“I came ahead of an ambulance.” A mother clutches her young child into her side, and a few of the men in the waiting room jump to their feet, ready to protect the others if needed. I look down at myself and fully understand their panic at the terrifying sight of me, so I immediately comply when the guard directs me to put my hands on the wall so that he can pat me down.
Once I am cleared, a gray-haired nurse pulls me through the waiting room doors to a private bathroom so that I can wash up without creating a bloodborne pathogen nightmare back in the lobby. She exchanges my soiled wrap with a regular band aid. Cartwright manages to find me a few moments later after asking where thewoman covered in bloodended up. The gray-haired nurse recognizes Cartwright, so when he explains why we are there, she takes us to the emergency surgery waiting room.
Once inside, all that is left to do is wait for Cameron to arrive and pray that Jalen made it in time.
Chapter fifty-two
FREE-FALL
WhenMonikafinallycallsme back, I fill her in on what happened including how she unknowingly solved the case. The picture that she sent earlier, along with Judith’s mug shot, was of Madeline, not Leah. I hate the fact that I had the answer on my phone this entire time, but there is no use beating myself up about it when I need to be strong for Cameron. I promise to call her back when he finally shuffles into the waiting room.
“Cameron,” I sigh with relief, and rush to meet him at the doorway.
He barely registers that I am there until I bury my face into his chest and nearly knock him off balance in the process. The second that he realizes it’s me, he pulls me into him so tightly that I can hardly tell where he ends and I begin.
“You’re here,” he breathes against my hair, and then pulls back to hold my face in his hands as if he needs to see it again to believe it.
“I’m here,” I confirm, and hate myself for ever giving him any doubt. “How is he?”
“They just took him back for surgery, but he lost consciousness on the way over and—”
“He’s going to be okay, son,” Cartwright says, and places a reassuring hand on both of our shoulders. “You two did everything right back at the hotel, and now the surgeon will handle the rest. Jalen is stubborn. He’ll pull through. I know it.”
We nod weakly at Cartwright’s words, wanting so badly for them to be true, and then the three of us reluctantly settle into the corner of the waiting room for what we know will be an excruciatingly long and painful time.
Cameron tucks me under his arm so that we are as close as we can manage while being in two separate chairs, and we cling to each other as Cartwright fields what seems to be an endless barrage of phone calls over the next two hours. Cameron and I shamelessly eavesdrop on all his conversations, and end up learning right away that Leah, who has been confirmed to be Nash’s wife, Madeline, is in custody and openly confessing to everything.
Cameron was far more shocked than I was to learn of Leah’s true identity and spent a long time trying to figure out how he missed it while doing the soft background check on all the guests. After talking to Cartwright about it, we learned that the real Leah Evans does exist and is a red-headed teacher in New Jersey. Madeline just borrowed her name and likeness to be granted access to the retreat without raising suspicion in case Cameron recognized her real name. Due to privacy laws, he didn’t have access to the credit card information that she used to pay for the retreat, so he had no reason to question when a similar-looking redhead showed up to Ravenwood.
We also glean from a subsequent phone call that Madeline was pregnant before but is not currently. She lost Nash’s and herbaby in the stress of his trial, and was unable to come to court as a result, which is why neither Cameron nor Jalen recognized her. She also confessed to wearing leather gloves when handling the murder weapon, which was, in fact, a drinking glass from the kitchen. Which means, even though she confessed to murdering Delaney and attempting to murder Jalen, I will still need to go to the station at some point to provide my fingerprint. That way, the police can confirm the unknown print belongs to me, and not someone else that Madeline is just trying to protect.
There are so many things that Cameron and I want to say to Jalen if he makes it out of this, but the very first will most certainly be an apology, followed by a massive thank you for preventing me from giving my fingerprint voluntarily. If I had, this entire situation could have ended even more disastrously.
Cameron and I start to lose interest in Cartwright’s phone calls somewhere near the three-hour mark, and by the time we approach a fourth hour of waiting, I slip into a state of suspended consciousness where I am both here and not here—only tethered to what remains of my sanity via the steel grip that Cameron and I maintain on each other. Cartwright speaks a set of names that I don’t think either of us expected to hear, though, and I am pulled back into the waiting room.
“Birdie and Jalen Sr.? Are you sure?” Cartwright asks whoever is on the other side of his current phone call. “Ask her to describe it and then call me back. I was the first one on the scene, so I will be able to confirm.” He hangs up with a few choice words and flinches when he turns back to find both Cameron and me looking expectantly at him.
“What was that about my parents?” Cameron asks.
“It’s nothing. I’ll tell you later—” Cartwright tries to deflect, but Cameron isn’t having it.
“Tell me now.”
Cartwright frowns. “Apparently, Madeline is claiming to have something to do with your parents’ deaths too.”
I can’t stop the gasp before it escapes from my lips, but Cameron simply looks back down at the ground, as if that bit of information is just another piece in a puzzle that he has been trying to assemble on the floor beneath him.
“I thought you said that the investigation determined my parents swerved off the road to avoid an animal.”
“An animal made the most sense at the time, especially around that corner, but I suppose . . .” Cartwright explains, but then trails off, lost in his own thoughts.
“If she were standing in the middle of the road, wouldn’t that mean she was trying to kill herself too?” I ask, trying to keep up.
“Maybe,” Cartwright says. “And it just so happened to be Cameron’s parents that came around the corner. Which would make it a really awful coincidence.”
“No.” Cameron shakes his head. “It wasn’t a coincidence.”
We both turn to him, and my stomach twists at the haunted look that has taken over his face. “She was there on purpose, because she came there to kill me.”
