by K. L Randis
“She going to live?”
Jared didn’t even want to ask but his heart was breaking with every sentence the doctor delivered. He had meant it when he swore to never lose her again.
“For now she’s stable and considering the damage we’re optimistic. We are going to keep her in an induced coma to keep her comfortable and she may require additional surgeries depending on the swelling.” He looked at the remnants of her face. “She’ll need quite an extensive amount of plastic surgery somewhere down the line. I believe they identified eight broken bones in her face alone. We won’t know more until she’s awake but that won’t be happening for weeks, maybe months, it’s tough to say. There’s a lot of gauze and bandages, I know, this must be very hard.”
“Crushing,” Jared replied in a barely audible whisper. Tears edged their way to the corners of his eyes, pooling near his nose and threatening to trickle down his face.
“I’ll be back to check on her one more time before my shift ends. In the meantime if you need anything just buzz one of the nurses.” He put a hand on Jared’s shoulder, squeezing it softly before exiting the room.
The call came three hours later, a soft vibration waking Jared from the chair he had dozed off in at Hailey’s side. He wrestled the phone out of his pocket with his eyes half-closed and placed it up to his ear.
“I’m afraid I have some unsettling news,” Flick said. Her voice was calm but there was a hint of anxiety as she rattled on, “Dex got away. I have men tracking the tri-state area in every possible direction. They lost him just before he got to the Delaware Water Gap, so we’re not even sure if he’s still hunkered down somewhere in PA. But don’t worry, we’ll find him.”
“If you don’t, I will,” Jared vowed.
“I have no doubt. How is she?”
Jared fully opened his eyes, monitoring the hum of the life support that had put him to sleep. “She’s a fighter. They hurt her real bad, but she’s strong, ya know?”
“Of course,” she said. Flick then refrained from talking business just long enough to let a few seconds of silence give Jared a nudge of support. “I’ll call when I have anything,” she said finally.
Jared slid the phone back into his pocket and rested his head on the sheets of her bed, staring at her hand as he stroked her ring finger. The pull on his heart was agonizing anytime he looked to her broken, bloated face. As a nurse walked in to check her vitals he weighed the consequences of calling her parents to let them know what had happened.
“The coffee you asked for, sir,” the nurse said, pushing the Styrofoam grail in his direction.
“Oh, no coffee for me, thank you though,” Jared mumbled.
“Trust me, you’ll want this cup.”
She set it on the stand at the foot of the bed. She didn’t pull Hailey’s chart like the other nurses did and she neglected to check her blood pressure stats or temperature. She was almost at the door when Jared noticed a familiar shape on the back of the nurse’s left arm.
Anyone else would have mistaken it for a prior injury, maybe a drunken night memento or skiing accident badge of honor, a possible souvenir from a bicycle accident when she was a little girl.
But Jared knew better.
When his hazy vision finally managed to capture the image in full as she slipped through the doorway, his eyes widened.
A lightening bolt.
He jumped to his feet, scanning Hailey to make sure the nurse didn’t pull any vital wires from her body as he crossed the room to pick up the cup. “Hey!” he yelled after the nurse, but she was already halfway down the hallway.
Cup in his hand, Jared started towards the door. He stopped when he noticed there was something unfamiliar about the offering. The lightweight shell was absent of coffee and instead a small rattle of plastic clinked against the sides of the cup as he rocked it.
His fingers hesitated on the plastic lid, tracing the snow-white cover before ripping it off like a week-old Band-Aid. There was a neon pink Post-It note hugging the inside wall of the cup with writing on it. He peeled it off with one finger, directing it under the light so he could read:
There’s the truth
And there’s the truth you were forced to believe.
Come and get me.
-D
It was an invitation.
Dex wanted to be hunted. He was alive and within his reach, taunting him with a cryptic message while he drowned in the devastation of watching Hailey struggle to live. Flick’s guys would surely find him if he was that close.
There was a burning in Jared’s chest that considered calling Flick to let her handle it completely. Maybe walking away from the hunt would be best for Hailey so he could focus on her while Flick did the dirty work and just let Jared join in afterwards. Maybe he needed to stay put.
The mysterious plastic piece inside the cup scrapped the side of the Styrofoam as Jared flipped it over in his hand, pulling it away like a magician he immediately identified the contents and gasped.
Lacey’s bracelet. The one she had worn the night she died.
Jared rolled the pearly white bracelet over in his fingers, remembering the afternoon he’d spent making it with her at the kitchen table. One part of the band was adorned with a capital ‘L’ charm. He clasped the bracelet in his hand, bringing it to his lips and kissing the side of his thumb.
Dex was a dead man.
AVAILABLE NOW FOR PREORDER
Excerpt from LACED ( PILLBILLIES BOOK 2)
The second book in the Pillbillies Series
It was wrong of Jared to test Hailey’s memory after the assault but he had to know how much she remembered of his drug-filled past. If there were any parts of his life that he wished he could erase from her memory it would be any recollection of his involvement in Lacey’s death, the drugs and his stints in rehab. She was the only person who ever saw the good in him, and as deceitful as it may have been, he desperately hoped that the good was all she would remember when she finally regained consciousness.
Still, he couldn’t just outright ask her about the nature and extent of her memories; it felt unfair to pressure her like that. The trauma had already erased years from her early childhood and her time spent as a teenager. From the way she’d described it, it were as though entire pages of her life were simply blank.
