Chapter 66. Jade
Jade
“Easy, easy,” says a disembodied voice. A woman’s face peers down at me, eyes filled with concern. An angelic glow surrounds her. Is this heaven? No. My head is pounding too hard, too real for it to be the afterlife. I think she’s a medic of some sort.
As my senses sharpen, I become aware of my surroundings. I’m outside on a stretcher that’s parked on the grass in front of the Carmichaels’ house. I still feel untethered from my body, but a tube in my nose is delivering healthy air that’s helping to revitalize me.
Blurry figures fuss over me like I’m some VIP.
They check my vitals: pulse, blood pressure, and temperature.
Evidently I’m stable enough, but my wrist feels like it’s on fire.
I realize it’s been splinted. I tell someone it’s still killing me, and before I know it, I’m on an IV drip delivering pain medication.
Holly. Where is Holly? And Conrad? I stabbed him, right? Is he dead? Did he bleed out?
I can’t take a deep, full breath. My limbs weigh a thousand pounds. But at least the anxiety has finally left me. I am here, I am safe. I am finally out of my prison. I can relax, if only a little.
Someone touches my shoulder tenderly. I turn my head—finally, a familiar face.
Dr. Hill smiles down at me. “Jade, I need to look in your eyes with my penlight. Is that okay?”
I nod because I can’t speak. Light fills my vision. I wince as though it pricked me. It’s not like the ethereal light I saw before—this one hurts. He does it again in the other eye.
“Good, good,” Dr. Hill says. “You’re doing great, Jade.”
But I’m not great. I’m actually trembling with fear because to my left, I see a big, burly cop settling Conrad into a folding chair. The guy looks like he’s had better days. I guess my attack wasn’t deadly, but at least he’s where he belongs—in handcuffs. The cop comes lumbering over to me.
“Can you tell us what happened?” he asks.
Dr. Hill doesn’t take kindly to the intrusion. “Officer Walker, she’s recovering. Please, questions can wait.”
Ah, so this is Tommy Boy.
A new person arrives. I only see them from the back—slender shoulders, hair in a bun, in uniform—a female cop, I guess.
“We have medical personnel looking after the woman in the tower. But I found a pair of bloody scissors upstairs, under the bed. Someone got stabbed—badly, by the looks of it, but it’s not the woman. She doesn’t have a mark on her.”
“Let me see those,” Tommy demands.
I turn to look and there it is, a bloody pair of scissors, sharp as can be, stuffed inside a clear plastic evidence bag, the blades soiled with someone’s bodily fluid.
“Who got stabbed?” asks the female cop.
“Probably Conrad,” says Tommy. “He’s got a neck wound like a viper’s bite. Could have been the scissors.”
“No,” I say weakly. “I stabbed that asshole with a bottle, not scissors.”
Tommy perks up. “Yeah? I don’t think so. We have two stabbing victims. Seems like the woman was cut by some pretty sharp glass. Are you admitting to injuring her? Maybe trying to kill her?”
A woman? None of this makes sense. I’m so confused, my head aches even more.
“This young girl is in no shape to speak with the police right now,” Dr. Hill interjects, placing himself between me and Officer Asshat. “Please hold off on your questions until she’s medically cleared at the hospital.”
Dr. Hill looks pleased with himself as the cop gives him a defiant stare, but then saunters off obediently in the other direction when the doctor doesn’t back down.
“Sorry about that,” Dr. Hill says. “Some people have their priorities all wrong. How are you feeling, Jade?” For a moment, the warmth in his voice comforts me. He rolls up his sleeves and reaches to check my IV.
In an instant, my body and mind separate again.
Suddenly I’m thrust back in time to when Conrad grabbed me from behind, whipped me over his shoulder, and smashed my head into the doorframe before carrying me down the tower stairs to my wine cellar prison.
What I remember most about the attacker was his watch—and I’m seeing that watch again, right here, right now—deep black face under domed crystal, slim gold minute hands, a band with tightly woven links.
I lift my gaze to meet the eyes of the person wearing it. Dr. Hill.
It all comes back to me now in a great rush—Baxter’s closet, how he kept multiples of the things he loved, and Dr. Hill was into vintage everything. Maeve even let him have the run of the closet before I got involved. Could I have had my attacker all wrong?
He smiles down at me. My eyes flicker back to his watch, then up to him, and something in my expression must change because I see his face fall.
I twitch, reflexively pulling away from his touch. “Was it you?” I ask.
Awareness blossoms in his eyes, and then something new—fear.
“It was you,” I say.
He backs away from the stretcher.
I lift myself onto my elbows. My chest expands as I breathe in as much air as possible. Then my voice pierces the night, erupting from me like a burst of lava. I shout as loud as I can: “It’s him—Dr. Hill. He’s the one who took me!”
I point at my attacker.
Dr. Hill doesn’t hesitate, not for a second. He takes off running.
I can’t move. All I can do is keep screaming as the night swallows him whole.