Chapter Twenty-Seven
Pieces of Dr. Yarrow’s shattered paperweight skidded across the floor as her abductor spun her around. Pain flared through her face as the superintendent who’d killed Ellender Garza pressed her into the wall of refrigerators from behind.
His body heated against hers, fitting them together in the worst way possible, and a surge of acid clogged her throat.
“I warned you what would happen if you didn’t help me, Dr. Hawes.” The scalpel he held nicked another patch of sensitive skin against her throat, and Drennan closed her eyes. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t break. Not for him. “Open it.”
She pressed her hands into the refrigerator door, bucking against him to add some semblance of distance between his front and her back. In vain. The killer only fought to hold her in place. “Get off me.”
The words sounded strangled, even to her own ears.
This wasn’t how Harvey held her throughout the night.
How his body heat had seeped into her muscles and soothed all the rough edges she’d picked up over the years.
This was something dominating and manipulative and gut-nauseating.
It felt as though thousands of spiders tiptoed across her skin, raising a rush of disgust.
The pressure at her back disappeared. Just for a moment. “Open it.”
Drennan didn’t have any other choice. She’d lost her only weapon.
She didn’t have the skills to fight back against a man almost double her size, and she wasn’t about to risk the baby in an effort to escape.
She was trapped. Her breath shuddered through her at the thought.
Forcing her hands to peel away from the cold refrigerator door, she reached for the handle to her left.
The door swung open, releasing a pillowy haze of mist. The morgue refrigerators leaned more toward freezers to slow decomposition of the remains they stored, and a chill tensed the muscles across her shoulders.
“It’s empty. The next one.” His command tightened around her rib cage. Sooner or later, they’d come across Ellender Garza. And then what? The scalpel was back at her throat, reminding her of how very little power she actually held in this room.
Drennan shifted over one row, grabbing for the refrigerator door.
If she could get him close enough, there was a chance she could slam it in his face.
Stun him long enough to make a run for the exit, but her abductor was being smart, keeping an arm’s length between them.
He’d see any move she made, and he’d punish her. He’d make it hurt.
She opened the next refrigerator, and the one after that.
Coming to the last in the row. She’d done what she could to stall, to think of a plan better than trying her luck at confronting the superintendent head-on, and now she was out of time. Her hands shook as she reached for the last door handle.
And swung it open.
A dark head of hair spread out across the sliding table stored inside the six-foot-deep refrigerator. The remains stored in the morgue no longer wore toe tags to identify them, but Drennan recognized the woman covered by a thin sheet inside.
“Pull her out.” Her abductor moved in behind her. The scalpel sliced across her skin, and Drennan couldn’t stop the gasp at the sting of pain.
She grabbed for her neck to gauge how deep he’d sliced, coming away with a slippery layer of blood. Nonlethal. He hadn’t cut anything vital or she would’ve already been dead, but he’d gotten close. She was bleeding, and she’d continue to do so unless she added pressure.
“Now!” Pinching the back of her neck in one hand, he shoved her into the opening of the refrigerator.
Her entire body flinched from the violence in his voice.
Stainless steel bit into her chest as she slapped her hands on the table to stop her momentum.
The injury at her neck screamed as blood slipped beneath her blouse and across her collarbone.
Drennan blinked against the sudden wave of dizziness.
Whether it came from the drop in temperature, her pregnancy, the impact against the storage box or the laceration along the side of her neck, she didn’t know.
But she didn’t have much time. “Okay.” That single word sounded as though it’d come from a stranger. “Okay.”
His body heat retreated for just a moment as he stepped out of her way.
Drennan tugged the tracked exam table toward her, her heart rate ticking too loud in her head.
This…this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
It wasn’t supposed to end like this. She was going to have a baby.
She was going to be a mom with a family of her very own and turn everything she’d survived in her mother’s house into something good.
She didn’t want to die. Not before she had the chance to see her son or daughter grow up.
To take their first breath and their first steps.
She wanted the ridiculous kindergarten graduations and themed birthday parties and the constant “mamas” once her child learned how to talk.
She wanted the scraped knees and the kisses that fixed them and the floods from the bathtub.
She could see it all. Right in front of her.
And Harvey… She could see him, too. Throwing his arms open for their toddler to run into at the end of a long workday, spinning around until they both got dizzy and sick.
She saw him helping her with dinner and kissing the side of her neck where her abductor had sliced through the skin there.
She could feel his hands on her hips and his calluses prickling goose bumps up her arms as if he was right here in the room with her.
It was so real…and so heartbreaking. Because Harvey couldn’t love her until he learned how to accept and love himself, and she couldn’t force him.
