by Jamie Howard
A voice on her end called out, “Elle? Are you still in the bathroom? Are you all right?”
“I have to go,” she whispered. “F-find her. Please.”
And then the line went dead. I pulled the phone back from my ear and stared at it, trying to make sense of everything Elle had told me.
“Dude, what’s going on with Jules. Is she all right?” Gavin asked.
“Elle doesn’t seem to think so.” I shook my head, my thoughts still swirling like they were caught in a riptide. “Gav, do me a favor. Can you see if you can find any pictures of Erik Hellstrom leaving the fundraiser?”
“Umm . . . why?”
“Elle’s convinced they didn’t leave together, and she hasn’t heard from Jules at all. She’s worried that something might be wrong.”
“Hold on.” Gavin twisted his lips to the side as he looked at his phone. “Okay, I’ve got Hellstrom living the gala alone.” His thumbs flew over the screen again. “But I’ve also got a picture of Juliet on her way to an audition yesterday?”
“Lemme see.” I wiggled my fingers and Gavin tossed it over, wasting no time to zoom in on the image. Right there, bright and clear, was the birthmark. My skin prickled, a chill skittering down my spine. “That’s not Jules.”
Chapter 36: Felix
I raked a hand through my hair. “I don’t care if you charge me four times the rate. Just do whatever you have to.” I listened to my P.I.’s reassurances that he’d get right on it, but dread was still hovering over my head like a low-hanging storm cloud when I tossed my phone on the coffee table.
The front door slammed, and Ian strolled in, three pizza boxes balanced on his hand. “Anything?”
“Nothing.” I huffed out a breath. “The police are fucking worthless. There’s no ‘proof’ that she’s actually missing so they won’t lift a damn finger. I’m paying out the ass to get my P.I. to dig up everything that he can, but that doesn’t guarantee he’s going to find anything.”
Ben linked his hands together, pursing his lips. “Have you considered that maybe everything’s actually fine?”
“Of course I have.” I ran my hands over my wheels, impatience polluting my veins. “But if it was someone you cared about, would you be willing to take the chance?”
Rachel stiffened on her perch on the recliner, but her gaze never strayed from her laptop. Which was why she didn’t catch the way Ben’s eyes strayed to her when he said, “No. No, I wouldn’t.”
Gavin plopped down on the arm of Rachel’s chair. “You got anything over here?”
“It’s only been three days since the fundraiser, so it’s not like I’d expect that many pictures to begin with.” She shrugged. “From what I’ve been able to find, we’ve got that picture of her going to the audition and another of her at Starbucks. Neither of which are actually her. But that’s nothing out of the ordinary.”
“So, essentially we’ve got nothing.” Helplessness spiraled inside me, invading my bones and weighing them down. Even running a hand over my face felt like an incredible effort.
“Well, we do have pizza.” Ian tapped a finger on top of the greasy cardboard lid. “Maybe some calories will jumpstart our brains. Give us some new ideas.”
“I’ll never say no to pizza.” Gavin flipped the paper plates up into his hands. “Want a slice, Rach?”
“Uh, no thanks. I’ll take a water though.”
“I got it.” Ben made for the kitchen while Gavin divvied up the pizza.
I struggled to eat one slice. The pepperoni tasted like ash in my mouth and every imaginary tick of the clock felt like I was wasting precious seconds. Hurtling toward a finish line I couldn’t even see coming. Everything in my body was straining forward, screaming at me to do something. Anything. If only I could figure out what the hell I should do.
“Oh hey.” Rachel sat forward, her laptop sliding forward on her knees. “Your P.I. sent something over.” She double-clicked on the touch pad, eyes roaming across the screen. “Looks like a pretty generic report on Juliet, nothing too out there.” Her finger zig-zagged across the screen as she read. “Her credit card is still active—she’s got some charges for food, Starbucks, a cab. Nothing out of the ordinary, but at least her credit card is still in the city. That’s good news.”
