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Chapter 3

Strangeness of situation hit me suddenly and it occurred to me that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this. I was dreaming, or hallucinating from shock and malnutrition. Either Pendergast had never shown up at all or he had shown up and been killed, and I was still captive. The correct scenario depended upon the point at which I’d begun to hallucinate. I decided that believing myself to be here freezing with Pendergast was infinitely preferable to either alternative, and decided to just go with it. What else could I do?

We were lying on our sides, arms about one another, and his weight was pinching my inner elbow. I shifted and he seemed to sense the problem and raised himself enough for me to move my arm up under his neck. Very considerate for an illusion. His arms stayed around my waist, hands on my back, icy through the thin material. We lay face to face, still shaking, staring at one another, and for the first time I noticed a mark near his right temple, a bloody abrasion. I palpated the area, relieved to find no obvious fracture. He winced and turned his face away slightly.

“What happened here?” I asked my considerate illusion.

“D-doctor, I will tell you everything in d-due time. But right now, we need to get warm. Tell me, where is your worst physical pain at this moment?”

My lower back throbbed in answer, and I pressed into him as though fleeing the pain. “My back.” My mind’s eye tried to conjure a vision of what had happened to my back and I blanked it out. “My lower back.”

“Very well.” His hands moved to the area and just having them there seemed to lessen the throbbing. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath that ratcheted in and out as he trembled. Another. Another. His face smoothed, minute lines of stress disappearing even as I noticed them. His shaking subsided subtly.

Meditation, I thought, not surprised. I’d been to his apartment at the Dakota once, on a hurried stopover to pick up some needed information. He’d led the way back through far more rooms than seemed possible, given the dimensions of the building, and we’d passed many closed doors. I’d glanced into one that was open and seen the nearest thing to a sensory deprivation chamber I ever expect to see outside a laboratory. There were no windows. The large room was painted totally black, and would’ve seemed only dark if not for one pendant light that glowed softly over a fiber mat in the middle of the floor. I’d nodded to myself, thinking that meditation would go a long way toward explaining his usually placid exterior and seemingly calm interior. After awhile, I’d known that the calmness didn’t always come easily and had come to suspect that, for Pendergast, meditation was more of a necessity than a choice.

His hands seemed to be getting warmer. His palms. Where they lay against my lower back, heat began to bloom, making me shiver harder momentarily before a relaxing warmth began to spread outward from where he touched me. I felt myself settling into the mattress, pulling away from him a little, and he felt it, too, and pulled me gently back against him. I took a breath and he anticipated my question and whispered, “Shhhh...relax...”

His heat chased cold chills through me and I shuddered as they peaked and disappeared. Breathing more deeply and slowly, he moved his hands apart, one higher toward my head and one lower, cupping my buttocks in such a way that his palm radiated heat directly onto my perineum. Warmth grew between his spread hands like hot oil trailing up and down my spine. He took another deep breath and opened his eyes, considering me silently for a time, apparently satisfied with what he saw.

“How do you feel, doctor?” His voice was the drowsy drawl of a thoroughly mint-juleped old scoundrel lounging in the Louisiana summer sun. His eyes, lashes lowered to half mast, glimmered a warmer blue.

I opened my mouth and nothing came out. My eyelids drooped and I had to jerk myself back from the edge of a doze. I recovered to see him smiling slightly.

“What the hell was that?” The question was meant to be humorous, the delivery, incredulous. What came out was my own mint julep murmur.

“I’ll show you.” He shifted slightly. “Put your hands on me. Here...”

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