Veda was across the room in an instant, taking hold of Coco’s wrist, her fingers sneaking under her shirt sleeve so she could feel her skin.
“I saw Todd leaving….” Veda’s voice trailed off, distracted by the texture she felt on Coco’s wrist. Before she could think to stop herself, she lifted the arm of Coco’s shirt and pushed it up to her elbow.
She gasped softly at the sight.
There were dozens of them, some deeper than others, some more textured, all moving in different directions on Coco’s wrist.
Tears stabbed Veda’s eyes as she blazed through all the possibilities in her head, running the tip of her thumb over the scars. A knife. Maybe a razor. She found an especially jagged scar and frowned. Scissors.
“Oh, Coco.” Veda encircled Coco’s wrist in a tight hold, lifting her own moistened eyes to hers.
Coco reclaimed her arm, pulling her sleeves down over her wrists, all the way to the beds of her nails, lowering her eyes with her shoulders raised high. “I don’t do that anymore….”
Veda waited for her to finish, but when she realized she was done, she took hold of Coco’s shoulders, forcing her to face her. Then she pulled Coco in, wrapping her up in a hug so tight her bones started to ache in seconds. But she didn’t dare loosen her squeeze.
The moment Veda had her arms around her, Coco exploded into quiet whimpers on her shoulder, wrapping her arms around Veda’s waist and embracing her in return.
Veda slammed her eyes shut, unable to believe that she hadn’t put the pieces together sooner. She held Coco tight until minutes had gone by. Until her cries had subsided.
Veda stepped away, still holding Coco’s gaze. She let her arms fall before turning to the side and pushing the waistband of her scrubs down. Just enough to show Coco the three marks on her hip.
Coco took in the sight, then raised her wide eyes to Veda.
“When I was eighteen…” Veda heard the vulnerability wobbling in her voice. “I was a girl, but I looked like a woman. I crashed a party in a short dress, and because my dress was short, ten monsters decided I deserved to have my innocence taken away.”
Coco’s teeth chattered as she tried to fight tears.
Veda fixed her pants, facing her. “Now I don’t know why you do that to yourself… but if you ever need to talk about it, know you can always talk to me. Always. I’ll never tell your secret, I’ll never tell you your feelings aren’t valid, and I’ll never judge you.”
Coco hugged her arms around her body, sniffling as her eyes fell.
Veda took a deep breath. “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to. Do you want me to just sit with you for a while? Just… hang out?”
“I was eight…,” Coco whispered, her tear-filled eyes riveted to the floor. “I was eight when he came in my room for the first time.”
Veda felt the horrified tremble start at her toes and climb her body. She knew, without a second thought, who Coco was referring to.
Tears plummeted from Coco’s eyes and splashed on the floor. “He says I deserved it—”
Veda flew across the space and wrapped Coco in another hug before she could finish, the blood in her veins running cold, the tears stinging her eyes now laced with fury instead of pain.
She dug her fingers into Coco’s scrubs, speaking through clenched teeth. “We have to go to the police.”
“No,” Coco whispered.
Veda tightened her hold, biting back a curse. “At least let me take you down the hall so we can do a kit—”
“No!” Coco locked her arms around Veda’s waist, as if that would be enough to stop her from following through on her words.
“Coco, we have to do something. We can’t keep letting him get away with this.”
“Please don’t say anything,” Coco begged, and when the silence went on for a moment too long, she took Veda’s scrubs in a tight hold too, her voice rising to frantic levels. “The Lockwoods… The Blackwaters… They’re dangerous. They hurt people.”
“Okay, okay…” Veda shushed her several times, waiting for a long quiet to fall in before she promised, “I’ll never tell.”
Only then did Coco’s cries relax, and as she sniffled softly into her shoulder, Veda found herself.
She found the Veda who had been missing for two long months.
She found the Veda who had touched down in Shadow Rock with one goal, and only one goal.
She found herself, and that time there would be no going back. There would be no mistakes. There would be no spit-shined rich boy to muddy up her mind.
That time, there would be no exceptions.
Todd Lockwood had to die.
And he had to die tonight.
—
Veda had never been so over the moon due to a late patient. Her last patient of the day at that. Usually, she’d curse their existence for ensuring the surgery went long, forcing her to get off work later than she’d planned.
But not that day.
That day, Veda thanked the high heavens for the patient’s blatant disrespect.
That day, she needed the exam room all to herself. The doctors and nurses wouldn’t be in for another half hour, which was the amount of time Veda needed to prep the patient, who’d already called to inform them they’d be twenty minutes late.
How could she deny that her goal was sound when the karmic gods were doing everything in their power to ensure she succeeded? Was it a coincidence that, on the day she’d found her goal renewed by the tears in Coco’s eyes, she’d also found herself alone with that syringe in her hand?
Rolling a sour apple sucker under her tongue, she held the syringe up to the bright exam room lights, squinting at it as she twisted it around in her fingers. The clear liquid inside the barrel moved like water.
Sodium thiopental. A fast-acting anesthetic that put her patients into a medically induced slumber in less than a minute. A rapid-onset anesthetic that, once upon a time, had been a vital component in the cocktail used to stop the hearts of prisoners on death row. An anesthetic that could both relax and exterminate, depending on the wishes of the person behind the injection.
