“I wouldn’t worry about that. Dude’s long gone by now. You just get some rest.”
After Macon left, I lay alone for the longest time staring up at the ceiling tiles as all those strange sounds droned on in my head. When I was a child, I’d had a recurring dream about being lost in a tunnel. I could see a light at one end, but the other end was pitch-black. I’d start toward the flicker only to be drawn back by something unseen in the dark. The tug-of-war waged on and on while disembodied arms reached through the walls to clutch at me.
I felt that same smothering claustrophobia of my dream. I couldn’t see the arms, but I had a sense that something was reaching out for me, pressing in on me. The sensation was so strong I had to sit up on the gurney to catch my breath.
A panic attack, I told myself. Surely I was allowed a lapse after everything that had happened to me. Still, I didn’t like feeling out of control. I wanted to be home, safe and sound in my own little sanctuary, but even that peace of mind had been taken from me now.
My head began to pound and I felt dizzy, so I lay back down and was just drifting off when I had the eerie sensation of being watched. I opened my eyes and turned my head toward the entrance, expecting to find a nurse or an orderly who would transport me upstairs. The doorway was empty, but I was certain someone had been there a moment ago.
Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I got up and padded across the room to glance down the hallway. I found nothing unusual in the chaos of the emergency room and was about to chalk the sensation up to paranoia when a man at the end of the corridor caught my eye. He was turning a corner so I only had a glimpse of his profile, but something about his attire and the style of his hair reminded me of Owen Dowling.
It couldn’t be him. The coincidence would be too great. Unless...his presence at the hospital wasn’t a coincidence. Maybe the stereoscope was more valuable than he’d let on.
The business card I’d left only listed my name and phone number, but finding my address wouldn’t have been at all difficult. And there’d been that odd awareness as I stood outside the shop, a niggling premonition that my visit to Dowling Curiosities had triggered something dangerous.
I told myself not to jump to irrational conclusions as I returned to the bed. But I lay with my eyes wide-open until someone came in to take me upstairs. The ghost voices in my head grew even louder as I was wheeled down the hallway, but once inside the elevator, they became muffled. As the car rose to the upper floors, the sound grew dimmer until a measure of calm returned to me. By the time I was rolled into the room, the sounds had vanished altogether, leaving nothing in my head but a dull throb.
A nurse helped me settle in, and then a police detective named Prescott arrived to ask questions. I would have preferred Devlin, of course, but I hadn’t been able to reach him.
This detective looked to be in his mid-to late forties with thinning hair and a condescending attitude that did nothing to put me at ease.
The first thing he did was to jot down my name, address and phone number in a small notebook he pulled from his pocket. Then he took a position at the foot of my bed, where he could peer down at me. Whether he had placed himself there deliberately to intimidate me, I couldn’t say, but his impervious stare unnerved me.
“I know you already gave a statement to the responding officer, but I’m going to need you to take me through it again,” he said.
“Okay.” I was happy that I could think a little more clearly now that the chattering in my head had subsided. “Something roused me from sleep. I don’t know what it was because I don’t remember hearing anything. But I woke up with a feeling that something wasn’t right in the house. So I got up to investigate.”
“You didn’t think about calling 911?”
“No, not then. It’s an old house and there are a lot of night noises.” And at that point I hadn’t thought the intruder human.
The door to my room opened just then and I felt a familiar tingle up my spine, a rush of hot blood through my veins that always signaled Devlin’s arrival.
He strode in—tall, lean, purposeful—and the air seemed to crackle with electricity as he moved toward me.
Ten
Maybe it was my tattered nerves or the position from which I stared up at him, but Devlin looked larger than life and far more formidable than I would have imagined under the circumstances.
In that charged air, a shiver whispered up my backbone. Even the other detective seemed to sense the shift in energy and he scowled warily as Devlin closed the distance between the door and my bed.