Resonance, J. B. Everett [the top 100 crime novels of all time txt] 📗

Chapter 22

David pushed through the blackness. Struggling to find light. And knowing even as he came around just what was happening. He was coming out again. And from the feel of his twitches and jerky, involuntary hand-squeezes and such, he wasn’t broken up.

 

Hal-a-fuckin’-loo-yah..

 

The other side wouldn’t be so bad if he wasn’t bashed all to hell.

 

He laid there, eyes still closed and lacking the control necessary to open. He didn’t push much. It never seemed to help anyway. The darkness would recede on its own terms.

 

So he waited it out, feeling the air pull into his lungs a little deeper each time. His breathing and heart rate sped up bit by bit, while his consciousness rolled around in his head, waiting to solidify.

 

“David?”

 

The tone came through sweet and clear.

 

Jillian. “Are you coming around?”

 

No, honey, I thought it’d be best to hang out in the netherworld for a stretch.

 

He felt rather than commanded the exasperated sigh that fled his lungs.

 

And, pure as bells, Jillian laughed from somewhere over him.

 

“Well, we don’t have to worry about any impostors.”

 

He would have smiled, but was caught off guard by a second female voice coming from behind her.

 

Sorenson. “With all the other problems we have, I’m glad we don’t have that one.”

 

But Becky’s sarcasm was brushed aside by the slightly southern lilt of Jillian, so close.

 

“We’re glad you made it back to us, David.”

 

Was there any question that he wouldn’t?

 

He cringed at the raw scrape in his throat. He could live without this wrenching process of waking up.

 

Sound forced its way out of his mouth, but he didn’t have much time to process it, because light shined in through the miniscule slits his eyelids had formed and it burned like a motherfucker.

 

Another sound emanated from him, and he turned slightly, wincing as he went. But in a moment of clarity his consciousness congealed. No pain. No breaks. Here he was as good as new.

 

David let his breath out and blinked his eyes a few times even though they felt like they were filled with sand. Jillian’s gentle hands grasped his shoulders and applied soft pressure to wake him up. Hold off on the shaking, honey, I’m coming around.

 

“He’s coming around.” Her voice was a little muffled, and within the light he could make out a long, dark chocolate streak - her ponytail. She was talking over her shoulder to Becky. But the streak swung out of the glare and her face moved in closer to fill his vision. Her eyes burning like aquamarines and becoming clearer with each moment. “We weren’t sure when you’d come out.”

 

He nodded slightly, and opened his mouth to speak, but Jillian beat him to the punch.

 

“Your vitals were getting concerning until about an hour ago. You were dropping well into the low end of normal and we were debating a few measures. But you’re here now.”

 

“You, too.” He wasn’t sure why those words were the ones that came out of his cottonfilled mouth. And from her frown neither was she. But he licked his lips and worked his tongue for a moment before he explained. “Abellard put you on an IV… . for low heart rate. Something about your volume.”

 

She nodded, absorbing and understanding what he relayed, even though he didn’t. “My blood volume.

 

Goes with low blood pressure. Over there?”

 

He nodded. Then with a few deep breaths he gathered the energy to prop himself on his elbows. He ignored Becky and Jillian while he sat up, piece by piece. They didn’t seem to take much notice of him until he was fully upright and rotating his ankles and knees, the sensation of stretching muscles flowing through him in the sweetest of ways. This beat the hell out of living in casts and popping Percocet.

 

He wanted to get out and walk around. Hell, he’d have turned cartwheels if he could have. Well, maybe if it wasn’t so gay.

 

“Hey, cowboy,” Jillian’s grasp wrapped around his upper arms and held him on the gurney,

“don’t go anywhere without a little help.”

 

He thought about waking up with the searing pain in his shoulder and hip, and that, over there, he never got out of bed at all. “Well, I only have half the practice at it that you do.”

 

“Touché.” She had the grace to wince.

 

With a sigh of acceptance he let Becky and Jillian brace him on either side, and he actually enjoyed the sharp pains that shot up his legs when his feet hit the ground. He looked at the small women trying to hold him upright with Lilliputian efforts. Men might have done a better job, cushioned his landing a little more, but right now neither woman seemed to notice that she was plastered, full-length, down his side. David noticed.

 

And smiled.

 

“I’m hungry.”

 

They both looked up at him. Maybe wondering why such normal words had fallen out of his mouth in such an absurd situation.

 

Becky shook her head, and he could feel the movement where her chest was smushed against him, just under his ribcage. “I forget how fast you two come around once you do wake.”

 

David stifled a perverted smile as Jillian shrugged and the movement drew her breast against him. She explained, “Once you come around, it’s just like any other day… except the part where you’re crazy.”

 

David actually laughed at that. He didn’t care to imagine the way that Abellard and Landerly must have grilled her. They had given him hell and they hardly knew him.

