I suck in a breath. Graham.
Chapter 23
“We have to go back to the gallery.” I spring off of him and start digging for clothes.
“Fuck,” Asher hisses, getting off the bed. He puts on a hoodie and sweatpants and I shimmy into leggings and a T-shirt before grabbing my coat.
I try to get a hold of Ty and Austin during the taxi ride to the gallery, hoping and praying Graham made it to his after-party. But neither of them picks up.
Asher and I are dropped off at the front and I run to the entrance. Finding the doors unlocked, I push my way in, Asher behind me.
“Graham?” I call out for him. “Graham?”
There’s no reply.
We walk through the empty gallery until I notice what looks like a hand from behind one of the freestanding walls. “Graham?” I run toward it and gasp with horror at the sight. Graham is slumped against the white wall, now splattered with blood, with a bullet hole in his chest. “No, no, no, no—” I kneel in front of him.
“Sloane.” Asher tries to grab onto me but it’s too late.
“Graham!” I pull him to me, trying to feel for a pulse. “Graham!” I yell again, and I might be crying now, I might be, but all I can focus on is the blood. It seeps from his shirt and his mouth. Graham gives a small raspy breath. “Oh my god, oh my god. Asher, call 911!”
“Sloane,” he warns, his eyes trailing up to the painting above us, with my journal entry taped over top. The one for Graham.
“Call them! I don’t care how this looks, call them! Just call someone!”
Asher pulls his phone from his coat pocket and dials 911.
“Graham, can you hear me? The ambulance is coming, help is coming.” I rock back and forth, keeping my fingers on his wound as more blood leaks from his mouth and onto me. Asher walks around us. He talks to me but I don’t hear it. I only hear Graham’s labored breaths and the sirens getting louder and louder as they approach the gallery.
“Sloane,” Asher warns again. “We need to leave now.”
“He’s still alive,” I say. “He’s still alive.” I hold on to Graham like he’ll die instantly if I let him go. But Asher begins to pry my hands from his body. Red lights flash throughout the gallery and Graham once again leans on the wall as Asher pulls me away.
“They’re here,” he says. “They’ll take it from here.” Asher hauls me up from the floor, ushering me to the back of the gallery and out the exit. The frigid January air is like a shock to my system as I breathe in frantic breaths, each one burning my throat and nose. We come out onto another street and Asher goes to call an Uber.
“No.” I grab his phone from him and take off down the street to circle the building. I need to know what’s happening. I run two buildings down before turning the corner onto the main streetwhere the front of the gallery faces. There are two cop cars and an ambulance parked in front.
Asher comes up behind me and snatches his phone back. “Are you crazy? You are covered in his blood. We need to go.”
When the stretcher gets rolled out the front door and toward the ambulance I expect to see Graham with an oxygen mask over his face, but instead it’s a body bag. A sound somewhere between a choke and a sob escapes me as I turn and bury my face into Asher’s hoodie.
Graham didn’t make it. We were too late.
Asher takes off my coat and swaps it for his hoodie, tugging it over my head and telling me to keep my arms inside. The ones covered in blood. He grabs a taxi to take us back to the hotel and we don’t speak on the way there.
In the hotel lobby, the same girl sits at the front desk reading her book.
“Excuse me,” Asher says to her. She doesn’t even look up. “Excuse me,” he says louder.
She looks up and smiles at him. “Hi, sorry, how can I help you?”
“We’re in room 317, and we were out for a while tonight. When we came back there was something left in our room. Did anyone go into the room while we were gone? Cleaning crew or... ?”
“Room 317? Oh, yeah, actually. A woman came in and said she was staying in the room, so I gave her a key.”
“You what?” he says through clenched teeth.
“Yeah, I wrote down her name. Where is it... ?” She looks around the desk. “Oh, here. Uh, Kate Holland?”
