Dreams of Shreds and Tatters Part 3

Drowned. An electric shock washed through Liz; blood roared in her ears, and for an instant everything else was grey and far away. "What happened?" Her voice could have been a stranger's.

"They don't know. Alain was with him." Only a heartbeat's hesitation, but enough to hear the worst in that indrawn breath. "He died."

The grey roar worsened. Under the table, Alex's hand settled on her knee, warm and steady. She straightened, blinking until her vision focused; she could fall apart later. "What's going to happen?"

"I don't know." Rainer's blunt, manicured fingers tapped the side of his demita.s.se cup. A yellow stone gleamed on his right ring finger. "No one knows." He paused, eyebrows arching. Familiar eyebrows-now she knew whom the second set of eyes in Blake's sketchbook belonged to. "You came all the way from Connecticut?"

"He's a good friend."

"But how did you know?"

"I... didn't, exactly. I had a feeling something was wrong."

She braced for skepticism, but instead he smiled. He wasn't precisely handsome-too little chin, a hairline that promised to recede early-but his smile was charming. Compelling. The pull of it unsettled and warmed her in equal measure.

"I'm glad you did," he said. "Blake will be glad, too. Had you spoken to him recently?"

Was the question a little too casual? Or was that her own guilt talking? She forced down a bite of baklava, washed away the sticky sweetness with her cooling coffee. "Not for a few months."

Their eyes met and she shivered at the intensity of his pale stare. Magnetic, electric. She wanted to lean closer, but was afraid she'd shock herself if she did. Then it was gone, replaced with polite interest.

"What about Alain?" Alex asked. "Will there be a service?"

"Yes. This Sat.u.r.day at Capilano View." Rainer dragged a hand over his face and his magnetism faded into weary pallor.

Antja glanced up, lovely and inscrutable as a sphinx. She had picked her pain au chocolat into tiny slivers, but didn't seem to have eaten any of it. She set down her fork and laid a hand on his arm. "We should be getting back."

Rainer glanced at his watch. "We should. Please excuse us," he said. He reached into an inside jacket pocket and pulled out a business card. "A new exhibit opens on Friday. Blake and Alain's work will be on display. I'd like you both to come." He handed the card to Liz, including Alex with a glance.

Their fingers brushed as she took the card. Instead of the electric shock she'd feared, only a faint shiver pa.s.sed between them. It left a tenderness in her chest as it faded, like a nearly-healed bruise.

"The show is at eight," Rainer continued. "I hope to see you there." He collected his coat and umbrella and offered Antja a hand out of the booth. Light rippled across the door as they stepped outside, and then they vanished into the gathering dusk.

Liz and Alex exchanged a glance and she swallowed the urge to say I told you so. He acknowledged it all the same, a wry tilt of his head.

"Well," he said, snaking out an arm to claim the last of her baklava. "This is an interesting development."

4.

Death by Water

IT WAS ONLY a hospital.

Liz had visited them often enough: her own childhood tumbles, her aunt's hysterectomy and grandmother's bypa.s.s, Alex's bout of pneumonia two years ago. Nothing dramatic. Nothing traumatic. Lions Gate was no worse than any of those. But the smell of air freshener and plastic and cafeteria coffee still set her nerves on edge.

It was a hospital, she told herself. Not a morgue.

Liz looked straight ahead as she followed Dr. Haddad down the beige-and-sepia hallway, boots squicking softly on the tiles. She concentrated on the sway of the woman's black braid against her burgundy scrubs and kept her eyes away from open doorways; she needed all her resolve for Blake.

"Mr. Morgenstern called," Dr. Haddad had said when she met them in the lobby. "He told me to expect you. You're Mr. Enderly's sister?" Her eyebrow had quirked when she said it, as if she knew it for a lie. But Liz had nodded, dry-mouthed, and the doctor had accepted her answer.

She was no good at lying, but for Blake she was willing to try.

"You can't stay long, I'm afraid," the doctor said when they reached the room. "His condition is still guarded."

"We understand," Liz said. "We appreciate anything you can do."

The room was silent except for the noise of machines and the faint buzz of the lights. The other beds were empty, their privacy curtains pushed back. Liz nearly stopped in the doorway, but she forced herself to keep moving.

Coma. She'd repeated the word over and over in her head until it became a meaningless collection of sounds. She had braced herself, she'd thought. She was prepared.

She hadn't. She wasn't. Her chest tightened as she focused on the solitary form in the bed. She couldn't get enough breath.

