Page 2 of Wanted
Her jaw clenched and her stare hardened as she stared fixedly at the wall.
“Okay.” The chair creaked as the man, Marcus, got up. Dragging the chair behind him, he rounded the foot of the bed. Out of the periphery of her vision, she noted him via the most abstract details—the snug fit of his worn jeans, the glint of silver off his rodeo belt buckle, the hug of his white polo shirt, and the bulge of his muscular forearms as he came around the end of the bed with a slight limp to his step and set the padded chair down directly in front of her.
Clean shaven, he looked to be in his mid-forties. His skin was tan and weathered from years in the sun. His eyes were stone gray, she noted, fighting not to look at him directly but to keep her glare fixed on the wall. His hair was brown and just long enough to tie back into a ponytail.
Giving the crease at the thighs of his jeans a tug, he favored his right leg as he sat back down. Elbows on knees and big hands folded together, he brought himself down to her level, physically blocking her stubborn view so she had no choice but to look at him.
Except she did have a choice, and she refused. She glared at his ear instead and did her best not to satisfy his invasion of her privacy with even the smallest reaction.
“Like I said,” he continued mildly. “My name is Marcus Hawke, and I was asked to take your case.”
She already had a detective. She didn’t need another one.
“I know you’ve been through a lot,” he said. “Obviously, you’d rather not talk to me, but I’m here anyway. So, unless you tell me to go fuck myself, then I’ll do the talking and you can do all the listening. Agreed?”
Her jaw clenched, but Pony said nothing.
“I’ll take that as consent. Okay, let’s do this.” Tipping his head, Marcus put his face directly into her staring path. Refusing to give him the satisfaction of making her acknowledge him, she glared at him directly now. “Your name is Anna Mitchell.”
She could see it in his dark, knowing eyes. He was waiting to see if she would protest his use of it.
“Or I could call you Pony, if you prefer.” He waited again, and only after her lengthy silence added, “No? Well, Anna it is, then.”
Master Ethen he was not, not even close.
“Your life has gone through a hell of an upheaval,” Marcus noted, seeming not the slightest bit bothered by her disrespectful stare. “Unfortunately, if I’m involved, then the upheavals aren’t yet over.”
He shifted in his chair far enough to reach into his back jeans pocket and pull out a thin packet of folded papers. He held them up for her to see.
“This,” he said, making himself comfortable again, “is a temporary court order granting me legal guardianship over one Miss Anna Mitchell until such a time as your competency can be proven with relative satisfaction. We’ve an uphill battle ahead of us. The doctors here are advocating for you to be hospitalized. It’s their opinion that you aren’t mentally sound and I’ll tell you, this vaguely hostile silent treatment you’ve got going isn’t helping anyone.”
Her chest was so tight she couldn’t feel herself breathing. He couldn’t be serious. She wanted to snatch the papers from his hand, but her muscles were locked up tight and her arms refused to move.
“Still nothing to say?” he asked, giving her every opportunity to protest.
Stubbornness and fury rising hot and fast to fill up every grieving corner of her being, she shook from the effort it took to hold it silently in.
“All right then, let’s continue. You’re five-foot-six and you weigh eighty-seven pounds. You were living in a house with plentiful access to healthy food, so you’re going to need to come up with an explanation for why you’re this malnourished and dehydrated if you don’t want the courts to side with your doctors. Unfortunately, your medical charts now include the diagnosis ‘anorexia nervosa.’ Fortunately, eating disorders, while considered mental illnesses, don’t usually lead to hospitalization. Which takes us right back to your next ‘unfortunately,’ because we both know that’s not what’s going on here, don’t we?”
She swallowed hard, locking her jaw.
“You’ve got marks all over your body,” he continued evenly, his returning stare steady and neutral, despite the accusation in his words. “Old, new, infected and scarring. They’ve chalked it down to self-harm and it’s obvious it’s been going on for a while. I don’t for a second doubt that you have punished yourself, but I think I also know where the order to do it came from. Am I wrong?”
“Don’t talk about him,” Pony warned, breaking her silence for the first time and before she could stop herself.
“He’s dead,” Marcus said evenly.
“Murdered,” she spat.
“I’m very sorry for your loss.”
She caught her breath, locking herself in position in bed before every wildly reacting nerve in her body threw her upright so she could scream in his face—You are not! Nobody is! I loved him!
Something she would continue to do right up until she died, even though he’d shot her in the head.
In a hot rush, her anger abandoned her, leaving her bereft in that stupid hospital bed with nothing but the burn of tears filling up the back of her throat until it reached her eyes. She blinked furiously.
“You must have loved him very much,” Marcus said softly. None of the sympathy she could hear in his voice reached his eyes.
