Little Girl Lost [Book 2]

by Alexandria Clarke

  “I don’t think you’ll be able to salvage any of this,” she said, using exam gloves to pick through the bloodstained clothing. “Do I want to know what you got up to out there—” she found the name tag pinned to Mac’s shirt “—Officer Hart?”

  “It’s Bridget,” I said, tired of the charade. The authorities were bound to find out about my criminal impersonation soon anyway. Holly’s presence here would give it away in a second.

  “Nice to meet you, Bridget. I’m Jules.”

  “Are you a nurse?”

  “No, I’m a resident. A student doctor.” She bagged Mac’s uniform and set it aside then washed her hands at the sink. “How’s it going in there?”

  I stared down at the white tile as the warm water washed Emmett’s blood from my body and down the drain. “It’s going.”

  “Need help?”

  “No.”

  When I was clean, Jules offered me a towel and a simple outfit, athletic pants and a sweat-wicking T-shirt. “They’re mine,” she said. “The pants might be a little short, but at least they’re clean, right?”

  I got dressed and absentmindedly patted the pockets of the sweatpants as if checking for my belongings. The panic switch in my brain went off. “Oh, God. Oh, my God.”

  Jules’s mouth turned down with worry. “What?”

  “The phone,” I said, tearing open the bag with Mac’s bloody uniform. “Emmett’s phone. I need that. It was the only way—”

  I pulled the phone from the pocket of the uniform pants. It was completely waterlogged from my swim through the cellar. No amount of praying or magic could convince it to turn back on. I threw it back into the bag. Holly was out of Emmett’s clutches, but we weren’t free of Fox. Not yet. He would be watching from the wings, waiting for me to contact him with the news of my success. Without Emmett’s phone, I had no way of knowing what his next move might be.

  Jules pried my hands from the bloody bag and led me to the sink to wash them. “It’s just a phone. You can get a new one.”

  I had no strength to explain it to her, so instead I let her drag me from room to room. We hit radiation next, where they X-rayed my arm and examined the results. Then Jules dragged me to Orthopedics, where another doctor fitted my wrist with a plaster cast. From there, we holed up in an empty exam room near the ER, and Jules dutifully sutured the injury to my shin. It took about twenty stitches to close the wound, but when she finished up with a neat gauze wrap and patted my knee in praise, I did feel a lot better than I had when I’d arrived at the hospital.

  “Thanks for putting up with me,” she said, helping me to my feet. “I didn’t want you traipsing all over the place covered in blood. It freaks out the other patients.”

  “Where are we?” I asked her.

  “Gold River Medical Clinic,” she replied.

  “Which is how far from Belle Dame?”

  “Belle Dame?” She cocked her head to the side, as if wondering why I was asking. “I’d say about two hours. Why?”

  I rolled the leg of the pants down to cover the bandage. “Thank you for everything, but I really need to check on my sister. How can I do that? Where would she be?”

  “Depends on the state of her.”

  We located Holly in one of the rooms that branched off from the ER. Doctors swarmed around her as Jules translated the medical jargon from her chart for me. It didn’t look good. As I suspected, she was septic, which meant that bacteria had leaked into her bloodstream. Her kidneys were compromised because of it, and she apparently had a high risk of blood clots. If they found any, they would have to perform surgery to get rid of it. The wounds on her torso and around her wrists and ankles from where she had been tied up in Emmett’s basement had been cleaned and dressed, but she still looked worse for wear. There were tubes sticking out of her mouth and needles hooked up to her arms. I couldn’t look at her, so I ducked out of the room and into the hallway to keep from bursting into tears in front of the medical staff.

  Jules followed me out and sat next to me when I sank down to sit on the floor outside Holly’s room. “Hey,” she said, rubbing my shoulder. “Everything’s going to be all right. Your sister’s heartbeat is really strong, and they say her airways are already clearing.”

  I rested my head on my knees, sobbing into the borrowed sweatpants. “This is all my fault.”

