54

RACHEL COULD SEE RED and blue light. The throbbing in her head wouldn’t quit. She tasted blood and dirt in her mouth, and in the panic of waking up, she accidentally swallowed some.

A flurry of policemen surrounded the perimeter of the church, now half burned. It stood as a flicker of its former glory. The ceiling was nearly gone and exposed some of the inner sanctuary. Windows were shattered, and glass had sprayed the steps where her body lay just moments earlier. Firemen had doused the flames before she’d come to.

At first she was dizzy, but Rachel had been knocked out before. Not often but enough to know how to stumble out of it. But her eyes were still twitchy, and she tripped over her steps a few times.

The firm hand of a paramedic grabbed her by the arm. “Excuse me, ma’am, but we’ll need to make sure you’re okay before we let you walk off. You may have a concussion.”

“A what?”

“A concussion, ma’am.”

“I’m fine,” she stammered, shaking her arm free.

The storm had ended, but it left its mark. Massive tree branches had been tossed on the small sections of lawn around the church, and power lines were down. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a group of technicians working on the wires, one of them getting shocked.

The wind raced through her shirt, grazing her ribs, almost slipping inside her. Teeth chattering, she relived the brief fight with Morgan Cross, how she sailed through the air like a paperweight before descending upon the cracked concrete steps.

She wasn’t strong enough to beat him on her own. That reality was unshakable.

Her hair was probably a frayed mess. She could feel it, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t care that she looked like a clown with bleeding mascara and a number of facial bruises, or that she had to walk with a limp and that every movement hurt like crazy.

“How is he?” she asked when she saw Mike stepping out of the church, surrounded by a wolf pack of disgruntled detectives and forensics personnel. No doubt they were all pissed about getting called in to handle the chaos. A number of reporters she hadn’t seen before started pulling up, camera crews and the works. It was strange not seeing Chase Vallace among the herd.

Mike dismissed the press with a few vague words and approached her.

“Chief, how is he? Is Jude okay?”

Mike turned to her and sighed. She’d never seen him so hopeless, so depleted.

The sea of faces parted as a group of paramedics carried Jude through on a stretcher. Her heart immediately sank. She wasn’t sure if it was relief trapped inside, waiting to come out, or if it was fear. Fear that he had endured it, and was perhaps changed even more because of it. Was he still the villain who tied Chase up and sucked the life from his body? Was he the maniac who forced himself on her? Or was he the man who tried to save her while they were surrounded in the now ruined church?

She shuddered. She couldn’t come to grips with it all, not now. Not yet. Seeing him alive, even though it was a challenge just to breathe, was causing her to react, and not at all in the manner she expected.

Blood-matted bandages were taped to both sides of Jude’s temple. And his chest had some stitches that looked painful. His head shifted from side to side, like he sensed her presence or like he sensed something even though the bandages blanketed his vision. He at last claimed his first full breath.

“Jude!” she gasped. “You’re alive.”

“Rachel.” Jude recognized her voice.

She followed the medics to the ambulance. Once he was laid inside, she put her hand in his. The fear was gone. He seemed so calm.

Jude held onto her with a tight grip. She didn’t think he’d ever let go. But it was only a blink. He was torn from her grasp as the medics attached his stretcher to a gurney and fastened him in. The ambulance would be off in mere moments, and they’d be separated. She didn’t know what would happen after tonight, what would happen to him, or if she’d stay long enough to find out. All she had was this moment.

“Is it you, Jude? Are you…all right?”

“It’s me,” Jude said in a raspy voice.

“What happened to you?” she asked, touching the bandages.

“I made a choice,” he replied definitively.

“It’s gone?”

“It’s gone. You’re not gonna believe this, but somehow, I can still perceive certain things around me, like I know that they’re there, even the shape of your face. I can see, Rachel. I can really see.”

Then he was tucked away in the back of the ambulance truck. She didn’t understand what he meant by I can really see. But her thoughts didn’t have the time to process it. The blink was already over. The moment stolen. A real sense of loneliness crept in. She turned back, a crowd of people standing in the aftermath of a terrible storm. In front of her was a man she wondered if she’d ever see again.

She couldn’t bring herself to say anything else to Jude. Her lips quivered. She scratched her scalp, perplexed and worried at the same time.

She said a prayer as the ambulance engine revved.

And then Jude was taken away. No goodbye. No see ya soon. No kiss for the road. Welcome to real life, Rachel. You’re lucky to still have it. She refused to blink. She didn’t want to come back. She didn’t want to stay here. She knew she would remember this moment until the day she died. And she hated that her mind worked that way.

She wanted so desperately to go with him, but she didn’t. She had become the burned-down statues, the rocks that couldn’t move. But why? The bad guy was gone, wasn’t he? The man she lo…felt something for, was alive. The case was solved. She could finally rest. Why, then, was she frozen?

“Looks like we won’t be turning into pumpkins after all,” Mike said groggily. He lit a cigarette and stood beside her.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I don’t.” He took a puff and handed it to her.

She inhaled once, coughed, and gave it back.

“What a week,” he groaned and spit. “But it’s finally over. Can you believe it?”

Rachel pulled her jacket tighter into her chest and exhaled a long, cold breath. “I’m still waiting to wake up.”

“We got lucky.”

“Yes.”

“You’re shivering.”

“I know.”

With the cigarette pinched between his teeth, he put his hand over Rachel’s shoulder. But his attempts at comforting her didn’t work. He removed his hand quickly. “He’s…gonna be okay. I mean, as okay as he can be, given everything that’s transpired. I’ll be…there’s no one on this earth I wanna tear into more than him.” Mike fumed. “He’s put me through more stress than I thought I could handle. But somehow, there’s no one on this earth I feel sorry for more.”