Missing.
Jared watched her cry in frustration as different doctors interrogated and prodded her about what she could recall. It seemed that Hailey remembered Jared, but not moving to Florida. It meant she only had more recent memories of him from when she moved back to Pennsylvania, and knew little about when they dated as teenagers.
When he told her stories about how they met she took his word for truth, even telling him how much she loved him a few days after sorting through the fog saturating her memory. The sheer idea that she could speak was profound enough; her ability to remember that they were a couple and that she loved him was more than he ever could have hoped for.
“Hey beautiful,” Jared said as Hailey suddenly stirred from her sleep. The doctors were sure she would be released within the next week or two and they took pride in calling her their miracle patient. She had already undergone three corrective surgeries to her face. It had been a long few months and the bills were stacked in a neat pile next to the refrigerator, their balances threatening to drain Jared of all he had. He didn’t care though, and he intended on funding the most skilled plastic surgeons that money could buy.
Her lips parted weakly and she motioned for him to move closer to her. He rested his hands on the mattress, contemplating his next move. It was selfish—he realized that—but he needed to know.
“Remember when I told you my sister died in a drowning accident?” Jared asked, treading lightly.
Hailey shook her head. “I’m so sorry Jared, I can’t remember her.”
“I know,” he whispered, caressing her hand.
He thought that maybe if she saw a picture of Lacey the memories would come flooding back. It wasn’
t that he wanted her to remember that he had been solely responsible for Lacey’s death. In fact, the exact opposite was true. But he had to know for certain if that memory was gone. If it was, then maybe he had a real chance at starting over with her. If Hailey had no knowledge of how Lacey died, maybe Jared would no longer feel the need to keep proving himself to her. Maybe then they could just live happily together without the ever-present shadow of his past casting over them like a dark, suffocating veil.
Jared pulled the same photo from his wallet that he had shown her at the cemetery when they visited Lacey’s grave. His mom and dad were beaming at Lacey in a soft pink, cotton dress while she sat on the floor hugging a white teddy bear. Their picture perfect happiness was a distant memory.
“I wanted to show you what she looked like. I think you would have loved her,” Jared said, holding the photo up while he held his breath.
Hailey nodded, mindlessly gripping the edge of the tattered photo and pulling it closer to her face. Her eyesight betrayed her at times, often resulting in nausea or migraines when she tried to focus on reading or tedious tasks.
A soft smile spread across her lips as she cooed at Lacey’s innocence and beauty. “Oh Jared, she’s just so perfect. What a beautiful smile she had,” Hailey said.
She lingered over the iconic dress his mom would put on her when they had special occasions, touching the photograph in an attempt to remember. “I wish I could remember,” she mumbled sadly as she lowered the picture to study the faces of his parents.
“It’s okay baby, I’m sure—”
“OH MY GOD!” Hailey screamed, flicking the photo as if it were on fire. It hit the wall next to her bed with a THWACK and fell to the floor. “Who is that?! Who is that man!?” Hailey squealed, sitting upright in her bed and pulling at her hair.
“Who’s who baby? Hailey who are you talking about?”
“The man! The man in the picture Jared! Why is that man with Lacey, who is he?”
Confused, Jared crossed the room and picked up the picture, staring down at it. “The man?”
“That man in the picture, the one standing there.” Hailey’s sobs were uncontrollable, the monitor next to her bed started to heighten in speed and Jared knew a nurse would be storming through the door any second. “That man is the one who did this to me. He’s the one who attacked me, I’d know his face anywhere. Oh my God, who is he Jared? Who is that?”
Jared’s mouth was sucked dry as he fought for words, “Are you sure? Hailey your memory—”
“I know that’s the man who attacked me. You don’t believe me do you? I could never forget that face! I know that’s who did it, I know Jared!”
He held the photo at the edges; entranced by the two-dimensional eyes staring back at him. They were the same eyes that had judged him, belittled him and worried for him for so many years.
“It’s my dad,” Jared whispered, letting the picture fall to the floor as a nurse came rushing in.
* AVAILABLE NOW FOR PREORDER *
LACED (The Second Book in the PILLBILLIES Series)
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Acknowledgements
To the paramedics, police officers, recovering addicts, family members and friends who’s invaluable input, personalities and stories are embedded in crux of this novel.
To my husband, for always letting me write “just one more page.”
To YOU, my undying and supportive fan base, you avid and voracious readers, look at you sticking it out to the acknowledgement page, you are MY biggest fan!
And most importantly, to Mickey Mouse.
Thank you for supplying my beautiful daughter with your song and dance in moments when I need to put ideas to paper before they were lost in the abyss of my mommy brain.
ALSO BY K.L RANDIS
Spilled Milk: Based On A True Story
#1 Bestselling novel
Brooke Nolan is a battered child that makes an anonymous phone call about the escalating brutality in her home.
When social services jeopardize her safety, condemning her to keep her father’s secret, it’s a glass of spilled milk at the dinner table that forces her to speak about the cruelty she’s been hiding. In her pursuit for safety and justice Brooke battles a broken system that pushes to keep her father in the home.
"Randis later would testify at a criminal trial against her father, who was sentenced to prison for his crimes. He was sentenced to up to 16 years in 2004. Her painful — and ultimately triumphant — story is recounted in Randis' first novel, "Spilled Milk."- Brown, Stacy. Interview with the Pocono Record Newspaper
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