Chapter 42
C assie
Anxiety hung over me like a spectre as I paced the hospital’s emergency surgery waiting room. Up and down. Up and down.
Dixie was being operated on. The hospital staff wouldn’t tell us shite, but I’d found a friendly nurse who’d given me just enough information so I didn’t go insane.
She’d promised to update me with any news, so long as the ward nurse wasn’t around to bust her.
Dixie could die.
My helpful, sweet, bubbly friend deserved so much more from life, yet some bastard had tried to kill her.
My gut churned.
It didn’t take a genius to realise it was a message.
Anger rose and rose and rose.
Footsteps sounded behind me. I spun around, sagging to see Shade. He’d had to leave to handle the crime scene but had promised to return.
“Any news?”
I shook my head, my words stuck.
“Detective Dickhead wants to talk to ye. I told him to back the fuck off, but the man is an arsehole, so don’t be surprised if he shows up. He knows you’re here, but that’s all the fucker has been told.”
He didn’t need to prompt me on what to say. Chief Constable Kenney was well known to me and my family, as much as to Arran, Shade, and the skeleton crew. I knew how to talk my way around police questioning.
“Kenney will be all over this as a copycat.”
Shade curled his lip, his back to the nurses’ station. “He’ll be jerking his stumpy dick in glee at a chance to catch the killer considering he missed out last time. If he dares talk shite about Dixie, I’ll threaten to cut it off.”
I stared at him.
He was right about the detective. Shade’s reaction, on the other hand, didn’t quite fit.
Images of the boathouse flashed before my eyes. He’d shown pain but not shock at the discovery of Dixie.
I cocked my head at the enforcer. “You’re not surprised by this.”
He didn’t reply, his thumbs in the loopholes of his jeans and his expression sober.
Emotion rushed inside me. “Hold the fucking phone. Bronson is dead, yet Dixie’s throat has been fucking slit. You said the killer, and not a copycat. Why?”
His mouth opened, but my anger took over again, dark realisations swirling.
“Ye expected another murder.”
He exhaled. “I hoped not.”
I exploded. “What the fuck, Shade? Is Bronson really dead?”
He shot his gaze down the corridor to where a couple slumped against each other in a row of plastic seats. At this hour, the hospital was quiet. Not empty, but enough that Shade dragged me further along and out of earshot.
“Bronson’s dead, like I told ye. Don’t make out that I’m a liar.”
“I’m confused. Doesn’t that make this a copycat?”
His nostrils flared.
No, he didn’t think that.
I folded my arms, digging my nails into my flesh, waiting on his explanation.
The enforcer palmed his tattooed throat, the Scotland flag inked on the back of his hand giving me no comfort. “There was enough doubt with his confession to give us pause.”
I took a shocked inhale. For a second, time stopped. I replayed his words. “You’re fucking kidding me. ‘Doubt’ meaning he didn’t do it? Ye weren’t sure, and yet Arran announced the news like it was all over?”
His slight head tilt sent my blood pressure through the roof.
“What other minor details don’t I know? What else did ye cut me and everyone out of?”
He didn’t have a chance to answer when I was in his face again, the consequences overwhelming me. I shoved his chest.
“Do you realise what you’ve done? How many women were out there unprotected because of that claim? We thought it was over. We thought we were safe.”
Shade snarled and backed up a step. “I did, too. It was just a hunch I couldn’t shake off, and Arran felt the same. Every woman remained protected.”
My mouth fell open, and I wheeled away, unable to believe my ears. “They weren’t protected. Dixie wasn’t.”
He swore. “No. Fuck. She shouldn’t have been alone. Not going to or from work.”
“But she was. Long enough for this to happen.” My voice broke.
“We didn’t know for certain. Both of us felt at the moment we ended his miserable life that that was it. His murder spree was finished and we’d done what we needed to do. He fucking confessed, Cass. It was after we compared notes and admitted the uncertainty. A matter of a day ago. I still believed I was making something out of nothing. Ye said I wasn’t shocked when we found her, that’s not true. I’m just as cut up about this as ye are.”
I shoved him again. “Get out of my sight. I don’t want to see ye right now. If she dies, I will never forgive the both of ye.”
Shade backed up further, his features twisted in hurt and regret. Aye, he fucking should regret it.
