01 Do You Believe in Magic - The Children of Merlin (8 page)

Her eyes were still smiling.
“You could say that.”

Great! That was good. They had
something in common after all. He’d forgotten his food. But now he
took a bite of soggy green beans. She got up and came to stand
nearer. Under the table, his loins responded to her nearness. She
was peering at his nightstand.

“Jack Kerouac, huh? I liked that
one.”

“Me too. Too bad I finished
it.”

“Mr. Tremaine, time for your
medication.” An older nurse bustled into the room.

“Well, I better head out,”
Maggie said, edging away from the bed.

“You don’t have to go,” Tris
protested. But she’d already slipped behind the motherly nurse and
was heading for the door.

“Yeah, I do,” she said,
pausing.

“Your … your business maybe
keeping you in Reno overnight?”

She shook her head. “Got to get
back to Elroy’s.”

He swallowed. “Yeah. Yeah, of
course. Well, thanks a lot for coming by.”

“Not a big deal.”

And she was gone. He wanted to
shout at the motherly nurse for giving Maggie an excuse to leave.
Hell, he hadn’t even gotten a number. He pushed away the tray, not
caring that the meal was half-eaten or that his erection would be
revealed. “I don’t need anything for pain,” he gritted.

“
Mr.
Tremaine,” the nurse
said in that firm mother voice that always got to him. “This is
not
discretionary. Antibiotics and pain medication. Right
here on the order sheet.” She tapped a clipboard. “You behave and
give me your arm or I’ll hook you up to an IV and put you in
restraints. How will you go home Thursday if I tell the doctor you
have to be restrained because you can’t be trusted to take
medication?”

Disgusted, he held out the arm
with the shunt on the inside forearm. Some rebel he was.

CHAPTER FIVE

No news of a fatal accident
on Highway 50. Damn. He’d have to drive out there and find the
body. The body would be there. It
had
to be there. No one
could have survived that hit.

Jason chewed his lip and
flipped the playing card labeled with the name of the hotel, “The
Nugget,” toward the ice bucket. It fluttered onto the carpet. Shit,
shit, shit! He got up and paced the room. The old woman hadn’t
called him. Yet. He swallowed three Tums extra strength and about
five ibuprofen. That might be counter productive. His ulcer was
acting up but nothing was touching his headaches either. He hadn’t
had headaches like that since
.…

Since he was fifteen. The face
he hated flickered in his mind’s eye. He couldn’t think about that.
He rubbed his temples. The headaches would stop once he was sure
Tremaine was dead.

And even if he wasn’t dead,
Jason still had time to find the son of a bitch in a hospital and
finish the job. The old woman wouldn’t ever have to know he’d
failed the first time.

Taking Tremaine out in the
middle of a hospital was too public though, even with a power like
Jason’s. Tremaine might struggle. If Jason lost concentration the
cloaking would fail. But he could sweet talk some girl nurse into
telling him when Tremaine would be discharged. Jason would be
there. Better yet, send someone Tremaine would trust. A woman. Say
she was from his family. When he got Tremaine somewhere
private
….
He’d enjoy that part, take his time. Then he was
home free. Free, except that the old woman could threaten him with
the unthinkable.

Did Fallon have a hospital? He popped
three more Tums.

*****

Maggie stalked out through the
busy halls of the hospital. Okay, she’d done her duty. She’d gone
to visit him in the hospital. And awkward as it was, she was glad
she’d come. The guy had no one who cared about him. She’d seen the
lines of pain around his eyes. He was stuck in bed, having finished
his book, with only TV for company.

The fact that he made her
practically a drooling, lusting idiot wasn’t his fault, exactly. It
was her fault. She had
no
idea what was happening to her.
Not that she hadn’t known what would happen if she went to see him.
Why else had she talked herself out of it for three whole days? The
fact that all her effort to keep him from her every waking thought
had failed just meant she was weak and stupid and desperate for a
man.

Not.
I’m fine on my own and
piss on anyone who says otherwise.

Then why had she driven all the
way into Reno to see him? She’d had to make up some lame excuse
about buying an automatic watering system. A child could have seen
that she didn’t have enough money for an expensive system like
that.

