38. Kara
W illa and I ran through the hallways, her leading the way because she knew the rabbit’s warren better than I did.
But the mob of men who’d made it through the door were relentless, held back by security staff only long enough to give us a head start.
“Here!” Willa slammed her security pass against a scanner.
“Open, open, open,” I muttered to the automatic doors, throwing a glance over my shoulder, fear racing down my spine as the first of the mob broke away from the hapless security guards.
“Wait there, Jesus bitch. Time for you to go home and for me to get paid!” It was the big guy, the one who’d demanded my tongue be cut out for speaking the word of the Devil.
His eyes gleamed with pure malice and evil, the kind I’d grown up being warned about.
I’d dismissed all of Josiah’s teachings, but the eyes being a window to one’s soul rang in my ears, and in that instant, staring at that man and the obvious intent in his eyes, I renewed my belief in evil, if nothing else.
My head flashed with nightmarish images of what would happen if a man like that got his hands on me. A lifetime with Josiah might have been more humane.
The door sprang open, and I grabbed Willa’s hand, dragging her through with me. On the other side, both of us spun in unison, pushing the door shut, the sound of the locks reengaging the sweetest thing I’d ever heard, apart from Hayley Jade’s little voice.
We were outside the hospital, the door we’d taken one that wasn’t in regular use. I glanced around, trying to get my bearings as to which part of the hospital we were in.
The first thumps of the men trying to get through the door had both of us backing away quickly, our tiny reprieve clearly over.
Willa breathed hard, her chest rising and falling from the exertion of running. “The door won’t hold long.” She spun around, starting up a jog because neither of us had another sprint in us. “My car is just over there.”
A vehicle felt like a beacon of safety. But… “Keys…”
Willa jingled the lanyard her security pass hung from. “A nurse is never without them. We still need them for many of the older parts of the hospital, as well as some drug storage and our lockers. I keep my car key on here too, because Lord knows I lose one set of keys often enough, I’d be a disaster with two.” She pushed the tiny button on the side of one key, and a car to my right lit up, the doors unlocking.
“I can’t drive.” My single lesson with Hayden definitely didn’t give me the skills to get behind a wheel unsupervised. Terror coursed through me at the thought of trying to get away alone, knowing it would only be minutes before those men found a way out here.
Willa gave me a look like I was insane. “Girl, you think I’m leaving you? You clearly don’t know me too well at all.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and scrambled into the passenger seat, giving the doors to the hospital one last fearful glance as Willa gunned the engine. “They’re holding.”
“Maybe the external doors are stronger than the internal. The windows are shatterproof because you probably wouldn’t be surprised to know how many people try to break into hospitals, being that’s where all the good drugs are. But it won’t be long until they find another way around.” She smiled at me reassuringly. “Don’t worry, we’ll be long gone by then. My son, Colt, always tells me I have a lead foot. Though he’s one to talk.”
True to her word, Willa put her foot down hard on the accelerator, and we jerked out of the parking lot, pausing only long enough for her to swipe her security card again so the boom gates would lift to allow us to exit.
I raised the lever on the side of the seat and lay it right back as we rounded the front of the hospital, not trusting any of the people milling around out there.
“They could just be patients and their families. It’s a popular place to smoke,” Willa tried to reassure me.
I stared at her from my horizontal position.
She grimaced, even though I hadn’t voiced my worries. “Yeah, okay. I don’t trust any of them either. Just stay down until we get out of here.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I stared at the ceiling of her car, counting silently in my head to try to distract myself from the reality of my situation.
I should have just gone back to Josiah when I’d had the chance. I was almost certain he would leave Hayley Jade alone if I returned.
It was me he wanted. Me who’d betrayed and embarrassed him.
But it was too late now. I couldn’t go back. But I couldn’t stay here either.
They would keep coming. They would never stop. No one I loved would ever be safe while I was around.
“Where do you want me to take you?” Willa asked gently once we were speeding through the streets of Saint View. “I don’t think you should go home.”
I agreed. If those men had tracked me down at the hospital, they would know about the clubhouse for sure.
“Your daughter’s school?” Willa asked.
“No. Hawk will be there making sure she’s safe.” And hopefully Hayden.
Willa glanced in the rearview mirror and sped up a few miles. “Good. Because that plan is out of the question anyway. I think there’s someone following us.”
I jerked upright, twisting around to peer out through the back window. Willa took a corner, and behind us, two other cars did as well. Fear swallowed me up at the idea of leading any of those men anywhere near Hayley Jade. I couldn’t see who was driving the vehicles, but in my mind’s eye, it was the big man with the devil in his eyes.
