“Anything else you’d like to tell me?” I asked. “If you give it to me now, I won’t take it from you later.”
He must’ve understood my sincerity, because by the time he was done speaking, thirty minutes later, I’d gotten not just the confession of my grandfather, grandmother, and cousin’s murder, but also the attempted murder on Verity, and how he’d planned the whole thing.
I was spitting mad, but I left him there, almost the same way I had found him, and barely made it to the bathroom in time to lose my lunch.
Lucky for me, Big Papa hadn’t gone too far, and he’d heard the entire thing. Something he told me five minutes later when I finally emerged from the bathroom.
“You did good,” he said. “I’m happy that you didn’t try to kill him.”
I wasn’t.
But I also wasn’t a killer…at least not anymore.
That didn’t mean that I didn’t want to go in there and skin him alive with my bare hands.
“Do you mind watching over Verity for a few minutes while I go home, change, and feed the cat?
The cat that I’d forgotten about in the last couple of hours.
I’d called my neighbor and told her not to bother going over today because we’d be back by nightfall. But that was before Verity’s head had nearly been blown apart, and I’d forgotten about everything but her.
Big Papa nodded.
“Yeah, I can do that,” he said, offering me his hand. “Maybe grab some food while you’re out.”
Was I hungry?
Yes. Yes, I was.
Would I eat?
No, probably not.
I nodded at Big Papa anyway, though. What he didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt him.
Chapter 24
I’ll never, ever let you go.
-Verity talking to her dessert
Verity
A dog’s barking woke me up.
One second I was in dreamland, and the next I was staring at a man across the room, wielding a syringe in one hand and an IV pole in the other.
He was swinging it at the dog—Aaron’s K-9, Tank—and trying to keep the dog at bay.
He was failing miserably.
I started to stand, but froze when something in my leg started to pinch.
I looked down at the large syringe sticking out of my thigh, and wondered what the hell it was doing there.
I pulled it out of my leg, my heart starting to pound.
Sweat popped out on my forehead, and my stomach roiled. All over a single syringe in my thigh.
Nice, Verity, very nice.
I swung my legs over the bed, my intent to get to Tank and stop the man from hitting him again, but the moment my feet hit the cool tiled floor, my legs went out from under me.
I hit the floor with a thud, and my head and arm screamed.
Not that my head wasn’t already screaming, because it was. Loud, booming and seriously pissed off.
I got my legs underneath me, my hand going to my forehead to try to counteract the steady pounding of my head, and moaned.
The dog’s whimper had me glancing up sharply, and it took everything I had not to start crying in pain.
I didn’t make a sound, though, knowing that if I could just somehow help Tank, he would take it from there.
The night Truth had fed me nothing but cookies for dinner, I witnessed the power in Tank’s body as he’d taken the padded man—who just so happened to have been Truth, something I hadn’t known at the time—and forced him to sit still as he’d waited for Aaron to call him off.
The fury in his barks now, compared to then, were much different.
It seemed like Tank knew that this man was a real threat to me, and he was going to protect me with his life.
Maybe if I could trip the man with my prone body…
Alarms started to go off, and I heard a worried voice say ‘Code Brown!’ over the loudspeaker, and I would’ve laughed at the use of ‘Code Brown’ had this situation not been extremely fucked up as it was.
“Tank,” my voice cracked when the dog went down to his haunches.
Tank didn’t spare me a glance as he did some amazing roll thing and went for the man’s knee.
My eyes took in the man as he went down to drop his weight on the dog, and it was then that I realized that this man was dressed in a hospital gown with handcuffs dangling from his wrists.
His feet, which were bloody as well, slipped.
He came down hard on top of Tank, and I heard the distinct sound of something breaking.
Oh, God. Please don’t let that be Tank’s bones! I chanted to myself as I crawled another inch.
My heart was racing. My vision was blurry now, and I couldn’t control my breaths.
I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the man had stabbed me with that syringe. And that something bad had been in that syringe, and was now racing through my bloodstream.
Saliva filled my mouth, and I took one last ditch effort to get to Tank…and failed.
***
Ghost
My heart was broken. My skin was tight. My eyes hurt. My head was pounding.
Though, I couldn’t tell which was physical or emotional, I knew that I couldn’t go on like this any longer.
Something had to give.
I knew as I walked into the hospital, rage filling my veins, that I had to find a way out of this mess that I found myself in.
“Code brown, second floor.”
I stopped as two doctors, three nurses, and a stumbling Big Papa ran in the direction of the stairs.
I hurried in the direction, my head no longer pounding as adrenaline poured through me. All my aches and pains were null and void as I took the stairs two at a time, surpassing Big Papa who was bleeding from a head wound.
He moved over, letting me pass, and I caught up to the last nurse.
I overtook her, too, and hit the second-floor landing and yanked the large metal door open before following the last nurse and doctor.
They were all standing outside of a room—Verity’s room—and staring in like they didn’t know what to do.
I could hear Tank snarling, and in between snarls were pained whimpers that he was trying very hard to contain.
“Move,” I barked out, pushing my way past the nurses and doctors gathered around the entrance.
They moved, and I almost wished they hadn’t.
Because on the floor was a nightmare.
Blood was…everywhere.
On the bed, on the floor, on the walls. If you had any imagination at all, this was worse.
A man lay dead, his throat torn out, on the floor.
Elais Beckett.
I could just see the edge of Verity’s hair as it lay fanned out on the floor, the last three quarters of an inch slowly becoming saturated with the blood that was pooling on the floor.
Her face was stark white, and small dots of perspiration were coating it.
And then there was Tank.
His left hind leg was hanging limply, and his eyes were wild as he tried to stay upright.
He had blood on him, too, but I couldn’t figure out if it was his or not.
I took a step forward, and Tank’s head snapped up.
His growl became deeper, and I realized that Tank wasn’t all the way home at the moment.
“Help me.”
Those whispered words had me trying to take another step, but Tank took a threatening step forward. Protecting his charge like he was told to do.
“Fuck,” I grated. “Big Papa…”