I Died In His Sick Game novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Jane Doe

Abby wakes beside the shark biologist who pulled her from the water, and sees Bradley on TV telling the world she killed herself after abusing their daughter.

He was too long for the chair.

His legs stuck out halfway across the room, and one hand still held a clipboard of wet paper on his knee.

He had a short brown beard and a knife on his belt, and he snored a little.

I stood at the foot of my own bed and didn't know which of us to look at.

A nurse came in at six and touched his shoulder.

"Mr. Sayward. You should go home."

He woke up all at once.

"Is she worse?"

"She's the same. The doctor says it could go either way."

He rubbed his face. "Then I'll stay."

"You don't even know her name."

"No," he said. "That's sort of why."

The nurse sighed and checked the machine.

"Talk to her, then. Some of them hear."

She left.

He looked at my body for a long time.

"This is stupid," he told it.

Then he cleared his throat.

"Okay. Hi. I'm Eli. I tag bull sharks for a living, so I'm not great at conversation. Ask anybody. Ask my ex-wife."

I came around the bed and sat on the windowsill.

"Bull sharks are the only big sharks that can live in fresh water. They swim right up the rivers. I've got one tagged that went forty miles up the Caloosahatchee. Number seventeen. She's a menace."

He turned the clipboard over in his hands.

"I put receivers in that bay out at Pelican Key back in April. Every shark that swims past one gets logged. And there were three fins in there that went around and around in a perfect loop. Same speed. Same circle. Day and night."

"Real sharks wander. Real sharks get bored. And half the real sharks out here have my tags in them. These never pinged once."

He was quiet.

"I called the Coast Guard twice. They said it's private property. I should have gone in myself."

I slid off the windowsill.

"Yesterday morning a big white yacht came in and anchored past the reef. So I went out to look. My sister relayed to the yacht for me because my radio's junk. Nobody answered."

He looked at my hand on the blanket, at the cuts.

"Then I saw something pale in the water, a mile out past the reef. Face down."

His mouth went crooked.

"For about one second I thought you were a manatee. I'm sorry. I'd like that kept between us."

I laughed.

I hadn't laughed in ten months without it hurting, and this didn't hurt.

"You weren't breathing when I got you in the boat," he said. "So now you owe me. I'd like to know your name."

I leaned in close to hear him better.

Something snapped.

It was a rubber band I hadn't known was stretched, and I was flung straight down into the bed.

Into the weight.

Into the pain.

There was a tube in my throat, and it was choking me.

My eyes wouldn't open.

My hand jerked on the blanket.

"Hey," he said. "Hey. Nurse! Her hand moved. Nurse!"

Then it all went dark for a while.

When I came up again, the tube was gone, and the light through the blinds was the gold of late afternoon.

My throat felt like I'd swallowed a shell.

He was in the chair, awake this time, with a paper cup of ice chips.

"Tilly," I said.

It came out as a croak.

He leaned forward. "Who's Tilly?"

"My daughter. I put her on a raft."

He put an ice chip on my lip, and I nearly cried at the cold.

"There was a raft," he said. "The yacht crew pulled a little kid out of the water. I saw it through the binoculars. I watched them get her aboard."

He held my eyes.

"That's why I went for you."

I cried then.

He didn't tell me to stop. He just kept handing me ice chips.

"Those fins," I said, when I could. "They came for me every time I swam."

"They'd have come at you on their track. There's a rail under the water. I went back with a mask this morning and found it. They're machines, ma'am. Some resort's idea of a show."

Ten months.

Ten months I'd been afraid of a toy train.

"Where did you find me?"

"A mile out, in the current. It was carrying you toward the Gulf. You'd swallowed about half the bay."

"Thank you."

"You can thank me by not dying. The paperwork's terrible."

He glanced at the whiteboard.

"They've got you down as unknown female. You want to give me something better?"

"Abby," I said.

I didn't give him the last name.

He nodded like that was plenty. "Abby."

The nurse came in, saw me awake and ran for a doctor.

When they left, Eli reached up and turned on the TV over the bed so I'd have something to look at besides him.

"Sorry. It's mostly game shows."

It wasn't a game show.

It was the steps of a building in Naples, and a podium with microphones, and Bradley.

He wore a dark suit. He looked thinner.

Kendra stood just behind his shoulder in a white dress, holding a tissue.

Bradley's voice came out of the TV, steady and sad.

"On Friday night a woman's body was recovered from a lake on my property. The island where my wife had been staying."

Staying.

"Police found a note. I'm asking for privacy for my family."

He looked straight into the camera.

"My wife took her own life after abusing our daughter."

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