Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Grace refused to tell the doctors the exact drugs with which she’d dosed him, but whatever it was had done internal damage that might equal the need for a transplant down the line.
Per Grace, it was punishment for turning Bea down when she’d been sixteen.
I’d known Bea’d had a crush on him for about five seconds, also knew it had passed as quickly. Bea, I understood, would’ve shared the story with Grace as a humorous anecdote of childhood drama, a funny snippet of life to make them both laugh in that dark place where they’d been imprisoned.
It was Grace who’d decided that Kaea’s gentle rejection—because Kaea wasn’t cruel, would have let Bea down with tenderness—was a crime that deserved the death penalty . . . after plenty of suffering. I had the feeling his mind and legal training had counted against him, too. That ability to unmask liars, expose twisted truths—and zero in on unstable points in an opponent’s psyche.
Grace, however, was far beyond simply unstable. Her name wasn’t even Grace and she wasn’t adopted, much less from Romania; she hadn’t tried to keep up the lies now that she’d achieved her aim of exposing Darcie.
Rubbing my face with one hand, I decided to check in on the others. The hospital staff had been very kind, allowing me to stay in the rooms long past visiting hours. News of what had gone on in the house had spread through those caring for my friends, and the hospital had even sent a psychologist to talk to me.
He’d strongly recommended I “undertake a regime of therapy” after my return to London, “with the aim of staving off long-term PTSD.”
I wanted to laugh.
I wondered what Dr. Mehta would say if I walked in and told her that I now had even worse problems than before my relaxing little vacation. Not that she’d be seeing me. I wasn’t going back to London.
How could I when Bea was here?
After making sure Kaea’s blanket was tucked in around him, I shoved up the sleeves of my oversize gray hoodie as I padded over to the next room. My sneakers were soundless on the hospital floor. The shoes and clothes were both courtesy of Detective Stu Ratene. He’d taken my own gear in as evidence even though I had little blood on me.
Procedure.
Though my eyes were tired this late into the night on such a limited amount of sleep, I could see fine; it was never fully dark in a hospital, not even at the darkest hour of night.
Too many machines with blinking lights, too much need for nurses and doctors to be able to rush into a room in an emergency without having to fumble to find their way. What existed in the hallways was a light bright enough to hurt, while within the rooms hovered a dark gray twilight somber and restful.
Despite the wires and the machines and the drugs, Ash was awake and staring out the window at the dark beyond. Tiny squares of light patterned his face, thrown from the windows of a neighboring high-rise. “Luna,” he said when I walked in.
His face was sallow and thin, his eyes hollow.
As of my last conversation with the staff, Ash remained listed as critical. His family was out of the country, would land in New Zealand in the early morning hours. Until then, they’d given the hospital permission to share information with me.
“You saved his life,” his mother had sobbed on the phone. “Please take care of him a little longer.”
I almost hadn’t been in time to save Ash at all; the kitchen knife his attacker had used when she’d lured him into the ruined part of the house with a cry for help had nicked a vital organ. He’d been bleeding out into his abdomen.
Ironically enough, it was the cold in the house that had saved him.
“How are you awake?” I came to stand beside his bed, my arms crossed. “You’re meant to be under heavy sedation postsurgery.”
“I have an irregular reaction to anesthetic—always wake up too fast.” His words were a monotone. “Can’t feel my stomach, though. No idea why. In fact, no idea why I’m in a hospital.”
Had this been Kaea, I’d have touched him multiple times by now, but with Ash . . . I didn’t blame him for falling for Darcie’s strategy to oust her sister, and yet I did. “How are you feeling overall?”
His chest rose and fell as he turned his head toward me. “I dreamed that I was being held by a crying angel. I could smell blood, but I wasn’t afraid. Funny, huh?”
A crying angel.
“About that . . .” I grabbed a lightweight plastic chair from the corner and moved it close to his bed. After taking a seat, I told him what I thought he could handle in his current state—and that didn’t include information about Bea’s return from the dead. Mostly, I focused on Grace’s desire to get vengeance for her friend.