Moments after Veda barreled into the doorway, Gage caught sight of her, and his spine straightened in his heather gray suit. “Good morning, Dr. Vandyke.”
“What the hell’s going on here?” Veda breathed.
A lump raced down his throat. He held his tie to his stomach, and his deep voice boomed as the representative held out a chart with more papers to sign.
Gage ignored them, eyes riveted to her. “Between the cost of renting the machines, the repairs, and the security we had to hire to guard them—not to mention the flurry of impassioned complaints from every employee in this hospital—Ez-Meds has proved themselves… more trouble than they’re worth.” His eyes fell to her lips, and he drew in a breath. “The hospital was losing money… too fast.” The corner of his mouth lifted as he raised his eyes back to hers.
Veda sputtered. She couldn’t even feel sadness at the sight of the man she’d lost. She couldn’t even give herself a moment to wonder what that half-smile on his face meant. She couldn’t even kick herself for ruining what they’d had because her heart was somewhere else.
Her heart was at the office door on the other end of the pharmacy. If the Ez-Meds machines were gone, someone had to be there to take their place. The shuffle of papers petered out from the small crack in the office door. Someone was inside.
She looked back at Gage.
The other corner of his mouth rose to join the other in a small smile, and his eyebrows jumped as his eyes narrowed to the office over her shoulder.
Without another word to Gage, Veda turned and hurried to the office door, shoving it open the rest of the way, a gasp racing up her throat at the sight that awaited her.
“No!” she cried, hopping up and down at the sight of Jake, his lab coat swinging through the air as he swiveled on his heel to face the door, turning away from the box he was unpacking. The same box he’d been gloomily filling with all his things the day Gage had fired him.
Jake held his arms out with a coy grin, and his grin moved to a chuckle when Veda zoomed across the room and hurled her body at him, locking her arms around his neck. He hugged her back, lifting her from her feet and swinging her around.
“Jake, I can’t believe it,” she breathed as he set her down, taking his shoulders and shaking him. “How could you not tell me?”
“Wanted it to be a surprise.” He tickled her belly.
She craned away with a squeal before shoving him playfully.
He laughed, taking her arms and cutting a look at her. “Did you rekindle things with Gage? Because that’s the only way he called me in the dead of night and asked me if I wanted my job back. That’s the only way he dialed back on the nurse practitioners he’s been rolling through here like a madman.”
“He dialed back the practitioners?”
“Just this morning. It’s like he’s had an exorcism overnight.”
“Well, it wasn’t me.”
“It’s always you.”
“The woman you should really be thanking is Stephanie Cochran,” Veda said with a pout. “She’s the one sleeping with him now. I guess her pussy is just as magical as her stupid, perfect face.”
Jake tilted his head at her before shooting a look at the door. He crossed the room and eased the door shut, drowning out the faint sound of Gage’s voice from where he was still speaking to the Ez-Meds rep outside. Jake waited until the door clicked shut to cross the room back to Veda.
“So,” he started. “Now that I’m back, you’ve got unfiltered access to your sodium thiopental once more.”
Veda’s eyes lit up, and she came to her toes.
“And now that you know Gage isn’t ten, you don’t have to rush things. You can stay in Shadow Rock with me, forever, and we can take them all down together. The way we were always meant to.” Jake searched her eyes. “I hope you’re not planning on letting this blessing pass you by just because you feel bad that Brock is a “nice guy” whose wife wants a baby.”
“Hell no.” Veda kept her voice low. “Penny just stopped me in the hallway and told me she’s pregnant, so I won’t have to live with the culpability of stealing her biggest dream forever. And Brock Nailer… well, Brock Nailer decided to put me up against the ice machine at Dante’s last night.”
Jake’s eyes exploded in size, and his pale cheeks reddened. “I’ll fucking kill him…”
Veda took his arm with a shake of her head. “He stopped before…” She couldn’t finish, thankful she didn’t have to, knowing he understood. “He stopped himself and ran off. Hope was so right about him. About the nice-guy mask, he’s had tied on all these years. How hard he works to do good deeds to justify what a monster he is inside. But good deeds don’t change a bad man. Nothing changes a bad man.”
“You really believe that?”
