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The screams pierced the walls of the outbuilding and straight into Shandi’s soul, where she sat in the truck, uncomfortable with the idea of encountering Deirdre. She knew in an instant that they had come from Jake, and before she knew it she was bounding across the parking lot.
Something stopped her at the door, however. She didn’t know what she’d find, but good sense prodded her into making sure someone would be on the way to help. She jerked her phone out of her pocket and called Cam.
“Sheriff Donner here,” his voice said.
“Come quick! To the first outbuilding at Arrowhead!” she rasped in a whisper, louder than she intended.
“What’s going on?” he asked, not as urgently as Shandi preferred.
“I don’t know. But it’s important.” She ended the call and crammed the phone back into her pocket.
Shandi took a deep breath. The screaming had stopped and she worried that she hadn’t acted quickly enough. She jumped the stairs in one huge step and jerked open the door, instantly buffeted by the scene before her. Jake lay strapped to a gurney with Deirdre beside him, stroking his hair. What the hell was she even looking at?
Once Deirdre registered Shandi’s presence, she moved from Jake’s side and reached for something on the counter. Without consciously knowing what would come next, Shandi sprang to her right as the echo of a gunshot rang in her chest.
Deirdre had shot at her.
Shandi lunged for Dierdre, who steadied her arm and squeezed off another wild round, Shandi easily evading it. The impact of Shandi’s head against Deirdre’s small, bony chest felt like it should be hard enough to break her ribs. Deirdre flew backwards into the counter, her head turning as she bobbled the gun, trying desperately to hold on, but it came lose and clattered across the floor.
Shandi wrapped her arms around Deirdre’s slight waist and dragged her to the ground, causing Deirdre to finally fight, flailing her arms against Shandi’s back. Shandi barely felt it. They tumbled to the ground together and seemed to roll forever before Shandi finally got the upper hand and managed to straddle Deirdre against the floor. Instinctively, Shandi slammed her fist into the side of Deirdre’s face. It felt good.
Sharp pain shot into Shandi’s skull and neck as Dierdre wrenched her hair back. The bitch wasn’t very strong, but those arms were ridiculously long. Shandi punched her again. Deirdre pulled harder and bucked with her hips, causing Shandi to lose her balance and fall to the ground. Deirdre flipped the script and straddled Shandi now, but she didn’t punch. She wrapped her hands around Shandi’s neck and squeezed.
Shandi gasped for air, kicking and reaching for anything that could help her but her arms lacked the reach of Deirdre’s and she felt like a cartoon character being held back by a huge powerful hand. Shandi grabbed Deirdre’s wrists and pulled as hard as she could to pry them away. Her vision started to narrow and her windpipe ached but she channeled the pain into pulling even harder until she could feel the grip loosening, and then Shandi held Deirdre’s wrists apart, with Deirdre unable to push back against the adrenaline-fueled grip of a very angry Shandi Mason.
It seemed that they were at an impasse. In this brief respite, Shandi looked at Deirdre’s face and could barely make out any humanity. Deirdre’s blue eyes might as well have been red for the fire burning in them.
In one smooth motion, Shandi forced all her strength into her right hand and bent Deirdre’s left wrist back further than it wanted to go, not quite far enough to cause an audible crack of the bones, but far enough that Deirdre yelped in pain. Shandi took advantage of the distraction, twisted her left hip and threw Deirdre off, immediately scrambling back on top where her right knee rested on Deirdre’s throat.
Deirdre clawed and slapped at Shandi’s calf, but Shandi only pressed down harder. Deirdre sputtered and gasped, begging with her eyes for Shandi to let her go. For the briefest moment, Shandi wanted to push harder, to choke the life out of this freak, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead, she let up enough for Deirdre to draw a ragged breath.
Then, in an instant, the room filled with uniformed police officers, Cam among them, with his gun drawn. He crossed the room and grabbed Shandi by the upper arm. Shandi did not protest. She stood up beside Cam, and for the first time since it all started, acknowledged the fear surging through her veins.
“Jake. She did something to Jake!” Shandi pointed off towards the gurney, but there were already Arrowhead Research paramedics at his side, one of them studying an empty vial.
Cam patted her back. “Don’t worry. I called for medical, too. Just in case.”
Despite her better judgement, Shandi buried her face into Cam’s chest. Tears burst from her eyes. She vaguely registered the sounds behind her: a defibrillator, calls for “clear”. It went on for too long. Jake wouldn’t survive. She shouldn’t have hesitated.
Then, a paramedic hollered over to Cam. “We’ve got him back. The poison did a number on him, but I think he’s going to be okay. Might be a while before he wakes up. We need to get him to the hospital.”
Shandi peeled herself from Cam’s chest and marched over to the gurney. “I’m going with you.”
Cam grabbed her by the shoulder, and gently turned her around. “I need you here, Shandi. I need to know what happened.”
Shandi’s face grew hot. “Screw you!”
He sighed with obvious displeasure. “You’re not even related to him. You really should—”
Cam backed off at this, though he expressed his displeasure by stomping around the room and loudly talking to his deputies about piecing the crime scene back together. Shandi didn’t care. In a matter of minutes, she found herself crammed into the back of an ambulance, anxiously watching the little line that represented Jake’s pulse.
***
She tried to stop her hands from shaking as the ambulance pulled up to the Rose Valley Hospital. Her time with Jake would soon come to an end. She couldn’t claim to be his wife. Not even his girlfriend. It would be difficult for her to coax information out of the doctors, but she knew the important stuff. The paramedics knew what poison Deirdre had used, and they’d managed to bring him back from death.
So did you, she told herself. She didn’t need adulation, though. Worrying over the details would be useless. Deirdre sat in the county jail and Jake’s pulse pattered steadily. Nothing else mattered.
They rolled Jake out of the ambulance and into the hospital. As they approached the doors going back into the ER, one of the EMTs held a hand out in front of her. “I’m sorry, Shandi. You can’t follow him in here. I’ll do my best to get you information. I promise.”
Yet another high-school acquaintance. She trusted that he would try, but also knew that he didn’t have much power over what happened to Jake from this point forward. She mumbled a thank you to him and turned back to the waiting room.
In the lobby, she sunk down into the first chair she came to, alone. With such a small population, the Rose Valley ER was generally quiet. She needed to calm down and figure out the next move. Deirdre tried to kill Jake. More accurately, Deirdre killed Jake. Shandi wanted to know why. That felt like the most important thing.
Deirdre had spent a year rehabilitating him. Why would she kill him after all the work she had put into his health and wellbeing? She couldn’t shake the worry that her staying with Jake had somehow triggered this crazy outburst. Maybe the night hadn’t gone how Jake had described. Maybe this was jealousy.
Even if Deirdre and Jake had slept together that night, it didn’t explain her behavior, even if she thought Jake had spurned her. There had to be more to it. Shandi felt certain that a piece of the puzzle hovered just beyond her grasp.
Did all of this relate to the beast? Shandi couldn’t come up with any plausible connection, but the coincidence was odd—the town gained a beast just as Dierdre lost her sanity.
Jake might have the missing piece of the puzzle. He would know more when he woke up. Shandi desperately hoped that he would. The thought of him dying terrified her.
To get information, she would need someone that the doctors would talk to about Jake’s case. He didn’t have immediate family in town. His single mother had packed up and moved away from Rose Valley years ago. Would they talk to Steve? Jake lived on his property. Maybe they would give him information.
Shandi pulled her phone out of her back pocket and found Steve’s name in her contacts. He answered after a few rings. She prepared to tell him everything, but when she heard his voice, all the adrenaline that had kept her going came crashing down, and she didn’t say anything. She just cried.
