Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [562]
“She’s gone.”
No, no, no. Her brain seemed to be screaming it, but it was no use. They believed she was dead. She couldn’t see beyond the black. She couldn’t make her muscles respond.
No, wait. Maybe she was dead.
Wasn’t this what dead felt like? A faint consciousness with no control over her body. No body to control.
Oh, God! Maybe they were right. Maybe she was gone. Gone forever. She felt herself slipping again. She’d close her eyes and sleep some more. Or were they already closed? She slept and woke again when she heard something. Nothing. More sleep. What felt like hours. A warm darkness slipped in tight around her. Liquid warmth ran through her veins. And she felt herself leaving again. Yes, maybe this was what it felt like. No second chances. No warnings. Gone.
Then suddenly she thought she saw…no, it couldn’t be. Through a blur of gray haze she saw her father and then she knew it was true. She really was dead.
CHAPTER 71
“Maggie?”
It hurt to open her eyes. The light blinded her. The images swirled above her head. The humming of equipment filled her ears. And her mouth tasted like rubber and cotton. She tried to focus on the voice and where it was coming from. If it was real. Then she felt someone squeeze her hand.
“Maggie? You have to come back or I’ll never forgive you.”
“Gwen?” It hurt to talk, but at least she could. She tried again. “Where am I?”
“You scared us, O’Dell.”
She turned her head to look up at Tully standing on the other side of the bed. Just the slight turn made her dizzy.
“What happened? Where am I?”
“You’re at Yale-New Haven Medical Center,” Gwen told her. “You suffered a severe case of hypothermia.”
“They had to drain all your blood out of you, O’Dell, warm it up and pump it back in. So you can’t complain about being cold-blooded, okay?”
“Very funny.” Gwen shot him a look.
“What, we’re not allowed to make jokes?”
“You really did have us scared, Maggie,” Gwen said, caressing her forehead with the warm palm of her hand.
“What happened?”
“Look, Maggie, you’re going to have amnesia and probably not remember everything that happened. We can go through it later when you’re stronger, okay?”
“But how long have I been gone?”
“You’ve been out of it since Thursday.”
“What day is it?”
“It’s Saturday evening, sweetie.” Gwen was still holding her hand and smoothing back her hair.
“What about Simon Shelby?”
“That she remembers. Always on duty, aren’t you, O’Dell?” Tully smiled. “Maryland State Patrol caught him last night. We’re not sure where he was headed. He actually had taken some of his specimens with him in the trunk.”
“Specimens?” Maggie asked, trying to fight through the annoying haze.
“We were right,” Tully said. “He was cutting out deformed livers, tumored brains, diseased hearts, crippled bones. Meriden’s police lab thinks they may have already matched a pair of eyes to that reporter. They’re running DNA tests on some of the other pieces. They’ll probably be able to match some of them to the bodies in the rock quarry. You should have seen his work shed, O’Dell. Shelves and shelves of jars and containers. It’s hard to tell how many victims or how long he’s been doing this. And he’s not talking. In fact, it looks like he might end up in a padded cell somewhere.”
“My guess is it started five years ago,” Gwen said, “when his mother died. I talked to a nurse at the local hospital. She remembered Simon Shelby and his mother, Sophie. This nurse told me she even felt sorry for him. The mother was constantly bringing him into the emergency room in the middle of the night. He always complained of terrible stomach cramps, but tests never showed anything out of the ordinary. His mother may have been poisoning him, just like he was poisoning Joan Begley.”
“Is she okay?” Maggie asked. “Is she alive?”
“She’s alive and she’s going to be okay,” Gwen said. “She’s up at MidState Medical Center in Meriden. It looks like Shelby was giving her