Blood Always Tells, Hilary Davidson [good book club books .txt] 📗

find outside of the bedroom. He went back in and touched her hand again, hoping he’d been wrong about everything. He wasn’t.

There was a noise downstairs, like the hinge of a door moving, and the floor creaked. Desmond realized he’d been wrong about one thing. He wasn’t in the house alone.

He took the stairs down to the main level, moving as stealthily as he could. On the foyer, he thought he saw something move out of the corner of his eye. He turned toward the parlor, ready to attack, but there was nothing there.

He made his way back to the kitchen again, bracing for a confrontation. But the only person there was Gary, still slumped over the table just as Desmond had left him.

“I think there’s someone in the house,” he murmured to the operator, before realizing he wasn’t holding his phone anymore. He didn’t remember putting it down. What the hell had he done with it? He stared around the kitchen, and his eyes fell on the cellar door. It was open, just a little. Had it been that way when he’d first come in? He didn’t remember that.

He moved closer to it. There was a sound coming from the basement.

He opened the door wider and saw a light burning downstairs. He started toward it, hearing the sound of a voice. He was halfway down the stairs before he realized the sound was coming from a television. It’s a trap, he realized. But as he turned to go back, the cellar door slammed and the lock slid shut. He raced up the stairs, throwing his body against the door. He did that again and again, and the splintery wood gave way. As he shouldered his way through the cellar door, he felt as if his legs might give out under him any second. Gary hadn’t moved, but Gary’s phone was gone.

An engine started up outside. By the time Desmond reached the front door, the Honda was disappearing into the trees. Desmond wanted to go after it, but he tripped down the wooden steps, falling into the dirt on his hands and knees. Get up, he commanded himself, but his body wouldn’t obey. His limbs were shaking as if a puppeteer were pulling his strings. Get up. Get up. He couldn’t even lift his head.

He heard the sound of a vehicle approaching the house. For all he could tell, someone was coming back to finish what they’d started in that house. He staggered to his feet, but he fell again, and this time, everything went dark.

Chapter 20

How does it feel to be a canary in a coal mine?” asked the woman hovering above him.

She was very pretty. Desmond, even in his quasi-awake state, noticed that. Her skin was a tawny gold, like honey. Her long dark hair was parted in the middle, framing her perfect oval of a face, and her amber eyes were flecked with pale green that looked like bits of old jade. As he came around, he noticed she was wearing a white coat and a stethoscope, even though she looked too young to be a doctor. He wasn’t entirely willing to trust that she was real, even though the noise filtering into the room from the hallway—shoes clattering, voices speaking, chairs scraping—didn’t belong in a dream.

“A canary?” Desmond’s brain tried to process that. He had been drifting in and out of consciousness and having strange visions. He’d come to when people lifted him onto a stretcher, back at… back at that damned house. He started to remember it all. It had felt as if a gorilla were crushing his chest, and he’d tried to call out. The sensation eased when they put a mask around his nose and mouth. Next thing he knew, he was in a hospital, lying on a gurney in a busy hallway. He’d talked to another doctor and a couple of nurses. He didn’t remember their names. They’d asked him questions. He knew they hadn’t answered his: how did his sister die? Somehow, he’d fallen asleep again. When he woke up, he was in a semiprivate room, but the other bed was empty. There was a hospital bracelet on his wrist. He was still in a fog of exhaustion, but he focused on pushing through it.

“That entire house was filled with carbon monoxide.” The doctor’s voice was soft. “It looks like there was a problem with the furnace. The leak probably started as soon as they turned it on. By the time you arrived at the house, it was full of carbon monoxide from top to bottom.”

Desmond swallowed hard. “I didn’t smell any gas.”

“You wouldn’t. Carbon monoxide is colorless, odorless, and tasteless. It’s not even irritating, at least not for a while. It’s almost impossible for people to detect.” She gave him a wan smile. “I’m Dr. Torres, by the way. We’re going to do some tests now, if that’s okay with you.”

“What if it’s not?”

She raised an eyebrow. “What do you think?”

“You’ll do them anyway. That’s what I thought.” He lifted his left arm to look at his watch, but it wasn’t on his wrist.

“It about four o’clock,” Dr. Torres said, answering his unspoken question.

But Desmond was distracted by something he didn’t expect to see. “What’s that on my hand?”

“It’s checking the amount of oxygen in your blood. We’re going to do a complete blood count and a—”

“Blood count? I wasn’t bleeding.”

“We check to see if you have enough red blood cells to carry oxygen, white blood cells to fight infection, and platelets for clotting. We’ll also do some metabolic tests. That’s mostly to see if the pH level in your blood has changed. Then we’ll put you into a hyperbaric chamber.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Because you passed out, we’re also going to assess your carboxyhemoglobin and methemoglobin levels. That way, we’ll make sure there’s no carbon monoxide in your bloodstream.”

“Is that what killed my sister?” Desmond asked.

“That’s what it looks like. From what we could put together, your sister and