Read Online The Hunted by Alan Jacobson - Free Book Online

realized he was dreaming.
    As he struggled to see his feet in the dark, the door opened and light spilled into the small room, creating a tall, thin shadow on the wall next to the cot.
    Chambers threw a hand up to his eyes to block the light. He looked around, still agitated from the nightmare, dizzy and completely disoriented. “What are you doing?” he shouted.
    His visitor, dressed in a light blue uniform, closed the door slightly and the room darkened again. “Sorry, sir, hospital security. I—I didn’t mean to wake you, but a patient’s taken off and he’s wanted for questioning by the police. We’ve got orders to search all rooms. Nobody’s come in, I take it.”
    “I’ve been on for thirty-three hours straight,” Chambers said, recalling what Dr. Farber had said to him. “I’ve been dead to rights ever since I fell asleep.”
    The man nodded, pulled out his flashlight, and swung it around the room beneath the three cots. “Okay. All clear.” He apologized again for disturbing him and left.
    Shit.
They were searching the entire hospital. He wouldn’t be able to leave, at least not for a while. But since this room had already been checked, he would hopefully not have to pass the scrutiny of a real cop, one who wouldn’t be so easily dissuaded with a physician’s woeful story of exhaustion.
    He lay back, closed his eyes, and within seconds was drifting off again to a deep sleep.

7
    The evening air had dipped below twenty degrees. Lauren hiked up the collar on her down jacket and watched as people filed into the cozy Herbert Green Middle School gymnasium. She tucked her gloved hands deeper into her pockets and closed her eyes.
You can do this
.
    Lauren caught sight of a smiling man who was bundled up in a parka, standing near the gym entrance. He was greeting people as they approached, even helping an elderly woman who was having a difficult time pulling the door open. After holding it for her, he took a moment to play with a little girl whose mother was reading a flyer she had been handed.
    The man reminded her of Michael... outgoing, always willing to help, good with people. Qualities Lauren wished she herself had.
    Lauren had gotten used to relying on Michael when facing an uncomfortable situation. He would be there by her side, coaxing her through it, always claiming to understand what she was going through. But having never been riddled with phobias of any sort, Michael could in no way understand the difficulties an agoraphobic faced in everyday life... the accommodations that had to be made. The excuses that had to be given. A fear of open spaces, of being out in public, of standing in lines, sitting in movie theaters, riding in elevators... as a psychologist, she understood what her problem was.
    Her case had its roots in an unresolved event from her childhood, the repressed anxiety surrounding the shooting of her father and the pain caused by his eventual death. Years later, the loss of something else central to her identity—her practice—had brought it all to a head.
    But being in the field didn’t solve her problem; it had merely allowed her to diagnose it sooner. After four years of therapy, she had learned how to decrease its effects, how to compensate for and work through her condition. But she had not completely recovered.
    A loud rapping noise on the side window startled her. She cleared the fogged interior glass with her forearm and saw Carla Mae standing beside the door.
    “You coming in, or should we just hold the meeting without you?” With her round face bundled up, and with her shouting through the closed car window, it was hard for Lauren to tell if her new acquaintance was being friendly or antagonistic. But the slight squint of the eyes told her Carla was smiling.
    Lauren took a deep breath, pulled the handle on the door, and popped it open. “I’m coming in, of course. I just didn’t want to be the first one in, you know, having to tell the story over and over again