  “I’m sure it’s not,” Jules said. “Don’t put that on yourself—”

  The double doors at the end of the hallway crashed open, putting an end to what was sure to be a lovely speech from Jules. I looked up from my tearstained pants. The tallest and blondest woman I’d ever seen marched toward us, clad in a sharp, pinstriped suit with a low-cut blouse beneath the designer jacket. She had black eyes like a hawk, and the sharp divot in the bridge of her nose indicated that it had been broken once or twice. She prowled past us, each click of her sky-high heels its own personal threat as the shiny badge clipped to her belt glinted in the fluorescent lighting.

  “Would you excuse me?” I said to Jules, wiping my face and standing up. “I just really want to be alone right now.”

  “Sure,” Jules said. “I’ll have someone draw up your paperwork and bring it to your sister’s room. If you need me, have someone page Doctor Andrews.”

  “Great. Thanks.”

  I left Jules outside Holly’s room and followed the biting scent of Chanel Number Five that lingered in the air behind the woman in the suit like a smoke trail. The aroma grew more fragrant as I closed in on my prey, until I heard Taylor’s unmistakable tone emanating from a supply closet in a deserted hallway. I inched toward it, eyes watering as I inhaled more perfume than sterile air.

  “Lucado, none of this is my fault,” Taylor was saying. “If the agency had listened to me in the first place—”

  “If you recall, the agency suspended you for your lack of listening skills,” came the scathing reply. “You should have contacted us as soon as you caught wind of the situation in Wolfwater. I can’t believe you would be this reckless. Actually, you know what? I can. It’s last year’s debacle all over again.”

  “Last year wasn’t—”

  “Wasn’t your fault,” Lucado finished in a whiny imitation of Taylor’s voice. “Listen up, Agent. You need to learn how to take responsibility for your own stupid choices. Do you realize what this means? Number one, a shitload of paperwork. I hate paperwork. Number two, another dead end for this case. You’ve completely screwed us over by working under the table without our permission. How are we supposed to uncover more information about this new trafficking ring if our only suspect is dead?”

  “You wouldn’t have known that he was a suspect if it weren’t for me,” Taylor spat. “I did the research. I took the initiative. I hung around that shithole people call Wolfwater for six months until the right lead came along.”

  “And then you killed him.”

  “I am not talking about Emmett Marks,” she replied sharply. “I’m talking about Bridget and Holly Dubois.”

  My pulse quickened, pumping blood faster through my body. I felt it with every throb in my wrist. What did these people want with us?

  “Who the hell are they?” Lucado snapped. “And why should I care?”

  “If you read the damn case files, you’d know,” Taylor replied icily. “I collected detailed info for all of the girls that went missing, including Holly Dubois. You want information on this new trafficking ring? Bridget Dubois used to work for the guy who runs it.”

  She paused to let the information sink in.

  “Go on,” Lucado said.

  “The blond guy we got footage of from the airport?” Taylor said. “He goes by the name of Fox, and according to Dubois, he’s doing all of this for her.”

  “She’s in on it?”

  “Not voluntarily,” Taylor replied. “At least, I don’t think so. She claims he abducted her in Paris. I think something happened between them, a disagreement maybe, that led Fox back to the United States. This is what I’m talking about, Lu
cado. If you let me back on the case, I can get the information out of Dubois. She could be a real asset. Hell, we could even use her as bait—”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “I said no,” Lucado repeated. “Goddamn it, Agent, when are you going to get it through your thick head? You have been suspended. This isn’t your case anymore, and it never will be again. At this point, you’ll be lucky to get your position back at all, considering how many agency guidelines you’ve violated. No, you’ll be debriefed and sent back to headquarters. I expect you to pass on every bit of the information you gathered in Wolfwater. Understood?”

  “Agent Lucado—”

  A clatter echoed from the supply closet, as if a sudden movement had upended a mop or a bucket.

  “Am I understood?”

  Taylor grunted in acknowledgement. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good,” Lucado replied. “As for the Dubois girls, leave them to me. I’m not stupid enough to ignore your suggestions. I imagine we’ll have to bring them in for questioning anyway. Who knows if the eldest is still in contact with this Fox character. And as for using them as bait to draw him out into the open… it’s not a bad idea.”

