Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(108)

CHAPTER 81


Amelia stared up at the ceiling of her hospital room, finding patterns in the paint, lines that the paint roller had left behind, forming channels all along the surface. Her wrists were cuffed to the bed railings, a cop at her door day and night. How long she had been here, like this, she couldn’t say—maybe weeks. It really didn’t matter. She’d been shot; she remembered that. It had to be weeks because she didn’t hurt as much as she had before, and the beeping machines and worried looks on the doctors and nurses who attended to her were gone, most of the bandages too. She heard something about her being transferred soon, but she had no idea where or when, and again, it really didn’t matter.

“A caged bird with clipped wings,” she muttered, watching the patterns. “A creator of beauty.” She lifted her wrists off the bed, rattling the cuffs. “Captured.” She sighed. There was nothing she could do in the state she was in but think and watch the swirls. She wanted her canvas but knew she’d never see it again. She’d never get to add Tom Morgan to it. Amelia began to chuckle, then laughed outright. “The look on his face. So shocked, so betrayed.” The laughing stopped; anger replaced it. “The liar.”

She squirmed, uncomfortable, fighting the cuffs. “Get me out of these. You have no right to treat me like this. Let me go.” The cop peeked in from the hall, then turned away. “You hear me, you cop. Get these off me.”

She tried to sit up, but the cuffs made that an uneasy thing. “You have no right.”

A nurse rushed in with a syringe, approached the port in the IV bag, and sneered at her. “Don’t you dare knock me out.” The nurse paid no attention to the warning. Amelia watched the syringe empty and knew what was coming. “Damn you, you bitch, I’ll get you next. I swear if it takes me a thousand years, I’ll get . . . you . . . next.” Her eyes blurred, but not before she captured the name on the nurse’s badge hanging from a lanyard around her neck. “Gina Shields, RN . . .”

Shields backed away from the bed, shaking, then ran from the room as though the devil himself were chasing her.





CHAPTER 82


Bodie gave his building one last look, then jumped into the car he’d just bought himself. He was leaving. Starting fresh somewhere else. There was no moving van. There wasn’t a chair or a plate or a rug he wanted to keep from his old life. He was going with the clothes on his back, headed . . . somewhere.

Amelia’s mind was gone. She was locked away in a padded cell, a killer who would never see the light of day again. His father, or the man he’d thought was his father, was dead. He was alone for the first time in his life and at a crossroads. He was Boden Jensen. Clean slate. His own man.

He started the car, listening to the purr of the engine, breathing in the new-car smell. He was normal, not the son of a devil. He’d been corrupted, but he could change and grow and become new. Niles Jensen, his real father, had wanted him, looked for him. He’d missed out on knowing him, having that love, and he couldn’t get that back, but maybe there was family somewhere? Cousins, a grandmother, connections? He’d start there. He’d find his family.

He put the car in gear and drove away without looking back.





CHAPTER 83


Silva walked down the hall of the prison’s psychiatric wing on her way to room 333-A. Locked ward. The place for the hardened psychotics, the dangerous ones, the ones who, if given half a chance, would gouge your eyes out with a ballpoint pen and smile about it afterward. She wanted to see the woman who’d tried to kill her. For a moment, she stopped in the hall to press her fingers into the tender flesh at her side. It still hurt. She still had to turn a special way and breathe a little differently, or she’d feel the tug, the strain of what the knife had left behind. But after many months, she was healing. She had a reason to look on the bright side of things. Twins. Bodie and Amelia Morgan.

Silva stood in front of the metal door of 333-A and slid back the small door used for observation purposes. This wasn’t Westhaven; Amelia was too sick, too dangerous, too unrepentant for that. It had taken Silva every ounce of pull she still possessed to gain access to her prize, here, behind locked doors. But she had needed to see Amelia again. Face her.

Inside the small, barren room sat Amelia dressed in a pink prison jumpsuit, her hair a mess of tangles. She sat on the narrow bed, rocking, staring out of the slit of a window at a piece of sky. Medication had stabilized her to some extent, Silva had been told, but her psychosis was severe, her mental injury profound and likely irreversible.

“Hello, Dr. Silva,” Amelia said, though she hadn’t turned when the little door opened. “I’ve been expecting you.”

Silva smiled, a thrill of triumph snaking up her spine. “Hello, Amelia. We have so much to talk about.”





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


I am indebted to my village of lifter-uppers and kick-in-the pantsers who keep me pushing forward when the weeds get deep. That village includes my writing family in Crime Writers of Color, Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime who prove that though writers write alone, they don’t have to struggle alone. Together we’re better! A profound thanks to my agent, Evan Marshall, and to my new Thomas & Mercer peeps, editors Liz Pearsons and Clarence Haynes, as well as to the entire T&M team. I hope we’ll do great things together. To the wonderful folks at Dana Kaye Publicity—Dana herself, awesome, and my fantastic publicist, Julia Borcherts—who are as passionate about my work as I am, thank you. For technical assistance, I give my thanks to Detective Gregory Auguste and retired Detective Keith Calloway, Chicago Police Department. I hope I got most of the police things right. I asked a lot of questions, but I’ll likely ask more for the next book, too, so also thank you in advance.