It made her so proud of him to hear those words. So why was she struggling?
His hand clasped over hers. She couldn’t look at him for fear he would see her inner battle.
“Shyla,” he paused. When she didn’t answer, he continued, “Shyla, look at me.”
Taking in a shaky breath she finally met his searching gaze.
“I’m going to need you with me. I can’t stand the idea of doing this without you.”
What he was asking was a monumental task; to stay with him to the bitter end, an end that was coming far too soon. It was selfish and unfair to ask it. She could see by the look on his face that he knew it and didn’t care. He had meant it when he said he needed to finally live for himself.
Her lip trembled and she bit down on it so hard she thought she might break skin. “I have to find Carmen first,” she said, “but…you don’t have to do this alone. I’ll be there with you.”
Squeezing his hand, she turned and looked out the window, past the scenery rushing by. All she could see was the end. Beyond that, there was nothing.
*
They were at a rest stop just outside of Medford when her cell phone rang. Brennan was grabbing a couple of coffees from the stand while she walked out the stiffness in her joints. The identification display on her phone read Ricardo.
“Hello?” she answered.
“We have a little problem,” Ricardo said without hesitation.
“What problem would that be?”
“The Halloween shipment has just been bumped up to this Friday night.”
Shyla tipped her head back in frustration.
“What? That’s three days from now. How am I supposed to pull this together now? What a damn mess. Victor must be anxious about the drop or why else would he make a last minute change like this?”
“I’m not sure what exactly is going on,” Ricardo said, “but it wasn’t Victor who made the change. It was the captain of the boat. My source thinks that something has him spooked. Knowing Victor, he won’t be happy with the sudden change of plans, but this guy he’s dealing with calls the shots on delivery. Not Victor.”
“Hmm, well, how reliable is your source Ricardo? I’m neck deep into a perfect storm of chaos down here. And if I have my contact on the LA department tap into his sources, its going to get ugly fast. I can’t afford for this to be wrong.”
“It’s reliable,” he said.
“Shit. Okay. Let me get my head around this. I’ll call you back in a few hours.”
Just as she was hitting the end call button, another incoming call came up on the display screen. Wanting the throw the device across the parking lot, she answered it before the first ring.
“Hey, Shawn, what’s up? You checking up on me?”
Shawn didn’t respond to her gruff greeting. When he spoke, he sounded breathless, like he’d been running.
“We found her,” he said, “we found Carmen.”
Shyla pressed the phone to her ear, her grip tightening with hope. But his voice didn’t sound quite right; there wasn’t just relief there.
“What is it?” she asked, “What’s wrong? Is she okay?”
“Uhh…she’s okay…”
“But what? What’s going on? I can tell something’s wrong, Shawn,” she was knocking on hysteria’s door. It was bubbling up inside of her as she waited for the world to deliver yet another blow.
Shawn’s voice was calm and stern.
“Just calm down, Shyla. She is…alive. She was found unconscious just outside of town. She had fallen down a ravine and hit her head. She has a small skull fracture and is seriously dehydrated but the doctor’s say that her vital signs are otherwise good.”
Relief, worry, panic, questions, and the need to see Carmen, to just set eyes upon her, flooded Shyla’s senses.
“Oh my god, I’m so glad they found her. I’ll be there in just a few hours, Shawn. Just tell her I’m on my way.”
A shaky sigh reached her ear.
“Shyla, I can’t tell her that. She’s in a coma.”
She dropped the phone.
FIFTY-FOUR
Looking down at Carmen’s round, youthful face as she slept in much too deep of a sleep, Shyla’s heart broke yet again. With no make-up, a bandage around the top half of her skull, and slight swelling around her eyes, she looked so much younger and eerily vulnerable.
“I’m going downstairs for some coffee,” Carmen’s mother said from the small cot in the corner of the room, “would you like something?”
Shyla tore her eyes from Carmen.
“No, I’m fine. Thanks.”
Sue Dunsworth stood up but didn’t move. She waited, staring awkwardly at Shyla as if she wanted to say something further. Finally, she jammed her hands in her pocket. “She’s gonna be just fine,” she said, “you know. I…uh…well when she gets better, we’d still like it if you came over for dinner.”
Shyla gave a thin smile.
“I’d like that very much. I promise to show up. I’ll even bring desert.”
A smile of relief passed over Sue’s features.
“That sounds good. And don’t pay my husband no mind. He really does love Carmen. He’s just rough around the edges. We both are. But that’s all gonna change. I signed us up for counseling through behavioral services earlier today. Dusty’s not real thrilled with the idea, but he said he’d go. It’s a start.”
Shyla could see how genuine Sue was in her declaration. She felt bad that she had judged her so harshly in the past. Though it was never okay to get physically violent with a child, Shyla also knew all the possibilities of imperfection within the dynamics of a family. It was never simple. She nodded her head and Sue excused herself.
Turning her attention to Carmen, she reached out and grabbed her hand. There was dirt under what was left of her chewed-off finger nails. Otherwise, her hands were perfect, with smooth skin and surprisingly long fingers in proportion to the rest of her. They were hands which had potential. Shyla gave them a squeeze as the tightness in her chest coincided with an overwhelming desire to cry.