He'd cut his hair. Amidst the mechanical spider web of tubes and wires, the beep and hum of monitors, that struck her hardest of all. It had been the thing she'd noticed first six years ago-a skinny teenage boy sitting cross-legged on the hood of a rust-mottled car, elbow-length chestnut hair falling in front of his face as he hunched over a sketchbook. Now it was a tangled brown shock, sea wrack washed against the pillow.

Other details filtered through more slowly: bruised and sunken eyes, cheekbones too sharp, shadows pooled in the hollow of his throat. Blake had always been thin, but now he was whittled down to bone and sinew. A tube wormed across his cheek and into his nose-her throat convulsed at the sight.

Liz swallowed sour spit and reached for his right hand-another tube was taped into his left. She flinched at the touch: too cold, veins too stark. Tendons and metacarpals stood out through flesh like sticks in a rice paper fan.

"Blake." She choked on his name. "I'm here."

No response, not even a flicker of eyelids. She'd never seen his face so empty before; even in sleep there had been some furrowing of his brow, some movement of his lips. Never this awful repose.

What were you hoping for? she asked herself bitterly. A miracle? Of course she was. That she would walk in and he'd wake up, happy as a fairy tale. Pressure swelled in her sinuses, p.r.i.c.kling behind her eyes. She knew fairy tales better than that.

"What happened to him, exactly?" Alex asked. Liz was grateful for his calm detachment. She didn't think she could speak around the lump in her throat.

"We don't know," Dr. Haddad said. "He and his friend washed up on the sh.o.r.e of Carroll Cove after a storm. It's a miracle he didn't die of hypothermia. His oxygen saturation is within normal values and there's no apparent brain damage. He had a few abrasions, most likely from debris in the water, but nothing to indicate a.s.sault."

"That's all?"

Dr. Haddad's lips pursed. "His blood alcohol content was pointoh-six. Toxicology also turned up trace amounts of a psychoactive. A dissociative-not one I've seen before."

Alex's eyebrow rose. "Could that have caused the coma?"

"That's difficult to say."

"What's the official diagnosis, then?"

"Hypoxic insult secondary to near-drowning."

Where are you? The rhythm of Blake's heart blipped past on the monitor, faint but steady; his chest rose and fell beneath the white sheet. But the hand Liz held might have belonged to a doll.

"We should be going," Dr. Haddad said after a moment. "We'll alert you if there's any change."

"Thank you," Alex said, touching Liz gently on the shoulder.

"Could we have a minute alone with him?" she asked.

The doctor's smile creased one plump brown cheek, but her eyes were sad. "You can have five. I'll wait outside." The door closed softly behind her.

Liz bit her lip, warmth and pressure leaking out of her eyes. She scrubbed away the glaze of tears one-handed, not letting go of Blake's fingers. Familiar dark crescents still stained his fingernails, ink or charcoal, and pencil calluses roughened thumb and forefinger. She wondered how long it would take them to fade.

But they won't, she told herself fiercely, because he'll wake up.

Alex peered into the closet where Blake's clothes lay neatly folded: sweater, t-shirt, jeans, a pair of boots that hadn't taken well to water. No answers. No miracles.

Alex caught her elbow as she turned away from the bed, a steadying pressure. "You can't blame yourself," he said softly.

It did nothing to help the sick, empty feeling in her chest. She didn't reply, only followed him back to the car.

She wiped her eyes with a tissue as she tugged on her seatbelt, staring sightlessly through the windshield, trying to find a way out of the Mobius loop of grief and guilt. A minute later she realized they weren't moving, that Alex had a map open across the steering wheel.

"What are you doing?" she finally asked.

His eyebrows rose as he glanced up. "What do you think we're doing? We're going to Carroll Cove."

THEY DROVE NORTH and east into the indigo shadow of the mountains, where the city gave way to towering firs and blue drifts of snow. No Trespa.s.sing signs warned them away from the narrow road to the cove, but no one challenged them as they turned in. At the end of a long, twisting lane, the trees thinned and Liz saw the water.

Glaciated hills rose on either side of a narrow cove, thick with fir and hemlock and cedar. A dirt road circled the sh.o.r.e, connecting the few well-s.p.a.ced cabins that stood by the water's edge. No cars, no chimney smoke, no sign of habitation. Alex pulled onto the shoulder and killed the ignition; silence rushed in to fill the car, broken only by the engine's fading ticks.

Warmth rushed out as Liz opened her door; yellow gra.s.s crunched underfoot. The water was a sheet of grey gla.s.s, mirroring the silver-clouded sky. Liz imagined the scent of pine and salt, but all she smelled was winter.

"What are we looking for?" she asked softly. Her voice cracked, and she realized she hadn't spoken since they left the hospital.

