by Abbie Roads
She slammed into the door at the bottom of the steps, the metallic clang of it percussive in the hushed lobby. Out of her peripheral vision, she saw everyone startle and look at her. The people and chairs in front of her were nothing more than an obstacle course. She ducked around an elderly man walking with a cane. She dodged right to avoid a woman in a wheelchair. Leaped over a low-slung coffee table with all the grace of a hurdler.
She drew up short of the automated door, stopping only an inch from impact. The danged thing took its sweet time to shudder and slowly begin to slide open. The moment she thought the door had opened wide enough, she squeezed through, leaving a bit of skin, but that didn’t matter.
Outside the air carried the bite of spring and brightness of summer.
She shot to the parking lot, feet pounding pavement, gaze darting among all the cars, searching for the old truck. For Cain. And suddenly she reached the last row of cars. No, must’ve missed the truck. She whirled around to run back the way she came, but in that moment she knew.
He was gone.
Gone.
Gone.
She couldn’t move. Couldn’t force her lungs to pump air. And her heart—the organ had gone MIA. Everything inside her felt wrong, empty, as if someone had torn out the most vital parts, leaving only her shell. She couldn’t even cry.
The only thing she felt was utter desolation born of extreme loneliness.
Once upon a horrible time, loneliness had been something she treasured. She’d seen it as a strength—self-preservation. A way to keep herself safe from all those people who wanted to take advantage of her. But right here, right now, she saw the truth. She yearned for connection and understanding. She yearned for Cain.
“Cain?” She spoke aloud to the sea of empty cars around her. “Where are you?” As stupid as it sounded, she waited for an answer, some bit of intuition to give her a direction. Because she was lost. More lost than she’d ever been.
Nothing. No bit of breeze, no bird flying overhead, just the sad hospital crouching next to the parking lot.
The hospital. Mac. He knew Cain best. Knew where he’d likely go.
Hope sprouted delicate wings and fluttered in her chest.
She’d find Cain and explain how she had always thought she was cursed. How Mac made her see logic. How Mac loved him and made a mistake. Then they needed to have a conversation about his father. About how his father’s actions may have bonded them in some way, but they couldn’t—neither one of them—continue to live in the shadow of the past.
She didn’t run back inside; this time she walked. Her steps faltered when she spotted Ken Jackson outside the sliding doors with his cell phone aimed at her. Filming her.
The asshole.
His energy was foul, this time almost worse than last time. In that way of hers—that way of knowing beyond reason and rationality—she saw images flip through her mind like memories, but they weren’t memories. They were of what Ken Jackson intended—him at an anchor desk summarizing her history and Cain’s. Footage of her running through the lobby playing. His sensationalistic speculation.
She walked with her head held high, her face a mask of dignity, her steps strong and sure. When she neared him and he opened his mouth to say something, she held up her hand in the universal symbol for “Stop.”
A piece of grace must’ve been on her side, because he didn’t say anything else, just kept filming her as she walked by him, walked through the lobby, toward the elevator. Her walking wasn’t exactly going to get him the numbers he wanted. Maybe she should moon him. A minuscule smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. It might almost be worth it to see the shocked look on his face.
The elevator doors slid open, and a young family exited the space. Mercy moved in after them, hit the close-door button, and looked up to meet Ken’s gaze. He obviously possessed no shame in the blatant way he followed her with his phone’s camera.
The elevator doors closed, and she slumped against the back wall. The same wall Cain had backed her up against, where he’d kissed her so thoroughly, where she’d felt possessed by him—and liked the feeling. How had things gone from that to this sense of devastation in mere minutes?
Thankfully, no one was around to watch her trudge back to Mac’s room. Outside his door, she paused and sucked in a breath. He was going to be so disappointed. But the sooner she talked to him, the sooner she’d know where to look for Cain.
She walked into Mac’s room.
Everything was the same. The room was the same. Mac was the same. But everything had changed somehow.
