“Mm!Mmm!”
I’m gaping. Breath locked deep in my lungs. Face tingling as I go pale with shock.
Someone drags me out of the way as nurses cluster around Ezra.
My heart thumps frantically inside my chest as an orderly drags me out of the room. As soon as we’re outside, he lets go and rushes back inside the room.
I totter there in the middle of the hall as more nurses and someone in a white coat rush into Ezra’s room. I’m caught between wanting to flee what suddenly feels like a crime scene, or staying to see if my brother’s okay.
But I’m not given a choice.
A hand grabs the back of my neck, and through some psychic gift I didn’t know I had, I know it belongs to Rooke before I hear his voice.
“Just the boy I’ve been looking for,” he growls in my ear as he marches me down the hall, away from Ezra’s room.
“Let go of me, you freak!”
“Quiet. We need to talk.”
A nurse exits a room up ahead, and Rooke hurriedly pulls his hand off my neck. We’re both silent as the woman passes, both of us giving her an inane smile when she greets us, both our mouths going back to lines as soon as she’s out of sight.
There’s a restroom sign up ahead. As I turn toward the other corridor leading to the exit, Rooke grabs the back of my hoodie in a fist and yanks me inside the restroom.
He closes and latches the door, dragging me along as he goes to check that all the stalls are empty.
“The fuck are you?—”
He shoves me so hard that I land face first on the white linoleum floor. I scramble up, but he’s already closing on me. No time to even get my fists up before he twists his hand in the front of my hoodie and pins me to the tiled wall.
“Phone,” he says, eyes flickering over my phone like he’s scanning my expression into his memory.
“Wh—”
His free hand slides over my body. First, my hoodie’s pouch. Then down, down?—
“Okay, fuck!” I shove a hand in my pocket and drag out my phone, pressing it against his chest.
He tugs it out of my fingers, turns it to face me, and flashes me a cold smile when the facial recognition software unlocks it for him.
“My, my, what a busy little bee you’ve been,” he comments idly as he scrolls through my photos. “Some of these are rather good. You ever consider taking up photography on a more professional level? The world can always use another stalker.”
The acid in my stomach congeals into slime when he pauses his invasion of privacy to smirk at me. “Does Haven know you’re her biggest fan?”
“Cunt!” I shout, trying to snatch my phone out of his hand.
Like a fucking high school bully, he simply holds it up, out of reach, keeping me pinned to the wall with his arm.
“Where is it?” he asks calmly, like he doesn’t have me pinned to the fucking wall.
“Where’s what?” I huff out, squirming in defiance against his grip.
“I could just reset to factory settings,” he murmurs, eyes on my phone as he scrolls. “But then it would still be in the cloud, wouldn’t it?”
The video.
He’s talking about the video.
Haven, youpiece of shit.
