Chapter 261
The hydraulic whine was deafening. The massive door lifted with agonizing slowness, revealing the cavernous, dimly lit hold.
Cold air rushed out, carrying the smell of animals and stale ozone.
Hilliard vaulted onto the platform.
He swept the hold with his eyes. Dogs barked in their crates. Somewhere in the dark, a cat hissed.
And there, in the far corner, wedged behind a pallet of suitcases — a figure.
Cailin.
She was curled into a ball, her face pale as moonlight. Her lips had gone blue. Her clothes were drenched in blood from the fall into the culvert.
Hilliard’s heart stopped.
For a single, terrible second, he thought she was dead.
Then her eyes opened.
They were dull and glazed with pain, but they found his immediately — and locked on with a ferocity that made him flinch.
“You lose,” Hilliard said, his voice cracking on the words. He glanced at his watch. “11:58 PM. You’re still in New York.”
Cailin tried to push herself upright. Her arms shook violently beneath her.
“You cheated,” she rasped. The sound was wet and labored, each word costing her something.
“I won,” Hilliard said, stepping closer. He reached out his hand. “Come here, Cailin. It’s over.”
She slapped his hand away. It was a weak, pathetic strike, but the defiance behind it was absolute.
“Don’t touch me.”
She gripped the dog crate and hauled herself to her feet, swaying dangerously.
“I’d rather die,” she whispered.
“You’re not going to die,” Hilliard said, his voice cracking with a fear that eclipsed his anger entirely. “You’re coming home. I’ll fix this. I’ll fix us.”
Cailin smiled. It was a gruesome sight — her teeth stained dark with blood.
“There is no us,” she said. “There’s only you and the monster you see in the mirror.”
Her knees buckled.
She pitched forward.
Hilliard caught her before she hit the metal floor. She was light — too light — and burning hot beneath his hands.
“Cailin?”
She convulsed in his arms, and then a wave of violent tremors wracked her body. A low groan escaped her lips, and Hilliard watched in horror as a dark, wet stain spread rapidly across the front of his white dress shirt, seeping outward from where he held her against him.
He stared at the blood. There was too much of it.
“Cailin!”
Her head lolled back. Her eyes rolled up into her head.
The triumph he had felt moments ago evaporated, leaving only a cold, hollow terror in its wake.
“MEDIC!” Hilliard screamed, his voice echoing through the steel belly of the plane. “GET A MEDIC IN HERE NOW!”
The ambulance siren was a scream that wouldn’t stop.
Hilliard sat in the back, his hand gripping Cailin’s limp fingers so hard his knuckles had gone white.
“BP is dropping — 60 over 40!” the paramedic shouted, cutting Cailin’s shirt open with shears. “We’re losing her!”
Hilliard stared at her chest.
There, just above her bikini line, was a scar.