Lost Girls(74)

A brief glimpse of a face, a familiar face, appeared close to the mirror, as if trying to look inside.

It was my father. Even disguised in camo and in an unlit room, I knew who he was.

“Zoe won’t accept your invitation,” I said, my words slurring.

“Why not?”

The door to the dressing room slammed open, the hinges taken off. Four men shuffled in, all with rifles pointed at the Man Who Had Murdered Nicole. He stumbled backward, but not quick enough, not before two of them had him by the arms.

“Because my dad’s here, that’s why not, you f*cking monster!”

And then my father was there, arms around me, asking if I was okay, had that man hurt me, was I drugged, could I walk. I could barely answer him, so in the end he carried me out, into the midnight air where a caravan of police cars and ambulances waited, where all the men who had been inside were getting cuffed with plastic cable ties.

“They got Lauren,” I managed to say. “They’re going to kill her.”

Dad said something I couldn’t hear.

My head slumped onto my chest. I was losing consciousness, that drug they had given me was too strong. I couldn’t fight it.

“Hang on, you’re going to be okay,” he said as he leaned closer, then he waved toward one of the paramedics. “Hey, get over here and take a look at my daughter! Make sure she’s all right.”

Dad stayed with me. I could sense his presence, despite the black clouds that rolled in and engulfed everything. His hand was in mine when I got in the ambulance, he walked beside me when I was carried on a stretcher into a hospital.

And when I started to black out, the world fading into muted sounds, I knew if I survived, he would be there when I woke up.





Chapter Thirty-Nine


I slept for a long, long time. I sailed through black heavens where flickers of lightning sparked, craggy and pink, and where every boom of thunder turned the skies blue. I thought I heard voices calling me, crowds chanting my name. But it wasn’t my name, was it? It was the name of a character in a story.

Odette—Odette—Odette.

I’d lost everyone I wanted to save, they had all ended up like Nicole, broken and bruised and left by the side of the freeway like trash.

My eyes flared open now and then—in the midst of a series of unending nightmares—and I saw an IV snaked into my arm. The world was softer than I remembered, all made of cotton and pastel colors and voices that whispered. I saw my dad once and my mom. Another time I saw Kyle, pacing back and forth, running his fingers through his hair. As soon as he noticed I was awake, he stopped, a haunted look in his eyes.

“I didn’t know,” he said, his voice hoarse as if he’d been crying. “Or else I never would have gotten in a fight with you that morning. I should have known something was up when I didn’t see you at lunch. I should have gone looking for you.” He moved closer, one hand reaching out to touch mine. “I’m so sorry, Rach—”

“It’s not your fault.” That’s what I tried to say, but I wasn’t sure if the words came out of my mouth or if they stayed trapped in my mind.

Once, I woke up and Molly was in the room. The only problem was, she had on a long LOTR cosplay gown and wig, and for a minute I thought I was hallucinating. It didn’t help that she would only talk to me in J.R.R. Tolkien quotes or that she claimed to have elven ‘lembas’ bread and that it would heal me. I finally realized who she really was when she broke character and started crying.

“You can’t keep doing this,” she said. “You can’t keep ending up in the hospital, half dead.”

“I won’t,” I promised.

She stayed with me until I fell asleep again.

The next time I opened my eyes, it was morning. But I didn’t know if it was the first morning since I’d been here or the third or the fifth. Light washed the room, pouring in from the window, making the sterile space a little more friendly. Hunger gnawed at me and I wondered how long it had been since I’d eaten.

I couldn’t remember what had happened. Had my dad really come to save me or had that been a hallucination? Thoughts of fear jumbled through my head, knocking open doors that led to more corridors and more horrors. Remnants of the drugs that had been pumped into me made my mind work differently than it usually did. I couldn’t seem to focus on anything. My thoughts kept jagging off on semi-related tangents, all of them frantic.

Where was Lauren, was she safe, and what about Madison and Komodo, and was Agent Bennet still alive?

Then a silhouette appeared in the doorway to my room, a man, hunched over and moving awkwardly, as if in great pain. He paused and looked in at me, his features still hidden in shadow. One arm was held close to his chest, the other leaned on a crutch.

“May I come in?” he asked and as soon as he spoke I recognized his voice. It was Bennet. A tear slid down my cheek as I nodded.

It took him a while to make his way into the room, to sit in the chair beside my bed. I winced as I looked at him, his injuries revealed now that he sat in the light—purple bruises on his face, a swollen eye, a broken arm, and a cast that went from his left foot to his hip.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

I was crying then, unable to talk for a long time. “I’m so sorry,” I said at last. He reached out, just like Kyle had, and took my hand in his.