Chapter 9 - The Chair

By evening, the hospital had moved me to a private room and placed an officer outside the door.

Brooke was no longer allowed near me.

For the first time all day, the room felt quiet.

Then Nurse Carter shut the door and said, “There’s something I need to tell you.”

She pulled up a chair.

“When paramedics brought you in, you had an injection mark inside your left elbow.”

I looked down.

A tiny bruise hid beneath hospital tape.

“We ran a tox screen. You had a strong sedative in your system. Not enough to kill you. Enough to make you confused and weak.”

The syringe in Evan’s SUV.

They had drugged me.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“Because at first we thought EMS gave you something. They didn’t.”

My skin prickled.

Nurse Carter lowered her voice.

“You also had fibers under your fingernails. Gray synthetic fibers.”

The tarp.

A memory slammed into me.

I was in the trunk.

Not when the blood got there.

Later.

Brooke and Evan had shoved me into the trunk after Dad fought them.

I remembered waking in darkness, wrists tied. The car stopped. The trunk opened.

Dad was there, bruised and bleeding, sitting against a concrete wall.

He had somehow freed one hand.

He cut my zip ties with a broken piece of metal.

“Run,” he whispered.

Then Evan returned.

Dad pushed me toward an open service door.

I ran into the rain.

That was how I reached the ditch.

I told Nurse Carter everything I could remember.

She called Reed.

While we waited, a man in hospital maintenance clothing stepped into the room pushing a cart.

“Air filter,” he said.

Nurse Carter looked at him.

“Facilities already came this morning.”

The man smiled.

Then he pulled a knife from beneath a folded towel.

Nurse Carter screamed.

I hit the call button.

He lunged toward my bed.

The door burst open before he reached me.

Officer Hale slammed him into the wall.

The knife hit the floor.

The man fought hard, kicking the cart over and sending metal trays crashing across the room.

Hale forced his arms behind his back.

“Who sent you?”

The man laughed through a split lip.

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Then he looked directly at me.

“Your sister says goodbye.”