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Perhaps even forever.
With a trembling hand Ice tried the doorknob.
It was unlocked.
He turned it softly and pushed the door open gently.
And sure enough, those muffled sounds came through loud and clear now.
Indy was on the bed, but it was clear that the earlier invitation had been retracted.
Because those demons had come for her too.
Her own demons dredged up from her damaged depths.
She looked at him with blood-red eyes, her body fetus-curled on the bed, her face streaked with tears and fears, her lips trembling with trauma and terror.
“I saw her, Ice,” she whispered as he moved silently to the bed and slid onto it beside her like it was natural, obvious, wanted, needed. “I swear I saw her, Ice. It’s not a hallucination but a memory. I know it. I feel it. It’s her. I know it is.”
Indy curled sideways into him. Ice pulled her gently against his body. They fit together in a shockingly perfect way, and Ice felt his energy swirl and settle with breathtakingly controlled power, like suddenly all that raging chaos had found a channel, found a purpose, found its target, sought out its fate, settled on its destiny.
“Who?” Ice whispered as she whimpered against him like a wounded kitten. “Who did you see?”
Indy gazed up at him through those wide wounded eyes, her lips moving silently before the words finally made their way out.
“My mother,” she whispered. “I saw her like it was happening now, like it had never stopped happening, like it had always been happening and will always happen, again and again like some infinite loop. Oh, Ice, I know I’m under the influence of a drug, but I swear it’s real, I swearshe’sreal. And she’s . . . I’m . . . oh, Ice, I can’t stand it, I’m going to explode, I’m going to—”
She buried her face into the crook of his neck and sobbed, curling so tight against him her body was like a spiral circle, a seashell shimmering with sadness Ice could feel like spikes against his skin. He stroked her hair carefully, gently, directing all his warmth in her direction, feeling his angels come to the forefront as if Indy’s darkness had brought out Ice’s light, forced him to focus all the masculinity in him to making her feel protected, safe, secure . . .
Loved.
“I love you, Indy,” he whispered, not sure if he was saying what she needed to hear or what he needed to say or both or neither. Either way, he’d said it and he knew he meant it, understood that time was just a sleight-of-hand trick, that they were closer in this moment than other couples might be in a hundred years, a hundred lifetimes. “You are loved, Indy. You are important. You matter. You matter tome.Do you understand that?”
Indy curled closer to him, burrowing deeper like she wanted to crawl into his body. She raised her head and gazed into his eyes, the confusion and chaos in her expression slowly morphing to calmness and comprehension, like she saw that he meant every word, spoke the truth like it had been delivered from up on high.
She opened her mouth to speak, but her lips were trembling like tiny quakes and fresh tears were streaming down her cheeks like little rivers and she just burrowed back into him, burying her face into the warmth between his neck and the pillow, her body shuddering with sobs that shook Ice’s body like they were connected, like they were the same person.
Ice stroked her hair again, pulled her as close as he dared without smothering her. He wasn’t sure if she’d heard what he said or if those hallucinations where she thought she could see her mother were still messing with her head. “It’s all right, Indy,” he whispered. “Look, you’re on a drug that does stuff to the brain. But it’s all temporary. It’ll wear off and everything will be all right again. We just have to ride it out and things will settle. Hell, in twelve hours we’ll probably be laughing about it.” He tried to chuckle, but it didn’t come out right.
Indy sobbed once more into his neck, then shook her head violently against his shoulder before gazing up into his eyes. “I know we’re on a drug,” she said with a forced firmness that was almost comical because Ice could see that she was experiencing that rubber-lips syndrome which made her words come out slurry. “I know it causes hallucinations and delusions. But I know what I saw, Ice. It was her. And it was amemory. Look, every psychology textbook acknowledges that those earliest memories are locked away inside every person’s head. There are entire books written about what’s called thebirth trauma, which is the moment when a newborn is wrenched out of its nice safe womb where it spent nine months cushioned by amniotic fluid and fed through the umbilical cord and experienced complete and absolute safety, its every need immediately cared for. And when it’s pulled out into the air and forced to breathe on its own, that’s actually a traumatic event for the newborn. It’s branded on every human’s psyche at the deepest levels. And that brand is an imprint, a memory—the first memory, the most important memory.”
Ice stared down into Indy’s earnestly wide eyes. “So you’re saying you remember seeing your mother after just being born? But she died in childbirth. So you . . . you remember seeing her . . . die? Oh, hell, Indy. Come here.” He kissed her brow with warm sympathy, sighed into her hair, shook his head gently. “Indy, maybe it feels real but isn’t. Benson told you that your mother died in childbirth. Hearing that in itself is pretty damn traumatic. That’s a heavy burden to carry. You’ve probably been carrying some kind of guilt for years, ever since he told you about her. Maybe it’s just the guilt making you think you remember her.”
