Chapter 30
Ronan stepped out to take a phone call. Roberta was just sitting in the corner, staring out into nothing and muttering to herself. He wondering if she’d had a mini breakdown, but also didn’t care.
Harvey wondered where the doctor’s phone was and after looking around he found it in the bathroom. He must have set it down on top of the cabinet while he was gathering up some stuff to pack.
It required a PIN or facial recognition, so he turned around and held it up in front of Doctor Wallace’s face.
The phone opened, and he started checking through it.
The first thing he found was a message from an unknown number.
I want what you owe me. You have until tomorrow night, midnight. Or you’re going to pay.
Hmm. So the doctor owed someone money, did he? Was this the guy who was supplying him with the Devil’s Breath, or was it something else entirely?
And was it the reason why he’d suddenly decided to leave town? The message had come through a few hours ago.
Did this person have anything to do with the doctor’s death? Although he had given him until tomorrow night.
So maybe not.
Harvey went through the doctor’s personal emails and checked what was in there. Nothing stood out, unfortunately.
“Harvey, I need you to come with me.” Paddy was standing by the door and looked pale. Sam stood behind him. “Sam’s going to stay with her.”
Harvey nodded and they headed downstairs.
“We really need to get out of here,” Paddy told him. He seemed unusually serious and tense. “We don’t want to be caught here. I’m taking a copy of everything on the computer, but I think we should go back to Ronan’s before I show you what I found.”
“Why would we do that?” Harvey asked, confused as they stopped outside a room. “What did you find?”
Paddy looked over his shoulder, and he turned to see Ronan inside a home office. He was standing behind a large, wooden desk, looking at a computer screen. He glanced up at the two of them.
“You’re not going to take this well,” Ronan told him. “Paddy is right. We should do this at my place.”
Fuck that.
He stormed into the room. No way was he going to wait for them to get to Ronan’s house in order to see what was on that computer screen. But when he walked around the desk, what he saw made him freeze, made his stomach drop, and his heart skip a beat.
No. No, no, no.
To his surprise, he suddenly found himself on the floor on his knees, and a sob ripped out of his mouth. “No, that can’t be her. That can’t be her. Please tell me he didn’t . . . that he didn’t . . . ”
“I haven’t watched the whole thing, man. And there’s more. There’s lots more,” Paddy said, sounding devastated. “So, I don’t know if he raped her in any of them.”
Rape.
Had the doctor raped her?
The video showed Lily lying on the bed naked, while the doctor, who wore a stupid half mask on his face, moved her into different positions, touching her body.
Grabbing the trash can, Harvey vomited up everything in his stomach. He could barely catch his breath. He knew he was going to pass out.
Suddenly, Ronan dropped down in front of him, grasping hold of his shoulders.
“Don’t do this, Harvey. You’ve got to keep it together, man.
Right now, we have a dead body upstairs, a hysterical woman, and a whole ton of evidence to collect.
I need you to stay with me. Hear me? I need you to stay with me. Even more than that, Lily needs you.”
He was right.
Lily needed him. And he needed answers.
Then he was going to fucking burn the world down for hurting his girl.
“I’m good. I’m good,” he told Ronan.
The other man stood and then held out a hand to him, helping him up. Normally, Harvey wouldn’t take a hand like that, but right now his legs felt shaky.
He couldn’t help but stare over at the computer screen as he stood. Someone had frozen it.
Lily was lying on the bed completely naked, her eyes were open, but they weren’t focused on anything. It was clear that she was drugged.
Was the doctor just doing this for his own enjoyment, or was there something even more sinister going on?
“Do you know what he was doing with the videos?” he asked, swallowing heavily as he felt his stomach roll nauseously. He couldn’t throw up again.
“Not yet,” said Paddy. “But I have to go through everything. I’ve tried to get access to his work emails, but they’re password protected, so I’m going to have to hack in. Or, I might have more luck at the clinic.”
“I just got the call from my guys at the clinic,” Ronan said. “They found a secret area that was shut off from the rest of the clinic, and in it was a young woman, drugged and out of it. No one watching over her.”
“I want to go to the clinic. I want to see,” Harvey told them.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Ronan said. “We need to keep our presence there under wraps.”
Harvey turned to him. “I’m going. I need to see this for myself. I need to see what he was putting her through.”
