by Tara Brown
“No.” I put the drink back down. “She isn’t.” She was close.
“Sir, your wife is waiting for you. She asked me to tell you to hurry up.”
A voice made us both turn our heads. The man who had bought me the drink looked confused, but I was instantly annoyed by the sound of it.
“Who do you think you are?” The man stood up.
Finn nodded his head at the elevator where a beautiful dark-haired woman stood looking angry. The man didn’t waste a second excusing himself. He left, hurrying to where she was.
“Let me guess, they’re also working for Hailey and he has given me a drugged drink, and she is his escape before I pass out. You’re the one who’s going to put me back in the cell?”
“I don’t know who they are. His wife asked me to tell him she was leaving.”
“How did you get in here? It’s an exclusive club.” I asked before I really thought about the fact I didn’t want to speak to him ever again.
“The elevator. I’m going to assume that’s how you got here as well?”
I didn’t look at him. I got up and walked to the table. “Linds, really?” I brushed past them and walked out onto the deck, hoping she’d come out to explain why she told him where I was.
But she didn’t come out.
He did.
“I can’t believe she told you where I was,” I growled and spun, not sure how to handle the moment.
“I told you already, I’m tracking your phone.” He leaned against the railing and stared at me, looking very Clark Kent-ish, although I reminded myself he was never going to be Superman.
“You can stop that. My dad is done paying you. And I never want to see you again. I made that clear.”
He stepped closer in his awkward way, pinning me against the railing I was next to. “You can ask me to leave you alone; I can choose not to. You can’t force me to go anywhere.”
“I can so.” I lifted my gaze to glare but the emotion in his eyes startled me. He looked devastated and I lost the rest of my words.
“I love you. I have loved you for some time. I want to say it was when we got to know each other. I want to lie and say it was well after you loved me.” He didn’t need to say anything. I could see it all, clear as day. He loved me. “But I have loved you since I first saw you. It took me a while to see that. But I do now.”
“When was that?”
“A year ago.” Anger filled his eyes as he relived something.
“A year ago?” I didn’t have a clue when that might have been.
“You were drunk. We met at a party in the Village. You were there with the girl who died.”
“Rachel.” My insides tightened as shame overwhelmed me, crushing his betrayal of me.
“Yeah. You guys were trashed. She was making out with a guy I know, Skip. You were so drunk you could barely stand. I helped you to a bench on the deck because I thought you were going to throw up and my friend was getting worried about you.”
“Skip?” I tried to change the subject. I didn’t remember Finn at all. I didn’t remember the party. I didn’t remember Skip.
“You sat on the bench and told me your name. And then you said we could do it if I wanted to so I could tell all my friends I slept with the one and only Sierra Casey.” He looked disturbed. “And then you fell asleep on me. And I left you there, sleeping on my shoulder and arm for hours. You looked so sad when you slept that you broke my heart. You were so tragically pretty, beautiful. And perfect. And I never told you that because I didn’t know you well enough to feel the way I did. Rachel came and asked me to carry you to the limo. And I did. When I put you in I felt sick letting them take you. But the driver assured me you would be fine. And that was the last time I saw you. Until the cell.”
“I don’t remember.” My breaths turned to the tiny stab wounds again.
“Of course you don’t.”
“Tell me the Hailey story, exactly. I might not believe you but I’ll listen.” I hated it but I had to give him a chance.
He reached over and took my hand in his, lifting it to his perfect plump lips and pressed it to them. I pretended for a second it was my mouth he was kissing.
He could have told me anything and I would have believed him. It was why I had been avoiding him. But he had me cornered on the balcony overlooking Gotham city, and he did look an awful lot like a heartbroken Clark Kent.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Gremlins
“So you believe him?” Sage twirled her hair around her finger, batting her huge blue eyes at me.
“Yeah. I guess. I don’t know.” I was flustered.
“I do.” Lindsey nodded. “He has an honest face.”
“Honest face means he has no tells. It just means he lies well. You believe everyone who has no tells.”
“Not you anymore.” She flipped me the bird and looked back at Rita. “I can’t believe you have a sleepover room. This is the coolest.”
“My mom had it built for me. She always wanted one and her friend had one. I think she’s had more sleepovers in it than I have though.” She chuckled and I fought the urge to cringe. We all knew her mom had affairs.
“Get back to the story.” Sage nudged me with her foot.
“Finn said exactly what Linds did. He was working in Washington on some file that was taking a couple of weeks. Dad called and told him he needed him. Finn said he was busy and Dad started to get upset, something he never did. He said I was missing and some hospital had called and said I’d checked in. But they couldn’t find me there. I had checked in and vanished.”
“Your dad had the same story.” Lainey nodded.
“Then Finn said he panicked because I was missing, and he came to Hatton Head to look around. He saw Hailey leaving and looking cagey, and he had a bad feeling. He backtracked her movements and found out from her bank receipts that she’d been living in Crimson Cove. He did more research and learned of the crazy things that had been going on in our town, with Andrew and Tom. And then he figured out she and Andrew had been at Engelmann together. He knew something was wrong. He followed her to the back side of the hospital. He watched her go inside and then found her in the weird hallway where the cell doors all were. When she left he cut me loose and got the hospital staff to come and find me. He told my dad to take me to Silver Hills and he checked himself in.” I took a deep breath and nodded. “And the rest we know.”
