Linwood Barclay - Trust Your Eyes

So maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised when Thomas snapped, too.

He came at me like he’d been shot out of a cannon. He lunged, reaching out and grabbing me around the neck. I toppled over onto my back and he landed on top of me, our legs tangling, his hands still clutching at my throat.

“You’re just like Dad!” he cried. His eyes were wide and manic. Choking, I grabbed his wrists but couldn’t break his grasp.

“Thomas!” I croaked. “Let…go!”

I reached up, grabbed his left ear with my right hand, and yanked.

Thomas yelped and released me. I rolled and squirmed out from under him. Pulling his ear seemed to have had the effect of stunning him. He looked at the chaos around us, then at me, and shook his head.

“No no no,” he said, and instead of turning any further anger on me, began to hit himself. He was driving the heels of his hands, alternating left and right, into his forehead. Hard.

“Thomas!” I said. “Stop it!”

I tried to get my arms around his, but they were like pistons. He was pounding his head hard enough that it sounded like wood hitting wood. I threw myself on him, pinning him to make him stop.

He made unintelligible grunting noises of frustration.

“It’s okay!” I said. “Thomas, stop!” I kept my weight on him, hoping that by restricting his movements I’d calm him.

“It’s okay,” I said again. “I’m sorry.”

Like a switch had been flipped, he stopped. His forehead was red and beginning to bruise. Between the battering he’d given himself and his red and swollen eyes, he looked as though he had just lost a bar fight.

He was crying.

I felt myself becoming overwhelmed. My throat felt thick, my breathing quickened.

Now I was crying, too.

“Thomas, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m going to get off you, okay?”

“Okay,” he said.

“I’m getting up. Promise me you won’t hit yourself anymore, okay?”

“I won’t.”

“Okay, that’s good. We’re good.” I eased him up into a sitting position, ran my hand on his back.

He glanced over at the power strip. “I’m going to plug it back in,” he said.

“I’ll get it, let me.” I crawled over, shoved the plug into the outlet. The computer tower started to hum. Before Thomas could get up I said to him, “But we need to establish some rules, okay? Before you start exploring again.”

He nodded slowly.

“First thing we have to do is get an ice pack on your head. You okay with that?”

He considered my offer. “Okay,” he said.

I extended a hand, and was relieved when he took it. I noticed his hands were bruised, too. “Jesus, you really made a mess of yourself.”

He looked at me. “How is your neck?”

It hurt. “Fine,” I said.

“I’m sorry I tried to kill you,” he said.

“You weren’t trying to kill me. You were just angry. I was an asshole.”

He nodded. “Yeah. A fuckhead.”

He sat at the kitchen table while I found a soft ice pack in the freezer. Dad was always suffering from some kind of strain or pulled muscle and there were enough packs in there to cool a Dairy Queen. “Hold this on your head,” I said, handing Thomas one.

I pulled over a chair so I could put an arm around his shoulder.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” I said.

“No,” Thomas said.

“I kind of lost it.”

“Have you been taking your medication?” he asked,

I hadn’t had a single M amp;M since returning from Dr. Grigorin’s. “No, I guess I forgot to take them.”

“You run into problems when you don’t take your medication,” he said.

I kept my arm around him. “There’s no excuse for what I did. I know…I know you’re the way you are, and screaming at you, that’s not going to make things any different.”

“What are the rules?” he asked.

“I just…I just want you to check with me first before you send any e-mails, or make any phone calls. But you can still wander all the cities you want for as long as you want. Is that a deal?”

He thought about it, still holding the freezer bag to his head. “I don’t know.”

“Thomas, not everyone in the government understands that you’re trying to help them. They don’t understand that you’re a good guy. I want to make sure there aren’t any misunderstandings. It’s not just you who could get in trouble. It’s me, too.”

“I guess,” he said. He took the bag from his head. “It’s really cold.”

“Try to keep it there. It’ll keep the swelling down.”

“Okay,” he said.

“I’ve never seen you get that angry,” I said. “I mean, I had it coming, but I didn’t know you had it in you.”

As Thomas held the cold bag to his head, his eyes were shielded.

“I’m going to go back to work now,” he said, slipping out from under my arm and heading for the stairs, leaving the bag on the table.

His back to me, he said, “Am I still making dinner tonight?”

I had forgotten. “No,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

Bridget is coming out of the building on Thirty-fifth Street where the PR firm she works for is headquartered when she sees him waiting there for her.

He grabs her firmly by the elbow and starts leading her down the sidewalk.

“Howard!” she says, glancing down at his hand. “Let go of my arm. You’re hurting me.”

Howard Talliman says nothing. He swiftly moves her along, Bridget struggling to maintain her balance on her heels. He steers her into the lobby of a building, the first place he’s spotted where he can talk to her without anyone else listening in.

“What does she know?” Howard asks once they are inside. He has moved Bridget up against a marble wall and still not released his grip on her.

“Howard, what the hell-”

“She says she heard things.” He is hissing, almost snakelike.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I met with her. When she was leaving, she said she heard things.”

“Heard what? What did she say she heard?”

“She didn’t say. But she intimated that it was something damaging. Things you’d said, things that made sense once she knew who you are.”

“Howard, I swear-”

“Did you talk to Morris while you were in Barbados?”

“Of course. We talk all the time.”

“You talked to him when you were with Allison Fitch?”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure I did. Howard, I can’t feel my hand. You’re cutting off the circulation.”

He releases his grip but is still only inches from her, his face pressed up to hers. “Was she present when you had those conversations?”

“No, I mean, she might have been in the other room. I talked to him when I was in the bathroom, or maybe when Allison was. I talked to him by the pool one day, when she went off to get us drinks.”

“So she might have heard any of them. She could have been behind you, or on the other side of a door,” Howard says.

“Okay, I suppose it’s possible, but even if she did, we didn’t-I’m sure I never said anything that-”

“You know about Morris’s situation,” Howard says grimly.

“He doesn’t tell me everything.”

“But you know.”

“I know what they’re looking into, okay. How could I not know? Morris is going out of his mind about it, thinking sooner or later it’s going to come out, that Goldsmith will implicate him.”

So she did know.

Howard had never been able to persuade Morris not to discuss political liabilities with his wife. He’d clearly told her how Barton Goldsmith, the CIA director, had involved Sawchuck in his plan to cut deals with a handful of terrorism suspects. Goldsmith argued he was doing it to protect the people of the United States, but it turned out the people of the United States didn’t quite see it that way after the New York Times did an expose on how Goldsmith had leaned on various prosecutors and law enforcement agencies across the country to allow certain terror suspects to walk in return for information.