Her eyes watered. “They destroyed me. So badly that I walked into Gage’s life, ten years later, and destroyed him too. It’s their fault I hurt him. It’s their fault I lost him. It’s their fault I have no idea how to be… happy. In a real way.” She sucked in a breath, nodding. “So, yes Jake, they will all pay. Starting with Brock Nailer. And he’ll pay by the end of the week.”
——
“Do you ever sleep, Detective Hill? Go home, will you?”
Linc took in a surprised breath, turning to the door of the precinct briefing room with one arm crossed over his body. Locking eyes with Lieutenant Chavez, he smiled softly.
“Can’t.” He turned back to the board. “I think I’ve got something…”
The click of her heels on the linoleum grew closer from behind, coming to a stop next to him, along with a gentle whiff of her perfume.
“What do you think?” Her brown eyes danced across the timeline he’d set up on the white board, which grew larger and more intricate every day, spanning several months—back to the night Todd Lockwood was attacked. As promised, he’d weaved Jax’s murder into the timeline as well, proving to his co-workers that the pieces were clicking together a little too perfectly to be a coincidence.
Linc pointed to a photo with the red marker in his hand. “This was taken the night of the party. Every member of the Blackwater Prep basketball team is in this photo, along with Jax Murphy.” He moved the tip of his marker along the photo, stopping at Jax’s face. “I think The Chopper is hitting them, one by one…” Linc circled Todd’s face. “Lockwood.” Eugene’s face. “Masterson.” Jax’s face. “Murphy.”
“But what’s the pattern?” Chavez crossed her arms, frowning.
“Every member of the team has their jersey number tattooed on their wrists. All of them.” He motioned to the few players in the photos whose tattoos were visible. “You see?”
“You think The Chopper’s going in order of jersey number?”
“Can’t be. Todd’s number was 23, Eugene, 8, and Jax didn’t have a number because he wasn’t on the team. Just some kid from the Hill dying to be included. So either The Chopper is hitting them by jersey number, in reverse, or she’s not going by jersey number at all. However…”
Chavez followed the pen as Linc tapped each face he’d circled.
“Lockwood.” He tapped Todd’s face before moving to Eugene. “Masterson.” He moved the pen to Jax. “Murphy…”
Chavez drew in a breath. “She’s going in alphabetical order.”
Linc nodded.
Chavez’s voice grew hurried, the way it often did when she felt excited by a lead. “If she is going alphabetically… Who’s next?”
Linc raised his eyebrows, licked his lips, and circled a new face in the photo. “Brock Nailer.”
“You think he’ll be the fourth?”
“I’d bet my life on it.”
“Let’s keep an eye on him.”
“He’s scheduled to be at a medical conference downtown. CME. This weekend.”
“You’re liking the conference for the next attack?”
“Chopper’s been lying low since Jax, but I have a feeling Brock’s time is coming quick. I’d like to be at the conference
.”
Chavez turned away with a nod, her heels clicking as she left. “Keep me posted.”
“I will.” Linc turned back to the board.
“And, Hill?”
He looked over his shoulder and met her eyes—brows raised high.
Chavez smiled. “Nice work.”
Linc took a trembling breath and, with one last nod, Chavez sauntered away, the click of her heels growing fainter until Linc couldn’t hear them at all.
28
After the CME conference she’d spent all day crashing proved just as boring as Veda imagined, she breathed a sigh of relief when the door to Brock Nailer’s hotel room slammed closed.
The sound boomed through the tenth-floor hallway of the JW Marriott Shadow Rock, prompting Veda to peek around the corner she was tucked in. Her eyes ran the hallway’s crimson carpeting and white Victorian molding. She waited for any sign of life. The ding of an elevator. The chatter of other hotel guests. The shuffling of sneakers belonging to the housekeeper who’d abandoned her cart in the middle of the hall. Only when a full minute of silence passed did Veda step out of the shadows and move down the hall.
Air conditioning in the entire building was out, making the black jeans and long sleeved t-shirt she wore stick to her skin. She adjusted her leather gloves, and they moved easily, hands slick with sweat. She dreaded the moment she’d be forced to pull the black mask propped on her head over her face, knowing it would make the heat nearly unbearable.
But regardless of how muggy it was—or how much money the hotel would lose for all the rooms they’d be comping that night—Veda remained unswayed.
