I Will Find You(21)
So I do the simplest thing I can.
“Help!” I scream as loud as I can. “Somebody, help me!”
I don’t rely on that, of course. This is a prison. I’m a prisoner. People are yelling crazy shit in here twenty-four seven. Still, the suddenness of my scream makes Curly pull up. I use that. I turn and sprint down the corridor, back toward where we came from. He chases me.
“Help! He’s trying to kill me! Help!”
I don’t turn around. I don’t know if he’s closing in on me or not. I can’t risk it. I just keep pumping my legs and screaming. But now I’m reaching the end of the corridor, that same checkpoint we had gone through earlier. No one is there.
I ram the gate. Nothing. I try to pull it open.
No go. It’s locked.
Now what?
“Help!”
I glance back over my shoulder now. Curly is closing in. I’m trapped. I turn to face him. I keep screaming for help. He stops. I try to read his face. Confusion, anguish, rage, fear—it is all there. Fear, I know, is always the overwhelming emotion. He is scared. And the only way to not be scared anymore is to silence me.
Whatever led him to this, whatever doubts he may have had, they are no match for his need to survive, to save himself, to worry about his self-interest above all else.
And that means killing me.
I am backed up against the gate with nowhere to go. He is about to lunge for me when a voice from behind me says, “What the fuck is going on here?”
Relief courses through my veins. I am about to turn and explain that Curly here is trying to kill me when I feel something hard smack the back of my head. My knees buckle. Blackness closes in around me.
And then there is nothing.
Chapter
8
Cheryl grabbed a cup of coffee and a section of the morning paper and sat in the breakfast nook across from her husband Ronald. It was six a.m., and this had become her blessed morning routine. She and Ronald wore matching one hundred percent cotton spa robes with thick shawl collars and cuffed sleeves; Ronald had ordered them during a luxurious stay at the Fairmont Princess Hotel in Scottsdale.
Most people had moved on to online papers, but Ronald insisted on going old-school with an actual daily newspaper delivery. He started with the front section while Cheryl preferred reading the business section first. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know much about business, but something about the dynamic read to her like a great soap opera. Today, no matter how hard she tried to focus, there was zero comprehension. The words swam by in meaningless waves. Ronald, who normally offered a running commentary on whatever he was reading—an act she found endearing and annoying in equal measure—was quiet. He was, she knew, studying her. She had not slept well after her sister’s call. He wanted to ask what was wrong, but he would not ask. One of Ronald’s strengths was his wonderful sense of when to pry and when to let it be.
“What time is your first patient?” he asked.
“Nine a.m.”
Cheryl’s practice saw patients three days a week starting promptly at nine a.m. The other two weekdays were saved for surgery. Cheryl was a transplant surgeon. It was, without a doubt, the most interesting field of medicine. She mostly worked on kidney and liver transplants, which was both high-stakes and challenging, but her patients, unlike other surgeons’, always needed a great deal of follow-up, often years’ worth, so she could see the results of her labor. In order to become a transplant surgeon, you start with general surgery (six years in her case at Boston General) plus one year of research plus another two years of a fellowship in transplant surgery. It had been staggeringly difficult, but after the disasters, after the tragedy and the fallout, the medical center—her education, her occupation, her calling, her patients—had sustained her.
Her work. And Ronald, of course.
She met her husband’s eye and smiled. He smiled back. She could see the concern etched on his handsome face. She gave her head the smallest of shakes as if to say all was fine. But it was not fine.
Why was Rachel at Briggs Penitentiary?
The answer was obvious, of course. She was visiting David. On one level, okay, fine, do your thing. David and Rachel had always been close. He’d been up there for nearly five years now. Maybe Rachel felt that was enough time. Maybe she felt she should reach out, that he deserved some level of, if not support, sustenance. Maybe, with all the professional and personal heartache in Rachel’s life over the past year, Rachel would find—what?—comfort in visiting a man who had always believed in her and her dreams.
No.
It had to be something else. In the same way Cheryl loved being a surgeon, Rachel had loved her job as an investigative journalist. She had lost it all in a snap, fair or not, and now she wasn’t the same. Simple as that. Her sister had been wounded. The experience had changed her, and not for the better. Rachel used to be reliable. Now her judgment was something Cheryl constantly questioned.
But why would she be at Briggs?
Perhaps she saw David as an opportunity. David had not spoken to the press. Not ever. He had never told his side of the story, as though there was one, or tried to elaborate on his own theory about what had happened that awful night. So maybe that was Rachel’s game. Her sister was still an investigative journalist at heart, so maybe she went to visit David on the pretense of caring about him. She was good at being a sympathetic ear, at getting people to open up. Perhaps Rachel could get a story out of David, a huge headline-making, true-crime-podcast type of story, and maybe, just maybe, Rachel could use that to regain her professional standing and get “uncanceled.”