Chapter 25 HARPER-RAYN
HARPER-RAYN
My body trembles as I sit on the couch, staring at the wall ahead with my knees pulled right up to my chest, the vision of Dr. McKullan’s throat being slit haunting every waking moment.
It’s barely been twenty-four hours since the attack, and I can’t bring myself to even want to breathe.
It’s my fault. All of it is my fault. If I had just allowed Elias to claim me, to take everything from me, he would never have come after Dr. McKullan, and Anders wouldn’t be in a hospital bed, fighting for his life.
This is never going to stop. I’m never going to have peace from him, never be allowed freedom to live my life. He’s going to keep coming for me and hurting the people I care for until he gets what he wants.
Elias is a disease. He’s a cancer, and he will continue to blacken my soul until there’s nothing left. He will infect me, he will take everything from me, one person at a time, until I have nobody left, and he will love every fucking second of it.
I’ve been numb ever since I broke free of the morgue and sprinted up the hallway.
The whole SWAT team was there in minutes, along with a medical team who immediately sprang into action, doing everything they could to save Anders, but from the location of that stab wound, I don’t know if it’s possible.
He’s been in and out of surgery three times over the past twenty-four hours.
His heart is desperate to give up, but he can’t give up.
I can’t have his life on my conscience too.
I’ve been trying to hold my composure as I speak to every law enforcement officer who appears before me, but when Dr. McKullan’s wife walks in, I break.
Heavy sobs pull from my chest as I think of the life they won’t live out together, despite the forty years they’ve already had.
I cry for the grandchildren who will soon learn that their grandfather won’t be coming to visit anymore.
I cry for the cold bed that she will have to crawl into each night.
The single plate she will have to dish up at dinner.
The deck that he won’t be able to sit out on and enjoy the day.
And despite her undeniable grief, she wraps her arms around me and holds me as I cry, the two of us beyond broken.
Once we are finally settled in on the couch at home, Knight does what he can to comfort me, but he’s still in work mode, leading the pack, desperate to find out how all of this happened.
He went over the security footage so many times to figure out how Elias gained access to the morgue while more than a dozen people were busily working in there all day, and how he slipped out undetected. What he found is unsettling.
Elias had come in during the night and folded himself inside a body bag, and as we worked around him, as I teased Dr. McKullan about his taste in music, as I taught the interns everything I knew, Elias was waiting for his moment to strike, planning our downfall.
After that attack, he slipped out into the chaos, making his way up to the main floor of the hospital where the staff were frantically trying to evacuate the patients and their families, assuming a fire had broken out because of the fire alarm I’d pulled.
But that wasn’t my intent. I just wanted to draw attention because I needed immediate help, and that’s the fastest way I thought to do it.
But as the chaos ensued, Elias slipped straight out the main entrance, his head down, mere milliseconds before the SWAT team arrived to lock down the hospital.
I have to put an end to this. I have to stop him, I just don’t know how. Elias is a ghost, and he’s playing by a set of rules I can’t even begin to work out.
Knight’s phone rings from across our living room, and he gets up from beside me to take the call. “What’s going on?” he demands, his tone sharp and to the point.
He listens, and while I can hear the faint murmurs of the person he’s talking to, I can’t make out a word, but when Knight hangs his head, undeniable grief flashing in his dark eyes, I already know. Anders didn’t make it.
Tears spring from my eyes, whipping down my cheeks and splashing onto my arms as I curl into a ball on the couch, devastation rocking through me.
Anders was young, only in his early twenties.
He had his whole life ahead of him, a whole career to build.
He never got a chance to find the woman he would spend the rest of his life with, never had a chance to build a family of his own or do the things he’d always wanted to do, all because of me.
I bury my face in my knees, the overwhelming grief too much for me to handle, and as I sit here, knowing what he’s capable of, I can’t help but fear for my life.
I fear for Knight’s as he relentlessly tries to protect me, and I fear for my mother and my new baby sister.
I know Mom made her own decision and refused to hear my warning, but no matter how I feel about her, she’s still my mom.
Despite the monster she became, she’s still the same woman who cared for me when I had chicken pox, who was there when my father walked out on us.
Knight drags a hand down his face, and just as I go to get up and try to comfort him, his conversation takes a turn, diving deeper into the ins and outs of their SWAT operations and how they’re going to move ahead from here.
As he talks, he slips out the back door and stands on the large deck he’d built with Ace and Diesel last summer.
I watch him out the window when my alarm for my meds goes off, and I swipe my thumb across my screen, dismissing the notification before getting up and going to the kitchen.
Reaching up, I take the small bottle of pills, and as I open it up and pour one out into the palm of my hand, I stare down at it.
It’s almost sick, really. If anyone knew how to take out a psychopath, it’d be the original. Only this medication is blocking him from coming back and telling me what I need to do. It’s the fucking grenade on top of the shit-storm cake.
My hand curls around the little pill, squeezing it within my palm as a wave of guilt flounders through me.
Maybe this is what I need to do. Maybe I don’t have any other option.
My original masked stalker would know what to do.
If I could just get him to return even once, he could tell me how to take Elias out. He could guide me through it.
Fuck.
A tear rolls down my cheek, and as I glance up through the kitchen window, I find Knight staring back at me, a small, encouraging smile resting on his lips, despite the overwhelming grief in his eyes.
And as I watch him, I realize that I have to do this, not just for me, but for him too.
I’m not the only person losing loved ones here, and the way we’re going, more people are going to lose their lives.
Knight is working tirelessly to put an end to this, and I need to do my part to help him. And with that resolve, I drop the small pill into the sink before turning on the tap and watching it sail down the drain, my heart breaking for the hell I know is bound to rain down over me.