And tonight, Veda Vandyke had only one wish.
One goal.
One must.
As she set the syringe down on the tray next to her and fished an empty vial out of her pocket, she thought of Coco. The tears in Coco’s eyes. The scars on Coco’s wrists. The terror in Coco’s voice.
“The Lockwoods… The Blackwaters… They’re dangerous. They hurt people.”
Veda popped open the empty vial. It trembled between her fingers as Linc’s voice drowned out Coco’s.
“Why don’t you ask your boyfriend?”
She drew in a breath that burned her lungs. Picking up the syringe, she guided the tip of the needle, shaking under her sweaty palm, into the vial. She became distantly aware that, if caught, she could be arrested. If caught, she would be fired. Her career would end in the blink of an eye if someone walked into the room in that moment. But as she pushed down on the plunger of the syringe, forcing the thiopental into the empty vial, she knew she wouldn’t sleep until someone paid the price.
Once she had enough liquid in the vial to floor a baby Rhino, Veda returned the syringe to the tray table, twisted the cap onto the vial, and slid it back in her pocket.
She stood and took the syringe from the table, dropping it to the floor.
Lifting her sneaker into the air, she took a deep breath before sending it barreling back down, exhaling sharply as the syringe shattered under her weight. What little was left of the substance flew, wetting the tip of her sneaker and spraying all over the floor.
Heart in her throat, she hurried to the phone in the corner of the room, dialing the number she’d come to know by heart in her short time at the hospital.
A male on the other end answered after one ring. “Pharmacy.”
“Yeah, Jake….” Veda ran her hand over her bun, trying to control the quiver she heard in her voice, hoping the lo
llipop helped muffle the sound. “I dropped a syringe of sodium thiopental and accidentally stepped on it while trying to find it.”
“Fucking spaz.”
Veda exhaled at the teasing tone of his voice. “I know. Can I swing by and pick up an additional 300 mg?”
“Sure, but you know we’ll have to write it up.”
Veda swallowed thickly. “I know. It’s my mistake, so… I’ll just deal with the consequences later.”
“Five minutes, spaz.”
“Thanks, Jake.” Veda hung up the phone and bent down on her knees with a gasp, needing a moment to calm her deep breathing and racing heart, both so out of control she felt like she’d just finished a five-minute mile.
—
Veda pulled the blue surgical hat off her head as she exited the recovery room. Her patient had opened her eyes after a successful surgery, but it had taken a good hour longer than she’d anticipated. It had scared her to death because it was the closest she’d ever come to experiencing the inevitable.
That day when one of her patients didn’t wake up.
Her blood went icy at the thought, and she forced herself to push it away.
She needed to remain focused.
The later into the night it got, the quieter the halls of Blackwater Hospital became. The sun had set, leaving just a few employees from the night shift breezing through the halls every once in a while. Even working in an upgraded hospital with all new state-of-the-art touches, Veda still felt like she was in a horror movie whenever she found herself there late at night. Like the ghosts and spirits of all the patients who hadn’t woken up were lingering around every corner, waiting to—
She yelped when she felt a hand around her forearm out of nowhere, and that yelp moved to a horrified scream as she was tugged with a strength that sent her tumbling sideways.
It wasn’t until she was sure she was going to fall to her death that an arm encircled her waist, keeping her steady.
Her heart pounded wildly as she took in the empty stairwell before her, eyes shooting to the wall-to-wall window that gave her the perfect view of the parking lot.
She heard the door to the stairwell slam closed and when she took her first heaving breath and smelled that spicy, earthy scent, she swiveled on her heels and instantly pounded her fists into the chest of the man she knew would be behind her.
“You. Scared. The. Shit. Out. Of. Me,” she said, her voice rising with each strike until Gage was finally forced to take both her wrists under his strong grip, pushing her back against the wall behind her.
The moonlight shone through the window and made his brown eyes look copper as he braced his hands on the wall on either side of her head.
Veda felt herself falling out of control at his closeness, the way she always did. Taken hostage by the ‘itchy thing’ she’d been so sure she could work out the first night they’d fucked. The ‘itchy thing’ that had hung around for two—almost three—long months now. The ‘itchy thing’ that was, miraculously, still alive and well, even after all the shit she’d been blasted with over the past few days.
“Why don’t you ask your boyfriend?”
She searched his eyes, swallowing heavily when she didn’t see the lines that always deepened at the corners whenever he smiled at her. Those lines weren’t there because he wasn’t smiling.
He was looking at her in a way he never had before.
She didn’t have the time to decide what that look was doing to her body, even though she knew it was like nothing she’d ever felt before.
“I can’t do this right now, Gage.” She tried to get under his arm but he lowered his hands on the wall, blocking her in and pushing closer. “You’re not even supposed to be here today,” she accused. “It’s your day off.”
He licked his lips, his eyes growing heated. “Why were you holding Lincoln Hill’s hand at the gym the other day?”
Caught off guard, she had to blink a few times to collect herself. “What?”
