by BETH KERY
Using the shelves to support her wavering body, she bent and finally found the lever. She pulled. There was a click, and the back wall of the pantry loosened. Alice pushed, and the shelved wall swung inward. She hastened into the revealed space and pushed the wall back into place.
Her entire body began to shake. Or maybe it’d been shaking all along, and she hadn’t stood still long enough to feel it. Her rubbery legs gave way and she sunk onto the floor.
“There. You did it. You’re safe now, Addie.”
That was her imagined mother’s voice, talking to her. Alice wanted to believe her, but she wasn’t entirely convinced. Her body was finished running, however. She could go no further. She scooted a few inches, finding the corner of the hidey-hole. Her head fell back against the wall. She finally succumbed to the heavy, thick haze of unconsciousness.
THANKS to the loud beach party, Dylan didn’t hear the castle’s alarm blaring in the distance until he reached the horse path. He’d been running already, but he picked up his pace even more when he heard the alarm.
Something’s definitely wrong.
He’d already contacted Jim and told him to meet him at the castle, but hopefully the knowledge that the house had been breached would rush him all the more.
When he reached the terrace doors, he realized one was hanging open. A quick check informed him that the pane near the lock had been broken. Someone had busted the pane.
“Alice?” he bellowed as he entered, the screeching alarm obliterating his voice.
You’ve lost her. Again.
He willfully quashed down the unhelpful, panicked voice of doom. He sprinted through the media room toward the hallway.
ALICE’S eyelids fluttered open. The pain in her head had diminished to a throbbing ache, but her face, jaw, and hands burned like acid had been poured on the skin. Is that what had brought her to alertness? Where was she? In the distance, she heard the pulsing alarm.
Memory came sluggishly.
Kehoe.
He’d tried to kill her. All those horrible things he’d said about Lynn. What if the things he said were true? Did that mean that Kehoe could be her . . .
No. Don’t think about that right now.
Thad had been there. He’d saved her, and she’d dragged herself to the hidey-hole in the pantry of the kitchen. The childhood memory of it must have been triggered by the trauma and her fear.
In a pause of the throb of the alarm, she heard a thump outside in the pantry. The outer light switched on. Icy tendrils slithered beneath her skin. She stared in frozen horror at the slit of white light shining beneath the fake wall at the back of the pantry. Did the wall vibrate, or was that Alice’s entire world shaking?
The fingers of ice reached all the way to her heart and clutched as she watched the wall slowly swing inward. Light flooded the secret space. Someone stepped into the opening.
Kehoe stared down at her, looking like a horror with blood streaming from his temple and his right eye swelling. His preppy glasses—the very symbol of Kehoe’s fastidious personality—were now bent askew on his face. There was a smear of blood on one of the lenses. Alice couldn’t breathe.
A disgusted frown tilted Kehoe’s lips.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t find you? You’re bleeding like a stuck pig. Your tracks led me straight to you. I knew you were much stupider than Lynn, but I have to say, I’m disappointed, Addie.”
She hated her weakness; despised it. But she was paralyzed as he stepped into the little space, breaching her zone of safety. That was when she noticed what he held—a heavy meat tenderizer. He must have picked it up in the kitchen from the jar of utensils on the counter. The vision of it galvanized her. She braced herself on her hands and kicked at his legs as he stepped closer to her.
He kicked her back in her solar plexus, his manner almost casual. Alice made an oof sound. Her lungs locked. Pain splintered her hazy consciousness yet again.
“Don’t you just want to get this over with? I know I do,” Kehoe said with a weary grimness that terrified her almost as much as the weapon. He raised the arm that held the meat pounder. Everything seemed to go into slow motion.
She watched, as if in a dream, as Dylan slid sideways into the cramped space. Her heart lurched. For a split second, their gazes met. She only had a flashing image of him. He wore a suit with no jacket, his tie was loosened, and his thick hair was mussed, his bangs falling onto his forehead. His narrowed gaze was trained on Kehoe. He looked furious and glacial, focused and dangerous.