"I'm not sure." Alex's voice was hushed as well. The stillness was nearly palpable. "Clues. Though I don't know what might be left to find."

Storm-wrack littered the road-scattered branches, drifts of pine needles, even a few uprooted trees near the edge of the forest. Snow dusted the cracked and frozen ground. The distant cries of gulls scattered across the water.

Something sleek and dark surfaced with a splash. Liz jumped, but it was only an otter. Shining black eyes watched them for an instant before it dove again.

"You're b.l.o.o.d.y edgy," Alex said.

"Maybe you're too b.l.o.o.d.y calm." The words came out harsher than she intended and she shot him an apologetic glance, crossing her arms against the cold.

His sigh hung in the air between them. "You were right," he said slowly. "I admit it. But being a bundle of nerves won't help either of you. You'll only wear yourself out."

"Easy for you to say." She kicked a stone, sending it skittering down the road ahead of them. It echoed like a landslide. "Something is wrong. Still wrong. More wrong. Don't you feel it?"

"Of course something's wrong. But I believe in unconscious cues, preconscious perception-I never claimed to be psychic."

She never had either. Not out loud. But coincidence and preconsciousness weren't enough to explain her dreams.

They both tensed as they pa.s.sed the first house, waiting for someone to emerge and accuse them of trespa.s.sing. The cabin was dark and shuttered, though, and they heard nothing but gulls and their own footsteps.

A breeze ruffled the surface of the cove. Liz tugged her stocking cap over her ears and Alex wound his scarf tighter. Her lungs burned with every breath-what was the water like? A miracle, the doctor had said, and she couldn't argue with that.

They pa.s.sed more cabins, all dark and empty. Summer cottages, like the ones in Cape Cod. Expensive for starving artists, even in the off season.

"What was Blake doing out here?" Alex said, voicing her own question. Liz only shrugged.

Alex frowned, shoulders hunching until his chest was a narrow concavity. "Blake and Alain were just out for a romantic stroll and fell in the water?"

Liz rubbed the tip of her tongue against her teeth. "That doesn't make sense, but I'm not sure why."

"Because he didn't have a coat. There wasn't one at the hospital, at any rate. Unconscious clues, remember?"

Liz rolled her eyes, but couldn't stop a smile. It felt strange on her face. "So they were in one of the houses. But which one?"

They followed the path until it ended in a tangle of fern and lichen-green boulders. Beyond that lay the greater water of Indian Arm. Waves glittered like chisel strokes in grey granite. Liz blew on her gloved hands, watching her breath drift away on the breeze. The sky was too heavy-it would crush her if it fell.

They turned back, but Alex's frown deepened as they neared the car. She recognized that frown; he wore it when confronted with a puzzle or an elusive bit of research. "How many houses are on this side of the cove?"

Liz blinked and glanced over her shoulder. "Four."

The frown became a scowl. "That's what I keep thinking too. But there are five."

They turned in unison, as if they might surprise the elusive house. One, two, three, four... and yes, five. But as soon as her eyes moved, the certainty evaporated. Alex stalked back down the path, shoulders hunching like a disgruntled heron.

As they drew closer, Liz blinked against a wave of dizziness. Her temples began to throb. She drew up, but Alex pressed on, and after a moment she stumbled after him. Gla.s.s sparkled amid the gravel, crunching under their boots. Something else crunched, too-tar paper. She looked up to see shattered windows, shingles ripped from the roof.

"How did we not notice this?" Liz asked as she caught up. Alex only shook his head. "The storm shutters weren't closed," she continued. "Someone might have been here."

Finally, when they climbed the steps and stood in front of the door, the pain in her head eased and her eyes stopped blurring. From Alex's rasping sigh, he felt it too. The front door was locked, much too secure for a credit card. But with so many broken windows that was hardly a problem.

Liz circled the house, ignoring Alex's strained, "Be careful."

"Help me up," she said, clearing shards of gla.s.s from a windowsill on the far side. "What?" she said when his eyebrows rose. "You're the one who started this."

He sighed. "In for a penny..."

In for two to ten. She decided not to say that out loud.

He knelt, and Liz stepped into his cupped hands, trying to ignore his grunt as he took her weight. He boosted her until she had a grip on the inside frame and could haul herself over the ledge. She grabbed his arm and pulled as he scrambled in after her.

They had crawled into a bedroom. The curtain rod hung askew, ripped half free of the wall, and pale light slanted across a neatly made bed. A lamp lay broken on the floor beside the nightstand. Through the cold she smelled damp and insidious mildew.