Cold-Blooded Beautiful (The Beautiful Series)

by Christine Zolendz

  “Was there an accident?” I asked, clenching my jaw.

  “Negative. The car is in perfect condition, half a tank of gas, keys on the front seat and her cell phone in the trunk. We did however find bloodstains in the trunk, Kade. It’s been a few hours, but we’re waiting on lab results. I’m at the hospital right now with your brother, waiting on the video surveillance recordings from last week. Seems like this hospital doesn’t have the proper upkeep of their security equipment, so we called in the head of the their security firm to help find the time stamp and evidence from last week.”

  “That’s all there is?” I whispered into the phone.

  “So far, yes. I’m sorry I don’t have more information for you, but I’m certain to get this sorted out as fast as we can. How far are you away from the hospital? Why don’t you come here and we’ll go to the car site together.”

  “Yeah, I’ll see you in a few,” I mumbled hanging up. “Please head to the Adirondack Medical Center,” I said to the driver.

  My mum’s soft-gloved hand touched my forearm, “What information did you get, love?” Her voice was cautious and caring, making me want to sob out in agony.

  “Sheriff’s office found her car with her cell phone in the trunk, abandoned on the side of a desolate road. There, um was blood inside the, ah…” I couldn’t finish.

  “Oh, dear,” she whispered, covering a hand over her lips.

  I could do nothing more than turn my head out the window of the car and watch the evergreens as they blurred by. The dark and dismal mass that was otherwise known as the Adirondack Mountains. Somewhere, in that surrounding black of the forest, was my Samantha. Did she know how to navigate in the thick nature of the Adirondacks? Did she know how to survive in this brutal weather? Or was she somewhere inside with that monster, being held prisoner? The thoughts gutted me, but I held onto my sanity with a tight grip. The only way I was going to save her was if I kept my head about me.

  When we finally pulled up to the hospital, Jen was outside leaning against the brick columns under the canopy of the large building. She was uncharacteristically smoking a cigarette, a cherry tip, blazing brighter as she inhaled a pull. She pulled herself off the wall as I climbed out of the car, and began wiping at the tears that emerged from her eyes, and walked toward me. “Oh, Kade,” she sobbed, “this isn’t happening, it can’t be. How could he have known she was still alive?”

  I took the cigarette from between her fingers, and instead of flinging it into the parking area, I took a long pull, and exhaled. There was no way to answer her question, so I ignored it. What difference would the answer make anyway, it was already done. “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  “There in the security unit on the ground floor,” she whispered.

  Taking my last pull of the cigarette, smoke burning and scratching its way down my throat, I flicked it onto the walkway and strode to the sliding doors. I didn’t check to see if she or my mother followed. Though, I did hear my mum’s voice say, “Well, Jen, dear, I’m sorry we have to meet under such horrid circumstances…”

  I shut the rest out. The niceties made me want to gouge my own eyes out of my skull. It was simply astonishing to me, how everyone in the world could be calm and act so bloody normal, while Sam was missing. Fuck, I was trying my damnedest to hold myself the hell together and not fall apart, but my body was knotted up into clumps of pure hate and bottomless despair.

  “Security unit?” I snapped at the security officer behind the front desk. Placing his hand on his little toddler like walkie-talkie, he eyed me as if I wore a strap-on bomb. “I’m Kade Grayson, the Sheriff’s department called me. I’m here to meet Deputy George down in security,” I said, pronouncing each word slowly, so I would calmly get my point across without having to use the knuckles of my hands that tingled to introduce themselves to his eye sockets.

  “Oh, yes,” he said pointing to the right, “it’s just down the hallway to your right. Just follow the signs.” Bloody moron. Bloody splatters of crimson spray splashed against the wall as a bullet tore through his head; gray matter clung to the desk and dripped thickly down his idiotic security uniform. Imagining his death made me feel better.

  I could hear Jen’s voice somewhere behind me as I stormed through the corridors to the security unit. Florescent lights beat down on my face, surreal and alien. Samantha once told me she found a strange kind of peace inside the cold whiteness of a hospital; a comfort in its chaos and trauma. I think maybe because she brought in the calmness, because she could heal everyone’s pain. Now, someone needed to do that for her.

