Chapter Fourteen
James had no idea what was going on, but he did know everything had gone wrong.
“Rose!” he yelled, not for the first time.
The woman might have been small in size but what she lacked in height she more than gained in speed. She ran full tilt down the hospital hallway like she was running for her life. The problem with that?
James was the only one behind her.
“Sto-stop!” he yelled out, nearly tripping over a patient coming out of a room. He sidestepped the confused woman and focused back on running after the woman confusing him.
Rose started to slow but only so she could take a turn in the hallway.
He could hear her shoes squeak across the floor.
James wanted to use her slower pace to his advantage, but it just wasn’t in the cards, with his physique.
He took the turn a lot less gracefully than her, losing him even more distance between them.
What had happened?
Why was she running?
James chanced the quickest of looks back down the hallway he was leaving.
There was no one chasing them. Absolutely no one.
But it had to have something to do with that Lloyd guy. If he had time, James would have cursed the man. He never should have stepped aside to give Lloyd the privacy to talk to Rose.
“Listen, he obviously looks scared,” Rose had argued when it was clear James didn’t want her to be alone with the man.
“He could have some answers. Some answers we need. And he could also need us. If Damon blames me for not saving Derrick because of a hesitation and he’s been going through all of this?
Maybe he’s been doing much worse to someone else. ”
Rose had reached out and put her hand right into James’s. It was small and warm and soft. Her expression was none of those. Her expression was hard, sharp. Determined, angry. Excited for something. Ready for anything.
Wildcard Rose.
She wasn’t asking permission.
Not that he would have been in the right to give it.
So he had relented, but only so much.
“I’ll go stand over there so I can keep you in my sight,” he had warned. “No going into off-limits rooms or secret passageways to make Damon’s job easier for him.”
She had nodded and pointed out a spot at the intersection of the hallway he had been standing in.
“Out in the open but not in a crowded place and you can see me.”
That had been fine. That had been good.
That still hadn’t worked.
Rose and Lloyd had started talking without any issue. Lloyd seemed tired, Rose open to listening to whatever he was saying. No one passed through their hallway or James’s. No gunmen or Damon or creep in a collared shirt showed.
And then everything had changed.
Rose hadn’t even looked his way before she turned on her heel and ran out of sight. Lloyd did the same.
But in the opposite direction.
By the time James had made it to their hallway, the choice of whom to follow had been a no-brainer.
Now that no-brainer had him thoroughly confused.
Rose wasn’t stopping for him.
Why?
The hallway they turned into wasn’t as long as the one they had come from.
If he was tracking right, it turned into the back section of the hospital before hitting a bank of elevators.
There was a doctor’s clinic somewhere near here that he had taken Mr. Donahue to once.
A clinic in the hospital that had its own small parking lot.
Where they had parked earlier before walking around the other side of the hospital to avoid as many eyes as possible.
That Rose, he realized, was heading straight for.
He heard the impact of her throwing open the Exit doors to the parking lot before he saw daylight streaming through them.
“Rose! Stop!”
She didn’t.
The doors shut before James could reach them. When it was his turn to open them, it sounded like an explosion as he rammed right on through.
Heat hit him in the face and made the sweat already starting to bead down him gain more traction. James didn’t care. He wasn’t going to stop running until he caught her. Even if that meant running every inch of the hospital or—
James felt his stomach sink.
He had driven to the hospital in the truck they had borrowed from a deputy at the department…but Rose had the keys. She had taken them after he had complained that the key ring was too bulky for his jeans.
Now he wished more than anything he hadn’t been such a baby about it.
Just then he saw what Rose’s speed had won her.
Halfway across the lot, she was already getting inside the truck. James didn’t bother calling for her again. Whatever was happening, she didn’t want him to be a part of it.
But that didn’t stop him from trying.
James pushed his big muscles as far as they would go at the truck with all he had.
Wildcard Rose?
Not even a man like him could catch her if she didn’t want him to.
She slammed on the gas as soon as the truck started.
James missed her by mere seconds.
Rose not once looked his way.
Wherever she was going, she was going to face it alone.
* * *
ROSE WASN’T USED to the truck. She didn’t know how much speed it could handle and how much grace she needed to give it without letting her foot off the gas pedal.
Instead of playing it completely safe, but also not putting her entire life on the line by slinging it around at ninety miles an hour, she split the difference.
When she came to the metal gate that separated the Reynolds Farm and the Seven Roads Cemetery right off County Road 72’s start, she hit it at a cool forty miles an hour.
The truck whined at the hit, bumped her around a little, metal twisted a little more, but it took out the gate without taking her out. And it didn’t pop a tire as far as she could tell.
Small blessings, she thought, as she started to haul tail again.
The Seven Roads Cemetery had changed names three times in its one-hundred-year existence.
No one really got buried there anymore and not many people in town had people already there, so the through traffic had become less and less over the last few years.
Five months ago, the entire place had been shut down after the storm dislodged some graves and nearly destroyed the main office.
Damage or not, though, Rose knew her way around.
Knuckles white against the steering wheel, she bypassed the decapitated office and took the main road that ran around the entire two-acre plot of land.
Gravestones, old and weathered, dotted the land to her right.
Big oaks, some damaged from the same storm, were lined up at her left.
Her target, though, would be right up ahead in a few seconds.
Rose’s stomach tightened as the phone in her pocket vibrated.
She knew who it would be.
She knew what he would say if she answered.
She knew what he would say when she told him why she was out here.
James would tell her to turn around. To stop. To wait.
To not listen to Lloyd’s warning.
