Page 7 of Two Kinds of Stranger (Eddie Flynn #9)

Elly

There was a dream.

The longest nightmare Elly had ever experienced.

First, there was darkness.

Then, Elly found herself standing at the top of a staircase in Grand Central.

In the subway. She was watching a yellow suitcase as it tumbled down the long staircase, turning and whirling through the air, making deafening bangs as its corners hit the stairs and then launched upwards, and then back down, that sound hurting her ears every time, echoing in her chest, her entire body feeling the impact vibration, and the steps went on, and on, and on, down and down into nothingness . . .

Here and there, for mere moments, she saw different images.

A man with round, wire-rimmed glasses and curly brown hair.

He had a kindly face and a white coat, like a doctor, and thick lips that parted as he stared down at her.

His hand on her brow. His thumb gently tugging her eyelids, and then a blinding white light that burned her eyes and stayed there even after she closed them.

She saw him a few times.

Her stomach hurt.

Her throat hurt.

Her head was pounding.

And the dream . . .

The suitcase thumping off the sharp corners of the stairs, tumbling, and then thumping, and every hit was a pulse that sent a shockwave of pain through her skull.

Pounding pain.

And then her eyes opened, and she was looking at a dark ceiling. Painted white. It must’ve been nighttime.

But her body was surrounded by a white veil hanging down. Like the veil that lines a coffin . . .

Elly felt the panic rise. She wasn’t supposed to be dead. She couldn’t be.

She was twenty-seven years old. And she wasn’t dead.

But the veil was so white and clear.

Slowly, her eyes adjusted, depth perception returning.

It wasn’t a coffin veil. It was the curtain surrounding a bed.

Her hospital bed.

Elly’s head hurt so bad. Her throat. She couldn’t speak and her stomach was in pieces. Like she had swallowed a bellyful of acid.

She tried to feel her tummy, but she couldn’t move her left arm. Her right hand moved, and she was able to hold it in front of her eyes. There was a sharp jab of pain on the back of her hand. She saw the butterfly needle taped there, and a drip line attached to it.

But her left arm would only move a little.

She had no memory. No idea how she got there.

The effort of moving her right arm was too much. Her eyes felt heavy, and she couldn’t keep them open no matter how hard she tried.

The darkness. Welcome. Restful.

And then the dream . . . the suitcase, and the noise of it hitting the stairs . . .

‘Elly . . . ’ said a voice.

She opened her eyes and realized instantly it was no longer night. Sun came in behind her. She could see it burning the doctor’s white coat, making the sunbeam seem otherworldly, like a shaft of light from heaven catching an angel’s wing.

It was him. The kind doctor with the wire-rimmed glasses and thick lips.

‘Elly . . . do you know where you are?’

She tried to speak, but her throat and her mouth were so dry.

Elly tried to move her left hand, to gesture to her mouth, but found once again that it would not obey her.

She was too weak to sit up. Too frightened to look.

There was a strange sensation in that arm.

Her left forearm and wrist felt so cold. Like it was stuck in a freezer.

Had she been in an accident?

Had she lost her left arm?

She motioned with her right hand, feeling the pull of the needle again, dragging the drip line. Her fingers touched her cracked lips. They felt like grade-five sandpaper.

The doctor nodded. He dabbed something cold on her lips. Ice maybe, or cool water captured in a linen cloth. It felt good. So soothing. Like drinking from a cold mountain stream after days in a hot desert.

‘Hos . . . hospit-al . . . ’ Elly said, her throat aching.

‘That’s right. You’re in hospital. You’re in Mount Sinai and you’re going to be okay now. My name is Dr. Jones . . .’

‘How . . . Wh-whe-whe-when?’

‘It’s okay. You’ve been here for four days. You’re going to be just fine.’

Elly blinked. Licked her sore lips. And, like a sudden flood, her recent memories came rushing back, her consciousness filled.

James, her new husband. The love of her life. Seeing him in bed with her best friend, not six months since her wedding day.

The explosion of attention.

The hurt.

The betrayal.

Even though he disgusted her, Elly still loved her husband.

That’s why it hurt so much. She was not enough for him.

He wanted the lifestyle she could offer, but he didn’t want her.

It wasn’t like that when they were first dating.

She met James through a dating app. They got talking and he seemed wonderfully, exceptionally, beautifully normal.

He liked nice clothes, working out, books, movies, and he had wit.

No baggage. No debt. He wasn’t an asshole – something increasingly rare in online dating.

He wasn’t controlling. He was supportive.

Clean. A junior trader on Wall Street with a career path, good teeth and a health plan.

They had been dating a month when Elly introduced James to her friends.

At first, Harriet couldn’t understand why Elly was so into him.

Harriet wasn’t into normal guys – she wanted someone special.

It was James’s normality that made him special, at least to Elly.

She didn’t know exactly when James and Harriet began seeing each other on the side, but she guessed it had happened not long after James proposed.

Harriet always wanted what she couldn’t have.

She’d met Elly during a shoot for fashion week.

Elly, being a social-media influencer, and Harriet a catwalk model, they had hit it off right away.

They had gone out for cocktails after the shoot and neither of them could remember much about the evening except that they were clearly destined to be best friends.

Harriet never felt human to Elly – she was some kind of goddess who didn’t play by the rules of society, work, culture or anything else.

And being around someone like that often felt like carrying a burning torch.

It lit up the world around you, but you realized that sooner or later the torch was either going to burn out, or it would burn you.

And now the shame.

The drunken phone calls to James that he didn’t answer.

All of it hit Elly again, afresh, in milliseconds, and with it came a tsunami of emotions.

And then the man on the subway stairs. Logan. The man with the scar on his chin.

The broken yellow suitcase. His apartment. The identical broken suitcases in his trash bags. The water. The tiny pinprick hole in the carton.

Vomiting. Passing out on the street.

Elly felt as if she might throw up again.

‘There are men here from NYPD,’ said Dr. Jones. ‘They have to speak to you . . . ’

Good , thought Elly. She’ll tell them what happened. She must’ve been poisoned. That man with the suitcase and the broken ankle, he tried to poison her. God knows what would’ve happened if she hadn’t made it out of that apartment.

She shifted her weight, tried to put her hands on the bed to sit up, but her left arm wouldn’t move. Her head throbbed violently at the effort.

‘My a-arm,’ said Elly, still unable to move it.

‘I’ve told them they should wait, but I can’t stop them talking to you,’ said Dr. Jones.

He stepped out of her view.

Another man appeared in front of her. He wore a plaid shirt and had ID badges hung around his neck from a yellow lanyard.

‘Elly Parker . . . ’ he said.

Elly turned away from him. He had cold eyes and Elly’s stomach clenched. She thought she was going to be sick. She turned to her left, gasped for air. She hated being sick, and didn’t want to vomit on the cop.

It was then she saw her left arm. She realized why it wouldn’t move and why it felt cold.

Her left wrist was handcuffed to the metal bed rails.

‘I’m Detective Sacks, Mrs. Parker, you’re under arrest for the murders of James Parker and Harriet Rothschild.’