“And when you asked for the records at Engelmann, he said there was nothing because he knew we would find Hailey and link her back to his orphanage. And he didn’t want you to worry he was part of it all.”
“Yup.”
Rita pursed her lips. “So it was actually lucky he found you and knew Hailey.”
“Mary,” Linds corrected her. “Her name is not Hailey. She gave herself that name. Her real name is Mary Smith. A name they gave her at the orphanage.” Linds held up her phone. “I have the records for Andrew and Mary, aka Hailey. Finn emailed them to me earlier. Mary was sent to the orphanage at the age of four. Her parents had died. She was given over by someone who didn’t want their name added to the record. Her parents had apparently both died and she became a ward of the state. Her original birth certificate or the names of the parents were never provided and no one reported her missing. She was a Jane Doe for a while before she was renamed Mary Smith.”
“Bro. No wonder she’s such a hot mess.” Sage recoiled. “I can’t even.”
“She’s killing people. Lots of orphans don’t kill people.” Lainey scoffed. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say most orphans don’t kill people. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I bet almost no orphans kill people.”
Sage stuck her tongue out at Lain.
“Anyway,” Lindsey continued. “When she was fourteen she was sent to Engelmann because the nuns at the orphanage noticed her hurting the other kids and always saying it was an accident. It was obvious the other kids were scared of her. Then one day they caught her lighting fires. One of the doctors at E
ngelmann was friends with the head nun so she was able to go there for free. She was there for two years. Andrew was there for just over a month in the summer when he was fifteen. They met then. A romance was suspected between them but no one could prove it. Andrew was removed from the facility by his parents as they believed he was fine.”
“What did the doctors say about Andrew?” Lainey asked as she leaned in.
“That they thought he had a personality disorder and was a narcissistic prick.” Linds shrugged. “They didn’t say prick but I feel like they wanted to. The staff found him arrogant and oppositional. He refused to follow rules.”
“Did Hailey or Mary, or whatever her name is, ever go to Hatton Head?”
“No. She went back to the orphanage at seventeen, just after Andrew left. She was free from the orphanage at eighteen. And like Finn already said, he gave her a lot of money and took care of her.”
“Was Engelmann a mean place?” I asked, wondering if this was why she was so cruel.
“No. Apparently, it’s a top-shelf facility. Best doctors and funded solely by a Mr. Dean Faber. He’s some billionaire out of Silicon Valley. His wife committed suicide from mental illness and he funded the Engelmann place. Named after her, her maiden name, and he put it here because she was originally from Manhattan.”
I bit my lip, contemplating it all. My friends all looked the same. “So we learned nothing?”
“I guess.” Linds nodded. “Except we confirmed what we suspected about Andrew and Hailey meeting at Engelmann.”
“Whoop-de-do.” Sage rolled her eyes.
“Yup.” Lainey sighed.
“I’m beat.” Rita rolled up her thick duvet and fluffed her pillow. “I need some sleep.”
“Me too.” I flipped onto my side and snuggled into the pillow.
“Night,” Linds muttered and the rest of us simultaneously replied, “Night.”
The eight small beds were perfect for a night like this one. I just wished Finn were here.
I hadn’t forgiven him for lying. But I also hadn’t fought him off when he kissed my hand. And I hadn’t stopped him from telling me his side of the weirdly coincidental story.
I wanted to believe him that it was all random luck. I wanted to believe he was in love with me.
But my head was stuck on the what-if.
It was going to be a rocky road back to where we’d been.
When I woke in the morning everyone else was up and gone from the room.
An eerie chill crept over me as I looked around the dimly lit room. Being alone had once been a wonderful thing. I was an only child; I thrived on my own.
But now it was frightening. I reached for my cell phone and dialed, not really thinking about what I was doing.
“Hey,” Finn spoke like he was hiding or somewhere public.
“Hey.” I bit my lip.
“How did you sleep?”
“Fine.” The conversation felt forced, filled with more empty space than words.
“Have you given much thought to what I told you last night?”
“No,” I lied.
“Liar.”
“Whatever. I don't want to do this. Be dramatic and teenaged and immature.”
“I think those are some of your best qualities.” He was joking but it was hard to tell because he didn't really smile when he spoke.
“Tell me something I don't know about you.” I changed the subject.
“I’m a virgin.”
My face flushed as I mused over the words still ringing in my ear. A grimace crossed my face. He was a virgin and I was—not.
“Sierra.”
“Yeah.” I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. A virgin? Finn was like twenty something. How was that even possible? “How is that even possible?” I blurted.
“I don't date.”
“I don't date either.” I was making it worse. I needed to shut up. But I didn't. “I mean, not even once? By accident? Like even just—”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Very.” He laughed bitterly.
“Is that why we haven’t—?”