She passed the gift shop and
headed out. Too bad she hadn’t brought him anything. You were
supposed to bring something, weren’t you? What did you get a guy
like that? Not flowers.

A book. He needed a book. She
did a U-turn and headed into the gift shop. A hospital gift shop
wouldn’t carry something as classy as
On the Road
. Didn’t
matter. He was on pain meds. He needed something simple and
amusing. She came to the rack of magazines first.
Cosmo
? He
might enjoy the sex quiz, but—no.
Playboy
? She wasn’t
pandering to that impulse. She could just see him jerking off in a
hospital bed.

Oh. Bad image. She blinked,
trying to get it out of her mind. It was a
real
stubborn
image.
Men’s Fitness
. Didn’t need that. The way his biceps
bulged under that hospital gown.…

Image also bad.
Okay,
stop with the magazines. Books. She came in for a book. She scanned
the next rack. They had maybe twenty titles. Not a romance. A guy
like that didn’t have a romantic bone in his body and wouldn’t be
caught dead with one of those. Mystery? Kinda complicated if he was
on pain meds. But hell, he’d been reading Kerouac. Okay. Mystery.
Sue Grafton? Maybe. Ah! There was a new James Lee Burke.
Hard-boiled Louisiana detective story. Masculine but with some of
the most beautiful language she’d ever read. Perfect.

It wasn’t like it was expensive
or anything. $7.99 plus tax. So it wouldn’t mean much. “Can you
just send this up to room 808?” she asked the spiky-haired
cashier.

“You don’t want to take it
yourself?” the kid asked.

“No. No I don’t.”

Like hell she didn’t. She wanted
to go back up to that room and take his good hand and stroke her
palm up the warmth of his forearm with its crisp hair to that
biceps covered with tats then up farther under the hospital gown.
Exactly how far did that pattern go?

Instead, she was never going to
see him again.

That was good. Disruption over.
Life back to normal. He would go on with his life like nothing
happened. Because for him nothing did. It was she who was
topsy-turvy right now, unable to get her bearings. She dashed
across the walkway to the parking building.

She’d paused outside the room
waiting for her heart to stop pounding long enough to hear he was
going home Thursday. His family would pick him up day after
tomorrow. End of story.

She stopped just at the stairs.
No, they wouldn’t. She’d be willing to bet he’d never even called
them. He’d probably just take a cab to a motel. Alone.

Not her business. She was going home
tonight and taking her horses down to LA tomorrow, and that was
that.

*****

How long did this take? Damn it,
he’d been sitting in discharge for twenty frigging minutes in a
Goddamned wheelchair with the footrest up to keep his leg elevated,
waiting for the special paperwork he needed to be discharged
without anyone to claim him. The cab would be here any minute. He
hoped to God they didn’t tell the babe of a surgeon. He wanted to
be outta here before she could sic a social worker on him. He
juggled a plastic bag full of drugs to go, prescriptions for more,
and discharge instructions, along with crutches and a shopping bag
holding the stuff salvaged from his cycle and the new book. Teresa
had cut one leg off his jeans above the knee and helped him into
his shirt. Were orderlies supposed to make yummy noises while they
dressed patients? She’d admitted she bribed her male colleague to
let her have “dress Tris duty.” Highlight of her week, the way
she’d been grinning. Once he would have bedded her without a
thought. As it was, he was a dreadful disappointment to her.
Join the club, Teresa.

Maggie had sent up that book. It
must have been her, though there was no inscription and the nurse
who brought it in just said the clerk in the gift shop left it.

It might mean she cared about
him. He liked that idea. $7.99 worth of caring anyway. He’d
finished the book. It was long but he was a quick reader. He was
going to keep it. Not because it reminded him of her, of course.
Just because it was a great book. He’d be reading a lot more James
Lee Burke. Man after his own heart, tight, a little closed. But one
who thought up language so beautiful it could make you grin.

A boozy broad who could be
anywhere between fifty and seventy tottered in on high heels in a
low-cut red dress. She was smoking a cigarette.

“I’m here for Tristram
Tremaine,” she announced to the girl at the desk in a voice hoarse
from years of smoking. Old enough to be his mother, but definitely
not his mother.