Tendrils of menace twined up her legs, her hips, her torso, wrapping around her neck and choking off her ability to breathe. Something was wrong. So wrong. The energy of the room was wrong.
“Mac, what’s—” Her words pinched off when she saw the man sitting on Mac’s bed.
His back was to her, his artfully trimmed blond hair shining like a gold medal. A white doctor’s coat covered his frame. The way he held his shoulders, the way his neck cradled his head, spoke of conceit and cruelty. Everything good and kind and nice retreated to the shadows in his presence.
Dr. Payne.
Maybe she should be surprised to see him, but she wasn’t. Every moment since she’d escaped the Center had been stolen time. She’d felt that on a level deeper than thought. The inevitability of Dr. Payne had been looming over her. Confronted with him here, she couldn’t find any fear for herself. None. She just wanted it over. Wanted him dealt with so she could build a life with Cain.
“Run!” Mac shouted from his chair.
She heard him. Everyone probably heard him, but she didn’t move.
Dr. Payne jumped from the bed and rammed his hand into Mac’s injured side. All the hearty color drained from Mac’s face. Torment twisted his features and flashed in his eyes. A sound unlike anything she’d ever heard—the sound of pure anguish—filled the room.
Dr. Payne’s foul intentions played in her mind. He would kill Mac to get what he wanted.
Her.
He wanted to drug her. Make her helpless against him. And he had no problems killing anyone who got in the way of that.
The soft squeak of thick-soled shoes moved down the hallway toward her. Great. A nurse was about to interrupt.
“Your words will have consequences.” Dr. Payne still hadn’t looked at her, didn’t need to. She knew exactly what he meant and knew which consequences she could live with and which she couldn’t.
She turned and met the nurse in the doorway. “Sorry about the noise. The doctor is examining him and hit a tender spot.”
The woman looked too young and too naive to have graduated from high school, let alone have a nursing degree, but she gazed around Mercy into the room where Dr. Payne bent over Mac in a show of physicianly concern, his face hidden from view.
“Oh. Okay. Well, let me know if you need anything.” She turned and walked away, having no clue what was really happening in the room. Some people were lucky like that. Bad shit never landed on them, so they never saw evil crouched in life’s corners.
Time slowed a bit as Dr. Payne straightened from his fake examination of Mac. Inch by inch he turned, revealing his face.
Looking at him was an odd experience. Her mind conjured the image of him she was most familiar with. And this guy wasn’t it. His pretty-boy good looks hid beneath a rainbow of pain—jaundiced yellows, eggplant purples, and every shade of black imaginable. One eye so bloodshot it bordered on demonic. His left cheek swollen to almost comical proportions. But there was nothing funny about the fury pulsing off him.
First priority: protect Mac. The only way to ensure Mac’s safety was to get Dr. Payne away from him. “I’ll cooperate. Let you do whatever you want to me. Just don’t touch him again.”
“Mercy. No,” Mac gasped, his voice buried beneath his body’s physical agony.
Dr. Payne didn’t speak, just held out his hand and motioned for her to come closer.
Instinct told her to run. Conscience told her to stay. She mind-over-mattered and forced her feet to move toward him. One step, two, three, four… She stopped next to him, inhaling the scent of his expensive cologne. Despite his house being off limits due to the police investigation, he had some fancy place to lie low—a place with all the amenities of home.
He motioned for her to sit in a wheelchair parked next to Mac. She sat in the cold seat but didn’t take her eyes off Dr. Payne.
He bent over Mac. “One word from you in the next two minutes, and I’ll splatter the ceiling with her brains. You got that?” He spoke through clenched teeth.
Images of things Dr. Payne planned for her flashed in her mind. He wanted complete control of her. He wanted her drugged and sedated. He wanted her at his mercy—Mercy at his mercy. He wanted to play with her the way a cat plays with a dead mole. But he didn’t want to kill her. And that was going to be the reason she’d defeat him. She wasn’t weak and helpless. She was no dead mole. She was a damned possum playing dead until the moment was right.
