‘It kills me, but I have to thank the bitch,’ Shade continues. ‘She's the only reason we found you before you called us. We wasted days trying to figure out what had happened, where you could be.’
'What did happen, Daisy?' Mav asks quietly, sliding a little closer, pressing himself against me as we go through the gate and onto a huge expanse of flat concrete with a massive looming airplane hangar in front of us.
'I don’t remember much,’ I say, trying to think. ‘I was on the dance floor. I think I must have been drugged because, the next thing I knew, I was on an airplane. I heard a voice. I don’t know who it was. They drugged me again and then I woke up in my room at The Heath. Stoke admitted to me that John is giving him money tokeep me safeat The Heath until he’s ready for me to get married…even though Joe is dead. I suppose he’s intending to make a deal with another family.'
‘He’s still trying to marry you to someone?’ Shade asks, sounding confused.
‘That’s what Stoke said. He made it sound like it wasn’t a question of if, but when.’
‘But why?’
I close my eyes and lay my head on Mav’s familiar shoulder. ‘Maybe to get rid of me, pawn the embarrassingstepdaughter onto someone else? Or, maybe, none of it was true. Stoke tried to mess with my head. The Heath lied to me, tried to make me believe I had never left the clinic. They told me I’d had a psychotic break and that everything over the past few months was a figment of my mind. They made me think that maybe you guys weren’t real.’
I let out a hard, emotionally charged breath, close to tears, and yet too scared that I’ll be dragged back right now to cry.
'Those sons of bitches,' Blake snarls.
‘Joseph Banderville was in Stoke’s office when I woke up there, too,’ I add. ‘He pretended to be my doctor when I recognized him coming out.’
Shade looks furious. ‘Why would he have been there at all?’
I shrug again. 'I don’t know. I figured they were working together. They might not have known Joe was dead yet. I didn’t see him again after the first day.’
I let out a sigh. ‘I realized while I was at The Heath…this time, I mean, that it's a bad place. So much worse than I thought while I lived there.’
I see Douglas nodding from the front as he drives across the mammoth forecourt toward a small plane much like the one that brought me to Richmond all those months ago for my mom’s funeral.
‘I want to take The Heath down,' I say. 'I want that place closed, and I want Stoke to be banned from ever working with patients again. He shouldn’t be a doctor. He should be in jail. The Blanks, too.'
‘Do you still have the flash drive?’ I ask Mav who nods and draws it out of his pocket, handing it to me.
I give it to Blake immediately. ‘This has an encrypted folder on it that I think might be important. I had somepapers from the files, but I gave them to a Blank who said she was a reporter.’
‘A reporter?’
I nod. ‘She was going to do an exposé on The Heath, so I told her where to find the papers I took. She didn’t come back after that though, so I don’t know what’s going on.’
Blake hugs me tightly.
‘I’ll crack it,’ he promises.
We get to where the plane is waiting on the tarmac. Shade opens the door, but before he can get out, Blake has his arm around Douglas’ body from the backseat, and has a knife pressed to his throat.
'Don’t move if you know what’s good for you,' Blake snarls.
'What’s this then?' Douglas says, staying remarkably calm in the face of Blake's violence.
'You’re one of them. What did you do to Daisy while she was at The Heath, huh? Did you put her down in those fucking cells before today? Did you zap her with electricity?' He glances at my face, finding the tender spot where I was smacked by the Blank. 'Did you ever hit her?'
I put my hand on Blake’s, the one holding the knife.
'Douglas was okay,' I say. 'He had to follow the rules, but he was fair. The papers I found showed he barely ever corrected any of us. They pretty much exonerated him.'
Douglas turns his head as much as he can with the knife there and gives me a nod.
'Never sat right with me, what they were doing to you and the others. Cure you?' He scoffs. 'Torture you into submission, more like. If you want that place taken down, I'll help if I can. Now go, lass. The police will probably already know you’re gone and Stoke has powerful friends. If they don’t know where you are yet, they will soon.'
I nod. 'Thanks, Douglas,' I say quietly. ‘Will you be okay?’
