Chapter 5
ASHLEY
Carter: We’re onto you. Whoever you are, whatever you’ve done with Ashley…you’re going to pay in blood. Return her now, and maybe we’ll make it quick.
Ashley: Took you long enough. Then again, you aren’t the sharpest tool in the shed, are you? All looks, no brains. Poor little rich boy.
Carter: WHERE IS SHE?!
Ashley: Figure it out and maybe I’ll let her go. Or maybe I’ll put a bullet in her skull and drop her in an unmarked grave. Shall we flip a coin?
A nxiety ate away at me so hard, I could barely eat. Forget sleep—that was long gone. All I could do was pace my room and silently scream at Nate in my head. Over and over, I mentally begged for him to get the message and come save me.
I couldn’t even remotely consider the fact that he’d put me here deliberately.
I couldn’t fathom the concept that everything the staff had told me was true.
The implications were too fucking devastating, and I’d already lost Heath once.
I wouldn’t survive it again, and I definitely wouldn’t survive losing my mom for real.
It was all fabricated. That belief was all that kept me going over the days following Nurse Annette’s call to Nate.
Frustratingly, I couldn’t just stay in my room and wait for my white knight to ride in and save me.
My nervous, changed behavior had already been noticed by the staff, and I could feel the constant weight of their gazes every time I ventured into the common room.
Even worse, Nurse Annette was nowhere to be seen, so I couldn’t pressure her to try again.
I had a horrible feeling that maybe she’d been fired. Or shit, maybe she’d quit. Either way, I had considerably less luck with the other nurses in convincing them I didn’t belong in a psychiatric hospital.
Three days after the failed call to Nate, I found a sheltered spot beside the pond to sit and…exist. Away from all the intense stares and crawling sensation of unease inside the hospital. At least out in the garden, I could feel the wind and hear birds, reminding me I was still alive.
I sat there for so long, I ended up leaning my back against a tree trunk and closing my eyes. Sleep had eluded me at night, but out here in nature…maybe I could rest a few minutes.
Voices shook me out of my daze, and I blinked my confusion for a moment until I recognized one of the nurses speaking. Tabitha? Something like that.
“There we go, Miss Abby. It’s a lovely afternoon to be outside, isn’t it?
” She spoke to the catatonic woman in the wheelchair she’d just parked by the pond like she actually expected a response.
“Are you warm enough? Hmm, maybe I should fetch you a blanket. It’s a little chilly in the wind.
Oh, here’s your journal, Miss Abby, and a pen. I’ll pop them here in your lap.”
Peeking out from my sheltered position, I watched the nurse arrange Abigail’s journal on her lap and place one limp hand on top to prevent the pen rolling off. I stayed still and quiet, and a moment later, the nurse made her way back inside with promises to return with a blanket.
That journal. I wanted so badly to see what was inside, but after the last time I tried to read it, I was hesitant to try again. Then as I watched, Abigail’s hands moved, and her gaze lowered, shifting from the unfocused stare she’d been fixing on the pond.
Holding my breath, I watched in shock as she opened the journal and started to write. At first it was slow, like she had to shake off a daze, but then it increased in pace. Increased intensity, like she knew she only had a short amount of time to get all her thoughts down in writing.
As desperately as I wanted to jump out and rip the book from her hands, I also didn’t want to interrupt. So I sat there, frozen, as she scribbled in silence, waiting for the perfect moment to speak up.
The click of high heels on the concrete path made me shrink back behind the tree, assuming it was a staff member bringing Abigail’s blanket.
“Nurse Tabitha asked me to bring this out to you,” Jocelyn said, shocking me hard enough I nearly choked on my gasp.
I hadn’t seen her around the facility for days, but fucking hell, she scared me.
The woman had far too much power, and as far as I could see…
she deserved to be a patient here a whole lot more than all the actual patients.
“I have some updates for you, Abby.” Her voice was softer than I’d ever heard from Jocelyn, almost gentle.
“The experiments are progressing just as we originally hypothesized, and the new test subjects are, for the most part, responding beautifully to the new recipe. There are still a few…resisting, but I have confidence we can break them eventually.”
She paused, and I pressed my hands to my mouth to keep from making any noise that would give me away.
What she was saying? What the fuck did she mean?
Abigail was a victim…wasn’t she? That was what her diary had said.
Then again, she was also supposed to be dead, and it was all too clear that wasn’t true.
“What are you writing about today, Abby?” Jocelyn asked, then a moment later, sighed heavily. “Well, we can’t have all of that in writing, can we? Don’t worry, I’ll cover our tracks. Like always.”