“Hey, girl,” she said, softly but firmly, knowing that Carmen wouldn’t recognize her if she was an emotional wreck, “I know you’re in there. I…uh…I wanted to say that I’m sorry I let you down that day. If it’s any consolation, I’ve been a total mess and your mom and I have already made another dinner date. I’m gonna bring something smothered in chocolate. We’ll all be in a chocolate coma by the time I’m done.”
Shyla winced as she realized her poor choice of words.
“Crap, I’m not very good at this. I need you to just go ahead and wake up now, okay?”
With Carmen’s hand still resting in her own, listless and frail, she felt abandoned. Panic rose up as she imagined Carmen like that for the rest of her life. Anxiety crept into her words.
“Do you hear me, Carmen? I need you to wake up. Right now. I need you to open your eyes and look at me,” she demanded.
There was silence, then a flutter of eyelashes, brief but definite. Shyla stood rigid by the side of the bed, her heart pounding with hope.
“Yeah, that’s it,” she said, “come on, Carmen. I’m here waiting for you to give me the riot act.”
Fingers twitched in Shyla’s sweaty palm. She hit the nurse’s call button.
Minutes later, two nurses and the doctor on-call were poking and prodding at Carmen, looking over her vitals and chart. After a thorough examination, and no further signs of consciousness, they eventually gave up and left the room. Shyla knew they were doubtful of what she had reported, but she knew, without a question, what she’d witnessed. A calm settled over her. Carmen was already fighting her way back. It was only a matter of time. Shyla settled into the rocker on the opposite side of the room and decided to wait it out.
Later, after she had brought both Sue and Dustin Dunsworth some take-out for dinner, she offered to sit with her for the rest of the night so they could get some sleep. “Go on,” she said, “I know you’re tir
ed and have to work in the morning. I don’t mind staying at all, in fact, I’d prefer it.”
Now, she was sitting in the room alone with Carmen. It was dark outside, which exacerbated the obnoxious glow of the fluorescent lights of the hospital. She turned off the main one overhead, leaving only the soft glow of the one behind the headboard.
It seemed that, though Dustin was not exactly ready to befriend Shyla, he had at least done away with the overt disdain for her. She wasn’t sure why, but was glad for the sake of Carmen. They all needed to put differences aside if they were going to help her heal.
The room was quiet. Though Carmen was unconscious, her body did not require life support. Her vital signs and reflexes were good and the doctors were all convinced that she would make a full recovery once the swelling from her head injury subsided. Shyla drifted off hanging on to that promise.
With no grasp on how much time had passed, she slowly came to a while later. She wasn’t even sure what had woken her. But then, as her mind cleared, she did. There was a subtle shift in the air, as if she were no longer alone. Looking around, it was dark and the hospital sounds were muffled with the long hours of night. No one else was in the room. Except Carmen. She glanced toward her. Nothing. Just the slow in and out of her breathing, her facial muscles relaxed with sleep until, there it was - a small flutter of lashes like she’d witnessed earlier that day.
Shyla sat forward in anticipation, holding her breath.
“Come on,” she whispered urgently.
Carmen slowly opened her big eyes and looked at Shyla.
Gratitude like she’d never before experienced flooded her system and she sank into the newness of it.
“Thank god,” she said breathlessly, “welcome home, Carmen.”
FIFTY-FIVE
She was dreading it, but she had to make the call, even though the idea of ignoring the Champlain case altogether and forgetting all about Victor was enticing.
The only things she wanted to focus on were Carmen, awake and alert, and the urge to delve into her frightening yet glorious feelings as she started to wonder if she was falling in love with Brennan. She wanted to clear her head, sort through the emotions and chaos of her fears and doubts and explore the idea of holding onto those people who were stirring such things within her, rather than running away from them.
She was tired of running away, tired of drinking, though her body was still craving it. It ached for it, a deep ache that started at her core and spread out through her nervous system, making her senses heightened, almost the point of pain. The instinct to numb that pain was nearly overwhelming at times. But, unlike other times when she’d tried to quit, there was an equal and opposing force to that craving - the desire to stay clean and change the course of her life. Never before, other than her drive to go to the police academy, had she had such clarity and confidence about what she wanted to do with her future.
Brennan and Carmen. They were her future now.
The fact that her innate sense of responsibility and obligation was driving her to seal up and finalize this case was really pissing her off. Why couldn’t she just let it go?
“Hey, Shyla,” Carmen called out, interrupting her thoughts.
“Yeah?”
“Can you tell these nurses to stop poking and prodding at me? It’s driving me nuts. They wake me up at all hours of the night. They ask me the same lame questions over and over again. And the food here stinks. Hey that reminds me, do you think you could smuggle me in a bitchin’ burger or something? Yeah that sounds good.”
Shyla bit the inside of her cheek and fought off the urge to giggle.
“First of all,” she said, “watch your mouth. Second of all, these nurses work their damn asses off to take care of your sorry butt, so you better show some respect. But as far as the burger goes…yeah, I’ll see what I can do.”