Still gasping in pain and curled in on himself, Mac nodded.
Dr. Payne grabbed a blanket off Mac’s bed and draped it over her shoulders. “Now you better do a great impersonation of a patient or, so help me, I’ll turn around and finish what I started in the cabin.”
She slumped in her seat and hung her head forward to hide her face. He grabbed the handles and maneuvered them out the door and down the hallway toward the staff elevators.
Alone inside the elevator with him, she turned to face him, to say—
A needle plunged into the meat of her upper arm. A sharp gasp escaped before she could cage it. The thing had to be as thick as a pencil with the way pain rippled outward. She watched his finger depress the plunger. A memory flared into her mind of him injecting Bo in the group room. And another wispy, barely tangible image of her lying on the floor of her room in the Center, him looming over her with syringe in hand.
The ground jolted underneath the wheelchair. She rocked forward and almost fell. He grabbed on to her, pressing her back against the seat. The room strobed in and out of focus and began a slow spin. Gravity suddenly didn’t exist. She felt like she was falling, falling, falling but never landed.
Chapter 16
Adam Killion was convicted for the Ledger murders but has been the primary suspect in no less than seventy-eight other murders. There’s never been enough evidence to pursue charges. In the twenty years since his conviction, there have been seventeen copycats, all seeking the same fame Adam Killion possesses.
—Marie Danielles, Crime Report Journal
It was late. Way past prison visiting hours—nearly midnight—but the staff had been surprisingly accommodating. Obviously, they’d been expecting them.
After Cain left the hospital, he’d driven around aimlessly, searching for something he’d never find—himself. In those hours, he realized he’d made a fatal mistake. He saw that now. He never should have hoped to be anything other than Killer Killion’s Kid. Being his father’s son had been a terminal diagnosis, one that denial could mask but never effectively treat. And now the mask was gone, and he was left exposed and vulnerable to the truth.
Cain stared through the one-way glass of the observation room into the empty interview room. An anemic overhead light provided barely enough illumination to see the table, two chairs, and a door beyond. Hell, the entire prison was shrouded in shadows. A guard had told him and Dolan that the state decided to go half power or less during the night as a cost-cutting measure. All the lights were on a timer. If he wanted to see his father without the mood lighting, he’d have to wait until morning.
He couldn’t wait. Neither could Dolan.
Dolan leaned against the wall next to the one-way glass—still wearing his shades as if the night was too damned bright for his eyes. Cain should be angry with the guy for lying to him. Angry that Dolan was the reason he had to see Liz’s murder. Angry that he’d been so sick afterward. But Cain wasn’t angry.
Apathy seemed to be his dominant emotion at the moment. “What asses did you kiss to get us in here after hours?”
“More like I had to suck a sow’s teat. And now I need to vomit and take a shower.”
Cain waited for a hint of a smile, something to indicate that Dolan was joking, but the guy’s expression remained full-on serious.
The door to the interview room opened, and a prisoner shuffled in.
His father. Cain would recognize him anywhere. It was like looking in the mirror and reliving the worst memories of his childhood at the same time.
His heart stopped pounding out individual beats. It vibrated so fast he could feel it humming along like an engine revved too high. If there had been a chair nearby, he might’ve sat down. But there wasn’t, so he locked his knees and wouldn’t allow himself to look away from his DNA source.
In the dim light, the color of his father’s prison uniform looked black. For some reason, he’d always thought of his father in orange, but black seemed more fitting.
“How’s Sparky doing?” his father asked, looking at the guard as if he really cared what the guy said.
The guard wore a cap pulled low over his face and focused on attaching the handcuffs to the table. “Vet said he was gonna need double knee surgery and be on bed rest for six weeks. You know how difficult it is to explain to a boxer that he can’t run and jump?”
