Edie dried his face with a paper towel, then backed away. “I don’t know. I mean I don’t think so.” She moved closer, breathing quickly. “I mean I think we can stop this from getting any worse. Lian’s smart. He would have settled into a lookout position, waited for backup, us or anyone who could help. Do you really think Kathy and Angel are with him?”
Scott froze. He heard something in the hall. What the hell was that?
“Did you hear that?” Edie whispered.
Scott nodded and turned to the door. Rather than waiting for it to come crashing open, he decided to go out with a bang.
Edie’s eyes opened wide. “Scott, no! Don’t!”
Chapter 5
Hearing footsteps in the hall, she steeled herself for what was ahead. Her chest wounds had soaked through the bandages and she’d just finished putting extra wraps over the top. Her latest encounter had left her needing more stitches and she’d hastily sown those in herself using black thread and a needle from a sewing kit. She didn’t expect to see armed escorts, but the unexpected was always a part of what she did.
Coming for you, Scott Evers. Time to settle up.
She was pleased to see that Scott seemed more incapacitated than she’d thought, but surprised to see the bitch was still at his side. She’d thought she’d rid herself of the girl.
His eyes were tired, she decided, gazing at him from seclusion as he was wheeled passed. She had little doubt he was every inch the killer she knew him to be. A wounded tiger was still a tiger — and perhaps even more dangerous and deadly than a tiger that didn’t know what was coming.
How had he known where to look?
It was the question she hoped to ask him as he died at her hand. Far more pressing though was her knowledge that there was little time left before the true nature of the situation revealed itself. She wondered if he even remembered their chance meetings and whether he knew he’d been an unwitting co-conspirator. He hadn’t recognized her in the infirmary, but then she’d been a brown-eyed brunette with a few too many buttons open on her blouse the first time they’d met.
Growing up, her curvaceous figure was invariably what most men fixated on. Very few seemed to look into her eyes when she talked to them. Even if they faked it well enough to fool others, she knew what they were eyeballing and it wasn’t her face. Her face, in truth, was rather plain. That plainness though helped her blend in and become someone else whenever she needed to. An added bonus was that almost everyone expected a buxom blonde to be a few pennies short of a dollar, even though she’d been blessed with an exceptional intellect.
Getting off the Kearsarge had been easy and all she’d really had to do was get back to the infirmary after lockdown, climb into a sickbed and wait. With all the excitement and ship-wide alerts, the rest took care of itself. The hard part was making darned sure she was going to be evacuated to the same destination as Evers.
She doubted he’d understand when she finally faced him. She was a good chameleon. Invisible even when she was the center of attention. She’d learned that trick readily enough as an early bloomer. Boys never saw her; they saw everything about her but her.
She’d chased her dreams of becoming someone else as a theatre major. Someone who was seen. Someone normal. She’d played Ivy in a performance of August: Osage County, Sister James in Shanley’s Doubt, but any joy she felt was fleeting, disappearing with the stage. Her true talent as an actor was learning how to transform herself to not only become like someone else but to be someone else.
Now, she’d show them. Everyone who never saw her would soon see nothing but her. She’d done everything to ensure this.
No one will ever forget my face again.
Not even the doctor who diagnosed her manic tendencies, which set in deeply in her teen years, saw her, crushing her hopes of ever being seen by anyone. When she told her step-mother, she looked right through her too, only seeing impending medical bills and worrying about how much new treatments and pills were going to cost. Prescriptions for Lamictal, among others, to stabilize her moods turned into prescriptions for Zyprexa and Symbryax to combat what her psychiatrists called antisocial and antipsychotic behaviors.
Of psychiatrists, she knew much and had seen many, going through them as rapidly as some went through boxes of Kleenex. Each time becoming a little smaller, a little less than she’d been before until there was nothing left, not one trace of the child in her who wanted to be happy.
Finally, fed up, she jumped up from the latest couch and shouted, “I’m not going to be your guinea pig. I’m not going to be a zombie anymore!”
Her psycho-analyst/psychiatrist ignored her outburst and told her very calmly, “No one wants you to be anything but you. There are others medications, other approaches we can try.”
She loved how doctors always tried to include her with those little two-letter words — we or us — as if, she had any say in anything done to her or for her. “There is nothing left to try,” she told him. “There’s no fixing me. I am what I am. Isn’t that enough?”
His sudden smile was meant to disarm her. “Of course, that’s something we can talk about. It takes us back to the crux of everything. How you wonder why nothing seems to fit. How you wonder what’s wrong with you.”
“I’m trying to be better,” she said. “Can’t you see that? I want to fit in. I’m not a square peg in a round hole. I’m not a swan born to ducks. I’m not a problem to be solved.”
“Very good,” he said, chuckling. “Thinking about the problem is the problem, isn’t it? It’s past time for you to look out and see the world. Look out and embrace the world as the world embraces you.”
And she did look out and embrace the world. It became not about her problems… but the world’s problems.
She channeled her energy not into her frustrations with herself, but her frustrations with the world. Philanthropic goals were the perfect match for everything she wanted to do to cure the ills she saw. She started volunteering, charity drives to help disabled children, walks to cure breast cancer, bell ringing to support the homeless. The sick, the tired, the hungry, the homeless, they saw her. They looked into her eyes and she looked into theirs. They were grateful, humble, sincere.
She worked harder and harder, fighting for their causes, fighting against the need to sleep, eat or do anything else. She was selfless. She was bold and brash, believing she could save the world — and never listening to anyone who said otherwise.
There are no ills that can’t be cured.
“Help fight ebola in Africa,” they said. “Help bring the word of God to the godless,” they told her. “Help save Thai children from the sex trade.” “Help save the seas from overfishing.” Yes, yes, yes, and yes. And it was through this string of yeses she found her darkest hours. Depression that swallowed her so forcefully she suddenly saw the world for what it was, suddenly understood what its true ills were. It wasn’t oil sheiks or robber barons. It wasn’t institutionalized corruption or criminal syndicates. It wasn’t excess or poverty or hunger or disease.
How wrong I was, she thought, I can’t save the world. There’s no saving the world. No one person can save the world.