Kehoe’s eyes sprang wide when the meat pounder suddenly altered directions. Dylan shoved Kehoe’s arm back at the same time that he hooked his thumb and fingers beneath Kehoe’s chin. Gripping his throat, he pushed Kehoe’s head and wrist at once, banging Kehoe against the wall with a force that rattled the surface behind Alice’s back. The meat tenderizer fell from Kehoe’s grip, clattering to the unfinished concrete floor. Before Kehoe could recover, Dylan lifted Kehoe’s head and smashed it again into the wall.
It was a brutal blow. There was a crunching sound. Alice suspected the back of Kehoe’s head had splintered the plaster. That . . . or Kehoe’s skull itself had cracked. Air popped out of Kehoe’s lungs.
Dylan pulled Kehoe’s head forward and whacked it against the wall yet again. Kehoe’s body went slack. He sagged down the wall several inches, but Dylan still had his neck and jaw in a squeezing grip. Dylan pulled his head forward yet again.
“Enough, Dylan,” a man shouted breathlessly. “You’re going to kill him!”
It was like she was watching the scene through a ten-foot tank filled with water. Everything was hazy and muffled. She saw a man peer around the opened back wall of the pantry. He wore a uniform. It was Jim Sheridan. He was too big to squeeze into the already overfilled space.
“Dylan,” Sheridan barked.
Dylan stilled.
Slowly, Dylan turned and met Alice’s gaze. In that quick second, she knew that killing Kehoe was precisely what he’d planned to do before Jim found them. She didn’t flinch from his savagery, but she was struggling to keep her eyelids from drooping and losing consciousness again. Dylan’s grip on Kehoe’s throat loosened. Kehoe’s body slid and crumpled to the floor.
Alice stared fixedly at Dylan’s face as he drew closer to her. He crouched over her and gently touched the skin at the side of her ribs. She recalled hazily that she’d flung off her T-shirt because it had betrayed her in the darkness.
All the focused savagery that had frozen Dylan’s handsome face before melted away, only to be replaced by a poignant, helpless pain. That mysterious, inexplicable bond they’d shared even as children pulled tight. He was feeling her pain in that moment, and she hated it.
“It’s going to be okay, baby,” he murmured, his hand moving and his gaze flickering over her anxiously, searching for wounds.
“My deputy has called an ambulance. Don’t move her, Dylan,” Jim Sheridan said, but Alice’s stare didn’t budge off Dylan’s face. She didn’t want to stop looking at him.
“It’s okay. I’m fine. But Thad,” she whispered hoarsely. Dylan’s expression stiffened.
“What about Thad?”
“He fought with Kehoe down by the bluff. Maybe he’s still down there . . . hurt,” she managed to get out. The effort of speaking exhausted her. A tear leaked down her cheek. God, what if it was worse. What if Kehoe had killed Thad? She shouldn’t have left him. He’d saved her, and she’d abandoned him.
“Shhh, baby, it’s going to be okay,” she heard Dylan say, but his voice was very muffled. He said something to Jim in a clipped tone, and Jim replied, but she could no longer decode their words.
She went into the darkness without a struggle. It was an escape, she knew, an avoidance of all the ugliness. But this time, she didn’t fear succumbing.
Dylan was there, and it was safe.
TWENTY-ONE
The first thing Alice saw when she awoke in the hospital was Dylan. He was staring directly at her, as if he’d known she wa
s rising into consciousness . . . as if he’d been waiting for the event. Her whole body ached with a dull throb, but it hardly mattered. All of her focus was on him. For a moment, neither of them spoke as they looked at one another. For Alice, it was like she was drinking him in. She vaguely recalled, like she might a hazy dream, that he had been wearing the exact white shirt, dress pants, and tie last night . . .
. . . in the pantry.
She winced when the graphic, terrifying memory rushed her consciousness. Desperately, she tried to focus on the moment. On Dylan.
There were smears of blood on the front of his shirt. The bright crimson seemed to blaze against the snowy white background. She realized the stains must have come from her. She couldn’t recall the ambulance or getting to the hospital, but at some point, he’d leaned over her and gotten some of her blood on him.