“There’s just no rationalizing with a dog, is there?” A wide smile bloomed on his father’s face. In all his childhood, Cain could never remember his father smiling. And yet the man sat there smiling up at that prison guard like they were buds about to share a beer. What. The. Fuck.
The guard chuckled and bent to attach the leg shackles to a giant bolt in the floor. “It’ll cost me an arm and a leg, but the vet says he’ll likely be good as new after he heals.”
“You have it scheduled yet?”
“Not yet. You know how it is.” The guard glanced up at Cain’s father’s face. “Too many irons in the fire. Gotta wait until things calm down a bit.” He stood. “I’m gonna go get your son. You need anything after I return, I’ll be right outside the door.” He placed his hand on Killion’s shoulder. “Have a good visit, Adam.”
“Thanks, Randall.” His father sounded friendly. Fucking friendly.
Cain’s mouth hung open at the abject normalcy of what he’d just witnessed. It was like they were two friends chatting, not a prison guard and an inmate.
After the door closed behind the guard, his father lifted his gaze to the mirrored glass that separated them, his eyes roaming the pane until they locked on Cain. Fucking locked on him like his father had x-ray vision.
Cold, unlike anything Cain had ever experienced, pumped through him. His hands shook, his entire body shivered. It was like the guy could see him standing there. Fuck. Maybe he could. With the lights dim, maybe he could see everything.
It had been twenty years—twenty goddamned years—and yet just seeing this man made Cain feel like the child he’d once been, a child who was more monster than boy. No matter how his father acted, Cain knew it was all just an act. Evil didn’t just up and vanish like a fart in a tornado.
Maybe Cain hadn’t really changed either. Maybe he’d just learned how to act civilized too.
“You ready?” Dolan asked and shoved off the wall to walk up next to him.
Cain couldn’t move. His lungs felt like someone had shoved them in the blender and hit Liquefy. Air didn’t exist anymore.
“Cain?” Dolan nudged his arm.
It took everything—every single drop of concentration—to pull his gaze away from his father and look at Dolan.
“It’s simple.” Dolan held out a photograph taken from the original scene at the Ledger home. “You go in, you ask about the
symbol, you leave. Don’t make it harder than it has to be.”
Dolan had no fucking clue. This wasn’t going to be a nice, simple conversation. No way. Cain was going to pay a price for every second he spent in that room. The price would be his sanity and his soul.
The door behind them opened. “He’s ready for you.”
Cain turned away from the window to face the guard. And froze.
For a moment, not even a full moment, more like a picosecond, Cain thought the guard was his father. It was the way the man carried himself—an arrogant kind of posture only those in a position of power could pull off. It was in the man’s height and weight and build. It was the shape of his face, and with his correction officer cap pulled low over his forehead, it almost looked like Daddy Dearest standing there.
If he was seeing his father in a random stranger, he was losing his shit. A strange kind of pressure started growing inside Cain—the prelude to an epic meltdown. The kind that would end with blood and bodies. He couldn’t tell if the feelings were suicidal or homicidal. At this point, it didn’t really matter.
The guard lifted his chin at Cain in one of those mucho-macho manly moves. “You look a lot like him.”
You did too for a moment. Cain forced his legs to move forward. “Yeah, I know.” He followed the man down a hallway and around a corner to the door leading to the interview room.
The guard stopped and faced him. His features were small and weaselly—eyes spaced too close together, nose too small, lips too thin—but still there was something about the guy’s features that reminded Cain of his father.
“The rules. No touching. That means no hand-holding or hugging, or the interview ends. Got it?”
“No touching. No problem.” Cain didn’t even want to be in the same room as the man. He sure as hell wasn’t going to touch him.
“When you’re done, knock and I’ll let you out.” The guard unlocked and opened the door for Cain.
I’m not ready, he yelled in his head, but it was too late. The door was open, and Cain could feel his father’s gaze upon him. Felt the assessment, the measurement, the judgment.
