Chapter 42
ASHLEY
Sir Carter: Spark, you really are the light of my life. You illuminate all the darkened corners I’d gotten so used to being there. When I’m with you, nothing else matters. I can’t tell you how stupid happy I am that you let me love you and that you love me too.
“ U n-be-freaking-lievable,” Carly exclaimed, gripping my hand in her tight grip as Royce ended the call with his father. “How? How the fuck? She’s like a fucking cockroach!”
Cold anxiety raised gooseflesh on my arms, and I shivered. “I’m not even that shocked, really. It was too easy.”
Jocelyn had still been alive—barely—when the reinforcements had burst into the room, and by some mind-blowing twist of events, the paramedics had managed to keep her that way long enough to get her into surgery. It took nearly eight hours…but they’d saved her life.
At one stage, one of the hospital staff had mentioned she may need a blood transfusion. Nate had barked a sharp laugh and walked the fuck away. Better than punching the staff member, which I had a feeling crossed his mind with the implication that he would ever consider donating.
And yet. She’d survived.
“She’s in a coma,” Royce reminded us, repeating what his father had just said on the phone. “And there’s no guarantee she’ll ever wake up. She was resuscitated several times on the operating table, so that likely caused some brain damage.”
“She’ll wake up,” Nate muttered, his face pale and drawn like he was going to be sick. “I need to get some air.”
He shoved out of his seat and stalked for the front door. Worried, I made to get up and follow, but Carter shook his head at me.
“I’ve got it,” he said quietly, following after Nate and grabbing their gym bags on the way out.
I blew out a long, frustrated sigh and dropped my head into my hands. I was exhausted . It’d been about sixteen hours since I had shot Jocelyn. Twelve hours since we had been released after giving our statements to a dozen different uniformed strangers. None of us had slept.
“It’s going to be okay,” Carly said gently, rubbing my back as I screamed internally. “You heard Colonel Douche Canoe. She’s under heavy guard, and if she wakes, she’ll be placed in isolation.”
We’d thought that the last time she was caught too, and look how that had worked out.
She’d orchestrated a whole fucking riot in a maximum-security prison and helped other inmates escape with her.
The best-case scenario here was that her brain had been damaged enough that she couldn’t fuck around with hypnosis anymore.
Although, after a few comments from Colonel Mike on the subject, it sounded like she’d made multiple visits with a lot of the prison guards over the past months under the guise of workplace therapy, potentially planting her hooks as a literal get out of jail free card.
She couldn’t possibly have visited every single guard everywhere, though, right?
“I need coffee,” I muttered, pushing up from the sofa with a weary groan.
“You definitely don’t,” Heath disagreed. “You need sleep.”
I scowled, but my brain wasn’t functioning enough to think up a valid argument.
I’d been awake for thirty-something hours so…
yeah, he had a good point. But I just blinked my confusion at the idea of simply taking myself off to bed when our world had just imploded.
I’d nearly killed Nate, and that was something I’d never be able to get out of my head.
“Come on, girl,” Carly said, taking my arm gently and giving me the push I needed toward my bedroom. “I’ll get you sorted.”
Words failed me as she calmly pulled out a clean boys T-shirt and sleep shorts for me to change into, and I simply did as I was told because I had nothing left in the tank to argue. She tucked me in and drew the curtains, then hopped onto the other side of my bed with her back to the headboard.
“What are you doing?” I asked sleepily, my whole body aching with how tired I was.
She had her phone in hand and seemed to be scrolling social media. “Hanging out,” she murmured in response, “so you’re not trying to fall asleep alone. Now shut your eyes. You look like hell.”
Once again, I had no valid arguments, so I just…shut my eyes.
Vivid memories of aiming a gun at my own head filled my mind when my guard was down, quickly followed by the intense terror I’d experienced while fighting my own body—that awful sensation of being trapped inside my head and unable to stop my own hand pointing a loaded gun at Nate.
It was enough to jerk me out of my sleep, my heart racing and sweat coating my skin.
A heavy arm with a bandaged wrist wrapped around my waist, pulling me across the bed and into a warm, strong embrace.
“Shhh,” Nate murmured, his voice thick with sleep. “You’re safe, Duckling. I’m here.”
Thank fuck .
Two weeks passed with all our nerves on edge every waking moment. Nate checked in with the hospital at least four times a day, but the news never changed: Jocelyn was still in a coma, and there was no way of knowing when—if ever—she’d regain consciousness.
Charges had been filed, but nothing could be done until she was conscious.
Once she was, though, there’d be no escaping her fate.
Multiple recording devices and cameras had been found set up in her house that night, providing irrefutable proof of what she’d tried to do.
It would be a slam-dunk case if she ever made it to trial.
Max and Mom had returned home the day after it all went down and were waiting in our living room when Nate and I had woken from our daylong nap. Mom had fallen to absolute pieces, and we’d made the decision to go home with them for a few days.
Nate and Max needed the time together, and Mom simply needed me to be nearby for a while.
It was emotionally draining, and as much as I loved her, I was relieved to return home later that week. She still texted me throughout each day, checking in and telling me about her day, and I made sure to always reply—for me as much as her.
Two weeks and two days after I shot Jocelyn, we got the call we’d been dreading.
She was awake.
