“Listen, he obviously looks scared,” Rose had argued when it was clear James didn’t want her to be alone with the man. “He could have some answers. Some answers we need. And he could also needus. If Damon blames me for not saving Derrick because of a hesitation and he’s been going through all of this? Maybe he’s been doing much worse to someone else.”
Rose had reached out and put her hand right into James’s. It was small and warm and soft. Her expression was none of those. Her expression was hard, sharp. Determined, angry. Excited for something. Ready for anything.
Wildcard Rose.
She wasn’t asking permission.
Not that he would have been in the right to give it.
So he had relented, but only so much.
“I’ll go stand over there so I can keep you in my sight,” he had warned. “No going into off-limits rooms or secret passageways to make Damon’s job easier for him.”
She had nodded and pointed out a spot at the intersection of the hallway he had been standing in.
“Out in the open but not in a crowded placeandyou can see me.”
That had been fine. That had been good.
That still hadn’t worked.
Rose and Lloyd had started talking without any issue. Lloyd seemed tired, Rose open to listening to whateverhe was saying. No one passed through their hallway or James’s. No gunmen or Damon or creep in a collared shirt showed.
And then everything had changed.
Rose hadn’t even looked his way before she turned on her heel and ran out of sight. Lloyd did the same.
But in the opposite direction.
By the time James had made it to their hallway, the choice of whom to follow had been a no-brainer.
Now that no-brainer had him thoroughly confused.
Rose wasn’t stopping for him.
Why?
The hallway they turned into wasn’t as long as the one they had come from. If he was tracking right, it turned into the back section of the hospital before hitting a bank of elevators. There was a doctor’s clinic somewhere near here that he had taken Mr. Donahue to once. A clinic in the hospital that had its own small parking lot.
Where they had parked earlier before walking around the other side of the hospital to avoid as many eyes as possible.
That Rose, he realized, was heading straight for.
He heard the impact of her throwing open the Exit doors to the parking lot before he saw daylight streaming through them.
“Rose! Stop!”
She didn’t.
The doors shut before James could reach them. When it was his turn to open them, it sounded like an explosion as he rammed right on through.
Heat hit him in the face and made the sweat alreadystarting to bead down him gain more traction. James didn’t care. He wasn’t going to stop running until he caught her. Even if that meant running every inch of the hospital or—
James felt his stomach sink.
He had driven to the hospital in the truck they had borrowed from a deputy at the department…but Rose had the keys. She had taken them after he had complained that the key ring was too bulky for his jeans.
Now he wished more than anything he hadn’t been such a baby about it.
