Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Noble rushed to meet him when Preston exited the ER. The guy had been standing near the nurses’ station, but when he saw Preston, he bolted forward. “How is the sheriff?”
Preston scraped a hand over his jaw. Stubble raked against his palm.
When was the last time that he’d shaved?
He had no clue, but he’d have to shave soon because he couldn’t risk hurting Sloane’s delicate skin when he was near her.
“She’s going to be all right. Doctors have her stable.
” But she’d scared him for a while there.
Debra had been helpless. He wasn’t used to her being that way.
“She’s not leaving this hospital anytime soon. ”
“Preston! Preston! Mr. Byron! Boss!” Joshua bobbed and weaved through the packed waiting area. “What’s happening with my aunt?” He reached Preston, chest heaving, shoulders shaking. “What’s going on?” Fear had his eyes flaring wide.
“Go on back.” Preston pointed to the ER doors. “She’s awake and talking, and she’ll want to see you. She had a brain bleed.” The doctors had said plenty more about her condition, but the important point was that she was stable. Now.
“Brain bleed? What the hell? Is she dying?” Joshua’s voice trembled.
“No, she’s stable. Stable. Go on back.”
Joshua raced toward the double doors.
Preston rolled his neck. He’d been back there with Debra for nearly an hour. The doctors and nurses had tried to push him to the side, but Debra had held tightly to his hand. “Where is Sloane?” He needed to see her. He’d expected her to be waiting with Noble.
But Noble blinked. Then peered toward the double doors. Then back at Preston. “I thought she was back there with you?”
His veins seemed to ice. “You’re supposed to guard her.”
“Frankie texted me that she came inside to be with you! He was gonna park the ride in the back.” A shake of Noble’s head. “The nurse at the station said you were in the ER. I figured Sloane was in there with you.” But his brow scrunched. “Frankie didn’t come in after he parked the Range Rover…”
“Help!” A quick cry as a woman in pink scrubs ran toward the nurse’s desk. “I need a gurney! I need a team! Outside, now! Back of the hospital!”
Preston lurched toward her.
“I was throwing away some trash—there’s a man outside behind the dumpster. He’s unresponsive. Hurry, hurry!” she urged.
A lot happened then. Fast. Nurses and a doctor and a security guard ran outside. Preston went with them. So did Noble. They headed for the back of the hospital. Preston caught sight of the Range Rover in the back lot. A line of ambulances. And…
Behind the dumpster. The man who was unresponsive…
Frankie.
“Oh, fuck,” Noble swore.
Someone called out, “Got a pulse!”
Then, another voice, “Let’s get him in the ER!”
Preston tried to reach Frankie, but he was pushed back. So he pushed harder. Then people were trying to lift Frankie on a gurney, and he helped, heaving up his driver. His…
Friend?
Noble was there, too, lifting Frankie. Swearing more.
Frankie’s eyes cracked open. “Am…”
He was talking. Hell, yes.
“Am…”
“We’re taking care of you, sir.” A quick response from the nurse in the pink scrubs. The team began to wheel Frankie toward the hospital.
“Am…bu…” Frankie managed to lift one hand. He pointed toward the ambulances.
“You don’t need an ambulance,” the nurse said. “We have you.”
“Sloane.” Frankie’s eyes closed.
The ice thickened in Preston’s veins. He yanked out his phone. Sloane doesn’t have a phone. Her phone is still locked in her car at the freaking impound. His fingers flew over the screen of his phone even as Frankie was wheeled inside the hospital.
“Where is she?” Noble’s voice cracked. “She…I thought she was with you.”
Josie answered his call on the second ring. “This is becoming a habit…” she began.
“Track Sloane. Now.”
She didn’t say anything else. He heard her fingers tapping. “Grace General.” Quick. Sharp. “Is she hurt? Is that why she’s in the hospital?”
He was bounding back to the hospital. A security guard stood in the doorway, looking nervous. He should be nervous.
“What in the hell happened to that man?” Preston blasted.
“I…I didn’t see anything. It’s been crazy here today. I’ve been called to help all over—”
“What’s happening?” Josie asked in Preston’s ear. “Talk to me. Please.”
“I need the exact location for Sloane. Can you guide me to her in the hospital? Is the tech that good?”
“I’m that good,” she promised him.
She was. Because, five minutes later, he was standing over the broken chain that should have been around Sloane’s throat. But it wasn’t. It was on the gleaming floor of a hospital corridor, and the lily pendant—the pendant with the fucking tracker in it—was shoved near the wall.
“Did you find her?” Josie asked, excited. Worried. Scared.