She couldn’t heal for him. But she could fight for them, for their family.
However long it took, through whatever hardships that came.
Whatever the risk or pain that most assuredly waited on the other side was worth it, wasn’t it? He had to see that.
The exam table hit the end of the track, jarring the woman on the table. Drennan tried to back away. She’d given the killer what he wanted, led him straight to Ellender Garza. Her gaze flitted to the double steel doors. Could she make it before he lashed out?
The superintendent ripped back the sheet hiding the stitched Y-cut from both of the victim’s shoulders, down over her sternum and into her belly. “Open her up.”
Blood that hadn’t seeped from her wound drained from her face. “What?”
“I told you what I came here for, Dr. Hawes.” He extended the scalpel toward her, blade first. “And I’m not leaving without it. Open her up.”
Her stomach pitched with a renewed flood of nausea. She shook her head. She’d cut into a thousand bodies over the course of her education and career, even as an assistant medical examiner, but she couldn’t do this. “You can’t be serious.”
“What about me gives the impression that I’m joking?
” He rounded the end of the cold exam table, closing the distance between them until she caught hints of his aftershave.
Something gut-wrenching and cloying. “You’re a doctor.
You know what you’re looking for. Get me my baby, and you walk away from this unscathed. ”
She tasted the lie as it seeped from his mouth.
He’d let her see his face. There was no way in hell he’d let her leave this room alive.
If she had to guess, he’d leave her body in one of the refrigerators to buy himself some time to escape.
Drennan backed up another step. “Please. You don’t have to do this.
I can delete the DNA from the database. She can be buried or cremated.
There are easier ways to get what you want. Don’t make me do this.”
His gaze narrowed on hers. “Now, why would a doctor beg me not…” Understanding smoothed the lines around his eyes, and his gaze dropped to her midsection.
“Ah. So that’s why Ranger Knight is so protective of you.
You’re carrying his baby. I had to wonder why a decorated soldier like that bothered to look twice at a boring as hell assistant ME in the middle of nowhere Utah. ”
The bite of pain that had nothing to do with the slice to her neck cut through her at his words. Boring. Unnecessary. Selfish. Disappointment. She’d heard the words a thousand times over, and they stung just as much coming from this complete stranger as they had from her mother.
Except Drennan had removed that particular tumor from her life. And she’d do it again. She’d do it as many times as it took. Because Harvey was right when he’d said she was strong. That she was important and that she deserved to be happy. And this son of a bitch was not making her very happy.
“I didn’t say that.” Drennan shifted her weight between her feet, ready to run as hard as her legs allowed. Would she make it far? Probably not. But she could go for one of the shards of paperweight on the floor.
A disjointed smile curled at one side of his mouth, as though he’d seen it on other people’s faces and tried to replicate it himself in the mirror a thousand times, but it never made the full impact.
Instead it curdled something in her stomach.
“You didn’t have to.” He took another step, coming to her side of the table, no longer allowing anything to act as a barrier between them.
“All right, Dr. Hawes. I’ll make this easy for you. ”
Why did she have the impression he had no interest in making things easy for her? Her hands went clammy with him this close as every possibility played out in her mind.
Twisting the scalpel in one hand, he took that final step that put them toe to toe. “Either you get me what I want, or I take your baby.”
Oxygen stalled in her chest. He wouldn’t. Would he? Her chin wobbled as she forced herself to keep eye contact with the man threatening her child. Her future. No one would hurt this baby. She could do this. “I need a scalpel.”
“Here.” That smile was back, still a little off. “Take mine, but if you try to use it on me, I will do what I promised and leave you to bleed out on the floor.”
Drennan took what he offered, the steel familiar and warm in her hand. “That’s not going to work for me.”
She struck, stabbing the blade of the scalpel into the soft tissue at the side of his neck, but adrenaline had thrown off her aim. She somehow managed to avoid hitting his carotid artery. The superintendent grabbed for his neck with one hand and backhanded her across the face with the other.
Drennan hit the line of refrigerators face-first. Lightning exploded behind her eyes just before she collapsed. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
“I warned you what would happen if you fought me, Dr. Hawes.” Her clothing bunched around her neck as he fisted her collar and dragged her around the end of the exam table.
He dropped her in front of another row of refrigerators, grabbing for the door.
The table slid out next, and everything in her body went tight.
No. No, no, no. He swayed above her, keeping pressure on his wound as he hauled her onto the exam table.
“I always follow through on my promises.”
Cold broke through the sweat along her spine. Drennan’s sense of survival kicked in too late as he shoved the table back into the refrigerator. With her on it. She reached overhead for the door. Too late. “No!”
The lights cut out.