The ambulance officers came around the front of the van.
Like a ghost, he was gone.
Chapter 27
Robert & Katrina Tolle
The first thing Robert became aware of was pain. Agony thrashed against the inside of his skull and his head felt as though it’d been split in two. He tried to reach up, but his arm refused to move. Confusion whirled through him. He was lying on a cold, hard floor. He opened his eyes and blinked. Darkness roiled in a sickening rush.
He squeezed his eyes shut. God, his head—it bulged like there was a hammer beating against his brain. He moaned, the sound muffled by something in his mouth.
He pressed his dry tongue against . . . what? Wool?
Robert remembered being in Jefferson’s office and then . . . he didn’t know. Incoherent thoughts scrambled around in his mind, searching for missing fragments between then and now.
Katrina.
Where was she?
Again, he blinked, trying to clear the blur, searching for her. Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the layers of darkness, and the room came into focus.
What he saw catapulted ice-cold dread through his body.
She was lying on the floor about six feet away, curled into a ball. Her hands were secured with cable ties behind her back, hermouth gagged.Gagged.She was still. Lifeless as a doll. A pool of blood lay on the ground, surrounding the top of her head. His heart jolted, and he choked out a muffled cry of despair.
Jesus, was she dead? She looked dead. No, no, no.
He tried to scream in earnest, but devastation had constricted his airway, and the only sound that came out was a limp whine.
God, no, please no, she couldn’t be dead.
When he met her, he didn’t know what it was like to be loved. He was on a bad path, he wanted to do better,be better, but it was hard when every direction he looked all he could see was darkness.
She exploded into his life and changed it. Her love changed him.
She was the stars in the night, the sunshine in his day.
Not her, please God, he begged, not her.
“Katrina!Katrina!” he cried out, but his voice was just a muffled sound caught against the thick cloth in his mouth.
He struggled. The hot burn of the tie cut into his skin, but he was oblivious to the pain. All he could see was her; all he could focus on was her.
Tears trickled down his face.Katrina!
She stirred, and an inaudible mutter fell from her lips.
He closed his eyes in overwhelming relief. He had to get to her. Tearing them open, he wriggled like a worm. Hunching his top half forward, he used his bound legs to push off the floor, dragging himself to her side. Each movement shot a horrible pain through his head, but he had to get to his princess. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to hold his wife and tell her he loved her for the millionth time.
“Katrina.”
Her eyes drifted open and stared blankly into his. She blinked slowly, three times, seeing but not comprehending.
“Katrina, I’m coming, princess.”
“Robert,” she murmured.
With one final heave, puffing, red-faced, and sweating, he wriggled to lie by her side. She tried to move, but her hands were bound by the same sharp ties that held him. To see her so helpless and suffering struck agony so deep in him that, had he been able to stand, it would have buckled his knees.