  That was all I needed to hear. I turned, sprinted down the hallway, and turned the corner. When I reached Holly’s room, most of the medical staff had dispersed. My little sister lay in bed, hooked up to several machines, while a nurse tucked blankets around her feet.

  “How’s she doing?” I asked, sitting on the edge of Holly’s bed to take her limp hand.

  “The doctor’s think she’ll make a full recovery,” the nurse reported with a reassuring smile. “Even if it takes a while.”

  I rubbed circles into the rough, dry skin of Holly’s hand, careful not to peel back the bandages around her wrists. “What about transferring her to the hospital that’s closer to our home? Is that a possibility?”

  “You’d have to ask the doctor assigned to her case,” the nurse replied. “Although from the looks of her, I wouldn’t try that anytime soon. It might put too much stress on her body. She needs time to recover.” When I didn’t reply, she rested a hand on my shoulder. “Can I get you anything, dear?”

  “No, thank you. But is there somewhere I can make a phone call?”

  She pointed to the receiver on the table next to Holly’s bed. “Dial nine to get out of the hospital’s internal line.”

  “Thanks.” I made a beeline for the phone as the nurse left, dialed the number I wanted, and put the receiver to my ear.

  “Belle Dame Police Department. This is Officer Scott speaking. How may I help you?”

  “Scott, it’s me, Bridget.”

  A gusty sigh traveled over the line. “Goddamn it, Dubois. What have you done now?”

  Officer Scott arrived at the Gold River Medical Clinic approximately two hours later. I heard him bellowing at the nurses in his search for Holly’s room. For those who didn’t know him, his roaring tone came off as loud and rude, so I rushed out into the hallway and cornered him at the nurses’ station.

  “There you are, Dubois,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. Behind him, the nurses looked either wide-eyed and frightened or mildly annoyed by Scott’s demanding presence. “Let’s take a walk.”

  The walk was short, landing us in the privacy of Holly’s room. I hadn’t told him over the phone about what had happened in Wolfwater, so when he noticed my sister unconscious in the bed, he immediately grasped at the air behind him, searching for a safe place to sit down. I quickly repositioned a plastic chair for him to sink into. It buckled beneath his weight as he stared unblinkingly at my little sister.

  “You— she— Explain yourself, Dubois!”

  “It’s a long story,” I told him. “Emmett took her, but he was working for someone else. I’d love to walk you through it, but I need to get her out of here, Scott. The CIA is here. Holly’s a part of a bigger case that they’re working on. So am I. They want to use us to get ahead, and I can’t put my sister through that. She needs time to recover.”

  “Goddamn feds.” Scott drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his glistening forehead.

  “Emmett’s dead, Scott. He was shot.”

  He was silent for a moment. Another Belle Dame resident had slipped through his fingers. Then he asked, “What do you need me to do, Bridget?”

  I stumbled over the corner of Holly’s bed. “You believe me?”

  “After all this time, I’d be an idiot not to,” he replied. “And I think you’ve proved that you’ve got your head screwed on straight. You wouldn’t have been able to find Holly if it wasn’t.”

  A quick grin touched my lips. “I need you to ask the staff to transfer her to the hospital near Belle Dame. I don’t know the people here. I can’t trust them, and I want Holly as close to home as possible. Say whatever you have to in order to make it happen. Say her foster parents need to see her, or that your department needs her to complete their investigation. I don’t care. Just get her home.”

  Scott stood up and wandered over to the bed. He looked down at Holly in awe, as if he couldn’t believe that she was really there. “Anything else you need to tell me, Dubois?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I admitted, shuffling from one foot to the other. “I impersonated Mackenzie to get the information I needed. Please don’t arrest me, and please don’t fire her. By the way, her cruiser is parked at the old freight station in Wolfwater.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  Holly was airlifted from Gold River to Belle Dame, which eliminated some of the stress of the transport. Officer Scott and I rode in the helicopter with her. Scott shouted questions at the pilot for the duration of the trip, forgetting that we all wore headsets that picked up our voices. I only cared that we were flying far away from Taylor and Lucado. I hadn’t seen or heard from them since eavesdropping on their conversation in the supply closet, and Scott had purposely abstained from seeking them out. I knew that they would turn up in Belle Dame eventually, but I would have a plan in place by then. No one was going to touch Holly. I would make sure of that.

