But maybe she’d lost her best friend. Because Brooke didn’t think any part of who she was had survived Adam’s wrath.
He tried to kill me.
Why?
What did I ever do to him?
Brooke shifted her gaze to the other side of her bed. Mr. Wagner sat in a chair in the dark, the light from his phone screen lighting up his face. He’d come through for her tonight. He’d ensured her wishes were carried out by the hospital staff.
He’d held Mindy Sue as she cried for Brooke and her baby.
Such a good father. A good friend to Brooke, too.
He looked like he was answering emails or something on his phone when it vibrated with an incoming call or text. His headsnapped up and his gaze met Brooke’s. “He’s here. He wants to see you.” Mr. Wagner had done it.
The governor had arrived.
She turned her head away, a new wave of tears threatening, but she just didn’t have the strength to weep anymore.
Mr. Wagner touched Mindy Sue’s shoulder, waking her gently. “Come with me, sweetheart. You can’t be here for this. I don’t want you involved.”
“But I want to stay with Brooke. She shouldn’t be alone.” Mindy Sue squeezed Brooke’s fingers, avoiding the bandages covering the many lacerations on her palm and arm.
Brooke saw the worry in Mr. Wagner’s eyes. “Go,” she choked out, not wanting to involve her best friend in this very dangerous situation.
Brooke was the only one who could identify her attacker.
Mr. Wagner looked at her one last time. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Brooke nodded. It had to be done. Adam had to be stopped.
Minutes after they left, the governor walked in and stood at the end of her bed, his shoulders slumped, dress shirt collar unbuttoned, tieless, and his hands deep in his slack’s pockets. Pale, weary, his face deeply lined with a haggard expression. With bloodshot eyes, he let his gaze roam over her battered body, wincing at the bandages covering her arms and the brace on her broken wrist and ankle, never really looking her in the eyes.
Silence stretched as he seemed to shrink in on himself.
Then he pulled himself up to his full height with an inhaled breath and his rough voice rasped out. “He left a very disturbing and anguished message for his mother.” Governor Harris rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “We rushed to his apartment.” Whatever he was remembering shone as pure torment in his eyes. “He…he slit his wrists.” His gaze landedon her abdomen and stayed there, though he couldn’t see the damage his son had done to her. To her baby. The fact that he couldn’t only served to prove the devastating loss she’d suffered at his son’s hands. “We barely got there in time.”
No one got to me in time to save me—her—from him!
“He’s been taken to a secure, private mental health facility.”
Not jail.
“Doctors there will treat him for his wounds and the obvious psychological breakdown he’s suffered.” The governor put both hands on the bed’s frame and hung his head, his knuckles white from holding on so tightly. His gaze came up filled with remorse and a plea. “I beg you. Please. Allow us to get Adam the help he needs. Prison will only leave him broken. Please. I’m begging. Don’t point the finger at him.”
The cover-up had already begun the second the governor admitted Adam to the private hospital, and unless Brooke blew the story wide open, Adam Harris’s suicide attempt would be recorded as a tragic symptom of mental illness and nothing more.
She stared right through him. She didn’t care about his pain, what he wanted, or what happened next.
Adam was locked up.
But not where he belonged.
Even in her devastated state, she knew she’d never get justice. Nothing would ever be enough to compensate for the loss of her daughter.
“Do you see me?”
The governor swallowed so hard she heard the click of his throat and stared down at her. “Yes, Brooke. I see you. I know exactly what he did.”
