opening, casting a pillar of light across the tile floor.
I knew what was going on.
They were coming for me.
I tried to scramble with my right hand, to get the call button.
I couldn’t move.
A form came into view. Male. Dressed in black. Something strange was on his head. He moved his head. I recognized it right away. Night-vision goggles.
I tried to call out.
My mouth so very, very dry.
He came closer, moving with no sound, moving like dark fog.
No call button.
I thought of rolling off the bed.
Couldn’t move.
Mouth dry.
Heart thumping, racing, almost choking me with its speed. I was now panting.
The man stopped next to me. A hand moved. Light from somewhere glinted off something metallic in his hand.
A blade.
Knew exactly what was going to happen next, knew all it would take would be a quick snap of the blade to my throat, and it would be over in seconds.
The blade descended.
I shouted.
Chest seized.
My eyes opened again.
I rolled to the side, shaking, my handcuffed wrist clanking along. One hell of a bad dream.
One hell of a bad dream.
There was a cup of water with a flexible straw. I grabbed it with my free hand and drank and drank until the cup slurped, empty.
I fell back against the bed. My heart was still thumping along, and my bedclothes were soaked through.
One hell of a bad dream.
I wiped my face and stretched out, wincing as a shot of pain burst out from my thigh. I eased my breathing, rested my head against the pillow.
A memory floated up to me, of my time back at the Puzzle Palace, when my section was responding to the news of an embassy attack in the Mideast, back when they weren’t such a common occurrence. We were trying to make sense of the information that was flowing in, and one of my fellow section members had shaken his head and said, “Pizza deliveries… sometimes they can go both ways.”
My breathing slowed down, my racing heart began to ease.
Pizza deliveries can go both ways.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Two days later was moving day. I didn’t have much in the way of personal belongings — most were now in the custody of the New Hampshire State Police — but I did get a little plastic bag with a toothbrush, floss, and toothpaste. Two polite deputies from the Grafton County Sheriff’s Department came into my room, one pushing an empty wheelchair. Paperwork was signed and exchanged, and the older of the two deputies — who had a florid handlebar moustache and a nearly bald head — tried to be gracious and polite with the whole process. His partner was tall and young, with close-cropped black hair, and eyed me suspiciously, like he wished I would make a sudden break for it so he could put a round in my good leg.
The older man, Deputy Lindsay, moved the chair close to my bed. “Mister Cole, this is what we’re going to be doing today. We’re in charge of transporting prisoners to the county jail. There’s a bed in the medical facility that’s waiting for you, though I’m sure the help won’t be as attractive as what you’re used to.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
The other man, Deputy Bronski, glowered at me, holding a manila envelope. Both men wore tan slacks and brown uniform shirts with brown neckties. Wide leather utility belts held their usual equipment of pistols, handcuffs, and pepper spray, along with radios that had microphones clipped to their shoulder epaulets.
Deputy Lindsay went over to the left side of the bed, and he quickly undid my handcuff. I wanted to prove how strong and noble I was by not rubbing the wrist, but I couldn’t help myself: I rubbed and rubbed the wrist, feeling like I was scratching at an itch that had been tormenting me for nearly a week.
Lindsay pocketed the cuffs and asked, “You need help getting into the wheelchair?”
“If you hold the chair steady, I should be able to make it.”
By now, my leg was no longer in some sort of suspension system. I tossed off my blankets and sheets and, gritting my teeth, managed to rotate around and put both feet on the floor. Lindsay held the chair fast and, after a few deep breaths, I got out of bed and into the chair.
It felt good to be out of the bed.
That nice feeling lasted about ten seconds.
“Sorry, Mister Cole,” Lindsay said. “Rules are rules. Put your wrists together.”
Wrists together, the handcuffs went back on with a metallic snap. He took a white cotton blanket and put it around my lap and down my legs. “If you’d like, put your hands underneath the blanket so no one can see them.”
I shook my head, rested my cuffed wrists on the blanket. “It was a fair pinch. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
Deputy Bronski led our little procession out into the hallway, and Deputy Lindsay pushed my chair along. The lights seemed very bright and everything seemed so clean, and I didn’t want to think much about what my lodgings were going to be like later that day. Passing the nurses’ station, I got a few sympathetic smiles from the Dartmouth-Hitchcock pros, and that felt fine. We got an elevator to ourselves, and I twisted my head back to Lindsay.
“Excuse my ignorance, but where the hell is the county jail?”
“North Haverhill,” he said. “We take Interstate 91 and get off on one of the state roads. Just over a half hour.”