  Through the maze of hallways, I could hear the sounds of male voices, harsh and loud, until I rounded the corner and found the open door to the office. Before I even stepped foot inside, my gag reflex attacked, and I had to pull myself up short of the doorway. Dylan was just inside, both his hands grasping the front of his hair. “Bloody, fucking hell,” he was saying, over and over. “Bloody, fucking hell.”

  My hands grabbed onto the doorframe as I tried to focus my breathing. “What? What? What!” I heard myself screaming.

  Sheriff Lane’s wrinkled face was in front of mine, hollow cheeks and oil filled pores, fumbling out words that I couldn’t hear over the white noise that filled my head. Just past his face, blaring in grainy black and white images, six enormous security screens played the video of David Stanton pushing a full laundry bin into the garage area, and dumping a body sized load of laundry violently into the trunk of Samantha’s car. A bouquet of dark flowers was tossed in on top of the heap and it didn’t move at all.

  Sam’s body was in that bag and it didn’t move at all.

  “NO!” I screamed. “No. No!” My fists slammed against the walls, splintering holes across the paint. Pain rocked up my arms when I didn’t stop, “Take me to the car. We have to find her. We have to find her!”

  This isn’t David trying to get the evidence she took. This is David getting his revenge. This is David not caring about getting caught and he was desperate now, desperate for her to give him all the money, desperate for her to die.

  Dylan and George wrestled me to the ground. Their voices urged and pleaded me to stay calm, and I tried, I swear I tried, but I just watched my world get hauled savagely into the trunk of a car, and I could do nothing to help her.

  “Over a week,” I roared, stilling my efforts to fight. Dylan’s hands grabbed my arms tighter, his forehead pressed against my shoulder blades. “It’s been more than a fucking bloody week since this happened. I have to fucking find her.”

  With Dylan still holding me steady, the fucking sheriff slapped a pair of handcuffs on me and shoved me into a rolling chair, which slid across the office and slammed me up against the far wall. My head bashed against the wall, and all I could hear was the harsh gasps of my Mum and Jen as they entered the office and realized what had happened.

  “Okay, everybody, just calm down!” Sheriff Lane bellowed. “Kade, you are not helping this investigation at all by throwing a tantrum. It wastes our time, babysitting you here. Time that we need to go looking for the victim.”

  Fuck me, he didn’t say her name. He just dehumanized her to me like he knew she was already fucking dead. The guttural sob that tore through my chest was in-fucking-human.

  “We have to do something,” Jen cried softly when her eyes locked onto the video loop playing Samantha’s abduction. “He’s really going to kill her. He’s going to torture her until he finds the money! My God, we need to do something. She might be...oh, God,” she sobbed.

  “You all need to realize that there is a great possibility that she is already dead. The blood in the trunk was a match with blood Samantha donated to the hospital for the last blood drive. So put your adult pants back on and let us do our job without getting in the way. Understood?” His pale brown eyes softened as he looked straight at me, “You also need to realize that the woman who is missing was trained for traumatic situations and spent six years in the fucking military, and the blood that was fou
nd on the outside of the trunk was someone else’s match, but we have no DNA evidence as to who. What we do know is that we have her hospital ID card code with her coming in and leaving twenty minutes later, and we’ve all just seen on the surveillance tapes who really left. Now, Deputy Tatum here is going to stay with you, and escort you all home. I have a department full of deputies and rangers combing through the woods in the fucking dark for anything that will lead us to find her.”

  Calmness overcame me. If it fell between the two, Samantha had more experience with violence. She knew the monster well. She had seen more violence and lived through more pain than I ever did. She’d survived worse than David.

  Right?

  She was a fucking surgeon. She could shank a bitch, gut her, feed her own intestines to her for dinner, and fucking keep her alive while doing it. It’s David’s arsenal of weaponry I’m fucking worried about. If he starts pulling out his handy dandy bag of pharmaceutical toys and shit, she can’t fight against him.

