Page 167 of Into the Dark
In the living room, he sits me on the couch—the same couch where Jake made love to me last night. The same couch where I told him his mother was dying. The same couch where he watched football and stroked my feet. Anything seems possible on this couch now. Mark says nothing as we sit on it. He has his phone out and is looking at it in frustration as the pre-ordered glass of water appears from somewhere. Not O’Connell, but another tall stranger. Mark barely nods his thanks, his focus on me.
“Drink some water, Alex,” he orders.
“What happens now?” I ask. “Am I under arrest?”
He frowns, a deep crease forming between his dark eyebrows. For the first time, I notice he has a freckle right in the corner of his eye, next to the bridge of his nose. I can’t understand how I’ve never noticed that before. It’s all I can see now.
“For what?” He gives me a look of disbelief.
I can’t say it. I don’t have to say it. Instead, I lift the glass to my lips and drink. My mouth is so dry and my throat so scratchy and raw. The water coats it like a cooling nectar.
Mark watches me carefully, staring hard at every part of my face. Like he’s seeing it for the first time.
“We need to take a statement from you. I can do it, or if you’d prefer a female officer I can arrange for that.” He’s speaking softly, but his eyes are angry. “Whatever you’d prefer, Alex.”
“Where’s Jake?” I ask instead, lowering the glass to rest it on my knee. “When he called you, where was he?”
“I don’t know,” he says.
“But you spoke to him? How did he sound? Did he say he was coming here?”
Mark swallows in an obvious sort of way and avoids my eyes. “It was a very short conversation, Alex. We need a bloody paramedic.” He glances out the window. “I’ll have someone go upstairs and get you some clothes befo—”
“But did he say he was coming here?” My voice is too high, a childlike whine. It hurts my head and rings in my ears. How long ago did he call me? It feels like days. “He just called to tell you to come here without saying anything else? That doesn’t make sense. Was it before or after he called me—do you know?”
“Alex, I don’t know much of anything right now.” He still isn’t looking at me. “He called me to say I had to get someone to your house immediately. That you were in danger. That’s all.”
Mark is about to say something else when the high-pitched squall of the ambulance siren diverts his attention. Useless. A useless waste of an emergency service. He’s bloody dead.
I’m about to ask Mark about Jake again when I hear a knock on the living room door. Turning, I see a woman with black hair pulled back in a firm knot. The expression on her tanned face when she looks at me is warm and soft, and her mouth and high cheekbones make me think of Tash. God, I miss Tash.
“Sir?” she says to Mark. “Ambulance is here.” She glances surreptitiously back in my direction.
“Yes I’m aware of that, Reed,” Mark says brusquely, an eyebrow cocked in condescension. “Alex, we need to get you to hospital—we can take your statement on the way.” He looks back at Reed. “Go upstairs and grab something for Alex to wear. I want you in the ambulance with us.”
Reed exits with a nod and a lowered head that makes me wonder how much she hates him. Also, I want to object to this Reed rummaging around in my drawers and touching my things, but then I remember my entire house is full of police officers, and since I was almost raped and killed in it, and since I just murdered someone in the kitchen, it really isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things.
“Mark, no, I can’t leave.” I shake my head. “Jake will be here soon, and I need to wait until he gets here. I don’t want him to come home to this, to these people in the house,” I explain in a way that to my own mind sounds more than reasonable.
The look on Mark’s face suggests otherwise. “Alex.”
“You never heard him on the phone—he was terrified, Mark. No. No, I need to be here… I need to wait here, for him.”
“Alex, you can’t worry about that right now, Jake wanted me to look after you,” he says. “Which means we need to get you to the hospital. He’d want me to take you to the hospital.”
He would. I know he would. But I need him. I need to see him, have him hold me, have him tell me everything is going to be all right.
“Mark, please. I just… I need to… I just want to wait for him…” I need for him to tell me none of this is real. “I need to be here… I need to wait until he gets here… I need to see him.”
“Alex, please,” Mark says gently. He reaches out and places his hand on my shoulder. It’s warm and comforting, but it’s not the touch I want, and it causes tears to spring to my eyes. I twist away from him and breathe deep. “Alex, you’ve been through a fucking ordeal. You’re in shock; you’re not thinking straight. You know this is the right thing to do.”
I shake my head again, but it hurts when I shake it, so I press my hand to my forehead and close my eyes instead. When I open them, the dizziness rushes over me, and it’s as though some floodgate has been opened, the pain and exhaustion and sickness whooshing through me in a wave. My head suddenly feels like spoiled fruit, battered and soft and useless. The pain courses down the side of my face, and I drop my hand from my head and I see it then. The dark, sticky splatter of Kevin’s blood across the back of my pale skin. The wave of nausea comes fast, flooding my mouth with bile and causing a sweat to break out over my forehead and down my back. There’s a trash can down by the side of the couch, which I reach for, spilling the contents of my dinner up in two vile heaves over Jake’s crumpled-up, two-day-old sports section.
When I turn to face Mark, he has the most terrified look on his face. “I’ll take that,” he offers, taking the trash can from me. “I’m sending a paramedic in.”
I feel nothing as they look me over. I need to go to the hospital, they say. We can’t take any chances, they say. Best to get everything looked at—as I know very well, they say. Mark’s expression drops as I tell the paramedic—Graham, Irish lilt and kind doe eyes—that I’m eight weeks pregnant. As expected, he only becomes even more insistent that I let them take me to the hospital. According to Graham, I’ve had “quite a fright.”
A fright. Interesting summation of my puncturing a man’s neck and letting him bleed to death on my kitchen floor.