The Lion's Den(95)

“Jesus, okay! Can you let go? Your nails are digging into me.”

“Promise me.”

“Okay, I promise! Shit!”

The clock on the bedside table reads 4:34 a.m. Amythest’s phone has 38 percent battery power, and Bernard must’ve taken our chargers because they’re both missing. I turn off the phone and store it under my pillow for safekeeping.

Eric had a picture of me in his bedside table. Does that mean what I think it does?

I’m physically tired, and I know I need to get some sleep so that I can be on point tomorrow, but I’m not in the least bit sleepy. My gears are cranking. I’m amped. My mind is speeding a million miles an hour. I need to get my passport back, my computer and my phone. I need to get to the police in the morning.

Eric had a picture of me in his bedside table.

Breathe.

Should I give Wendy and Claire a warning so that they can save themselves? If they haven’t been interviewed yet, they haven’t lied. As hurt as I am by Wendy, I don’t want her to go to jail. And certainly not poor Claire.

I tried cocaine once and never did it again because it made me feel exactly how I feel right now: unable to hold on to thoughts speeding by too fast to articulate, a sense of impending dread, an anxiety I couldn’t pinpoint. Though now I can pinpoint it.

I repeat the same mantra now that I used that night—Everything is going to be okay, everything is going to be okay, everything is going to be okay—over and over and over, ad infinitum. But it’s hard to believe.

I check the clock. 4:56. Okay, that’s good. Time is passing. Just two more hours until I can get up and shower.

Eric kept a picture of me in his bedside table.





(twenty days ago)

Los Angeles



In the morning, a leaf blower aroused me from fitful sleep.

Eric is alive and on my couch.

My eyes flew open. I jerked myself out of bed and padded quietly into the living room, where Eric was still sleeping soundly. He didn’t look good. His skin was pale and his brow glistened with sweat.

Should I wake him and drag him to the emergency room immediately?

No. Sleep was probably the best thing for him.

I gazed out the kitchen window as my coffee percolated, watching the wind ripple the fingers of the palm trees. The day was bright and clear, the world fresh from last night’s rain.

What was he doing here?

It dawned on me that I should call Dylan. I palmed my phone and scrolled through my contacts for his number, but hesitated, my thumb hovering over the call button. Though Dylan had given me no reason not to trust him, calling him somehow felt like a betrayal of Eric, who had come to me, not his brother. A little voice in the back of my mind whispered that perhaps I should wait to find out why before I contacted anyone.

I put the phone down. Maybe I’d find when Eric woke that he’d already contacted Dylan and my caution was unnecessary. Regardless, Eric would be up soon—I could delay calling anyone until I talked to him. The fact that Eric had shown up on my doorstep demonstrated some level of trust in me, and I felt obligated to at least honor that faith until he’d had the chance to relate what had happened to him.

But why come to me?

My head throbbed. I’d had less than four hours’ rest, but was afraid that Eric would leave if I fell asleep again, so I poured my coffee and trudged back to the living room, where I curled up in a chair to wait for him to wake and promptly nodded off myself.

My neck was cramped from napping in the chair and my leg was asleep by the time his moaning woke me. His eyes fluttered, his skin clammy in the light through the curtains. Pins and needles shot through my foot as I limped to the bathroom, returning with a thermometer. I slipped it into his mouth, and he opened his eyes with a start. “It’s okay,” I said as calmly as I could muster. “I’m just taking your temperature.”

He closed his eyes while I watched the numbers on the digital screen escalate. The thermometer beeped and flashed red: 104.3.

Shit, that was high. I dredged the depths of my mind for the medical knowledge I’d garnered while playing a med student. If I remembered correctly, 105 was hospital zone.

I googled it to confirm, then ran a cool bath, as the Internet suggested. I returned with Tylenol and a glass of water, but he waved it away.

“Just wanna sleep,” he murmured.

“Eric, your temp is really high,” I insisted. “You need to take this Tylenol and drink this entire glass of water, then come get in the bath, or I’m calling 911.”

He raised his head, and I placed the Tylenol on his tongue and held the glass while he gulped most of the water before diving back to the pillow.

“Okay, now the bath,” I instructed. He didn’t move. “Eric, I’m serious. I can’t lift you myself, and I’m not sure where all you’re injured, so you have to help me.”

I assisted him up to sitting, and he swung his feet to the ground. I slipped my right arm around his waist, placed his left around my shoulders. “Okay, on three. One, two, three.”

And we were standing. Unsteadily, but standing. We shuffled the short distance to the bathroom, where I closed the lid to the toilet and sat him on it, then helped him out of his T-shirt. His torso was covered in scratches and bruises; a bandage on the outside of one of his biceps was soaked in blood. Even beaten to a pulp, he was still beautiful. His chest was lean and toned, like someone who did yoga and free weights, and his abs were hard.