Chapter 259
She was huddled in the darkness between a crate containing a golden retriever and a wall of stacked luggage. It was freezing in the cargo hold. Her breath came out in small white clouds.
Her abdomen was on fire. The fall into the culvert off the highway had not killed her, but it had broken something inside — she could feel it. The warm, sticky wetness spreading beneath her fingers told her what she already knew: the impact had torn open her old surgical scars.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a syrette. A military-grade cocktail of coagulants, painkillers, and a metabolic stabilizer. Kegan had pressed it into her hand before they’d separated, his expression saying everything his voice hadn’t: for a worst-case scenario.
She jammed it into her thigh.
The fire in her gut dulled to a deep, throbbing ache. Her head cleared for a few precious seconds.
Through the small porthole in the cargo door, she caught a flash of strobing light. A fighter jet, holding position just off the wing.
They weren’t going to London.
They were turning back.
She slumped against the cold metal wall, her cheek pressing against the steel. He had found her. He always found her.
She coughed, and a spray of blood appeared on her palm — bright red against her pale skin.
She stared at it.
She wasn’t going to make it to the ground. Not like this.
The hospital room was quiet, save for the soft hum of the air filter.
Elia sat in the center of the large bed with her knees pulled to her chest. The hospital gown was far too big for her. Her eyes, wide and gray, moved restlessly around the room.
Aron and Davy were gone. The men in dark suits had taken her — and the man who called himself her father had brought her here, to this white, frightening place, telling the nurses she needed to be evaluated for shock before being brought to a “new home.”
The door opened.
Elia flinched.
It wasn’t the nurse. It was a lady with shiny hair and a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
Charla.
She was carrying a basket of fruit wrapped in cellophane. She had been released from police custody less than an hour earlier — a technicality her father’s lawyers had exploited before Hilliard could file his own statement. Jeraldine Holloway had met her at the precinct, pressed a visitor’s pass into her hand, and given her a single instruction: Find out what the child knows.
Charla nodded to the two guards standing outside the door.
“Jeraldine sent me,” she said, her voice warm with counterfeit concern. “She insisted I check on the poor dear myself. She’s terribly worried.”
The guards exchanged an uncertain glance. The Holloway matriarch’s name was a key that opened most doors in this building. Contradicting Hilliard was one thing; contradicting his mother was another kind of risk entirely. They stepped aside.
Charla walked in and pulled the door shut behind her. The lock clicked.
The smile dropped from her face instantly — slid away like a mask, leaving something cold and reptilian in its place.