Carmen gave a huge smile. Shyla left the room. She still had a phone call to make.
Thirty minutes later, she got off the phone with Eli Straton, with a fairly solid plan to end the case once and for all. She just hoped Ricardo’s information was solid, or else the drug bust of the decade wasn’t going to end so well. She shoved that thought aside and focused on the next task at hand; there was one specific person she wanted to speak to face to face - Quentin Solero, her favorite forensics guy.
FIFTY-SIX
Brennan decided make a detour past the hospital. He wanted to see Shyla before he left town. It bothered him to know that he was deliberately keeping information from her, evading the truth of where he was really going, but it was in her best interest to leave her in the dark. Besides, it was the last job he intended to ever do for Victor. They’d go down to LA, secure this last shipment, and then he’d wipe his hands of it. All of it.
He hadn’t had the conversation with Victor yet, but he knew that he could sense it, see it in his eyes, ever since he’d returned from the visit with his mother. How could he not? If he was disgruntled about it, he wasn’t overtly showing it. Yeah, he could tell it bothered him a bit, but they weren’t addressing or discussing it, yet. That was fine with him.
Fatigue and guilt were plaguing him. His footsteps were heavy as he walked down the long, sterile hallway of the hospital. His skin still crawled whenever he was any type of facility that resembled the institute. It was the smell. It seeped into his nostrils and reminded him of ugly, ungodly amounts of abuse and hopelessness.
Before he even reached Carmen’s room, he saw Shyla standing just outside the door with her back against the wall as she spoke on the phone. The first thing he noticed was that her hair was down. It looked silky and shiny, like she had spent time carefully brushing it out.
She was nodding and the look on her face was of concentration. But as she sensed his approach, her head jerked toward him. Her whole face lit up and she quickly ended her phone conversation. All fatigue and worry left his body as he was filled with a divine love for her. He could see the love she had for him, whether she was willing to fully acknowledge it herself. And that feeling, that knowing that she loved him as completely as he loved her, filled him with an energy that he had never experienced before. With it, came a determination to overcome his dire diagnosis. Who said it had to end that way?
She walked toward him and he held his hand out to her. Slowly and after a moment’s consideration, she took it.
“You’re wearing your hair down,” he said, “it looks nice.”
“It feels weird. It might take some getting used to, but yeah, I’m trying it out. I guess I’m trying a few new things lately.”
“Well, you look exhausted, too” he said, planting a light kiss on her forehead, “did you get any sleep at all last night?”
Shyla sighed and rolled her shoulders.
“Not much. I was too thrilled with Carmen’s recovery. And I don’t know how she does it, but that girl woke up from a coma like she’d never even hit her head,” she chuckled, “the first hour was slow as she realized where she was and remembered details of how she’d got here, but after that she picked up where she left off and hasn’t shut up since.”
It was good to hear her laugh, Brendan thought, as Shyla looked over his shoulder. Her face shifted and she pulled away.
He turned to see Shawn strolling toward them, his long-legged gait covering the length of the hallway quickly. The look on his face was so easy to read. With jaw clenched and lips drawn tight, he looked like he was trying to control his temper or any reaction at all, but he was having a hard time hiding his true emotions to seeing Shyla in his arms.
Shawn paused with a wide stance, folded his arms and gave them a smirk.
“No need to stop the love fest just because I’m here,” he said, “I saw this coming a mile away. I’m not shocked. I just wanted to check in on Carmen. See how she’s doing.”
Shyla was clearly uncomfortable and Brennan knew she was regretting the public display of affection. He should have known better. There was still a lot going on around them and it would have b
een better had they kept the change in their relationship from the rest of the world, at least until after he had cut ties with Victor.
“Go on in,” Shyla offered, “she’s awake and lively. I was just having a word with Brennan. I’ll be right in.”
“Sure,” he snorted, “okay.”
With a curt nod, he looked directly at Brennan before walking into Carmen’s room.
“That was awkward,” Shyla said.
“Ah, don’t worry about it. He’ll get over it.”
She furrowed a brow and gave him a sour look.
“So I’m that easy to get over, huh?”
“Not at all,” Brennan chuckled, “but I’m keeping a positive attitude. Besides, he doesn’t love you like I do.”
The expression on her face sobered instantly. She shifted the weight on her feet back and forth; it looked like she was fighting the urge to run away.
“What made you drop by?”
So she was changing the subject. That was fine.
“I wanted to let you know that I’ll be out of town for a few days. With Victor. On business.”
Tilting her chin, Shyla nodded her head.
“You’re not telling,” she said, “and I’m not asking.”
“Good. I like that plan.”
There was something changing between them again and he didn’t know if it was because she was doubting his commitment to quit working for Victor or if she somehow knew that the ‘business’ he was talking about was so much bigger than he was suggesting.
“Look, I need to get back in there,” she said with a nod of her head toward the door. There was still an uncomfortable gap between them. He wanted to close the distance and pull her to him, but he knew she wouldn’t want that. There was something agitating her.