“Why have you been boxing next to Lincoln Hill at the gym every weekend?”
“Are you following me now?”
He shrugged, tried to smile, but a frown won over. “Is this whole thing just….” His frown deepened. “Is it just a big fucking joke to you?”
Her heart went into overdrive. “Lincoln and I are just friends.” She heard her voice shaking and tried to control it, but as she continued, she realized it only wobbled more. “And I doubt he’d even call us that. He’s barely spoken two words to me. And I wasn’t holding his hand.” Why was she explaining herself? “He saw that I was holding my fists incorrectly and was kind enough to help me out before I dislocated a thumb.”
“I want you to stop seeing him.”
She felt her eyes grow wide as saucers. “You’re joking.”
“No.”
“I’m not sure what you think this is, Gage.” Feeling like the accusation in his eyes was going to set her on fire, a blaze came to life in her own body, and she was sure it manifested on her face. “But it isn’t any of your business who I am or am not friends with.”
“It isn’t my business?”
“No, it isn’t.”
The muscle under his jaw rolled. “It isn’t my business, Veda?”
She jolted when his voice rose.
“The Lockwoods… The Blackwaters… They’re dangerous. They hurt people.”
She tried to back up but realized she was already flat against the wall. She rose to her toes in her attempt to get away, holding her breath when he wouldn’t even allow her that inch of extra room, pushing in so close she could see the black shards in his eyes where his pupils melted into the irises.
“Two days ago, you told me not to marry Scarlett. Now it isn’t my business?”
“Have you left her?”
He faltered, and it was clear that the truthful answer was one he was in no hurry to utter. “I went home to end it. She wasn’t there. Ended up going toe-to-toe with my mother. Defending us. Defending you.”
“But you didn’t end it.”
“Like I said, Veda, she wasn’t home.”
“Because we don’t live in the age of the cell phone, the Internet, and social media.”
“Beautiful deflection. Brilliant. Truly. But it won’t work.”
“I’m not deflecting.” Veda swallowed, lowering her eyes. “I made a mistake telling you not to marry Scarlett, and the fact that you haven’t ended your engagement yet… Well, that proves you agree that it was a mistake too. You’re clearly not ready to go against your parents, and you shouldn’t.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth.”
“We’ve always been completely clear with each other about what this was. When we made love the other night it was… deeper… more intimate than what we’ve grown accustomed to. It muddled our feelings—”
“I’m not muddled.”
Veda faltered. “Gage, what we have is casual. We’re scratching an itch. Telling you not to marry Scarlett was a momentary lapse of good judgment and sense.” She turned her head and peeked at his hand on the wall, saw it tighten into a fist.
“What did he say to you?” Gage asked through clenched teeth.
Veda looked at him from the corner of her eyes. She considered lying, but the words left her lips before she could stop them. “He said that I should ask you about his missing wife.” She didn’t realize how much those words had been eating her alive until tears filled her eyes the moment she said it. She wanted an explanation. She wanted him not to be the man Lincoln and Coco had turned him into with just a few whispered words.
She wanted him to be different.
For the first time since he’d pulled her into that stairwell, his head fell.
Veda turned her eyes back to his hands, watching as he dragged his nails down the concrete wall. She looked back at him once he lifted his head again, saw that the anger in his eyes had ebbed to desperation.
He spoke in a calm tone that was clearly difficult to maintain, as it sh
ook with the frustration that lingered underneath. “Lincoln Hill is entrenched in a fantasy world he’s concocted in his own head. He believes that because his wife disappeared during one of my father’s cruises, that my father had something to do with it. He’s been trying to have my father arrested for years, and he’s been unsuccessful, because my father hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“A warrant I was counting on fell through. The rich prick I was gunning for found yet another loophole.”
She heard Lincoln’s words and couldn’t believe it when her heartbeat slowed. Was her body that much a fool for Gage? Willing to swallow up any and every bullshit thing he said if it meant returning him to the angel who’d taken over her life? Her spirit? Her heart?
She felt her eyes falling to his lips. She wanted to stop them, but couldn’t.
Gage removed one hand from the wall and cupped her cheek. “Veda, I love you. Please don’t allow other people to get in your head and confuse what we have. Especially not a man who has a vendetta against my family. A man who’d love nothing more than to see you and me broken apart.”
“Linc doesn’t care if you and I are broken apart.”
“I see the way he looks at you.” Anger filled his eyes. “Whenever he’s in this hospital.”
Her eyebrows knitted. “The way he looks at me? What, with total indignation? Intense irritation? Borderline loathing?”
He searched her eyes. His voice lowered. “I see the way he looks at you.”
Veda was stunned. “Gage, this has gotten completely…” She swallowed heavily, her voice weakening. “Completely out of control. This is just casual.”
His voice rose. “This is not casual.”
Veda pressed back against the wall. “It is casual. And even if it wasn’t, you’d still never have the right to tell me to stop talking to Linc. You would never have the right to tell me what to do with my own body.”
“Whether you have the courage to face it or not, Veda, I’m in love with you.”
She opened her mouth to refute, but nothing came. A frown pulled at her eyebrows.
Quiver (Revenge Book 1) Page 19