His left hand scooped up the pendant. Clenched around it.
“Preston…” Noble was at his back. “What do we do?”
Her eyes flew open. Sloane sucked in a deep gulp of air. She tried to sit up but…
Couldn’t. She was strapped down. Trapped. “No!” Her head twisted as she tried to look around.
“Yeah, that’s cool. Scream. Have at it.” A male voice floated to her. Adam East’s voice. “I’m the only one who can hear you, and honestly, I like screams. Don’t get to hear them nearly enough. Hard to hear screams when your prey is trapped underground.”
Her frantic gaze took in the space around her. Supplies. Medical supplies. Monitors. A familiar scene because she’d been in this exact spot before. I’m in the back of an ambulance. The vehicle bumped, and her whole body jerked.
Strapped down. A strap across her upper arms. Her chest. Her waist. Her thighs. Her calves. Tight, hard straps that dug into her body. “Let me out!” she yelled.
He laughed. “I will, soon. Out of the ambulance, anyway.”
She tried to turn her body, but the straps had been tightened too much.
“Those are usually for a patient’s safety,” he called to her. “In this case…not so much.”
Her fingers were free. Her wrists. Her upper arms were held tightly against her body, but she could stretch out her wrists. Could she reach anything that might help her?
“You stopped screaming.” He seemed disappointed. “Haven’t given up already, have you?”
Not even close. “You lived in California.” Adam had told her that…before.
Before he’d drugged her and dragged her out of the hospital and into the back of his ambulance. Preston will realize I’m gone. He will track me.
Was she still wearing her necklace? Her head craned as she tried to glance down. All she could feel were the straps biting into her body. She had no idea if she still wore her necklace or not. Can’t see it. Can’t feel it.
“Yeah. I lived in California. Born and raised. Grew up there.” Mocking laughter. “Killed there.”
He liked to talk. Obviously. So he could keep talking and maybe…
maybe she could reach something to use while he was busy talking and driving.
Because he was calling to her from the front of the ambulance.
She was the only one in the back. Unfortunately, all her frantic gaze could see were bandages. Cardiac monitors. Trauma supplies.
Maybe I can slam a defibrillator into the side of his head. If she could reach it. A feat that seemed impossible. “You…drugged me.” Her voice came out raspy, and a few dark spots wanted to keep dancing near her eyes.
“Oh, yeah. I drug people all the time. Got plenty of access to all the drugs I need. A perk of the job. You wear an EMT uniform, and you can go in and out of any doctor’s office you want. Any hospital.” Another laugh. “Any psychiatric facility.”
Her gaze froze on the big, red bag attached to the left side of the ambulance. Psychiatric facility. That had been a very deliberate response. “No,” she whispered. Then, louder, “Mary Jean?”
“She didn’t leave me at a fire station. She just dumped me in a hospital parking lot and ran away.
You would have thought that, after she knew what my father was, she’d steer clear of him.
Certainly not have a second kid with him, but, hey, who knows what went through her head?
Maybe she thought that he could be fixed. ” Mocking laughter.
There had been no record of Mary Jean having another baby. None. But…
She was in and out of drug treatment facilities for years. She lived on the streets. She bounced around—she wouldn’t have received normal medical care. She could have easily had another child that she told no one about.
A child she gave up…A child who’d found her.
“My dad didn’t need fixing, though. He was perfect as he was.” Pride.
No, no, no.
“I don’t look like him. Think that always bothered him. Used to say—used to say that he wasn’t even sure I was his. That he thought that bitch Mary Jean had been with other men before he got to her again.”
A stethoscope dropped from a hook and fell to the bottom of the ambulance. Not like that was going to do her any good.
“I was in my fourth foster home when he found me. He took me out of that place. Grabbed me in the middle of the night. After that, I stayed with him. He needed me, you know? Not like the work he did was a one-person job.”
Her heart squeezed in her chest. She’d always thought it had to be hard for one person to take a victim, to bury the person—to do all that work alone. “How old were you?” Sad. “The first time he made you help him kill someone?”
Silence from the front. Followed by an eruption. “Don’t you pity me!”
But she did. Even knowing what he’d done—
“I wanted to help him!” Guttural. “I liked it when they went in the ground. They were weak. We were strong! I liked—”
“How old were you?” Sloane repeated. There were no items she could use as a weapon in the back of the ambulance. Of course, there weren’t. Not like EMTs wanted frenzied patients to be able to attack them.
“Seven.”
Her eyes closed. You were seven when you had to help your father kill?
“He needed me! He’d even use me to help lure some of his targets. They came right up to a lost kid.”
Yes, she bet they had.