Unswayed as she hurried through the quiet hall on her tiptoes. Unswayed as she seized the maid’s cart on her way by. Unswayed as she rolled that cart all the way up to room 305.
Brock Nailer’s room.
Veda remained unswayed as she snatched a black Sharpie from the messenger bag on her hip and covered the peephole in ink. Unswayed as she lifted her gloved hand and knocked.
“Housekeeping!” she cried, shoving the Sharpie in her bag before retrieving a syringe brimming with sodium thiopental from the side pocket. Looking both ways to make sure the hall remained empty, she popped the plastic top off the syringe. The needle gleamed under the hallway lights.
“No, thank you!” Brock’s voice was laced with irritation from the other side of the door, clearly miffed at the maid blatantly ignoring the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign hanging from the handle.
Veda knocked again, louder. “Housekeeping!”
“No!”
She escalated from a knock to a bang. The door’s hinges disagreed with the frame. “Housekeeping!”
Brock’s muffled curses snuck under the doorsill, growing clearer, louder, as he moved closer to the door.
Veda yanked the black mask down over her face, assuming he was looking into the peephole that she’d blacked out.
She hurried around the cart, taking fierce hold of the handle. “Housekeeping!”
The door swung open, and Brock’s infuriated, reddened face came into view. “I said no, thank—”
Veda shoved the cart forward with all her might just as Brock’s eyes widened at the masked person before him. Apparently frozen in shock, he only managed a small gasp before the cart had connected with his thighs, sending him stumbling backward, cursing as he struggled to remain upright as Veda barreled the cart forward relentlessly.
She breathed a sigh of relief—and was forced to bite back a laugh—when he lost control, feet getting caught under the wheels of the cart, sending him careening down to the floor.
Veda kept pushing until half the cart was on top of him, pinning him down. Though the wheels insured the cart was easy to move, it was still teeming with thick, heavy bath linens, appliances, cleaning agents, and every toiletry known to man. Veda would guess it was at least two hundred pounds, so it came as no surprise to her when the weight of it on top of him nailed him down. Still, he fought, sending bottles of lotion, shampoos, and fresh towels flying as he writhed under its crushing weight.
She released the cart and zoomed around it, falling to her knees next to his thrashing body, sliding the syringe into the jugular vein in his neck before he knew which way was up, wasting no time emptying the drug into his system.
“No,” was all Brock could whisper, eyes soaked with horror. He reached for her, for her mask, probably to remove it—to see who she was—but the drug was too fast moving, and he only managed to brush the backs of his fingers against her breasts, wide brown eyes searching the mesh eyeholes of her mask before they fluttered slowly shut, his breathing instantly deep, like he’d been sleeping for hours.
“Still a fucking pervert, even when you’re anesthetized. Who gave you permission to touch my tits?” Veda swatted his hand, which had gone limp between her breasts, away from her body in disgust.
She gasped in each breath, never having grown used to the adrenaline that vengeance sent rushing through her veins and leaped to her feet. Hurrying past the cart, kicking mini condiment bottles as she went, Veda took hold of the door and slammed it shut.
——
Stepping off the elevator on the tenth floor of the JW Marriott Shadow Rock, Linc’s heartbeat picked up. He nodded to the hotel guests that passed him in the hallway, green eyes dashing over the crimson carpeting and the white paneling lining the walls. He searched the ceiling for cameras the concierge had already informed him weren’t there, cursing under his breath that the conference had been held in the only hotel on the island that didn’t have surveillance on every floor.
He turned a corner that led to another wing of the hallway.
To room 305.
Twisting the room key the concierge had cut for him with a trembling hand, his heart climbed to his throat as he grew closer to Brock Nailer’s room.
He prepared himself for battle with the electronic lock as he stopped at the door, breathing in relief when the indicator light blinked green on the first swipe—a stroke of luck he rarely experienced with hotel keycards. Slamming the handle down, he threw the door open, moving inside the room with long, determined strides.
Detective Samantha Gellar looked over her shoulder as Linc approached, nodding softly up at him from where she stood in the room’s arched entryway with her arms crossed and her legs splayed wide. A team of forensic investigators perused the room with gloved hands and focused eyes. The first wisps of sunlight flirted with a gap in the curtains.
