First Girl Gone(109)

He shook his head.

“Anyway, what I can remember is all murky. Like I was surrounded by some kind of dark cloud. I could hear things, but they sounded garbled and far away, like when you’re underwater. But there was one moment when the light pierced the haze. It was sunny and bright, and I could hear perfectly well. And Allie was there. She told me everything was going to be OK. That you’d solved the case. Found the girl.”

Charlie stared at him, wondering how much of this could simply be explained away as a fever dream. The hallucinations of a very ill man on a cocktail of drugs, each one with its own jumble of bizarre side effects.

“You want to know the weirdest part?” Frank asked.

“What?”

“The thing that stands out to me most was that when she reached out to hold my hand, her fingers were all sticky, like she’d been eating an ice cream or something.”

All the hairs on Charlie’s arms stood on end, and her spine quivered. She suddenly flashed on the vision she’d had when she was knocked unconscious, of her and Allie eating popsicles.

Before she could say anything, a dark-haired woman in blue scrubs bustled in with a phlebotomy cart.

“Knock-knock,” the woman said.

“Who’s there?” Frank responded, looking far too pleased with himself.

Without missing a beat, the woman said, “Ivan.”

“Ivan who?”

Affecting a Dracula-esque accent, the woman said, “I vant to steal your blood!”

Frank and Charlie laughed.

“Seriously though,” the woman said. “My name is Marta, and I’m here for a blood draw.”

Charlie made room at the bedside for the woman and her cart.

“Hey, turkey,” Frank said. “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve, you know?”

“I know.”

“Well, let’s start the celebration early. I got a hankering for some fried chicken. Extra crispy. A breast, a thigh, and two wings. Maybe some mashed potatoes and gravy. All the fixins.”

Charlie couldn’t help but smile.

“Seriously?”

“Deadly. You wouldn’t believe what passes as food in this joint.”

“I heard that,” Marta teased.

“OK,” Charlie said. “As long as you promise to behave yourself while I’m gone.”

“Me?” Frank asked with mock innocence. “I promise to stick to knock-knock jokes. Just good, clean fun.”

“Yeah, don’t pretend like you don’t know half a dozen dirty ones.” Charlie swiveled to face the phlebotomist. “If he tries to tell you one about ‘Anita,’ give him a good slap upside the head.”

“Don’t worry,” Marta said, snapping on a glove. “I’ll keep him in line.”

Charlie exited the room and retraced her steps back to the elevators. As she passed by the waiting room, someone called her name.

She halted, turning to watch a tall form rise from one of the chairs.

Will.

He had two black eyes now and a small line of stitches that ran from just over his right temple and disappeared into his hairline.

“Two shiners,” she said. “Does that make you doubly irresistible?”

“You tell me,” he said, a half-smile touching one corner of his mouth.

Charlie’s eyes went down to the polished floor.

“You spied on me, Will. Do you expect me to just forget about that?”

“I know, and I’m sorry. I just wanted the truth. Needed the truth. I thought maybe you could understand that, of all people,” he said. “Haven’t you crossed a few lines on behalf of your clients?”

“Get a load of this guy. He violates your privacy and then tries to spin your question like a politician or something,” Allie said, suddenly interjecting.

Charlie considered it and came to the conclusion that maybe they were both right. Maybe she was one of the few people who could appreciate what Will had done, in the name of pursuing justice. But he had broken her trust, something she had in short supply as it was. This wasn’t something that could be repaired so quickly.

Charlie raised her eyes, meeting Will’s gaze.

“You did what you thought you had to do to prove your client’s innocence,” she said. “On a certain level, I can respect it.”

He pulled back, his expression softening.

“You and I both know, doing what we do, that no one can really be trusted. Not truly,” Charlie continued. “So why would either of us be surprised by this type of thing? Why should it hurt us?”

His eyes went wide. Blinking.

“Charlie, you can trust me.”

She shook her head.

“Can I? Because once I knew you were the one who’d installed that keylogger on my computer, it threw everything into question. I actually believed that you’d kidnapped Kara and killed Amber. I believed you killed Allie.”

“Allie?” Will’s eyelids stretched farther open still. “But you have to know I didn’t—”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “On some level, I do. But sometimes you think things you can’t unthink. Not all the way. Some things you can’t take back, maybe.”

Will’s shoulders sagged then, and she thought it was finally sinking in for him. Whatever there might have been between them was gone. Erased.