The unmistakable sound of paper tearing clued me in to the fact that she’d just torn the pages from Abigail’s journal. A moment later, smoke reached my nose, and I groaned internally. Whatever Abigail had written about, Jocelyn saw as dangerous enough evidence that she had to burn it. Fuck .
The silence that followed stretched for so long, I almost peeked out to see whether Jocelyn was still there. Almost.
“If we had more time, I really think we could achieve our end goal in this round of experiments,” she murmured, as if Abigail were actually engaging in conversation with her.
“Sadly, it looks like our time with the little bitch is already running out. It’s fine, though.
We achieved our intended result in holding her this long. ”
I nearly passed out from how hard I held my breath.
What? My head was spinning so hard, it was making me dizzy.
What the fuck did they achieve by holding me?
If it was even me she was talking about.
For all I knew, she’d been running experiments on dozens of other people in the same situation as I was right now. Or worse.
“Trouble is,” Jocelyn continued, speaking to Abigail like a peer rather than an almost catatonic psych patient, “I’ve heard rumors that our funding might be cut soon if we don’t show some real progress in measurable trials.
And stupid fucking Ronald had the notes encrypted on his personal hard drive, which melted in his house fire. Fucking idiot.”
Dr. Fox. Ronald had to be Dr. Fox, Heath’s former psychiatrist and the deranged asshole who’d been dabbling in hypnosis with a bunch of DB members.
The same creep whose house we’d set on fire after Heath had beaten him to death with a marble duck.
If the fire was real, then the murder was also real, right?
Which meant that the version of him floating around the psych facility was just a look-alike? A twin? What were the odds?
As much as it churned my stomach, I had to admit it was smart. Seeing Dr. Fox “alive” had been the one thing that shook my confidence in reality more than anything they’d told me to date.
“It’s fine. I’ll fix it before the next review panel. Even if I need to break every ethical rule in the damn book, we will. If that means Carina’s darling daughter dies in the process…so be it.” Her laugh that accompanied that truth bomb was chilling, and I lost my grip—on silence and discretion.
“You fucking bitch ,” I snarled as I launched out of my hiding spot and flew at Jocelyn with one thing on my mind. Murder.
She reacted with genuine shock, reeling backward as I crossed the space with my hands outstretched. Her heel must have caught in the soft grass, because a moment before I reached her, she stumbled and fell backward.
“Security!” she shrieked, then locked eyes with me and smirked. “Quit while you’re ahead, Ashley, or we will get to see what a heavy dose of Haldol does to that rock-hard resistance, hmm? Maybe you’ll end up like Abby and stop meddling.”
I was too blind with rage to even process her warning.
All that mattered was my need for blood.
Jocelyn’s blood. I crashed into her and wrapped my hands around her throat with every intention of choking the fucking life out of her.
If I spent the rest of my life in prison for murder, it’d be worth it to know this evil piece of shit was gone.
Then my mom would be safe.
Now it was all so clear—Jocelyn was her stalker. Fucking hell, Jocelyn had been drugging and hypnotizing her own son, so clearly nothing was off-limits. She needed to die, and now was as good an opportunity as any.
My vision tunneled as my hands tightened around her throat, her pulse hammering into my palm and her eyes bugging out with panic as I squeezed and squeezed .
I wanted to see the light dim in her eyes and the blood vessels burst. I wanted to feel her windpipe crush and her neck snap.
I wanted to tear her whole cursed head from her shoulders and watch as her severed arteries pumped what remained of her blood into a puddle at the edge of the lake.
Rough hands grabbed me, jerking me backward, but I held on tight. This bitch was dead, and I intended to see it through.
A sharp sting bit the side of my neck, but I ignored it entirely, focused on maintaining my grip on Jocelyn’s throat and not letting her draw a breath for even a second.
Until I couldn’t hold on any longer.
My hands went weak, and my knees turned to jelly. Rough hands caught me as I collapsed, dizziness and nausea swirling through me.
“What fucking took you so long?” Jocelyn coughed as my vision started to darken and my head lolled forward on my shoulders. “She nearly killed me, you incompetent fools!”
“Sorry, Boss,” one of the guys mumbled as I fought to keep from totally losing consciousness.
“Stick her again,” she snarled. “She resists the drug too easily.”
“Ma’am, we already gave her the maximum—” The guard’s protest cut off with a scuffle, then another sharp sting bit into my neck, followed by a sickening swirl of chemicals through my bloodstream. I could taste it, for all the sense that made.
“If she dies, then you write it up as an accidental double dose,” Jocelyn snapped. “Don’t fucking question me again.”
That was all I heard before the darkness sucked me in with a grip ten times tighter than mine had been around Jocelyn’s throat. Would this kill me? She better hope it did because, if it didn’t, I wouldn’t give up until she was dead. Not now, not ever.