  They had to find her.

  “There is nothing more that you all could do for her tonight, so go home and get some rest. I know you think that’s an impossible feat, but you have to try. Tomorrow, when daylight breaks, if you want to volunteer in the search parties we are setting up, you can, but you need to leave your emotions home, Kade. It will not help her for you to lose control.”

  Too fucking late, control has already been lost.

  Chapter 14

  Slowly, I cracked open the door and swept the room for David with my eyes, I would have given a limb for a gun right about then. My hands tightened and braced themselves against the wall as I slipped out silently. It didn’t feel right, being so vertical. That wasn’t the best of signs, but I wasn’t giving up, and I wasn’t stopping for anything. My skin was too raw and too hot. It burned from the inside out. It prickled and stung like thousands of little needles were piercing my skin, making me shiver with chills that crept into the nape of my neck, but I couldn’t stop and self diagnose. I had to concentrate, keep my eye on the target, and get out alive.

  Aurora’s clothes were huge on me, and I practically had to tie them around things to keep them from dropping around my ankles. With slow calming breaths, I silently closed the door of my prison.

  The room on the other side was crammed and cluttered with battered mismatched furniture, and hundreds of piles of tied up newspapers. Cartons of what smelled like rotting food littered every surface with swarms of bugs hovering over like little black clouds. One circular tube of fluorescent lighting flickered and buzzed in the middle of the ceiling, and tiny silhouettes of bug carcasses filled the bulb. From the rush of icy air that surged in through each broken window, torn cream curtains ruffled and fluttered like long menacing spirits. The sight of the room crippled me with a mixture fear and disgust.

  How long have I been here?

  Keeping myself as close as I could with my back to the wall, the room spread out in front of me. I made my way towards the closest window. The frigid draft sent chills across my skin, making me wrap my arms around my chest for warmth. How long would I be able to stay outside in this cold? How long until the sunrise?

  My eyes quickly scanned the room for anything I would be able to use. A few dishes. Mounds of papers. No utensils or weapons.

  There was one long candle cradled awkwardly into a metal holder. That’s going to have to do for now. Look. Keep fucking looking. Grabbing it quickly, I shoved the metal candleholder in the waistband of the skirt, scraping my hip as I did so. Keep looking. My eyes scanned through everything. My hands held tightly to my chest, not wanting to touch one single piece of filth. Climbing over the piles of papers and fuck I don’t even know what, I tried my hand at wrestling with a rusty old latch of a piece of furniture. After a few strong tugs, the drawer came open and a puff of dust and debris exited. I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream and mother fucking OCD clean. I felt like…I felt like things were crawling across my skin. I moved my eyes faster around the room. There had to be something there to use as a weapon, anything. Come on.

  My eyes dropped to the ground, where a small box of matches lay open, matchsticks scattered across the rotting floorboards.

  Matches.

  Matches?

  I’m going to burn this motherfucker down.

  Someone will come to put it out. That’s my way home.

  Crawling across the floor, I began picking up every matchstick I found, praying the box they had come in was bone-dry. My knees sank into the soft decaying wooden planks of the floor. They crumbled and snapped under the pressure. Yeah, this place was going to light up real quick. Maybe I could find some gasoline or other flammable substances to help it along. My gaze fluttered around the room, quickly taking an inventory of everything as fast as I could. Then my eyes froze on the closed door to the room I was held prisoner in.

  Son-of-a-SUBMISSIVE-BITCH! Aurora was still out cold in there, wasn’t she?

  There was a tiny, miniscule part of me that wanted not to care. Leave her there. After all, she helped David with whatever he had planned.

