The Girl Who Survived(71)

“A prank.”

“Maybe.”

“What did she say?”

“She’s alive.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s alive,” he repeated. “Then it wasn’t Marlie, because she would have IDed herself, right? And said something like, I’m alive. Not she’s alive.”

“I thought about that.”

“Maybe they—whoever called—they weren’t talking about Marlie.”

“Who, then?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, moving on the bed and grimacing in pain. “You tell me.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I thought maybe you knew something about it.”

“Me?” His gaze sharpened as he understood. “Why? Oh, wait. Now I get it! You think I left you the message? Because I was released? Out of prison? You thought I would play some sick mind game with you, is that it? Give me a fuckin’ break.”

Again, Kara heard a noise outside the door, footsteps coming closer. She froze. What if the cop was back? How would she explain herself and get out? Or what if a nurse or doctor came in to check on Jonas? She couldn’t be discovered here in his room. Didn’t want to be found out. Not yet. At any second her empty bed could be discovered and if so, Jonas’s room would be one of the first places the staff would search for her. She’d made her need to see him well known to the nursing staff. That had been a mistake.

And what about the police? The nurse had told her the cops were going to return to ask her questions. She was out of time. “I’ll be back,” she promised, but he didn’t seem to be listening, was sleeping again. Carefully, she cracked the door, peered into the hallway and slid out, past the empty chair. She passed a man in a wheelchair rolling down the hallway and the semicircular nurse’s desk where the same nurse sat, back turned to her.

Kara moved noiselessly to the elevators just as the nurse clicked off her phone and glanced over her shoulder. Her gaze met Kara’s and she stood up quickly. “Can I help you?” she asked, her eyebrows knitting.

Kara froze.

Silently prayed the elevator doors would open. Shoving back her chair, she stood and ripped off her headset as she rounded the desk, phone still in hand. “This floor is off-limits to visitors at this time.”

Kara thought about coming up with a quick lie but knew she would be found out. “I’m leaving now.”

A soft ding announced the arrival of the elevator car. Thank God!

“What were you doing up here?” the nurse asked as another nurse, a tall male with a wrestler’s physique and concerned expression, appeared from a patient’s room.

“What’s going on?” he demanded.

“I was just trying to visit my brother.”

The woman said, “But it looks like you’re a patient.”

Her bandages! Kara had forgotten the gauze covering her stitches. Crap!

“Your brother? And who is that?” The nurse glanced down the hallway to the empty chair at the door to Jonas’s room just as the elevator door opened and Kara, heart thumping, slipped inside. “Wait a sec—”

Too late. Kara slapped the button for the first floor, then punched the door closed as the nurse approached, already speaking into her phone.

Thankfully the doors closed and with a clunk the car started to descend. But she’d seen the nurse calling someone, maybe because of her, maybe not, but she didn’t want to deal with anyone. Not a doctor, not a hospital administrator and certainly not anyone from security, or the police for that matter. She thought about trying to stop the elevator on the second floor and using the stairs, but it was too late. Maybe she had enough time to—

The car settled on the first floor and as the doors opened onto a hallway, Kara tore off the gauze on her head and pulled her hair down so that it covered the injured side of her forehead. She stepped out of the car, one eye on the other elevator door and the staircase beyond, just in case either of the two nurses had decided to follow her.

But the reception area was mayhem: loud conversation, shouts and footsteps and some kind of chanting. About Jonas. Oh. God. She caught a glimpse of the reception area, where a crowd had gathered, a crowd composed mainly of women—mostly under forty, some with babies, others with handmade signs, all about freeing Jonas.

Wesley Tate’s distraction.

Security guards and cops were trying to keep the throng at bay while a tall man in a dark suit—probably an administrator of some kind—was speaking with a red-jacketed female reporter, hair wet with melting snow, cameraman at her side. As the cops were trying to herd people out a side door, she took advantage and slipped between a tall woman in heeled boots, wool coat and an updo, and a shorter, rounder woman wearing a ponytail, jeans and sneakers.

Heart drumming, Kara avoided eye contact with the guard as he shepherded their group through the open door to the exterior.

She was almost free.

As she stepped outside, a blast of bitter air slapped her cheeks, but she kept walking along a concrete path where snow had been trampled. She circumvented the crowd congregated outside the wide front doors where women carrying picket signs had gathered. Denied access to the interior, they were chanting.

About Jonas.

It was nuts. A circus sideshow.

Television news crews had set up in the perimeter of the hospital, several white vans emblazoned with logos from stations in Washington and Oregon parked, and she spied a couple of freelancers who worked for rival papers trying to gain entrance and getting nowhere with the security guard, who was obviously on crowd-control duty as the front entrance was roped off.