  All was silent on the Fox front as well. Without a method of communication to bridge the gap between us, I could only hope that he was distracted long enough to get Holly up and running again, though I wasn’t naive enough to assume that would be the case. When we arrived at the hospital, I refused to leave Holly’s side. Not on the helicopter pad. Not in the familiar corridors. Not in her new recovery room. No one approached her without my consent, and it would remain that way until I figured out what to do about Fox.

  It was starting to feel like I spent more time in the hospital than I did in my rented room at the local bed and breakfast. Scott brought me takeout from his favorite restaurant. He sat down to eat with me as I flicked through the channels on the blurry television in Holly’s room. For a minute, he watched me shovel bite after bite of Fettucine Alfredo into my mouth, glancing between me and the TV, before he snatched the remote out of my hand.

  “All right, you’re going to give me a seizure,” he barked. “And chew your damn food. I’ve only done the Heimlich once, and I don’t care to repeat the experience.”

  I swallowed a mouthful of pasta. “Sorry, Scott. I’m starving. I haven’t eaten in days.”

  “Clearly.” He flapped out a paper napkin and tucked it into the collar of his uniform before carefully popping the lid off of his own meal and digging in. “When this gets out, it’s going to be a complete shit show.”

  “I need this to stay quiet,” I told him. “Holly’s still in danger. So am I. Emmett wasn’t the root of the problem. Once people know that Holly’s back in Belle Dame, it’s going to start a whole new chain of events.”

  He wiped his mouth and set down his fork. “Listen, Dubois. If you want me to take this seriously, I need you to give it to me straight. I can’t go into this blindly. I need to know exactly what’s going on. You got a whole lot of information for someone who wasn’t allowed access to Holly’s case, but I got a feeling
that you didn’t get all of it from your friend at the police department.”

  I twirled the tines of my fork through the fettuccine, watching the noodles slip and slide over the white plastic.

  “Come on, kid,” Scott urged in a quiet voice, nudging my shoulder. “You gotta be able to trust me. You can’t protect Holly all on your own.”

  If it had been anyone but Scott, I wouldn’t have given in. My past was full of hurt and anguish and guilt. It was a long list of dirty crimes and indirect murder, but I laid it all out on the table for Officer Scott to examine. I told my story in a flat monotone, covering every detail. It was time to recruit someone to my side. Holly was home, and safe for now, which meant that Fox couldn’t hold her potential death over my head anymore. He couldn’t threaten me if I turned to the police, so I gave Scott as much as I could, detailing my journey from the moment I’d left Belle Dame all the way to the warehouse in Wolfwater. When I’d finished, my cheeks were wet. Scott’s food lay abandoned in its takeout container, his gaze focused solely on me. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t apologize or offer condolences or tell me how strong I was for pulling through all of that. A lot of times, those weren’t the things that made me feel any better. Scott seemed to get that, so instead of talking, he pulled me into a rough side hug.

  I sobbed into the rough fabric of his uniform, the bridge of my nose bumping uncomfortably up against his radio. He held me like that for several minutes, until my body stopped shaking and my breath evened out. Then he pulled away and dabbed at my wet face with the paper napkin around his neck.

  “You should sleep,” he said. “Go on. Take the bed next to Holly’s. I’ll keep watch for a while. I promise.”

  I nodded, picking myself up from the uncomfortable waiting chair and relocating to the empty hospital bed. I didn’t bother to pull back the stiff sheets, lying on top of them instead. Within seconds, my swollen eyelids drifted shut, and for the first time in what felt like weeks, sleep pulled me into a blissful, oblivious world.