“Don’t leave here,” he ordered with a stab of his finger at the floor between us.
Thank the gods, he turned and left.
I sank to the nearest seat.
All that time, the killer wasn’t gone, just lying in wait and biding his time.
A hot rush of emotion swallowed me whole. That person had wanted me dead. He’d been out for blood. Riordan or Shade had been with me every time I’d left the warehouse, but the same care hadn’t been taken over Dixie.
I palmed my face, more facts slamming into me.
I’d doubted Bronson’s confession, too. I’d said it didn’t feel right. My brain filled in all the reasons why Shade would’ve kept his suspicion quiet. To lure him out? Or her. I couldn’t reject that possibility.
The minute I got back to the warehouse, I was reinstating the detective wall.
If Dixie survived. If she didn’t… I couldn’t think like that.
Alone, I stewed in my misery. An hour passed, or maybe more. Lonnie appeared in the hall but stepped out when I glowered his way.
It was only when the friendly medic returned to the nurses’ station that I dragged myself up.
The older woman lifted her gaze on my approach. Then her eyes crinkled at the edges. In sympathy?
My heart thundered. “What’s happened? Can ye tell me anything?”
The woman shot a look to the right to where another nurse crossed the corridor. “I’m sorry, I already told you I can’t comment on a patient’s care without their consent.”
The second person disappeared into a room.
I swung my focus back. “Please,” I whispered.
“Out of surgery,” she whispered back and picked up a pen, pretending to write something on a whiteboard.
I sidled closer.
“Alive?” I barely breathed the word.
“In recovery. Come back this afternoon and you can ask to see her. She should be awake.”
I sagged against the station. Awake meant the surgery must’ve gone well. The potential to be awake later today meant she hadn’t died.
The nurse patted my hand then repeated loudly that I really should come back in visiting hours when the patient could consent to sharing information.
Weak with relief, pain, and everything in between, I stumbled back to a seat. For a long minute, I held my head in my hands and swam in the mix of happiness and horror at what my friend must’ve endured.
I’d avenge her. I’d hunt down whoever did this.
My phone buzzed.
I fished it out and checked the screen, then did a double take.
Unknown: I heard you’re searching for me. Now you have my number.
I stared, ice sliding down my spine. How eerie. Who the hell?—?
“Miss Archer,” a voice hailed me from the ward entrance.
Detective Dickhead sauntered my way. In a rumpled dark-coloured shirt and suit trousers, the arsehole cop looked like he’d fallen out of a club to investigate the crime. Lonnie stepped into view, but I rolled my eyes and waved him off.
“Kenney,” I snipped.
“You know the drill, eyewitness.”
“Not in the mood right now.”
“And I wish I was still balls-deep in the pretty young thing who was on my dick when I got the call, but we can’t have everything.”
I exhaled irritation. “Fuck, and I can’t stress this enough, all the way off.”
His gaze sharpened and sank over me. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you alone.”
My phone buzzed again.
Unknown: It’s Cassandra, by the way. Or Ma, I guess. Is there somewhere private you can go to call me?
I scrambled back and nearly lost my footing. My pulse thumped so loud in my ears that I couldn’t hear anything else Kenney said.
Ma? Cassandra… My mother?
The uncle I’d texted must’ve given her my details. She wasn’t dead?
Reeling, freaked out, and entirely panicked, I pushed past Kenney and left the ward. Outside the doors, Lonnie stood taller but relaxed again when I snapped that I was taking a bathroom break.
A lie.
I couldn’t breathe. I needed fresh air and a second to take it all in. To call back the number of the woman who gave birth to me twenty years ago. Today, I realised. It was my birthday. Fuck. No wonder she’d got in contact.
Outside the hospital’s huge rotating doors, bright dawn lit a chilly autumn morning, and traffic rumbled by. I ambled into the centre of the plaza. Took a breath of mostly cigarette smoke from the cluster of elderly smokers in hospital gowns, some holding rolling IV stands.
The moment slowed.
If only my brain would settle.
I sensed the rush towards me way too late.
Material landed over my head. Someone lifted me, and tyres screeched. I was tossed onto the hard metal bed of a van without seeing who I’d had the displeasure to be kidnapped by.