  Clenching my eyes shut tight, which hurt like hell, I inhaled deeply and sighed. That wasn’t the person I was, though. I wasn’t the type of person to leave someone to die in a burning building, no matter what she ever did. Maybe you could. Maybe the majority of the people in the world could, but I would never be able to look at my reflection in a mirror again and live with myself, knowing that I could have saved her and didn’t even try. I mean, come on, even with the limited knowledge that you hold about the way my brain works, you know I could never leave her. I was a trauma surgeon. I couldn’t leave her and start a fire where I knew she would die. I just couldn’t. That’s not what I’m made of. That’s not how I was created. I was put here to fucking heal people, to save them, and I refuse to give up who I am for anything. And…I’m not going to lie. It’s the thought of seeing her in a bright orange jumpsuit, behind bars, being someone’s little bitch that made me want to save her even more. Yeah, major critical visual stimulation for me. I wanted to be visiting her in prison, smiling in front of the thick bulletproof glass, and eating Twinkies in front of her.

  Still on my hands and knees, I shoved all the matches into the little front pocket of my new shirt, and crept across the floor back to the room. All I could think about were the plethora of fungal infections that lived on everything I touched. I needed to do this quickly.

  Silently opening the door, I slithered in and crouched down next to her almost bare body. Damnit! I forgot I stole her clothes. Screw it. The gigantic campfire I was about to unleash, would have to keep her warm.

  Hooking my elbows under her arms, I dragged her unconscious body slowly across the floor and out the door. I was so weak from whatever drug David had given me, by the time I hauled her to the window, I had the cold sweats and labored breathing. I might have vomited once on Aurora’s leg, but let’s be blatantly honest here, she deserved it.

  Hefting her body up and out of the window just about killed me, yet I did it, and she flopped out and onto a decomposing porch with a loud thwack. Again, she deserved it.

  With trembling limbs, I lunged back to the piles of newspapers and set to work on lighting them up. Quickly starting in one corner, I moved around the room, striking a match to light and holding it against the stacks of paper, until I watched them curl up in flames. Damn, adrenaline rushed through me. I felt the heated burst of it across my chest and scalp, and immediately, I was high. Great, somewhere hidden in the depths of me is a closet pyromaniac. I couldn’t wait to tell Kade. Over a dozen little fires raged, rapidly growing into tall scorching flames that licked black rings of smoke along the ceiling. Within a few moments, the place was an inferno.

  Climbing out of the window, with the heat of the flames biting at my back, I threw my weight up and over. My body landed on Aurora’s. Once again, she deserved it.

  Grabbing her by the ankles, I yanked her body as far as I could from the burning cabin and carefully scanned
my surroundings. I had no idea where I was, or even when it was. The night was dark, moonless, and tall evergreen trees blocked out most of the view. One narrow pathway, just barely visible and wide enough for a car, stretched out just in front of the cabin. The ground was covered with a light dusting of snow and ice. That wasn’t helpful at all to me, because I didn’t want to leave any tracks behind for David to follow.

  Okay, maybe I did. Leaving Aurora’s body up against the nearest tree, I ran towards the pathway, making sure to leave a clear set of footprints behind me. I did this for a few minutes, then jumped into the surrounding forest and doubled back the way I came. Halfway back, I climbed up the thickest covered tree I could find and watched the cabin blaze with fire from above.

  I stayed there. I didn’t run. I waited. I hid and I watched, because now, I was motherfucking hunting. Someone had to see that fire, right? Someone had to be alerted and people had to come, right? I knew David would, but I was counting on others. If I ran out into the dense woods, I would freeze, and I’d most likely be lost for days. I had to trust my gut instinct. Stay close to the enemy and watch him.

  My body started to numb with the cold. I tried swaying back and forth on the branch of the tree to get my blood flowing, but that just made my ears ache with my accelerated movements. I climbed to a higher branch with better pine needle covering from the wind, when I heard the low motor of an engine. Just through the darkness of the dirt road, bright headlights crawled toward the cabin. David. He completely runs over my tracks and doesn’t notice his lump of submissive mistress leaning limply against the tree.

  The car slowly pulled up next to the front door of the cabin and its door swings open with a metallic hollow creak. David climbed out. Long elegant trench coat, slicked back hair. I wanted to throw a rock at his head. Slamming the door closed, he walked around the old boat of a car and unlocked the truck with a key. Who does that anymore? Bending over the rim of the trunk, he seemed to be looking for something. When he stands up, he’s got a huge bag in one hand and a huge roll of rope in the other.