Not only that, but she was stable enough to be transferred to a more secure facility.
“You don’t have to be here,” Max said in a grim voice when Nate and I arrived at the Orpington Psychiatric Detention Center the following day. “I’ve gone through all the security measures with Mike personally.”
“We need to do this,” Nate said firmly, offering me his hand as we headed up the front steps of the front entrance. I agreed a hundred percent because, although we’d been told that she was barely a shadow of her former self, we both needed to see it with our own eyes.
Max sighed but didn’t argue, instead introducing us to the staff and waiting patiently while we showed our ID and filled in the paperwork required before being allowed into the facility.
To their credit, the place was just as secure as any maximum-security prison.
The difference here was the prisoners were also patients.
“She’s outside,” the guard escorting us advised. Or was he a nurse? Or maybe both? “Been out here all day. Can’t promise you’ll get any sense out of her, but you’re welcome to try.”
He unlocked a heavy door at the end of the corridor and gestured for us to go through ahead, then locked it again on the other side. “Over there,” he said, pointing across the gloomy outdoor space.
Max led the way, and Nate gripped my hand so hard, I worried for the fate of my fingers while we followed across the dirt yard to where Jocelyn sat in a wheelchair beside a slimy-looking pond.
She looked up as we approached, but there was absolutely no recognition in her face. Just blank confusion. “Have you brought me more bread?” she asked Max in an oddly childlike voice. “The ducks are hungry.” She gestured to the pond. The empty pond.
Max didn’t answer her, just turning to us with resignation on his face. “You see?”
“The ducks are hungry,” Jocelyn repeated, turning her gaze back to the vacant pond with a sad tilt to her lips. “Can’t you hear them quacking? Always quacking. They follow me. Always quacking.”
Nate and I exchanged a long look, then he sighed and released my hand as he stepped forward. “Mom, do you know me?”
Jocelyn blinked up at him, a small frown on her face. “Are you one of the nurses? I asked for more bread. The ducks are hungry.”
“Her CT scan showed significant brain damage,” Max said softly. “Irreparable damage. At least that’s what the doctors believe for the moment. She is unlikely to ever remember her life as we knew it was. Time will tell, though. And she’s going to be closely monitored. No assumptions.”
Nate crouched, speaking quietly with his mother, and I backed away a few steps. I’d seen enough. He joined us only a minute later, turning his back on the sad, frail woman by the pond.
“It would have been better to let her die on the operating table,” he muttered, seizing my hand in his and stalking back toward the guard, who waited patiently by the door.
I didn’t say it aloud, but I agreed. I wished my aim had been better and it’d actually ended her life then and there.
None of us spoke as we exited the facility, returning to our cars with some small level of closure. Jocelyn—unless she was the best actress in the entire world and knew how to fake her own CT results—was no longer a threat.
“Max, did you have any luck with Abigail?” I asked as we reached Nate’s truck. “Was she still there at Mallard?”
Max swiped a hand over his face, shaking his head slightly.
“Mallard is no longer…operational. The night after Jocelyn attacked the two of you, the facility experienced an electrical fire. Somehow, none of the smoke detectors functioned properly, nor did the sprinkler system. The whole facility burned to the ground before emergency services were even informed.”
I sucked a sharp breath of shock, thinking of all those patients who—like me—probably didn’t belong there in the first place.
“Surprisingly, there were very few casualties in the wreckage,” Max continued. “No bodies were found in patient rooms at all. It was only staff. And without any records of who was being treated, there is no way of knowing who was there…or who is unaccounted for.”
Words failed me as I processed what he was saying. The patients had escaped? Or they were transported somewhere worse, for someone else to continue Jocelyn’s experiment in secrecy. It made my stomach clench painfully.
“Thanks for letting me know,” I whispered, my chest aching with worry all over again.
Max gave me an apologetic smile and offered a quick hug. “I wish I had better news. I’ll see you two at dinner this weekend, right?”
I nodded weakly, climbing into the truck as Nate hugged his dad goodbye. The two of them had been putting in some real effort to offer mutual support, and it was encouraging to see them both healing.
Nate and I drove most of the three hours back to Nevaeh in silence, lost in our thoughts about Jocelyn.
When we parked and climbed out, my phone vibrated in my pocket, and I pulled it out, expecting to see a message from Mom or Carly, or more likely from the group thread someone—Royce—had named Ashley Addicts .
Instead, the message fragment on my screen stopped me dead in my tracks.
“What?” Nate asked, pausing to look back at me with concern. “What is it?”
I wet my lips, barely breathing as I unlocked my device and opened the message.
Abigail: Thank you. You did what I never could, but now it’s my turn to keep you all safe. It’s the least I can do, for my part in this experiment. Sorry doesn’t cut it, but maybe this will help?
Her text was followed by a photo. A selfie of a smiling, very lucid version of Abigail posing behind the vacant-eyed, lost-looking Jocelyn we’d just met. Abigail held up her fingers in a peace sign, winking at the camera in her recognizable uniform. She was a guard at Orpington.
She was telling me that she had eyes on Jocelyn.
Abigail: Seek therapy, Ashley. One bad egg doesn’t need to spoil the batch, and you’ll need help to move on. But rest assured, your part is over. I’ll be watching your back for you. XX - Abby