Jeff Abbott - Fear

‘Celeste. You were having a flashback.’

‘Past tense. It’s gone.’

‘You’re safe.’

‘Yes, thank you, I know.’ She wanted Allison gone, a flush of embarrassment creeping up her skin.

‘What triggered it?’

‘I think… the sound of you typing. I never hear anyone on a keyboard except myself and then I don’t notice it. The Disturbed Fan – after he’d gotten into my house, after he’d tied me up, he got on our computer. He hacked my fan Web site.’ Her throat felt rough as sandpaper. ‘The first step of not having to share me with the world.’ She shuddered.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I’m all right.’ The urge to cut started to fade, from fire to smoke.

‘I’ll stay with you so you don’t hurt yourself.’

‘No need. I might cry. I won’t cut.’

Allison nodded. ‘You’re making real progress.’

‘I hope.’ She hoped. Progress. Baby steps. She still couldn’t imagine opening the front door and walking out into the grander world. Too much.

‘I’m done with the computer. Thank you again.’

‘It’s no problem.’

‘I don’t mean to pry. I saw on your screen, you’re logged on to one of the post-traumatic support blogs.’

‘Yes. Victor Gamby’s. I think I mentioned him to you. He’s a friend of mine in Los Angeles – he’s tireless about raising awareness of PTSD issues. He’s the one who wanted me to appear on Oprah with him.’

‘I hope you’re strong enough to accept his offer.’

‘God, are you kidding? No way. No way in hell.’

‘Someday, Celeste, you’ll leave this house. You’ll want to.’

Celeste couldn’t speak. Allison cleared her throat, blinked as though she were searching for the right words. ‘Those discussion groups… it’s good that you’re reaching out to others.’

‘I don’t talk about myself. I just read what other people say.’

‘But it helps to know you’re not alone.’

‘I’ve made an art of being alone.’

To her surprise Allison knelt among the scatterings from the spilled purse, fished out a fresh rubber band, stood awkwardly, and slid the band on Celeste’s wrist. ‘There may come a day you don’t want to be alone.’

Celeste shrugged. ‘Who’d want a basket case like me?’

‘Oh, Celeste.’ Allison shook her head. ‘I have a second favor to ask.’

‘Sure.’

‘If anyone calls from the hospital – especially Doctor Hurley – you haven’t seen me today.’

‘Who’s Doctor Hurley?’

Allison stuck out her tongue, rolled her eyes. ‘My boss at my part-time job.’

‘Shame on you, playing hooky,’ Celeste said.

‘We all need a mental-health day.’

‘Or week, or month, or year.’

‘I’ll call you tomorrow, see how you are,’ Allison said.

‘Thanks.’

Allison left, and Celeste shut the heavy door behind her. She peered around the curtain, watching over the low adobe wall surrounding her yard as Allison got into her BMW and drove off. Celeste stood at the window, her hand against the reinforced pane of glass. Twenty seconds later another car shot by and then the mud road lay quiet, and Celeste listened to the wind rattle in the cottonwoods.

She went back to the computer – Allison had thoughtfully left it as she found it, the posting from the boy-soldier back from Baghdad front and center. She clicked on E-mail Reply and wrote: It does get better, sweetie, be sure and find a doctor who really understands PTSD and will listen to what you tell him/her. Don’t let them tell you it’s just in your head or depression, don’t let them use nothing but pills to numb you. Don’t lose faith. If you were here, I’d give you a big hug if you’d let me.

Then, to the girl cutting herself, Celeste wrote: I wanted to cut today and I didn’t. Lately I’m more able to resist the urge, maybe it’s the change of the seasons maybe I’m just less ‘crazy’ today but we’re not crazy we’re broken and we are our own glue sweet girl know that we on the list care and if I were there I’d give you a big hug and tell you: You will, you will, you will be okay. She signed both replies ‘ceebee,’ the name from her initials she used on the group, because she dared not use her own. That would bring out the media vultures.

She pressed Send. She didn’t want anyone else to suffer the hell that she did, she was only twenty-eight but here were these kids younger than she, already with savaged souls, and it broke what was left of her heart. Saying no to Victor, the flashback, reading other people’s sadness, she needed a lift. She hunted for the antidepressants Allison had prescribed for her, kneeling in the jumbled spill from her purse. The razor. The rubber bands. Her wallet.

The vials of pills she kept in her purse were gone. White pills and blue pills. She took the blue if her mood sank low, like now, and she needed the comfort of an antidepressant, the white pills right before a therapy session with Allison, to calm her, to make it easier to talk about Brian and the Disturbed Fan. But the bottle had just been there on the floor, hadn’t it, when Allison got her a replacement rubber band?

She knelt, glancing under the chair and the coffee table, finally getting up and wandering the room. She went to her bathroom and found one bottle holding the sweet blue numbers. But no white pills. Where the hell had she put them? She should have asked Allison for a refill, but that was all right, she didn’t have a session for two more days.

She downed a blue meanie, as she called them, and went and sat in front of her window. She observed the shifting sunlight of the day from inside her cage. The thought nagged at her. Those pills had been in her purse this afternoon, she was sure of it.

Perhaps Allison had taken the pills, palming them when she rummaged through Celeste’s purse. But why, without telling her? And asking her to keep her secret for her, as if they were teenage girls, was downright odd. Actually unprofessional. Keeping a secret meant responsibility, and she wanted nothing to do with responsibility.

She got up and headed for the phone.

Miles slowed to a walk as he reached Palace Avenue. He scanned the office’s parking slots. Allison’s silver BMW wasn’t in the lot.

But he saw Sorenson walking through the front door, into the building. He carried a fat briefcase, the kind Miles had seen government lawyers use to haul massive files into the courtroom.

Miles ducked close to a cottonwood, counted to thirty, then went up to the steps and into the building.

Allison’s office was closed. He risked a quick listen at the door; he heard the softest tread of foot on floor. The hallway air reeked of paints and solvents and he heard voices upstairs, workmen discussing the renovations, the quiet voice of a woman asking when the work would be finished, she planned to relocate here from Denver and, damn, she needed an office before the rents went up. The painters laughed and agreed with her sense of urgency.

Keep them occupied, lady, please, Miles thought. Knock or wait? Confront Sorenson – but with what? That he wasn’t licensed? He considered the oddity of Allison’s request, a note tucked into his medication. She presumably couldn’t ask for help in front of Sorenson. So Sorenson was her so-called real trouble. She couldn’t call and ask for help, which might mean that Sorenson was going to be around her a lot. Or monitoring her calls…

That sounded ridiculous. Paranoid. But she’d said Sorenson was a doctor, and he wasn’t. So what was he?

He stepped away from the door toward the office across the entryway from hers. The door stood open, the beige paint on the walls fresh. The workers upstairs must be refurbishing these rooms as well. They could return at any second and he didn’t want to be forced to explain his presence. But he eased the office door shut to an inch, where he could still see Allison’s door.