Good, let him hurt.
“What did you give me to knock me out?”
“Chloroform,” he whispered.
“How original,” she deadpanned. “And your wife? Does she know any of this? If she didn’t know about you asking me out, I’m sure she doesn’t know about your helping a murderer.”
“She doesn’t know. She knows I have gambling problems. That’s why we separated in the first place. She left me when she found out how much I owed.”
“Wow, you’re a real winner, Sheridan.”
His shoulders hunched over as he folded in on himself, and she looked away from his self-inflicted misery. They sat in silence again, before Sheridan released a defeated sigh. He stood and slowly walked to the door. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him pause at the threshold. His hand gripped the frame, knuckles white, and he looked back at her.
“It was you or me, Kelsi. And I was always going to choose myself.” He watched her for a long moment before he hung his head and walked out.
He returned not a minute later, a syringe in hand with clear liquid in the chamber. Although she struggled where she wasbound, she couldn’t escape as he stuck it in her arm and pressed the plunger down, injecting her with the contents.
“I’m sorry. This will make it easier for both of us,” he whispered to her before leaving her alone.
All she had left was hope that Dylan and Abby would be looking for her and that someone would find her. Preferably before McGuinness came back.
She tried tugging on her zip ties once more, but the only result was her wrists chafing more. Every movement sent ripples of agony through her. She tipped her head back and looked out the skylight to a powder-blue sky, no clouds in sight. She thought to herself that it was a beautiful day to die.
Her head spun with the effects of whatever concoction Sheridan had injected her with. And before her mind slipped into oblivion again, she pictured Dylan’s face the night before when they finally got the truth out in the open. His smile at her when she left came to the forefront of her mind. She only regretted that in their time together, she hadn’t told him the true depth of her feelings. So she did it now, whispering to the blue-eyed man in her mind, who had taken up the majority of her life,I love you, before everything faded to black.
CHAPTER 45
Dylan
20 minutes to trial
Dylan walked upto the door of courtroom six. Even knowing it was a little under a half hour before court would be in session, he still gave the doors an experimental shake, testing to see if a deputy had come by to unlock them.
The doors didn’t budge, rattling under his grip.
Frustrated, he spun and sat on the bench along the wall opposite the doors. He clasped his hands together in front of him and leaned over his thighs, staring down at the floor. His anxiety was sending him into a spiral.
He’d lost his dad and then Jace in combat. He couldn’t lose someone else important to him. Kelsi had to be okay. If she wasn’t ...
Lost in his tumultuous thoughts, it took him a moment to register his phone ringing from his suit jacket. Quickly, he pulled it out and answered.
“Dylan.” Kole’s voice on the other end of the line was serious. He said they’d found her phone and Dina’s croissant in the parking lot, as well as seen security footage of her being kidnapped.
Dylan had suspected that, but hearing it still caused his breath to stutter out of him as if he had been kicked in the gut.
“Know any blond cops that Kelsi would have trusted enough to follow to his car?”
Dylan’s gut clenched tight, rage boiling up inside him as he pictured Sheridan. For a tiny moment, he couldn’t help but feel insecure—had she left him again for another man?No, he told himself,she wouldn’t do that to you.
“Mike Sheridan,” he said, his voice tense with anger. “A deputy in Oyster Shoals. She would have trusted him, I think. Someone from their department was supposed to bring the evidence this morning. It could have been him.”
“That motherfucker!” Abby exclaimed in the background. “No good, lying sack of shit. I should’ve known it would be that limp-dick bastard—”
“Okay,” Kole cut into Abby’s tirade. “I’m gonna run with this lead. We got the plates on his car from the security footage, so I’ll have the patrol on the lookout for it, but tell them to keep it off the scanner since he’s a cop.”
“I want to see if I can find any place in town he may have taken her to in the meantime,” Abby said.
“All right, guys,” Dylan addressed the pair. “Don’t count out McGuinness either. He’s involved in this somehow.”