I wheeled over next to her, trying to get a peek of her screen.
“Did you know Juliet’s real last name is Carter?” Her hair brushed across my arm as she turned to look at me.
“I didn’t.” I shook my head. “I knew she changed her name to try and give her family some anonymity, and she was really freaked out when her stalker traced her back to her apartment because she bought it under that name.”
“Huh.” Rachel tapped a finger against the tip of her nose before her fingers dove back to the keyboard.
“What are you doing?” Ian asked, leaning his elbows on the back of the chair to read over her shoulder.
“What Felix said got me thinking. I ran my usual searches on Juliet St. Clair, but I’m wondering—”
“If maybe you’d have better luck searching for Juliet Carter?” Ben finished for her.
Rachel flashed him a smile. “Exactly.” She hummed under her breath as she kept pecking at the keys. “There.” She sat up straighter. “It looks like she owns an apartment in the South Bronx?”
“The South Bronx?” Gavin scowled. “Now there’s a bad idea.”
“Are you sure that that apartment belongs to my Juliet and not some other Juliet Carter?” I asked, my fingers already itching to get moving.
She frowned. “It’s probably hers.”
Probably. I massaged a hand over my forehead.
A hand clapped down on my shoulder, squeezing. “Let’s go check it out,” Gavin said.
Ian’s hand landed on my other shoulder. “We’ll go with you. We’ve got your back.”
“This could be the break you’re looking for.” Ben stood, his hands finding their way into his pockets. “Seems like a no-brainer to me. I mean, what’ve we got to lose?”
Chapter 37: Juliet
The floor shook as Ally stomped back and forth across it, her boots practically driving holes into the worn wood floor. “Dammit, dammit, dammit!”
It took every speck of concentration I could muster to keep from flinching. To keep my body relaxed, my breathing steady and even. The only advantage I had at this point was trying to convince her I was still unconscious. Maybe then she’d leave without pumping me full of more drugs, and I could try and pull together a plan.
My phone started ringing again, eliciting a snarl from Ally. “Shut up!” Pings exploded across the room, pelting the floor like plastic raindrops. Her voice dropped to an unintelligible mutter, and the pacing picked up steam.
Panic tightened around my throat like a noose. Every time I broke through the fog of the drugs, Ally was more unstable. Even in my extremely incapacitated state I knew my time was running out. There was only so long until Ally broke, until she snapped and loaded me up with enough of whatever she kept filling that syringe with to send me into a permanent sleep.
The sound of a zipper had my shoulders stiffening. Then there was the rustle of clothes, a laugh that made my stomach hollow out, and finally the slamming of a door.
I lay there, slowly counting down from three hundred. Refusing to even move an inch till I was sure she’d gone and wasn’t coming straight back. This was my chance, and I wasn’t going to waste it.
When I finally hit zero, I let my eyelids flutter open. Moonlight streamed through the crooked blinds, but I couldn’t even guess how long I’d been here. My sense of time had been completely obliterated.
The room spun like an out of control merry-go-round when I sat up, and the ever-present nausea churning in my stomach threatened to send me back to my knees. I took deep breaths through my nose until it subsided. Not that the combined smells of must and mold were all that comforting.
Once I’d gotten my stomach under control, I lifted my wrists a little higher. T
he rope twisted around both of them, snaking in and out in a complicated knot that I couldn’t find the beginning to, let alone the end. I needed something to cut them with.
I scanned the crappy studio apartment, but other than the current mattress I was occupying on the floor and the lone lamp, the entire thing was empty. My gaze traced the long shadow that stretched across the floor from the corner of the bathroom to the door, an idea taking shape.
Using my knees and elbows, I started the slow, awkward trip across the room. Splinters dug through the thin fabric of my dress, the endless amounts of grime dirtying the white material. Sweat dotted my hairline by the time my knees hit tile, my arms and legs quaking from exhaustion.
