Crush(115)

With a heavy sigh, he pulled it from his pocket and glanced at it. His features darkened in the strangest way, but he still didn’t answer it. Instead he switched the ring to vibrate and focused on me again. “Are you in pain?” he asked. This time there was a new tone in his voice. One I’d never heard.

Hushed.

I didn’t like it.

As if my lack of response was a yes, he started for the door. “I’ll get the nurse.”

“No, not yet.”

I could see his phone vibrate in his hand. I wanted to ask him if I could use it. I wanted to call Logan, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to explain myself. Still, I stared at it the entire time he poured me a glass of water. “How’s Clementine?” I asked, more concerned about her than ever.

With the glass in one hand and his phone in the other, he handed me the water. “She’s fine. Here, drink this.”

Once I’d taken a sip, I looked up at him. “How did you know I was here?”

His sigh gave away his concern and he sat in the chair next to the bed. “I was at the Sudbury Sheriff’s Department when units were dispatched to the scene.” His last words trailed off.

I looked at him strangely. Town names didn’t matter to me. I could have been on Mars, that’s how far away I’d felt.

“I was worried about you. You were missing and I’d filed a missing persons report. I was notified when the Mercedes was found and I wanted to talk to the men who impounded the vehicle, directly.”

With a shudder, I forced myself to talk even though I didn’t want to. “I wasn’t missing. A man took me, Michael, a man who told me I had to walk down God’s path, a path that leads to you.”

Silence stretched between us. “Shhh . . . you don’t have to talk right now. I’ve told the police we’d go down to the station tomorrow in order to give you some time to think, to get everything straight in your head,” he finally said.

Straight? How did he know it wasn’t straight? It wasn’t, but I hadn’t told him that. Did he know who had taken me, who had taken my sister? Any calmness I might have had in me, any patience or tolerance, had been left on that dirt floor wherever I had been. I felt raw inside and I wanted answers. “Michael, the man who took me said he had taken Lizzy, too.”

His phone was buzzing again and when he glanced down at it, all the color drained from his face. And then just like that, like what I’d said wasn’t news to him, he jumped to his feet. “Listen, I need to go,” he said, and headed for the door.

“Michael!” I called.

He turned back. “The doctor said you should be released tomorrow. I have something I need to take care of, but I’ll be back later to check on you.”

“Michael!” I called again, but the door closed.

What just happened?





LOGAN


I was a force to be reckoned with.

As I strode down the hospital corridor, nothing or no one was going to stop me from seeing Elle.

As soon as Miles had gotten the call that Elle had been found, he slapped the siren on his car again and we took off. Unfortunately, no one would violate HIPAA policies, so I had no idea how she was. All I knew were three things. She was alive. She had been admitted and was on the fifteenth floor. And I was going mad.

My legs couldn’t move any faster. I wanted to run, but didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I hadn’t stopped at the desk, hadn’t checked in. I snuck by with my hat on and sunglasses on my face. Somehow, I managed to slide right past the reception area without so much as a whisper. I wasn’t going to take a chance at being denied access.

The hospital was huge and it took f*cking forever to navigate. When I got in the elevator, there was no button for the fifteenth floor. I turned around to find a nurse with a cup of coffee in her hand. “Excuse me, how do I get to room fifteen ten?”

She gave me a smile. “Take the red elevator to the third floor, follow the sign for the green elevator, then take that one to the fifteenth floor.”

Something tight in my chest exploded like a grenade.

I thought it was my heart, blown into a million pieces.

This journey was taking way too long.

What if she needed me right now?

“Thank you,” I said, and this time I ran.

At the door to the room, I came to a stop and braced myself for the fact that O’Shea might be there already. When Miles made the call, he had learned that O’Shea was at the Sudbury Sheriff’s Department. He was more than an hour closer than us.

Resolve, resignation, hatred, and rage were just a few of the emotions that passed through me. Tempering all of them, I took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to stay in the shadows anymore. I couldn’t. Elle was mine, and I was going to claim her for all the world to see.

Elle and I would deal with the fallout of O’Shea finding out about us, together.

A small huff of laughter escaped my lips. I talked the talk, but in the end I knew I’d do what I had to in order to make sure Clementine remained in Elle’s life—even if that meant stepping away.

Pushing all the shit aside for now, slowly, I pulled the door open.

My heart was a drum banging in my chest as I eased it open. The room was dark, and emotion flooded me when I saw her lying so still in the bed. So much so, I almost dropped to my knees and prayed. Something I hadn’t done since my grandmother was alive.