I was suddenly glad it was me he was following. The thought of him even setting his sights on my daughter was incomprehensible.
I mumbled a silent prayer, not knowing who I was praying to when I no longer believed in whatever God Josiah preached about. But it was habit, so I prayed in my head to the universe, to whatever powers there were, for all of them to protect Hayley Jade.
And the two men I’d sent to save her.
I would save myself.
Willa took another turn, but the cars didn’t follow.
She breathed a sigh of relief. “False alarm. We’re good.”
Except we weren’t. What was done was done. The people chasing me weren’t suddenly going to stop because I’d gotten away once. They would come back. Again and again.
Until the inevitable happened.
I had to leave.
My heart squeezed at the thought of leaving Hayden and Hawk. At realizing those moments in the middle of chaos had been our goodbyes. A tear dripped down my cheek. I already missed the feel of their arms around me.
But I’d known all along we were living on borrowed time.
They’d look after Hayley Jade. They’d explain to her that I’d gone not because I didn’t want her, but because I loved her enough to leave so she could have a normal life. One away from the evil that followed me everywhere I went, no matter how hard I tried to shake it.
If I believed in Josiah’s God anymore, I was sure he’d say I was a cursed woman.
Cursed from loving two men. By kissing a third. All while married in the eyes of the Lord to a fourth.
I needed to say goodbye to Grayson.
To write a letter for Hayley Jade that he could take to her.
I needed a minute to catch my breath and work out where I was going, without a cent to my name or any way of getting there.
Grayson was the one place Josiah’s podcast hadn’t mentioned. The one place that might be safe for me right now. But my phone was lost somewhere at the hospital, so I couldn’t even call and ask him. “Do you know where Grayson lives?” I asked Willa.
She nodded. “I went to his housewarming party. He’s literally the only doctor I’d do that for. The rest can go to hell. But he’s one of the good ones.”
“Could you take me there, please?”
Willa didn’t ask questions. Just steered us to some nice apartments in Providence, and stopping outside the doors. “I don’t know the security code to his building, but his apartment is the penthouse. You can buzz him to be let in.”
She reached across the center console and squeezed my fingers. “I wish I could tell you to go to the police. I wish I could assure you they’d protect you from whatever it is you’ve gotten yourself into. But I know from firsthand experience they’re more likely to hurt than to help.” She smiled sadly at me. “I have a feeling you aren’t coming back to work, are you?”
I so desperately wished I was. I’d have given anything to turn back time to a few weeks earlier, before Josiah had set his dogs on me, when it felt like I had everything I wanted and needed for the first time in my life.
I wished I’d known to savor it a little longer. To cherish it a little more.
The memories would be all I had to take with me, and that was a crippling sort of pain, one I knew I would never come back from.
I pulled away from Willa with tears in my eyes, thanking her for her help but knowing I couldn’t sit there another minute, or I might cave in and ask her to take me back to my daughter.
I dragged myself from the car, and with a heart that felt like it was breaking, pushed the intercom button on the penthouse apartment. There was a click when Grayson answered, but he didn’t even get a word out before I burst into tears and a babble of sorrow. “I need you,” I choked into the intercom. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
The door buzzed, unlocking the door, and I leaned on it, entering his fancy building. I made sure the door locked after me, just in case anybody did make the connection between me and him and made their way here. Then took the elevator to the top level, the doors opening into a tiny hallway that only had one door. I practically fell onto it, giving in to the silent desperation and guilt and shame eating me alive.
The door opened.
Strong hands grabbed me before I could slide to the floor.
“Well, well, well,” a voice that wasn’t Grayson’s purred in my ear. “Here I was, expecting my son of a bitch brother. Instead, I get his pretty little wife replacement.”
Fear turned my blood to ice, my head swirling. I scrambled to get away from the hulking man, but his fingers were tight around my arms, nowhere for me to go. “Who are you?” It was on the tip of my tongue to explain Josiah was never going to pay him a cent when his words registered through the confusion.
Grayson’s brother.
He chuckled, dragging me inside and kicking the door shut with his foot. “The look on your face is kind of insulting. He never talked about me then? Surprising. He used to love to tell everyone all about how I killed his wife and her cunt of a sister.”
Shock stole my breath.
Grayson had spoken of a serial killer, warned me he thought there was one who targeted sisters. Confessed he believed that killer to be his wife and her sister’s murderer.
He’d never mentioned the murderer was his brother.
The man pulled me tighter and inhaled the scent of my hair deeply. “What a brother he is, bringing me another, just like the first. Has he ever told you how much you look like her?” He ran his tongue across his lips. “Or how pretty her face was when I put a cord around her neck and strangled her?”
The end…