Indy shook her head firmly, her face peaked and strained but those eyes ultra-focused, staring a hole into Ice’s head. “It’s not guilt. Sure, it wasn’t exactly uplifting to hear that my mother died bringing me into the world, that in a way I unintentionally might have killed her.” She shook her head again. “But the memory isn’t of my mother dying, Ice. In fact I saw her calm and serene, heard her heart beating strong and hard as I lay against her body, suckling from her breast. Herleftbreast—the memory is that fucking specific.” Indy took a breath, shuddered it out. She rested her head on Ice’s bare chest, stayed silent for a long moment before speaking. “The memory is more emotional than visual, but I see her clearly. She watched me suckle at her nipple, stroked my little head as I drank.” Indy’s breath caught in her throat now, and Ice could tell she was choking back a sob. “My mother watched me suckle, but her eyes were cold, so cold. Oh, Ice, I could hear her heart beat as she watched me. It was slow, steady, calm like she knew exactly what she was going to do.”
Dread rose up Ice’s throat when he saw the darkness flicker behind her eyes. He wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but in a way he already knew, could see the emotional imprint behind Indy’s ultra-focused eyes with pupils big like volleyballs, windows to her soul wide open. “What did she do?” Ice whispered, suddenly understanding that Indy was speaking a truth that had been buried in the earliest folds of her brain. “Tell me, Indy. Let it out.”
Indy blinked twice, swallowed once, then took a breath and nodded. “She watches me drink from her,” Indy said for the third time, her eyes misting over like she’d been transported back there now, was living it again now, like maybe a part of her had never stopped living it. “She cups the back of my head as I suckle,” Indy muttered through trembling lips beneath wide glazed eyes. “Now . . . now she’s . . . she’s pushing . . . pushing my face into her soft breast, harder now, smushing my nose and mouth against her nipple, pressing down hard, so hard, Ice, oh, I can’t breathe now, I’m struggling, clawing at her, squealing, coughing, choking, gasping, but she’s still pressing down on the back of my head, and I can hear her heart, Ice, oh, her heart is still beating, it’s loud like a drum but still slow and steady, regular and rhythmic as she’s doing it, as she’s doingme, as I’m running out of air, running out of hope, my fingers curling into tiny fists and beating on her to save me, to help me, to . . . to love me, to love me, toloveme . . . but shedoesn’tlove me, her heart says so with its steady beat, slow and rhythmic, revealing the cold truth with its unchanging drumbeat, staying steady and now changing, changing suddenly, changing only for a moment, the moment when I run out of air, when I go still against her breast, when everything goes dark, goes quiet, goes dead.” Indy suddenly raised her head like she’d been yanked up by her hair, startled out of a deep slumber. She stared unblinkingly at Ice, cold certainty in her dark-moon eyes. “Ice, my mother didn’t die in childbirth.Idid. She killed me, Ice. My own mother killed me.”
21
You killed her, Scarlet told herself with cold certainty as she leaned against the metal stairwell door, her body tight with shock. You smothered her like an unwanted kitten, felt her little fingers claw as she cried, heard her muffled squeals as she died. She’s dead, and this is just your own imagination playing tricks, your hormones having their way with your sanity. Menopause followed by high-dose progesterone and estrogen is stirring up old memories, projecting the past onto the present, mixing nightmares with reality.
Scarlet exhaled slow and heavy, ran the back of her hand over her brow, wiped beads of cold sweat that had pricked up like poison from the past. She took another breath to shake off the image of Indy O’Donnell’s dark eyes, eyes that still sparked the memory of that infant suckling like a dirty little piglet, those big eyes gazing up at Mama.
The eyes of an infant grow with age but are still windows into the same soul, the same essence, the same person, Scarlet thought feverishly as she fidgeted with her fingers, checking the time again, peering out through the glass-window in the stairwell door, wondering how long it would take for O’Donnell to lose her mind and hopefully drag Wagner and herself both out of that room, out into the open where Scarlet could finish this mission, get rid of this feeling, then maybe take some time off to get her head right, her hormones right, her heart right before logging back into the NOC system.
Maybe she’d never log back in again, Scarlet thought with a rush of relief, maybe even hope. She could just stay disappeared, fade into the mist, be gone with the wind, just like Benson had quipped when he’d assigned her the codename Scarlet before putting her into the NOC system and then cutting the cord and unleashing her upon America’s enemies.
