I’ve been trying to hold my composure as I speak to every law enforcement officer who appears before me, but when Dr. McKullan’s wife walks in, I break. Heavy sobs pull from my chest as I think of the life they won’t live out together, despite the forty years they’ve already had. I cry for the grandchildren who will soon learn that their grandfather won’t be coming to visit anymore. I cry for the cold bed that she will have to crawl into each night. The single plate she will have to dish up at dinner. The deck that he won’t be able to sit out on and enjoy the day. And despite her undeniable grief, she wraps her arms around me and holds me as I cry, the two of us beyond broken.
Once we are finally settled in on the couch at home, Knight does what he can to comfort me, but he’s still in work mode, leading the pack, desperate to find out how all of this happened. He went over the security footage so many times to figure out how Elias gained access to the morgue while more than a dozen people were busily working in there all day, and how he slipped out undetected. What he found is unsettling.
Elias had come in during the night and folded himself inside a body bag, and as we worked around him, as I teased Dr. McKullan about his taste in music, as I taught the interns everything I knew, Elias was waiting for his moment to strike, planning our downfall.
After that attack, he slipped out into the chaos, making his way up to the main floor of the hospital where the staff were frantically trying to evacuate the patients and their families, assuming a fire had broken out because of the fire alarm I’d pulled. But that wasn’t my intent. I just wanted to draw attention because I needed immediate help, and that’s the fastest way I thought to do it. But as the chaos ensued, Elias slipped straight out the main entrance, his head down, mere milliseconds before the SWAT team arrived to lock down the hospital.
I have to put an end to this. I have to stop him, I just don’t know how. Elias is a ghost, and he’s playing by a set of rules I can’t even begin to work out.
Knight’s phone rings from across our living room, and he gets up from beside me to take the call. “What’s going on?” he demands, his tone sharp and to the point.
He listens, and while I can hear the faint murmurs of the person he’s talking to, I can’t make out a word, but when Knight hangs his head, undeniable grief flashing in his dark eyes, I already know. Anders didn’t make it.
Tears spring from my eyes, whipping down my cheeks and splashing onto my arms as I curl into a ball on the couch, devastation rocking through me. Anders was young, only in his early twenties. He had his whole life ahead of him, a whole career to build. He never got a chance to find the woman he would spend the rest of his life with, never had a chance to build a family of his own or do the things he’d always wanted to do, all because of me.
I bury my face in my knees, the overwhelming grief too much for me to handle, and as I sit here, knowing what he’s capable of, I can’t help but fear for my life. I fear for Knight’s as he relentlessly tries to protect me, and I fear for my mother and my new baby sister. I know Mom made her own decision and refused to hear my warning, but no matter how I feel about her,she’s still my mom. Despite the monster she became, she’s still the same woman who cared for me when I had chicken pox, who was there when my father walked out on us.
Knight drags a hand down his face, and just as I go to get up and try to comfort him, his conversation takes a turn, diving deeper into the ins and outs of their SWAT operations and how they’re going to move ahead from here. As he talks, he slips out the back door and stands on the large deck he’d built with Ace and Diesel last summer.
I watch him out the window when my alarm for my meds goes off, and I swipe my thumb across my screen, dismissing the notification before getting up and going to the kitchen. Reaching up, I take the small bottle of pills, and as I open it up and pour one out into the palm of my hand, I stare down at it.
It’s almost sick, really. If anyone knew how to take out a psychopath, it’d be the original. Only this medication is blocking him from coming back and telling me what I need to do. It’s the fucking grenade on top of the shit-storm cake.
My hand curls around the little pill, squeezing it within my palm as a wave of guilt flounders through me. Maybe this is what I need to do. Maybe I don’t have any other option. My original masked stalker would know what to do. If I could just get him to return even once, he could tell me how to take Elias out. He could guide me through it.
Fuck.
A tear rolls down my cheek, and as I glance up through the kitchen window, I find Knight staring back at me, a small, encouraging smile resting on his lips, despite the overwhelming grief in his eyes. And as I watch him, I realize that I have to do this, not just for me, but for him too. I’m not the only person losing loved ones here, and the way we’re going, more people are going to lose their lives.
Knight is working tirelessly to put an end to this, and I need to do my part to help him. And with that resolve, I drop the small pill into the sink before turning on the tap and watching it sail down the drain, my heart breaking for the hell I know is bound to rain down over me.
26
KNIGHT
The door swings open as I make my way into Elias’s home. Sure, it might be an unlawful search, but where Harper is involved, I can’t seem to give a shit. There’s no line I wouldn’t cross, no mountain I wouldn’t climb to protect her. Even if it means losing everything I have worked for. None of it matters to me without her.
It’s coming up on midnight, and from what I can tell, Mae isn’t home, which raises the question, where the fuck is she in the middle of the night? It’s a Tuesday. What the fuck could she be doing? Is she shacking up with the real father of that baby? Taking advantage of the fact that Elias hasn’t returned, or is she out there searching for the next fool who’ll take her in?
The house is silent, and as I make my way from room to room, thoroughly searching and collecting any intel I can find, I can’t help but think of Harper.
This is destroying her. The guilt that rests on her shoulders is like nothing I’ve ever seen. She feels everything so deeply. To her, she might as well have been the monster holding the blade that took Dr. McKullan’s life, and I know she blames herself for Anders being in that morgue when he was. No amount of comfort has been able to help her, and as I watched her through the kitchen window this afternoon, I saw something shift inside her.
I’m losing her. All the progress she’s made since starting therapy dissipated before my eyes.
I need to be better for her. I need to finish this. And right now, I’m failing her. Every fucking step I take seems to be wrong, every direction I turn, I become more lost, and eventually, there’s not going to be anything left of her to save.
Making my way back down the stairs, I stop by Elias’s office, slipping inside the silent room to search every corner. I go through the papers on the desk, rifle through the drawers, and even go over the knickknacks left on the shelf.
Finding Elias’s filing system, I pull it open drawer by drawer, going through all the paperwork there for anything out of place, anything that could tell me if he bought any properties under the radar, but when you’re a billionaire with your fingers in every cookie jar, it’s almost impossible to decipher what holds meaning. There are deeds for hundreds of businesses. Restaurants. Two different malls. A furniture company. A logistics and shipping business. A bakery. A hotel chain. Everything under the sun is here when I come across the blueprints for this house.
I go to shove them aside, not seeing how they could be relevant for what I’m looking for, but something has me doubling back. I grab the roll of paper and spread it out on Elias’s desk to look over it, checking every portion of the property, not evensure what I’m looking for. A hidden panic room. A walk-in safe. Anything.
Only what I come across is much worse.
A basement.
The only problem is, this house doesn’t have a basement. There’s a large wine cellar. But no basement.
