"Stay right where you are!" Brad said, his mind racing. "I'm leaving right now!"
"Oh Brad!" She started crying again. Hearing her voice, hearing her break down like that, broke Brad's heart.
"I love you, Lisa," Brad said, his throat choking up. "I'm leaving now."
Another voice came on the line. "Mr. Miller? I'm detec tive Morse. Your wife is fine. We're having her transferred to USC Medical Center to have her checked out, but physically she looks okay. She's been through a terrible ordeal, though, and.. "
The minute the conversation was over, Brad hung up and was racing back to the car, then peeling out of the garage and down the street to the freeway, his heart racing with anticipation at seeing his wife.
He couldn't get to USC Medical Center fast enough. What would. have normally been a forty-five-minute or more drive took Brad less than thirty minutes. It was a miracle he made it to the hospital at all; his mind was completely focused on Lisa and reuniting with herseeing her, touching her; holding her close to him. He barely paid attention to his driving. When he arrived at the hospital, he pulled into the first available spot and leaped out of the car, racing toward the hospital with bated breath.
When he burst into the lobby, he went directly to the receptionist desk. "My wife Lisa was just brought here! She was kidnapped and-"
A uniformed officer who was standing near the receptionist desk stepped forward. "Brad Miller?"
Brad turned to the officer. "Yeah. Is Lisa okay, is she-"
The officer nodded at the receptionist and a security guard who had approached. "She's fine. Come with me."
Brad barely noticed as the officer gave him a visitor's badge and led him through a seemingly endless maze of corridors. He could hardly keep his emotions in check. He'd cried briefly on the drive over, the thought that he had almost lost her had hit him hard. He still couldn't grasp the concept that she had been given a second chance, that she was safe. He had to see her.
They reached the emergency ward and the cop nod ded at a nurse who was standing at the nurse's station. "This is Brad Miller," he said. "Lisa's husband."
The nurse held out her hand and smiled. Her features were calm and reassuring. "Mr. Miller, I'm Candace Thorton. Come with me."
Brad followed Candace on trembling legs. She opened one of the doors to a triage unit and Brad's eyes fell on the figure lying in the lone bed in the center of the room. "Lisa!"
The figure looked up, and at first Brad thought he had it all wrong, that it wasn't Lisa dressed in a white hospital smock lying in the hospital bed. The woman who looked at him from across the room was too pale, heavy dark cir- des under her eyes, her blond hair a stringy mess, the skin stretching tightly over her bones, her face weathered. This couldn't be Lisa. Maybe they had it wrong; maybe the men who had kidnapped her had tracked her to the hospital and snuck off with her, replaced his wife with this wraithlike stick figure who looked like she had been through hell and back and-"
"Brad!"
It was hearing the sound of her voice that confirmed it for him. The minute he heard it, he knew The face, still pretty but bearing the emotional and physical strain of the past few days, the dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep. It was Lisa, all right. There was no question about it.
Nothing else mattered to Brad at that moment-not the nurse or the cop that he barely noticed, who was sitting in a chair near the bed, not even the cop who had met him at the receptionist desk or the doctor that came in to talk to him. All that mattered was Lisa, the confirmation that she was alive. He didn't care about anything else at that moment; those people did not exist for Brad as he quickly crossed the room to Lisa's bedside and swept her into his arms, the tears coming so strong and so sudden that he didn't even bother trying to stem their flow. He let it all out, let the tears come, let himself cry his heart out as he held her close to him, not wanting to let her go, not wanting to lose her ever again, and Lisa cried against his chest and he let her, everything outside of their little world nonexistent right now as he held her and told her he loved her over and over again and that everything was going to be all right.
Seventeen
They had just finished filming when the shit started going down.
Tim had thrown up at least twice during the shoot. He couldn't help it; he'd never seen anybody get done like that before, and he had never seen a baby get done before, either. That was the worst. They'd actually kept the baby's mother alive and tied up while Animal did it, too. Her hands tied behind her back, legs lashed together, her mouth gagged tight, she'd been forced to watch in anguish as Animal… even thinking about what Animal had done to that baby made him sick.
Tim took a deep breath, closed his eyes, trying to gain control of himself. He had to keep telling himself that in the grand scheme of things, he didn't give a shit. Nearly a quarter of a million bucks was riding on this gig, split three ways between him, Al, and Animal. That was a lot of dough for one night.
But then, every time he tried to tell himself that, Alicia's terror-stricken eyes, her anguish, stabbed into his conscious. He had watched her as she watched helpless, powerless to do anything, and in doing so was transported back to when he had been in her shoes.
The rabbit's name had been Binky. Stupid name for a fucking rabbit, but Tim had loved it anyway. The rabbit had been a gift from his mother, for Easter, and he had doted on it the way most boys fawn over dogs. He'd built a little hidey-box inside its cage, fed it, made sure it had water. And he played with it every chance he got. When he came home from school, Binky was always there waiting for him. Tim would lose hours in a single afternoon playing with the creature, absorbed in his own world.
Tim had loved Binky. And he was sure that Binky had loved him.
He must have forgotten to do a chore or somethingplaying with Binky made him forget a lot of things, made him neglect stuff around the house. His mother went after him about it constantly, and he would quickly perform whatever task had needed to be done before Dad came home. But one day he hadn't been so quick about it and his father had come home early. And when Dad saw that the garbage hadn't been emptied and that Tim was lying on his stomach in the backyard, laughing and talking to Binky as they played, he had stalked across the yard and plucked the rabbit up by its ears.
Tim had protested, quickly sensing the error of his ways. Please, he had beseeched. I'm sorry, it won't happen again.
How many times have I told you, his father had said, grasping the rabbit's body with one meaty forearm, that chores come first?
Tim had begged his father not to do it, but he knew the begging would be in vain. Dad had done the same thing to his brother Doug's cat two summers ago, to teach him a similar lesson. There was no reason to suspect he would change his method of operation now
Dad had pushed Tim on the ground and said, Now you watch and you think about the inadequacy of your ways which has caused this great and terrible injustice to be done. And then, as Tim had watched, helpless and horrified, unable to do anything to intervene lest he receive the whooping of his life, his dad had grasped the rabbit's head between his meaty hands and pushed them together. Binky's little red eyes had bugged out in terror and pain, his hind legs had kicked frantically, his little body wriggled as a horrible mewling cry rose deep from within him; that cry had sounded like the scream of an infant. Blood had spurted from the rabbit's eyes and nose and then the head just exploded in a watery pop that sent brains and thick red blood gushing everywhere. And all Tim could do was stand there helplessly while his father killed the only thing he had ever loved.