“Yeah.” He cut me off again.
“But you want to—?”
“Of course.”
“Okay.” I furrowed my brow, confused on how this was happening. But then something dawned on me. “You loved me even though we haven’t done—it?”
“You know I do.”
“I didn’t think boys did that.”
“You don’t know very many nice boys.” He sounded funny. “Can you just come outside?”
My eyes shot to the door to the room. “Where are you?”
“At the front door.”
My stomach leapt. The conversation and the awkwardness were about to get a million times worse, but I stood and walked from the room that had been creepy moments before. Now it seemed hot and weird.
My feet forced steps and my legs wobbled, but when I got to the front door and opened it, I smiled wide. Finn was holding his phone to his ear, the same as I was, and grinning. I loved it when he smiled, even a cheesy grin.
“Hi.” I hung up the phone. The cold December air assaulted me.
He didn't speak. He stepped forward, pulling me into his arms and lifting. His head lowered and his lips met mine with passion. He wasn't passionate except when we kissed. He didn't speak it or look it or act it, but when we kissed I felt it all. Everything he wanted to say.
Finn crushed me into him, his hands trembling a little. He pulled back, looking at me with his eyes doing all the talking for him. “I don't want to be apart from you anymore.”
It was the weirdest and sweetest thing he could have said.
“Come in and have breakfast with us then. I’m sure they’ll want to grill you about Hailey and whatever.”
He kissed me once more before stepping into the house with me. The warmth of the embrace wasn’t enough to stave off the freezing air from outside.
“Did you sleep outside again?” I asked when I noticed how cold he was, despite his huge peacoat.
“Yeah. I slept in the Jeep.” He pulled off his coat and handed it to me.
“She doesn’t really have butlers or help. There’s like one cook who doubles as the maid.” I wrinkled my nose.
But he laughed. “How will we ever get through breakfast? Jeeze. Will I be doing the cooking?”
“I feel like you have a better chance at making breakfast than any of us.”
“I can cook better than you think.” He rolled his eyes.
Before we walked into the rest of the house, I wrapped my arms around his neck and stared up into his dark eyes. “I need you to promise me, on my life not yours, that you won’t ever lie to me again.”
“Never.” He didn't falter or blink. “If I’m being totally honest, I stole money from your dad when I was younger.”
A slow smile spread across my lips. “I don't care about that. And I bet he doesn’t care either.”
“He might. It was a lot. He had some account he never used and I filtered small amounts from it—”
“Yeah, I super don't care. At all. My dad and his money mean almost nothing to me. I like money. I love it. But I’ve never had to live without it so it really is just there and awesome. But it means nothing to me. I care about the secrets you’re keeping from me. That’s all.”
“Okay.” Finn nodded. “Then whenever I recall a secret I’ll be sure to let you know it.” He mocked me but I didn't care about that either.
I believed him again.
Which meant my heart was full again.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Black Christmas
“Sierra!”
“Hmmmm?” I was pulled from a dream, one I didn’t recall but my body was still there. I cracked an eye, moaning into the pillow. “What time is it?”
“Wake up. I have a special present for you.”
I groaned. “Sleepy.” I blinked and tried to focus my eyes but all I saw was my wall. I took a coup
le of deep breaths, getting my bearings, and then turned over to see what she wanted. Her voice took seconds to click in my head.
Her voice.
Oh my God.
The empty room and cold wind blowing in the open window, flicking the curtains back and forth, made the voice scarier.
It was her. I was certain. The girl with the dark hair had been in my room. Not that it was hard to get into, but Finn had been here with me. He was gone, I was alone, and the girl had been here.
I jumped up from the bed, checking under it, in the closet, and under my desk and dressing tables. With my heart racing and my stomach turning, I rushed to the window, slamming it shut. The stark morning might have been beautiful with the first snowfall laid delicately across the landscape. But the footsteps leading from my bedroom window, along the roof of the garage to the side yard and away from the house were all I noticed.
The fresh fallen snow preserved her small footprints perfectly.
“Sierra.”
I jumped and turned, pointing when I saw Finn. “She was in here.”
“What?”
“The footprints.”
“Those are mine. Your dad came in to check on you while you were sleeping. I had to get away quick. I just came around the front in my car, like I just got here.” Finn breathed like he was catching his breath.
“I heard her talking to me. She woke me up.”
“In the eight minutes I’ve been gone, she woke you?”
I contemplated it for several moments before I sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe I was dreaming.”
“What was she doing?”
“She said she got me a present. And then she was gone.”
“Weird.” He looked around the room, like he was giving her being here some thought. “I wouldn’t put it past her, but she literally had minutes to come in here, wake you up, and leave again.”
“And the guards are still here,” I added.
“Well, your dad gave most of them Christmas morning off. I think there are only one or two here.”
“Great.” I crawled back into the bed and pulled the covers up to my nose. “Hopefully, it was you and my dad who woke me up.”
Finn crawled onto the bed next to me, wrapping his arm over my waist. “You can’t be cranky. It’s Christmas morning. The whole house is awake.”
