Trail of Dead (Scarlett Bernard #2)(74)

Will sat down in the chair across from mine, looking as exhausted as I felt. Neither of us had said a word since I’d thanked him for giving Eli the sedative. I don’t know how long we sat there—time seemed to fuzz away from me for a long moment, and then suddenly someone was knocking on the back door at the end of the little hallway. I looked a question at Will.

“The doctor,” he assured me. “He always comes to the back door.”

Will went back there to let him in, and I stared at the floor, absently tracing a circle in the glass with my boot. The shock was beginning to fade again, and I realized I had no idea what to do now. I checked my watch: 10:50 p.m. And Olivia was still out there. Jesse was safe, surrounded by a legion of police. Molly and Jack were hiding. Kirsten was in the hospital. Dashiell was busy taking care of cleanup—doing my job, I supposed—at Kirsten’s and then here. I had no one left to lose, but I also had no one left to help me. And whatever Olivia and Mallory were going to do, they were going to do it in just over an hour.

I was alone.

Will and the doctor returned from the back door. I had been picturing someone older, maybe a guy in his late fifties with nefarious horn-rimmed glasses, like the evil Nazi in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I was wrong again. The guy who followed Will back toward Eli and me was forty at the most, carried a briefcase, and was movie-star handsome, with a perfect cleft chin and warm eyes that were almost as green as my own. He was wearing navy-blue scrubs, and he looked for all the world like one of those doctors on prime-time soaps, the ones who spend more time sleeping around than practicing medicine. “You’re the doctor?” I said, not bothering to keep the skepticism out of my voice.

He grinned and eyed my T-shirt-and-boots ensemble. “You’re the null?” he countered.

I glanced down at the outfit and shrugged. “Touché.”

“Scarlett, this is Matthias. Matthias, Scarlett.”

I considered a comment on his ridiculous name, but I didn’t exactly have a leg to stand on there, either. “Can you help him?” I said instead.

“Yes.” Matthias squatted down next to Eli, checking his pulse. He opened his briefcase, rummaged around, and pulled out the biggest needle I’d ever seen. Syrupy-looking pink fluid sloshed inside. “This is going to take a little finesse, though.”

He directed me to walk away from Eli, to whatever I thought the edge of my radius might be. I complied, and he got the mammoth needle into position at the vein on Eli’s arm. When he nodded, I took the last two steps away from Eli and felt him leave my radius. Matthias quickly drove in the needle’s plunger, injecting the pinkish fluid into the vein. I hovered, half-expecting it to not work. I wanted to be ready to leap back toward Eli. But the unconscious man didn’t even stir, and Matthias checked his pulse and nodded to himself. “Keep him out of your range for the next four hours or so,” he said to me. “These drugs would kill a human pretty quickly.”

I nodded and took a few steps back, just to be sure. “Mind if I sit in your office a minute?” I asked Will. I wanted to be away from the carnage, and I had no interest in seeing Will and Matthias handle the doctor’s payment. Will nodded. I leaned down and carefully extracted my wallet, Jesse’s keys, and my phone from the bloody pile that used to be my jeans, hoping to find a plastic bag or something for them in the office.

Will’s office was unpretentious and comfortable: a solid old wooden desk and matching chair, a bulletin board with pictures of Will, his family, the pack. There was some debris in here too, from when Caroline had first changed: papers and office supplies scattered over the floor, trash cans upturned. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the bar, though. Her first instinct had probably been to get to a more open space.

Caroline. Caroline was gone.

I pulled back the chair, which seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. I was so tired. Before I could even sit down, though, my phone buzzed in my hand, making me jump. I looked at the screen cautiously. Unlisted number. I answered it. “Bernard.”

“Scarlett, darling,” Olivia’s voice cooed. “Did you get the cookies I sent?”

Now I did sit, my body dropping into the office chair without me really noticing. “Where are you?”

“Oh, come on, baby, where are your manners? Didn’t I teach you anything?”

I felt a familiar little sting for the briefest moment—I had disappointed her! I hadn’t followed directions! As soon as I registered that thought, however, it made me even angrier. I was not a little girl. I was not her Barbie doll. And I didn’t have to play her games. “Where are you?” I repeated, through gritted teeth. Then I remembered the psych report and the background we’d collected: Olivia wanted a family. She wanted me with her. “I—I really want to see you,” I added, letting my voice break with emotion. “I don’t know what else to do.” Well, that was honest.

There was a pause. “I’m afraid tonight’s not a good night, darling. Plans, you know. But we’ll get together soon,” she said coyly. “You can count on it.”

I moved the receiver away from my mouth so she wouldn’t hear me taking a deep breath. That was bullshit. She’d called me, she wanted me to see her fingerprints all over the wolfberry. She wanted me to know she was still in control, still the puppet master—and she wanted me to see her finest hour. Whatever she was planning with Mallory, she wanted to show it off, or she wouldn’t have called tonight.