“He seems…better now,” Rachel whispered, staring at the ambulance until it faded into the black.

“Doesn’t make sense, if you ask me. Crazy son of a gun tore out his eyes.”

The bandages taped to his temples, the blood. He was blind. “Oh my…” She started, choking up. “How did he…do that? How did he survive?”

“Human beings can survive anything, if they fight. You and I are still kicking, aren’t we?”

“Like you said, Chief, we got lucky.”

“Maybe,” Mike said, looking back at the remains of the church. “Or maybe there’s something I ain’t figured out yet about all this supernatural mumbo jumbo. Demons, soul-suckers, God, it all makes my head hurt.”

“You never were much a believer, were you?”

“Is anybody, really? Until you see something like this, the stuff that just don’t want to fit inside the rule book, you can’t help but lean on concrete facts. Makes you wonder, about a lot of things.”

“I hear that.”

“I just don’t like the blanks, you know. We can’t find any evidence that Cross was even here. Although, I was stupid in ever thinking there’d be prints or anything legit. Whatever. Maybe he burned, maybe he evaporated or whatever it is that he was able to do. I just don’t know for sure, and I don’t like that. I want him to get what he’s got coming.”

“He was in there, Chief. I saw him. I shot him. I tried to kill him myself.”

“Yeah. You got more ferocity than some of the other windbags on the force, I can tell you that. But I want more than this. I want reasons. What happened to Jude…That kinda crap can’t be explained.”

Mike licked his lips then took another drag. He noticed she still stared in the direction of the ambulance, and she hadn’t blinked in the last thirty seconds. “They’re bringing him to hospital now. Figure they’ll keep him there overnight, maybe a few days. I don’t know, run some tests, make sure he didn’t do any real damage to his system. I can’t believe he did it. What makes a man rip out his own eyes?”

“What’ll happen to him?” Rachel finally asked, still unsure if she wanted the truth.

Mike spit again. “I love him, Rachel. You know that.”

“What’ll happen to him, Mike? Tell me straight.”

“He may seem better now, to you. But it’s for the moment. He murdered a man, possibly more, nearly burned down a church, and he tore out his own eyes!”

“He also solved a case, Mike, and had the guts to finish it.”

“Foster is no saint.”

“No one is.”

Mike tossed the cigarette. “I’m looking out for him. He’ll be checked into a psych wing at the hospital. He needs help.”

“So help him.”

“I can’t anymore. I care for him like I care for you, but things are different now. You’ve noticed it yourself. He has changed.”

She knew it was true. But what if there was a part of Jude Foster that no one had yet seen? A part that was healed, safe? Did he really belong in a place like that?

“Is this the part where we wash our hands of him and act like everything’s normal?”

“What do you want me to do?”

She flared her nostrils. “Protect him.”

Mike folded his arms and said, “I am. Jude’s had enough of this life. It broke him. It made him something else. Don’t you get that?”

“It wasn’t him!” she said emphatically.

“Right. ’Twas the demons. We make choices, Rachel. We do. We think. We feel. Whether demons do or don’t exist doesn’t matter. In the end, we say whether or not to pull the trigger.”

Rachel knew it was pointless to argue any further. Jude had chosen, but so had she.

“Look, believe in whatever you want to, but I just don’t know enough of anything spiritual to say with certainty that Jude didn’t commit murder. He’s broken, like it or not.” Mike motioned like he was ready to leave, too frustrated to carry on a religious dialogue so late at night. “Whitney survived the acciden, just so you know. He’ll live, like the rest of us.”

Live. Like the rest of us? Is that what this was? Living? Following cases with torn-off ends. Putting her faith in something that seemed impossible? Caring for, even loving someone she didn’t even fully know. Was this life? Was this the existence that held her prisoner?

“Looks like this church has seen its last night,” Mike said, scratching his chin. He wanted to touch her shoulder again, to let her know he really did care, but he chose not to. “It’s condemned, just like the other one. If I had my way, I would’ve let it burn to the ground.”

“I just want this night to end,” she said in a hushed voice, ignoring him.

“Everything ends eventually, kid,” Mike said, walking away. In that moment, she swore it was her father alive again, however briefly, smiling as he breathed out cold fog. Mike even looked like her father, walked as he walked, with that hiccup in his step, that slouch in his back, like he was just too tired to pin himself up straight. Maybe he wasn’t too tired, though. Maybe he was just beaten but not dead.

She finally shut her eyes, the stray rain droplets trickling across her lids and down her nose. She could feel him, right here, with her. She didn’t care one bit if the chief believed in other worlds, in God, in demons. Her father was still alive, in some way, still moving. Maybe he was safer.

“Everything ends,” Rachel murmured. “But not everything dies.” She didn’t understand it yet, but those few words were like life itself. If Jude could see, maybe she could too. Maybe she could believe, for real. Mike probably never could.

She replayed the demon’s words from that bad recording in the back of her mind. It was slimy and dirty. But it was part of it. The good with the bad. The hell with the hope.

Everything went quiet around her as she looked out across the city block. She took a step, the pain in her thigh throbbing but not enough to trap her forever in this moment. She was stronger than that. She was more than her fears, more than her father’s failures. This case had changed her too.

“I survived, Dad,” she said, feeling a tear mix with the rain. There was no promise of a normal life—a husband, two-point-five kids, and a checkered lawn. There was no fixing it or wishing Jude to be set free from the new straitjacket life he was heading towards. Mike would have his way.

Still, with each step she took, Rachel knew there was more. Something more than her next breath. Something more than the next sunrise. She had hope.

Jude could be good again. He wasn’t dead. And neither was she.