Ronan ran his hand over his face, but to Harvey’s shock, he nodded without any more argument. Good.
“Ronan, do you think that’s smart?” Paddy said quietly.
“It might help settle him down,” Ronan said. “I know I’d have to see where my girl was being held and treated like this.”
Paddy nodded.
“Have you got everything you need, Paddy?” Ronan asked.
“Yeah, I think I have,” Paddy said.
“Good. I’m going to send a cleaner to erase our presence here.”
“We’re leaving the body as it is?” Paddy asked.
Ronan nodded. “I’m undecided about what to do with the old woman, though.”
“She comes with us,” Harvey said. “She knew about what was happening to Lily, and that means she has to pay.”
“All right,” Ronan said. “I’ll have Sam take her to my place. Let’s go to the clinic.”
When they walked into the clinic, there was no one in the reception area.
Which made sense, since it was about two in the morning.
However, there should have been someone in the small nurses’ area as they headed out back.
Harvey turned to look at Ronan questioningly.
“What did you do with the people working here?”
“They’re just having a bit of a sleep. When they wake up, they won’t remember anything. There were no patients here. Just one nurse and a security guard.”
“They might have been in on it,” Harvey said. “The receptionist, too.”
“We’ll find out if they were.”
As they walked past one of the rooms, he saw them both lying on the bed with one of Ronan’s men watching over them.
They reached a metal door with just a keypad next to it. Ronan sent a message, and the door opened to one of his other men standing on the other side.
“Is Michaela here?” Ronan asked.
“Yeah, she’s checking the woman over to make sure she’s all right. She’s totally out of it. I covered her up when I found her.” Ronan’s guy looked a little pale and ill. “Whatever is going on here, it’s fucked up. Someone needs to pay for what they’re doing to these women.”
They walked into a smaller room first. It was like an observation room, with a large window into the room next door. It also had a few computer screens and a couple of seats.
“Fuck,” Paddy said.
They moved into the other room. There was a pale, blonde woman on the bed and Michaela was standing next to her, checking her vitals.
She glanced up as they walked in. Her face was serious, and she just shook her head. “Whatever was going on here was sick. Look at the camera setup.”
Michaela waved her hand around, and Harvey took in the cameras set up around the room. This was where he’d filmed Lily, in this room. There was no real medical equipment, and she’d never mentioned remembering a room like this.
So she’d probably been out of it the entire time she’d been in here.
“There are three rooms,” Michaela said. “Another one like this one. And then a room in the middle that he used for observation. Fucking bastard. I hope you have plans to make him suffer.”
“I wish,” Harvey said. “He’s already dead, and he died too quickly for my liking.”
“Fuck. That’s too bad. I’d have liked to have gotten my own kicks in.”
That was surprising. He’d never seen Michaela lose her temper or show any sort of violent tendencies.
“This is just terrible. We don’t even know who this poor girl is, how she got here, or whether she has any family looking for her. If it’s safe for her to go back to them.”
“What do you think the best idea is for her?” Ronan said, staring intently down at the girl.
Harvey could feel the protective waves coming off his older brother, and knew that if her family had anything to do with why she was in here, that she wouldn’t be going back to them. Ronan would see to that.
“Well, I don’t want her waking up in here,” Michaela said. “I’m not sure I want her in this clinic at all. I’m thinking about moving her to mine.”
Ronan shook his head immediately. “That implicates you if anything goes wrong.” He frowned slightly. “I think we need to move her back into the main part of the clinic. Although when the nurse wakes up, she’s going to get a hell of a fright to find a new patient.”
“We could drop her off at a hospital entrance,” Paddy suggested.
“We can’t traumatize her any further than she’s going to be,” Michaela said.
Ronan nodded. “Unfortunately, either way, she’ll be traumatized, whether she wakes up here, at your clinic, or at a different hospital, plus she won’t have anyone to really care for her.”
“I will care for her,” Michaela said
“I won’t have you put at risk, Michaela,” Ronan said firmly. “No, I’m going to take her home with me.”
All of them gaped at Ronan.
“With you?” Paddy said. “To your house?”
“Yes, it’s the only solution,” Ronan replied.
Harvey wasn’t so sure that was the only solution, but Ronan seemed to have made up his mind, and he wasn’t going to argue with him. Right now, what he wanted to know was what the doctor was doing with the recordings he’d made of Lily.