 

Her voice cut into his thoughts again. “So, let’s head over to the cafeteria.” She tugged on his arm, and he realized that even together, they couldn’t budge him.

 

“No.” He extricated himself from their grasp. “What I want is to drive my new Mercedes and go out somewhere and have someone cook me a nice big steak.”

 

“That sounds heavenly.”

 

They almost started drooling and he had a momentary vision of a bubbling hot tub, with the drooling faces inserted. Except he had once had Jillian in a bikini in a hot tub, and there had even been beer, and … nothing.

 

Becky’s voice chimed in, “I’m game. But where would we get a steak now?”

 

Still they proceeded with full hope that it was possible, the women shrugging into their jackets and Jillian tossing him his brown suede bomber after her hands were through her own sleeves. They filed out the tent flap, his fingers encircling the ring of keys in his pocket. A brief burst of relief settling into him that they were really there. That he had actually bought the car. Here.

 

He pulled the keys out, letting the short frigid gust of wind steal heat from his fingers. But he didn’t care.

 

Looking up to see how far the chattering women had gotten ahead of him, he stopped dead.

 

No way in hell.

 

But it was.

 

In the flesh.

 

“David.” The old man spoke through thin lips. His hair whiter and wispier than the last time they had seen each other. His chest a little more of a barrel, but in general he seemed the same. Certainly in great shape for a man of sixty-nine. And David knew, with the certainty that he knew himself, that if the weight was there, then the old man simply hadn’t been able to get it off. “Dad.”

 

His right hand shot out, years of reflex and training, and grasped the slightly wizened version that met it.

 

“How long has it been?” His father’s voice was cultured and smooth. Of course. Naturally, everything about him spoke of wealth and power, just the way he planned. And David felt the added pressure of another disadvantage: David Carter The First also hadn’t just awoken from a coma.

 

God, he hadn’t even thought to check the lists to see if his old man was alive over here. And here he was - in Tennessee of all places.

 

David’s chest settled into lead. He came to see me. He gathered himself and answered his father’s question. “Two years.”

 

“Too long.”

 

Not long enough. But he mustered a weak smile.

 

Jillian and Becky stood in the background of the portrait his father made, behind the space the old man commanded. He wished they would go back to their female chatter, and stop watching this drama unfold, because David knew what happened every time he and the old man talked.

 

Damn, he had really thought he was done with the man when his name had turned up on the lists. But that was there. It would be best to just get it over with. “What are you doing here, Dad?”

 

He felt his body shrink back to adolescence, his maturity level drop several notches. And things he had carefully shoved to the back of his life begin a steady seep into the here and now.

 

“I came to see my son.” He gestured with the brilliant mahogany cane David had only just realized he was carrying. “I hear you’re the wizard who discovered all this.”

 

Where the hell was the old man going? David waited for the knife to come out, the other shoe to drop. But he only nodded. Knowing, even as he did it, that Jillian and Becky were standing right there listening, and that they deserved their due. But he couldn’t bring himself to give it, not when The First stood in front of him.

 

“Very impressive.”

 

David heard, but didn’t believe, the praise. Years of experience had taught him that the better the complement was, the harder the knife came from behind. So he waited, and the old man spoke again. “Did you use my hotspot theories?”

 

Ah, the joy of honesty. “I used a few. But in the end they didn’t pan out.” Again he fronted what he hoped looked like a genuine smile, and promptly changed the subject. “Dad, I’d like you to meet Dr. Jillian Brookwood and I believe you’ve met Dr. Rebecca Sorenson several years ago. They’re both with the CDC.”

 

Jillian nodded, of course she had already figured it out. His father scanned the two women, keeping his smile in place. But David knew. Dad wore a full business suit, and a small tic of the muscle along his jaw revealed what he thought of Jillian’s scrubs and sneakers, and worse yet, Becky’s faded old jeans and hiking boots. But his father just nodded in return, and acknowledged the two women in a polite way. Only David knew that it was less than his usual greeting. The one he reserved for esteemed colleagues and ornament women.

 

The invitation he extended was with his usual graciousness. “I was wondering if you would do me the honor of joining me for dinner.”

 

David felt both stares swing his way. He warred between being grateful that the females deferred to him in front of his father, and frustrated knowing there was no polite way out.

Before he could answer, his father stepped up to the plate and steered the conversation. “I have my limo waiting.”

 

Great. He felt his insides congeal and sink. Becky’s jaw dropped open and Jillian tried to hide the lift of her eyebrows but didn’t quite swing it.

 

David conceded defeat, a position he was used to when The First was around. And his father smiled, a big genuine grin that ate at David. Was it because he was happy that people would join him for dinner, or because he had succeeded in manipulating the situation?

 

The driver stepped over, decked in his full black suit, and held the door while Becky and Jillian slid in the back. They resembled puppies running loose in a mansion - young, out of place, and oblivious to all of it. He followed his father into the