I pushed myself to keep moving, keep going. Wrapping my fingers around the chipped edge of the pedestal sink, I strained to pull myself up to standing. Maintaining that position with my feet tied together was a balancing act. I wobbled this way and that, my death-grip on the sink the only reason I didn’t go crashing to the floor.
I’d have to do a lot better than that if I had any chance of my insane plan succeeding.
Across from me, the crooked mirror hung against the wall, its edges spotted with age. I propped my hip up against the sink, and batted my hands against the mirror. It swayed gently to the right before settling back in place.
Harder, Jules.
I smacked it again, but it stuck in place. I bit my tongue, fighting back the frustration that was clawing its way up my throat. One more time, I could do this.
This time I flung my whole body into it, clipping the corner with my balled-up fists. The mirror came crashing down, and I fell right along with it, the edge of the toilet seat colliding with my temple.
My vision flickered, like I might have passed out. Lost a few seconds, a minute, maybe more. Glass splinters stuck to my skin, a warm trickle of blood running down the side of my face and dripping into a small puddle on the floor.
Get up. Hurry.
With a groan, my fingers searched across the floor for a glass shard big enough to help me cut through the ropes. The edges of it sliced my fingers to ribbons when I grabbed it. I ignored the pain—the throbbing in my head, the burn in my hands, the ache that seemed to take up residence in every inch of my body. Getting free was the only thing that mattered. I was fairly sure my life depended on it.
I painstakingly sawed the glass against the restraints wrapped around my ankles. Every motion had me biting my lip to keep from crying out, the slippery blood coating my hands running harder and faster. I slumped against the wall as the rope frayed, kicking out with my feet until they were free.
One down, one to go.
If I could just find a way to pin the glass between my knees I could—
“Well, well, well.” Ally dropped a hand to her hip. “I’m getting a little bit of déjà vu, what about you, Jules?” Glass crunched underfoot as she took a step forward. “There’s just something with us and bathrooms.”
I tucked my feet back underneath me, dragging the rope along with them, hoping she might not realize I’d already half-succeeded in breaking free.
Ally’s other hand finally came into view, another syringe pinched between her fingers.
“More drugs?” I looked at her pleadingly. “Please, Ally, you don’t have to do that. I’ll be good, I promise.”
“It’s too late.” Her jaw clenched. “If your stupid boyfriend could have taken a fucking hint, I wouldn’t have to do this right now. He’s ruining everything and—”
“Felix is looking for me?”
She sneered down at me. “Oh, I’m going to make sure he finds you, too.” A laugh contorted her face. “What’s left of you anyway.”
Now. The word sizzled across my brain like an electric spark. I burst to my feet, my only goal to take Ally down, to get some kind of leverage.
My shoulder slammed into her chest, and we both crashed through the bathroom door, back into the main room of the apartment. I landed hard on top of her, and her hand bounced against the floor, the syringe skipping and spinning away from us. Leaning all my weight on my knee and into her stomach, I pressed my bound hands against her throat. I couldn’t get a good grip with the way my hands were tied together, and between one moment and the next, Ally’s fist blindsided me on the corner of my jaw.
Somehow I ended up back on the floor, my vision an abstract patchwork of what I was supposed to be seeing. Ally’s snarling face appeared above mine, an ominous click echoing around the room. The barrel of the gun was cold as it pressed against my forehead.
I shook my head, not bothering to stop the cascade of tears streaming from my eyes. “Don’t do this, Ally. Please don’t do this.”
She pressed the gun even harder against my skin. “Don’t you get it? This is what you deserve. This is how you’re going to pay me back.”
“By dying?”
“By giving back the life you stole from me.”
I saw the flare in her eyes as she got ready to pull the trigger, an awful warmth that sparkled in her gaze, dilating her pupils. I was out of time, out of options.
With nothing left to lose I tried to buck her off of me, my foot managing to catch the side of her knee and knocking her off balance. The gun went off as she fell, and a ripping, burning pain tore through my shoulder and into my side.