Who the hell was this?

“Put out that cigarette, ma’am,”
the volunteer admonished. “You’re in a hospital.”

“Oh.” The woman seemed shocked
to see the cigarette in her hand. Was she drunk? “Oh, okay.” She
looked around for an ashtray, like there’d be one in a hospital,
and then finally went back out through the sliding doors to the
trash receptacle with the sand on top outside. After stubbing it
out, she tottered back in. “Now where is my darling boy?”

“Right over there, ma’am.” The
volunteer gestured toward Tris and his wheelchair. If she’d
actually known who he was, he’d have been hard to miss. “We thought
he was checking out on his own. Nice that he has someone to take
care of him.”

Like hell. Who
was
this
broad?

“Darling!” The woman whooshed
over to him, a very unmotherly light in her eyes. “How is my baby
boy?” She took his face in her veined hands and planted a sloppy
kiss on each cheek.

“Who are you?” Tris asked
through gritted teeth.

“My oh-so-handsome little
invalid is crabby, is he?” She smiled a crooked smile revealing
tobacco-stained teeth and stood. “Well, Mama has a wonderful
surprise for you.” Her sly grin matched her sloe-eyed “come-hither”
look. “Mama’s gonna take care of all your needs.”

Right. Like Tris was going to
dip his wick in
that
inkwell. A yellow cab pulled up outside
the sliding doors. His or not, he didn’t care. “I’ll just take that
cab.”

The orderly behind him said, “In
that case you have to wait for the paperwork to come down so you
can sign out. A social worker is on the way with it.”

Busted.

“No need,” Tris’s “mother” said
to the orderly. “He’ll be coming with me. I can sign if you want,
and we can go right now.” She shot a significant look at Tris.

“Fine. Let’s just get the hell
out of here.” Whatever it took. Whoever this woman was. He was sick
of this place. He’d ditch her for the cab once she signed him
out.

“You got it, baby-doll.”

The little volunteer brought a
clipboard over. The boozy woman signed with a flourish.

“Let’s go,” Tris growled.

The woman stepped behind his
chair and wheeled it through the front doors. A Cadillac
convertible sporting a cherry paint job in fire engine red and
restored chrome was parked in the West Discharge Circle. Tris ran
an appreciative eye over its long silhouette and discreet fins. A
’67, if he wasn’t mistaken.

“Where’d you get the car?” he
asked in spite of himself.

“Never mind, my little stud
muffin. We gotta hurry. Got an appointment to keep.”

What appointment? “Thanks for
springing me. But now I’ll take the cab.” He set the bags with his
earthly possessions on the ground while he fumbled with his
crutches. He could only use one right now because of the sling and
that made him a little wobbly.

“No dice, handsome. I got my
orders. You’re coming with me.” She grabbed his other crutch and
whirled to open the back door of the Caddy.

“Orders from whom? Who sent you
anyway?”

“Your mother.”

More likely Kemble. Kemble knew
everything. Of course. The insurance. Would charges have hit
already? He should have declared himself indigent. Only that felt
like cheating. The thought of his family knowing he wrecked himself
and sending this woman to collect him like she was picking up trash
just made him feel sick.

*****

Maggie pulled her truck slowly
down the street next to the huge hospital complex, looking for the
West Discharge Circle. That’s where the operator said patients were
released. Her windows were rolled down. Eighty-five was hot when
you didn’t have air. Lord knew what she was doing here. She’d
already be in LA if she’d loaded the mustangs and left when she’d
planned. She’d watered the horses, fed them. She’d cleaned Mr. Bad
Boy’s blood out of the truck. Then she’d been reduced to making up
odd jobs around the shack and the lean-to that held the hay to keep
herself busy and her thoughts off him.

Hadn’t worked. And she wasn’t
even good at lying to herself. She’d known for two days what she
was waiting for. Thursday morning. Just stupid. And you can’t fix
stupid, as the comedian used to say. But she couldn’t get Mr. Biker
out of her mind and she just knew he was going to go to some crummy
motel, and … and she just didn’t want to see him alone and in
pain.

Oh, hell. She just wanted to see
him again.