“Pamela, my name is Detective Kate Morgan. Can you hear me?”
With her arms wrapped around her chest and shivering, the woman nodded.
“Can you speak?” she asked.
And the woman nodded again, then stilled.
“Now, can you tell me who you are?”
“I’m Pamela,” she said in a faint whisper. “Simon told me that you were coming.”
*
The message onSimon’s phone was short and terse.
We got her. We’re taking her to the hospital to be checked over.
He sank back down on the bed in shock. “Thank God,” he whispered. “Finally something decent happening in Pamela’s life.”
At least he thought it was decent. He didn’t know. Something was still nagging at him. Something that he should have noted but hadn’t yet. He sent back a message.Thank God.
He received a happy emoji in response. With that, he grabbed a coffee and sat back down in the corner of his couch, wondering if all the incessant background noise and the smells on steroids and everything would stop. Now that Pamela had been rescued, surely the connection wasn’t necessary anymore. At least he hoped so. It’s just so hard to know what was going on.
As he sat here, he noted a cleanliness to the air that he hadn’t felt in quite a while. Not so much that it was a problem, just that it was different. He smiled. Yet something was going on, something frustratingly nagging Simon in the back of his mind that he couldn’t seem to get to.
And, as he settled on the couch, lying here, he just let his mind empty. This was the most bizarre case he’d ever had. But then he’d only had very few of them. Smiling, starting to feel a whole lot better, he got up and had a quick shower, pulled off the sheets, then made the bed with fresh, clean bedding.
When he came out again to the living room, he sat back down on the couch to study the beautiful view in front of him. And then it hit him. He didn’t know what it was yet, but that feeling of wrongness was building and building and building. He grabbed his phone to call her, and Kate answered right away, her voice much happier now. “Something’s wrong,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know, but something’s wrong. I’m sure of it.”
“Like what?” she snapped.
“I don’t know, but it has to do with Pamela.”
“Okay, if you say so. We’re still at the hospital, and she’s getting checked over right now. She hasn’t done any talking yet.”
“Right. Does she have a phone with her? Or a laptop? Anything?”
“She has a phone, but it’s got no battery in it.”
“Interesting, that doesn’t ring true.”
“What are you saying?” she asked curiously.
“I’m not sure. I’m not sure at all. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“But something must be.”
“Yes, and I know I shouldn’t be saying this, and I have nothing to back it up, but…”
“Come on. Just spit it out,” she said impatiently.
“I don’t trust her. There. I said it.”
“Jesus, you’re the one who sent us there to rescue her.”