“Maid found him,” Sam said, as Linc came up next to her in the entryway. “Paramedics say he’ll probably be awake within the hour.”
But Linc could hardly hear her as he drank in the sight of Brock Nailer’s unconscious body being strapped into a yellow backboard on the floor.
Linc was sure Sam was still speaking to him as the medics moved to either side of the board and lifted Brock’s body. He was sure she was sharing vital information as he pressed himself against the wall to give them room to carry his body past him and out the door. He was sure one of the medics even said a few words to him, but his ears were pounding too loudly to hear any of it.
Whatever Sam saw in his eyes as he stared after Brock and the paramedics caused her to cross the hallway and squeeze his bicep.
Linc’s eyes shot to hers, shocked at the unexpected touch, and as Sam raised her eyebrows, his pounding ears cleared just enough to let her reassuring words sink in.
“It’s not a lose, Linc.”
“Fuckin’ assholes didn’t tell me they upgraded his room when the AC went out. Been staking out the wrong goddamn floor all night.”
“They fucked up, and she slipped through our fingers this time. But still… You were right. She’s going alphabetically.”
Linc searched her eyes and nodded softly.
“She’s officially a serial neuterer, and something tells me she’s not done. Thanks to you, we know her pattern. Which means, from now on, we’re one step ahead. We’re gonna get her, Linc.” Sam smiled and punched his arm. “W
e’re gonna fucking get her.”
29
Veda stared at the phone on her kitchen counter. Clutching the granite, her fingers itched to do one thing while her mind screamed to do another.
Gage wasn’t hers anymore. He was dating someone else, and he was happy. Happier than she could ever make him herself. She had too much baggage to give him the love he deserved. The right thing to do was to let him go. To give him a real chance at bliss with a woman who hadn’t just castrated one of his closest friends two weeks earlier.
Still, her hand flew out and grabbed the phone, because one fact remained. One fact that canceled out everything else.
Her pregnancy had just hit the twelve-week mark, and even if he wasn’t her boyfriend anymore, Gage deserved to know.
He deserved to know he was going to be a father.
So Veda dialed his number with trembling fingers, calling him for the first time since their blowout in his dining room. Since the morning he’d told her he was seeing Stephanie Cochran and didn’t want to be with her anymore.
Her stomach felt sick as she brought the ringing phone to her ear, and her heart fell to her feet when she was sent to voicemail.
She didn’t know why she’d expected different. He wasn’t hers. He wasn’t obligated to answer the phone. He was probably balls-deep in Stephanie right that very moment.
Even if Veda had made peace with the fact that she didn’t deserve him, she still felt shredded at the thought of another woman exploring the magical, spit-shined cock that had once belonged to her.
“It’s Gage, you know what to do.”
Veda sighed at the beep that followed his greeting—the greeting he’d rarely let the phone ring long enough for her to hear when they’d been dating—digging her nails into the countertop and begging for strength.
“Gage…” She paused when she heard how weak her voice sounded. The gentle tremble that lived beneath it. Centering herself, she swallowed thickly and tried again, thankful when her voice came out more evenly. “Listen… I’m sure this isn’t the kind of message a woman should leave on her ex-boyfriend’s voicemail but… to be honest…” She laughed softly. “A part of me is a little relieved that I can just spit it out on your machine without suffocating on the fear of what your response will be. Maybe that’s selfish…” When she realized she was rambling, she spoke faster, suddenly worried that the machine might cut her off. “I know that I destroyed everything between us, and I know that you’ve moved on with someone else, so I want to make it clear that I’m, in no way, telling you this to sway you, or to change your mind, or to make you feel obliged to do anything. You’re not obligated, but you deserve to know.” She drew in a haggard breath. “Gage, I’m pregnant. Twelve weeks. And it’s yours.” She exhaled because the worst was over. A wave of relief crashed over her, so violently, she almost believed it might carry her away. “When I first found out, I was really scared. Scared to death, honestly. But I’m not anymore.” Realizing she was getting off course, she willed herself to focus on why she’d called. “If you’d like to talk about it, you can call me. Or you could come over, and we can talk face to face. I’ll be home for the rest of the night. Even if you come in the middle of the night, just bang on the door until I wake up, and I’ll open it.”
Yearn (Revenge Book 4) Page 23