Drennan tugged the tracked exam table toward her, her heart rate ticking too loud in her head. This…this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. She was going to have a baby. She was going to be a mom with a family of her very own and turn everything she’d survived in her mother’s house into something good. She didn’t want to die. Not before she had the chance to see her son or daughter grow up. To take their first breath and their first steps. She wanted the ridiculous kindergarten graduations and themed birthday parties and the constant “mamas” once her child learned how to talk. She wanted the scraped knees and the kisses that fixed them and the floods from the bathtub.
She could see it all. Right in front of her.
And Harvey… She could see him, too. Throwing his arms open for their toddler to run into at the end of a long workday, spinning around until they both got dizzy and sick. She saw him helping her with dinner and kissing the side of her neck whereher abductor had sliced through the skin there. She could feel his hands on her hips and his calluses prickling goose bumps up her arms as if he was right here in the room with her.
It was so real…and so heartbreaking. Because Harvey couldn’t love her until he learned how to accept and love himself, and she couldn’t force him. She couldn’t heal for him. But she could fight for them, for their family. However long it took, through whatever hardships that came. Whatever the risk or pain that most assuredly waited on the other side was worth it, wasn’t it? He had to see that.
The exam table hit the end of the track, jarring the woman on the table. Drennan tried to back away. She’d given the killer what he wanted, led him straight to Ellender Garza. Her gaze flitted to the double steel doors. Could she make it before he lashed out?
The superintendent ripped back the sheet hiding the stitched Y-cut from both of the victim’s shoulders, down over her sternum and into her belly. “Open her up.”
Blood that hadn’t seeped from her wound drained from her face. “What?”
“I told you what I came here for, Dr. Hawes.” He extended the scalpel toward her, blade first. “And I’m not leaving without it. Open her up.”
Her stomach pitched with a renewed flood of nausea. She shook her head. She’d cut into a thousand bodies over the course of her education and career, even as an assistant medical examiner, but she couldn’t do this. “You can’t be serious.”
“What about me gives the impression that I’m joking?” He rounded the end of the cold exam table, closing the distance between them until she caught hints of his aftershave. Something gut-wrenching and cloying. “You’re a doctor. You know what you’re looking for. Get me my baby, and you walk away from this unscathed.”
She tasted the lie as it seeped from his mouth. He’d let her see his face. There was no way in hell he’d let her leave this room alive. If she had to guess, he’d leave her body in one of the refrigerators to buy himself some time to escape. Drennan backed up another step. “Please. You don’t have to do this. I can delete the DNA from the database. She can be buried or cremated. There are easier ways to get what you want. Don’t make me do this.”
His gaze narrowed on hers. “Now, why would a doctor beg me not…” Understanding smoothed the lines around his eyes, and his gaze dropped to her midsection. “Ah. So that’s why Ranger Knight is so protective of you. You’re carrying his baby. I had to wonder why a decorated soldier like that bothered to look twice at a boring as hell assistant ME in the middle of nowhere Utah.”
The bite of pain that had nothing to do with the slice to her neck cut through her at his words. Boring. Unnecessary. Selfish. Disappointment. She’d heard the words a thousand times over, and they stung just as much coming from this complete stranger as they had from her mother.
Except Drennan had removed that particular tumor from her life. And she’d do it again. She’d do it as many times as it took. Because Harvey was right when he’d said she was strong. That she was important and that she deserved to be happy. And this son of a bitch was not making her very happy.
“I didn’t say that.” Drennan shifted her weight between her feet, ready to run as hard as her legs allowed. Would she make it far? Probably not. But she could go for one of the shards of paperweight on the floor.
A disjointed smile curled at one side of his mouth, as though he’d seen it on other people’s faces and tried to replicate it himself in the mirror a thousand times, but it never made the full impact. Instead it curdled something in her stomach. “You didn’t have to.” He took another step, coming to her side of thetable, no longer allowing anything to act as a barrier between them. “All right, Dr. Hawes. I’ll make this easy for you.”
Why did she have the impression he had no interest in making things easy for her? Her hands went clammy with him this close as every possibility played out in her mind.
Twisting the scalpel in one hand, he took that final step that put them toe to toe. “Either you get me what I want, or I takeyourbaby.”
Oxygen stalled in her chest. He wouldn’t. Would he? Her chin wobbled as she forced herself to keep eye contact with the man threatening her child. Her future. No one would hurt this baby. She could do this. “I need a scalpel.”
“Here.” That smile was back, still a little off. “Take mine, but if you try to use it on me, I will do what I promised and leave you to bleed out on the floor.”
Drennan took what he offered, the steel familiar and warm in her hand. “That’s not going to work for me.”
She struck, stabbing the blade of the scalpel into the soft tissue at the side of his neck, but adrenaline had thrown off her aim. She somehow managed to avoid hitting his carotid artery. The superintendent grabbed for his neck with one hand and backhanded her across the face with the other.
Drennan hit the line of refrigerators face-first. Lightning exploded behind her eyes just before she collapsed. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
“I warned you what would happen if you fought me, Dr. Hawes.” Her clothing bunched around her neck as he fisted her collar and dragged her around the end of the exam table. He dropped her in front of another row of refrigerators, grabbing for the door. The table slid out next, and everything in her body went tight. No. No, no, no. He swayed above her, keeping pressure on his wound as he hauled her onto the exam table. “I always follow through on my promises.”
Cold broke through the sweat along her spine. Drennan’s sense of survival kicked in too late as he shoved the table back into the refrigerator. With her on it. She reached overhead for the door. Too late. “No!”
The lights cut out.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Harvey kicked through the heavy double doors.
A mess of features contorted as Superintendent Pierce Shelton whipped his attention in Harvey’s direction. He’d never met the man—hadn’t seen anything more than his smiling photo in the monthly ranger newsletter—but every cell in Harvey’s body told him this was the son of a bitch who’d attacked Drennan in the park. Who’d wanted to use her to get to the woman currently cut open on the table. Straightening, the superintendent seemed to gauge the distance between him and the door and conclude his chances weren’t great. Now unmasked and exposed by the sharp fluorescent lighting overhead, Pierce Shelton’s appearance exceeded his midlife age. More gray, more shadows to his face, more wear around his eyes. Not from exhaustion.Desperation.His hand shook as he pulled away from the victim on the table.
“Ranger Knight, what a pleasant surprise. I don’t expect you’re here for an update on the Ellender Garza case? Because I can confidently tell you the case is closed, and your services are no longer needed.”