I felt the vibration of my scream as it echoed around my throat, but the only thing I could hear was a loud, permeating ringing. I curled onto my side, trying to hide from the pain. Something hard dug into my side. My fingers fumbled around the edge of it—black, warm, and lethal.
I could barely keep a grip on the gun, didn’t even know how I was supposed to hold it. Ally launched herself at me, her body landing on mine with such a force that it knocked all of the breath from my body. Her fingers fought against mine, trying to grab the gun. I did everything I could to hold onto it; she did everything she could to wrestle it away.
We both jerked when the gun went off a second time.
Someone screamed—her or me, I couldn’t tell.
My vision eroded, blinking out entirely as something warm and sticky soaked through my dress.
The last thing I remembered was the sound of footsteps, before I remembered nothing at all.
Chapter 38: Felix
A Styrofoam cup of something warm appeared in my hands. I glanced down at it, trying to figure out how it had magically appeared there.
Gavin nudged me with his elbow. “Drink up, man. It looks like you’re sleeping with your eyes open.”
I wasn’t. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even close my eyes without feeling like I was back in that shithole of an apartment. We’d been on the sidewalk when the first gunshot rang out. Down the hallway when the second sounded. For the rest of my life, I’d never be able to forget the sight of those two limp bodies sprawled across the floor, an enormous puddle of blood spreading out from underneath them. For a minute I couldn’t even tell which one of them was which.
Ben was on the phone with 911 before I could even process the thought. Gavin knelt on the floor, his shout, “She’s alive!” the only thing that got me breathing again. There wasn’t even anything I could do but hold her hand, her fingers cold as ice, until the paramedics arrived and whisked her away.
She coded in the ambulance.
They rushed her straight into surgery.
And I’d been sitting here in this godforsaken waiting room ever since.
I took a sip of coffee and grimaced. The sludgy brown liquid was burnt to hell, the few packets of sugar Gavin had dumped in it not nearly enough to cut through its lethal potency. I set the cup down on the table, not willing to risk the hole it was tearing in my stomach for the small kick of caffeine.
“We have to hear something soon.” Gavin’s knee bounced up and down. “It’s been hours.”
“No news is good news,” Ben added from his spot across the room.
It was only the three of us now. Ian had taken one step through the emergency entrance and lost all
color in his face. After everything he’d been through, I didn’t blame him. And when Rachel gave him the perfect excuse to leave—a ride home to change out of her blood-stained clothes—I encouraged him to take it.
Another hour creeped by.
Then another.
Finally, the door swung open, revealing a tall, slender woman in a long white coat, her salt-and-pepper hair drawn back in a ponytail. Her gaze slipped down to the clipboard in her hand. “I’m looking for a Mr. Donovan?”
“That’s me.” I rolled forward. “Is she all right? Is everything okay? Did the surgery go well?”
“Ms. St. Clair pulled through surgery well. She’s resting comfortably in recovery right now. She’s been asking for you.”
My head dropped into my hands, suddenly weightless. For the first time in hours I could actually breathe—she was okay. My eyes stung as I blinked up at the doctor. “Can I see her?”
She held up a finger. “Only for a few minutes. Then she needs to get her rest.”
“Whatever you say, doc.”
I followed right on her heels as she led me down the hall, through a set of double doors, and stopping outside room 301. She swung the door open for me. “I’ll be back for you in a few minutes.”
I didn’t waste a single second, racing through the door. Juliet was surrounded by machines, a crisp white sheet pulled up over her chest, tubes running out from her hand, her arms. She had a bruise on her forehead, more on her neck, and a thick swath of bandages wrapped around her hands.
“Hey, you.” She smiled and something stirred back to life inside me. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
I edged up to her bedside, my hands hesitating in my lap because I had no idea where to put them. “That’s not even funny,” I whispered. Nothing about this was funny. Seeing her like this, realizing how close I’d come to losing her, was breaking my heart.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice caught, her lower lip wobbling. “I’m so sorry about everything.”