He stood slowly, his dark eyes gleaming as he looked down at her. She lifted her hand to touch him and realized it was bandaged and she had a tube inserted into her arm. She frowned. He caught her forearm and gently placed her hand back on the bed. He kept his hand there. The warm pressure of his touch comforted her.
“You’re going to be fine.” He sounded distant. Muffled. She shifted her head. He must have read the question in her eyes. “They have an IV in to keep you hydrated, since you were unconscious for quite a while and couldn’t take in any liquids. Your head took it the worst. You’ve got plenty of scrapes and bruises, but nothing that time won’t heal just fine. Their biggest concern is the head injury.”
“You’re . . .” She swallowed. Her throat was very dry. Dylan noticed her difficulty and reached for a pitcher on her side table. He poured her some water. He raised her head off the pillows and held up the cup to her lips. Alice swallowed, the cool liquid feeling like nirvana to her parched throat.
“You’re okay?” she finished asking a moment later when he’d laid her back on the pillows and set aside the cup.
He gave her a small smile. Her heart gave a little spasm at the sight. She’d missed him. She hadn’t seen him since he’d left town on Tuesday, but it was more than that. It was as if that ordeal on the bluff and in the pantry had taken up a year of time in her brain.
Last night had aged her.
“I’m completely fine,” he said, placing his hand on her forearm again. “A good deal better now that you’ve woken up,” he added.
“Thank you for coming,” she whispered feelingly.
His hand curled around her forearm, and then he immediately loosened it, as if he thought he’d break her. She could tell by his expression he’d understood she was thanking him for saving her life, not for coming to the hospital room.
“I’m just sorry I wasn’t there sooner.”
She glanced around the room, taking in her surroundings. “Do you remember everything that happened, Alice?” he asked cautiously. “The doctor is worried there might be some memory loss.”
She nodded. “I think I remember everything. I still don’t really understand it all, though.”
“We’ve been trying to figure out the chain of events. I know from Dave Epstein that Kehoe had sent that message to you through the kitchens, saying it was from me.” He grimaced, as if a pain had gone through him. “Alice, I think I was there in the house, when he first attacked you. Upstairs. I left for our meeting, but that must have been in some quiet interim before Kehoe took you to the bluff and Schaefer set off the alarm.”
“When he first hit me, I blacked out. I’m not sure for how long,” she admitted. “When I came to, he was dragging me through the yard, and it was dark. If he heard you coming, he might have waited in the house until you left.”
She regretted saying it when she saw the angry tilt of his mouth. The vision of him disabling Kehoe so utterly flew into her mind’s eye. A shadow crossed his bold features, and she wondered if he’d just recalled the same thing.
“Kehoe?” she rasped.
“He’ll live,” he replied, his expression conveying he wasn’t exactly pleased about that news. “He’s in stable condition.”
“Is he . . . is Kehoe here? In this hospital?” she wondered uneasily.
“No. The ambulance took him over to County General. That’s where the county jail inmates get medical care. They’re more used to police guards than Morgantown Memorial.”
She exhaled shakily, relieved at the idea that Kehoe wasn’t in the same facility as her. Dylan’s mouth went grim, and she realized he’d read her anxiety and subsequent relief at realizing Kehoe was at another hospital and under guard.
“He’s a horrible, sick man,” she muttered.
“He’s never going to bother you again, Alice. Never.”
She had so many questions to ask him, but exhaustion weighed on her. How had Kehoe gotten past the security and into the house? Was he talking to the police? Was he admitting his guilt? Was anyone else hurt?”
“Is Thad okay?” she managed weakly.
“Thad is banged up a bit, but he’s going to be fine. They’ll be discharging him this afternoon.” He held up his hand when she opened her mouth to ask another question. “I know you have questions, baby. So do I. But now’s not the time. I need to go and tell the nurse that you woke up. The doctor wanted to be called when you did so she could do an examination. I promised I would call the second you opened your eyes. So for now, know that you’re safe and will recover soon enough. Okay?”
She nodded, but grew uneasy when he started to walk away.
