“It was real.” She met Gabe’s worried stare. “Oh, God, Gabe. What if Mark didn’t really kill himself? What if someone had been after him the entire time?”
“Baby, stop.” He cut her off, giving her hand a supportive squeeze. “You know better than most not to let yourself go down the what-if trail. Trust me, you’ll drive yourself crazy doing that shit.”
“Logically, I know, you’re right, but…” She used her free hand to swipe at another fallen tear.
“The best thing we can do for Mark now is focus on what we know. What else do you remember from that day?”
“Everything.” Her watery eyes stared back into his. “I remember everything.”
Chapter 13
Excitement and dread intertwined inside Gabe’s gut as he waited for Ellena to tell him about the day of her accident.
“Take your time, Elle.” He took her hand in his. “Start with the first thing that comes to mind.”
Her baby blues were filled with trepidation as she looked over his shoulder and into the recent past. She spoke softly, listing off the day’s events as she recalled them.
“I went to work like normal. Saw all of my scheduled patients. Had lunch with a couple of the other doctors in the hospital cafeteria.” Ellena rubbed her temple as if the effort to remember was causing her physical pain. “I’d just finished up the final notes from my last patient and was about to leave when Mark barged into my office with a panicked look on his face.”
“Tell me about the conversation you had with him.”
“It was jumbled, really. I could tell he was in a heightened state of paranoia. Much greater than the previous times we’d met. He kept saying ‘they’re after me’. I remember him being worried about me, too. He said he’d brought them to me, too.”
Gabe’s heart physically hurt for the pain and guilt he saw pouring from her self-deprecating eyes.
“Sweetheart, listen to me. No matter if Mark committed suicide or if it turns out he was somehow connected to what’s been happening to you, neither of those things are your fault.”
“I blew him off.”
“I’m sure you did everything you could as his doctor to help him.”
“No, I mean that night.” Her shoulders fell with regret. “I was tired and ready to go home, and I…I blew him off. I told him to come back the next morning. That I’d had a cancellation, and I could fit him in during that timeslot.”
“What did he say to that?”
Ellena huffed out a humorless laugh. “He told me I should leave. That I needed to go someplace far away and hide.” She stood and walked over to the fireplace. Staring into the burning logs, she shook her head. “Hide someplace no one will find you. That’s what he told me.” Ellena turned back to him. “Guess he knew what he was talking about, after all.”
Though Gabe wanted to go to her, he kept his ass planted on the couch. As hard as it was to watch, she needed to work through her last encounter with Mark in order to get to the rest of that night’s events.
“He wasn’t making any sense,” she continued on. “Mark just grabbed my shoulders, begged me to go into hiding, and took off.”
“What did you do, then?”
“I left. I remember feeling a little shaken by the conversation and wanting to get home as quickly as I could. So I left the hospital and drove home. Or started to, anyway.”
“Do you remember the wreck?”
Ellena nodded. “I was on Florida Drive, the two-lane road that runs behind the hospital. I was driving past Balboa Park when out of nowhere, a set of headlights appeared on one of the dirt roads that intersects the road I was on. By the time I saw them, it was too late. The car hit me square on the driver’s side door. Pushed me off onto the shoulder, tipping the car onto the passenger side.”
Christ.The image her words created sent a renewed rush of fear through Gabe’s system.
“I’d hit my head pretty hard, but I remember the blood. I could feel it running across my forehead and into my eyes. It made it hard to see the man.”
“The man?” Gabe stood then, unable to stay away from her any longer.
Ellena turned back to him. “H-he came up to my car. I thought…I thought he was going to help me, but instead he just stood there. Staring. I screamed at him to help me. Or, maybe it was only in my head. I was pretty out of it by then, but I do remember a blinding flash of light. Like from a camera.”
“The email.”