To not willingly go into danger.
To not make it easier for Damon…
But what James didn’t realize was that she was doing this for him.
“While you’ve been dodging his attacks, I’ve been playing his games,” Lloyd had said, exhaustion in his every word.
“Damon’s?” she had parroted.
Lloyd had sighed.
“He sure started it,” he’d said. “I thought I found a way out but then you finally showed up.”
“I don’t understand. What game? What’s going on?”
There had been no hesitation in Lloyd’s answer, no emotion either. Just that exhaustion. How had his coworkers not seen it? How had no one stopped him to check on him?
“I’ve been playing hide-and-seek,” he’d said, not at all showing signs that he was kidding. “But only one person can find me and you just did.” He’d glanced down at his phone. “And he knew you were here before I did. He sure is everywhere.”
Lloyd had sighed again, an all-consuming weight seemingly dragging him down. Rose had almost turned to James then, red flags springing up to make a sea around them, but Lloyd had been quick.
“Don’t let him know what I’m about to tell you or we’re both going to lose.”
Lloyd had just finished a phone call when they had first seen him, and he let her in on the conversation.
“We have ten minutes to get to the groundskeeper’s house at the Seven Roads Cemetery. If we’re not there by then and if we’re not alone, bad things will happen to whoever they took.”
Rose hadn’t for the life of her expected that.
“Whoever they took?”
Lloyd had flinched.
“That’s all he said.”
The sea of red flags took over the land too.
Lloyd, however, hadn’t tried to reassure her or persuade her after that. But she wasn’t sure any words could convince her faster than his utter look of resignation.
Rose had believed Lloyd then.
Still, she wasn’t a fool.
“We could still call for help,” she’d said.
Lloyd had shaken his head.
“I’m not taking that chance again. I’ve already learned my lesson.” He had flinched again before putting his phone in his pocket. “The time starts when we leave the hospital. What do you want to do about the big guy over there? He looks like he’ll stop us and get himself killed for it.”
Every word Lloyd had said lacked inflection, lacked emotion. Just matter-of-fact.
It sealed the deal for Rose right then and there to take this seriously.
There had been too many unknowns.
What she had known was she wasn’t going to lead James into a situation that would put him and someone else in danger.
“My car is in the side lot,” she had said.
Lloyd, despite his obviously deteriorated emotional state, had understood.
“We’ll split up,” he’d said. “Whatever happens, I suggest you get there in ten minutes.”
Rose had wanted to turn to James, to call his name, to take him with her, but she put her trust into fear.
Now she had two minutes left as the side road that branched off to the house behind the cemetery came into view.
Everyone local to Seven Roads knew about Groundskeeper Demetri’s old house.
Demetri was the last person to live there and die there, and since his time it had become the famed haunted house of the town.
Teens went there on haunt nights and spoke to Old Demetri like he was a ghost lying in wait just for them.
It was an easy way to kill boredom on a Friday night and an easier excuse to snuggle up with a special someone when things got too spooky.
Rose couldn’t fault anyone for it because she had been part of some of the first groups of teens to start the tradition of haunt nights and fake ghost-whispering.
Blake and Price had even shown up a time or two with her, because when you grew up in a place as boring as Seven Roads, you had to get creative.
Now, seeing the old two-story, Rose felt true fear grip at her heart.
Not only because of the unknown but because there had been a detail about the property she had forgotten.
There was a small pond behind the abandoned house.
Was that why she had been told to come there? For another attempt at a drowning scene?
Or was this just part of Damon’s revenge for Lloyd?
Rose shook her head to herself and slammed on brakes, skidding to a stop on the overgrown grass next to the house. Her phone started to vibrate again.
She ignored it.
If she was wrong, it was only her life in danger.
If she was right and coming could save someone? Could keep James safe?
Those odds she could make peace with.
Rose didn’t waste any more time. She ran up to the porch and took the steps two at a time. She went for the door handle, but the door was already cracked open. She pushed it open with her foot and on reflex went for her gun.
It wasn’t there.
Neither was anyone in the foyer.
Rose listened but heard nothing but her heartbeat thundering in her chest.
Was this part of the movie scene? Was this part of a game? Had Lloyd told this bizarre lie simply to separate her from James?
No sooner did she start to doubt everything than she finally heard something in the distance.
She walked in its direction, going from the old foyer to the kitchen that was at the back of the house.
In its prime, it was probably the most beautiful of rooms with big, open windows running along almost every wall, facing out toward the dock and pond.
Great for watching sunrises and sunsets and making the job of groundskeeper all the more relaxing.
Now some of the windows had long since been broken. Others had molded. Some had vines that had come through. One had plastic poorly taped across it.
Yet, despite the dilapidated state of them, Rose could see what she realized was just for her.
She also understood the noise she was hearing.
A man was standing on the dock, clapping. There was something next to him but she couldn’t make it out completely.
Not that it mattered much.
Something had been set in motion, and it was time for her to find out what and why.
So she took a quick breath and pushed open the back door.
Once upon a time it had led to a patio that had housed many a party back in her day.
House bands and wannabe DJs, kegs and constant chatter.
She’d had fun here then. Dancing, talking, playing around.
A teenager without too much to worry about, thinking only about how to kill boredom.
Twenty or so years later, Rose walked across the same concrete with a heaviness that only grew with each new step.
Because the man clapping was none other than Damon Tillman.
And now she could clearly see what he was standing next to.
It was two cinder blocks. If that wasn’t terrifying enough, the rope hanging around his arm sure did the trick.