“I’ll be right back,” he growled softly before he leaned over the railing and brushed his mouth against her lips. Alice closed her eyes, savoring the contact of his skin against hers. Then he was gone.
She tried her mightiest to stay awake, but she would have sworn her eyelids weighed thirty pounds each.
SHE didn’t succeed in holding up the eye weights. She awakened at around noon, ravenous. Dylan stayed with her while she ate a meal of chicken noodle soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. She was so starved, that sandwich was the best thing she’d ever eaten in her whole life. She was glad to see some of the stark worry leave Dylan’s face as he watched her demolish her simple meal. Afterward, a Dr. Sheldrake examined her and declared that she showed no overt signs of neurological damage. She explained that more testing was required, however, and she’d ordered an MRI for later that afternoon.
“When will I be finished? I have somewhere I need to be tonight,” she told the doctor as she completed her examination. The doctor’s brow furrowed and she glanced at Dylan.
“I’m afraid you won’t be going anywhere tonight, Alice. You’ll be with us at least until Monday morning, maybe longer, depending on your test results. You took quite a blow to the head. We want to make sure there’s no serious damage to your brain.”
Alice looked over at Dylan, panic sweeping through her. “But my kids! It’s the last night of camp. They’re giving out the team trophy tonight. If I don’t see them tonight, they’ll be gone . . .” She faded off because her voice had grown shaky at the mere idea.
“I’m sorry, baby, but you heard the doctor.”
“But—”
“There’s no but about it,” Dylan said more firmly this time, but there was compassion in his dark eyes. The doctor murmured some platitudes and medical facts about brain injuries, which Alice ignored, and left the room.
She sagged back on her pillows, desolate. She couldn’t believe it. After all she’d experienced at that camp—all the effort, anxiety, risk, and triumph—and she was going to miss the most important day. The Red Team had such a good chance at winning the Team Championship trophy, and she had so many things she wanted to tell her kids before they left. She might never see them again. She wanted to cry. God, she despised Sebastian Kehoe for a lot of reasons, but this particular robbery from her life had to be right up there at the top of the list.
“Can my kids maybe come see me before they go home tomorrow?” she asked Dylan, her voice cracking.
He looked a little slain. “I don’
t think you realize what you’ve been through.”
“I have a concussion and some cuts and bruises! You said so yourself.”
He inhaled and closed his eyes. Suddenly he stood and walked away.
“Dylan?”
“I’ll be right back.”
He returned a minute later, carrying a hand mirror. He looked very solemn as he handed it to her. Alice grasped the handle dubiously with a bandaged hand. She held it up to reflect her face.
Her lungs froze. She stared in disbelief for several seconds before she handed the mirror back to Dylan wordlessly. He set it down on the bedside table. Tears swelled in her eyes in the silence that followed.
“The police want to speak with you, and so does the FBI,” Dylan said quietly. “Dr. Sheldrake wouldn’t let them in to talk to you until after she’d completed her examination and gave the okay. I seriously doubt that she’s going to allow a bunch of teenagers in here. The only reason I’m allowed in is because . . . well, I wouldn’t take no for an answer, number one. I’m guessing Durand’s donation for the new children’s wing here at the hospital probably helped my cause some,” he added dryly under his breath. “But the real reason I think Sheldrake made an exception in my case is that you kept saying my name over and over when they brought you in. I was the only thing that quieted you, so I guess she saw my worth. But she’s not going to okay a roomful of kids.”
Alice didn’t argue. Her mind had changed in an instant when she looked in the mirror. The last thing she wanted was for them to see her like this. Her face was a bruised, bloody mess after slamming into that stonewall. She looked like a bandaged ghoul.
“Are you sure none of the damage is permanent?” she asked shakily, ashamed of her vanity at a moment like this.
“Yes,” Dylan assured, touching her shoulder. “Don’t worry about that. It’ll take a while for the abrasions to heal and the bruises to fade, but it’s surface damage. No bones were broken, thank God. They don’t think there’ll be any serious scarring.” He stroked her. His warmth made one of the tears spill out of her eye. “I’m sorry for breaking it to you like that, but I thought you should understand.”
