Chapter 266
She tried to shift — a movement so small it was barely a twitch — but a bolt of agony tore through her, sending the monitor beside her bed into a frantic cascade of beeps.
“Cailin, stop! You’ll tear your stitches!”
“Where… is… my daughter?” she gritted out, each word a monumental effort, fighting the dark, rolling waves of anesthesia that threatened to drag her back under.
In the morgue, Hilliard was running.
He checked the autopsy room. Empty.
He checked the viewing room. Empty.
“Elia!”
Then he saw it.
At the far end of the corridor stood the walk-in freezer for long-term storage. The heavy insulated door was slightly ajar — not fully sealed. And on the floor, wedged in the gap beneath it, was a small pink hair clip.
Elia’s.
Hilliard ran to the door and seized the handle. It was stiff with ice. He pulled harder, bracing his foot flat against the wall, and with a roar of effort, wrenched it open.
A cloud of white mist rolled out over his feet.
He stepped inside. It was twenty degrees below zero.
There, in the far corner, huddled between two body bags, was a tiny figure.
She was blue. Her eyelashes were frosted with ice. She wasn’t moving.
“No!”
Hilliard scooped her up. She was rigid. Cold as stone.
He tore off his jacket and wrapped it around her, his other hand fumbling along the wall until he found an emergency alarm button and drove his palm into it. A klaxon began to blare throughout the basement. He pressed his hand to her chest.
A faint, fluttery beat.
She was alive. Barely.
He turned and ran.
He didn’t wait for the elevator. He took the stairs, carrying her, his lungs burning with every flight.
He burst onto the ICU floor.
“Help! I need a warming unit! Hypothermia!” He sprinted down the hall.
The door to Cailin’s room was open. Vance was trying to calm her as she thrashed weakly against the bed, her eyes wild with panic.
Hilliard ran past the door.
Cailin looked up.
She saw him. She saw the bundle in his arms. She saw the small, blue, lifeless hand dangling from the edge of his jacket.
Time stopped.
The lie shattered.
Cailin’s eyes went wide, her pupils dilating until they were nothing but black. A sound tore from her throat — not a scream, but a raw, guttural gasp of pure agony that arched her whole body against the bed. The heart monitor shrieked into a frantic, staccato alarm as the lines on the screen dissolved into chaos.
“ELIA!”
Hilliard didn’t stop.
But Cailin’s shattered cry echoed in his ears long after he had passed — a sound that carried, beneath its grief, the weight of a hatred that would never, ever die.
The scream didn’t sound human. It was the sound of a soul being torn out through the throat.