Page 2 of The Knight

My mom can't afford any of this.

If my dad really is on an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana, he should be sending money back. But I doubt that the selfish bastard is. He's probably hoping that he can forget about the family he fucked over—and the son who died knowing what it feels like to have your own father beat you to within an inch of your life.

I'm all alone in this, which means trying to get out of it as quickly as possible. But the doctor who checks me out wants me admitted the second I try to stand up and fall over, dizzy. He says soothing words about blood tests and CT scans, but all I hear are bills that will bankrupt my mother for no good reason.

I'm so despondent as the nurse puts the IV in my arm that she checks me a second time for fever, clucking over the state I was found in. Somewhere in my unconsciousness I lost my wet dress in exchange for an oversized hospital gown that won't close in the back. Heated blankets are thrown over my legs, and a TV remote put into my hand, but all I can think about are those two men who took me.

They could be anywhere.

They could've even followed me to the hospital. It's not like it would be hard to figure out where I am—Great Falls is a small place, and if they have access to a police scanner, they'd figure out what's going on pretty quickly.

I just don't know why they left me alive, or how Hass found me. I know what I suspect: that he's somehow involved in this, money and all, so he—or more likely, someone more senior—called off the hit. Then hefoundmy body in the trunk of a car, while the guys who took me got a chance to get away.

It's the only thing that makes sense to me.

And it means I have to get back to Coleridge right away, so I can head to my room and grab Silas's laptop before someone else gets to it. Right now Hass could still be giving a statement at the station, but as soon as he's out he'll probably take that laptop—or get Georgia or someone else to take it.

If it has something on it that was worth killing my brother over, I need to know. But there's no way I'll be able to get back and beat Hass there before the doctors are done poking and prodding me to the tune of too much money.

I need help.

"Excuse me." The nurse turns just as she was about to leave my room, a patient expression on her face. "Do you know where my things are?"

"That dress of yours had to be cut off, honey. I'm sorry."

I don't care about the dress. It wasn't even my money that paid for it. "I mean my cell phone."

"The police took everything. Officer Lopez might know where it is. Is there something you need?"

"To call my mom," I lie, trying to sound like a scared seventeen-year-old girl. It's not hard, because I am one. "I know she's on her way, but I haven't gotten to talk to her yet."

"Oh, sweetie." The nurse reaches into her scrubs. "You can borrow my phone."

Now I have to lie again. "I uh, don't have her number memorized." An arched brow at this. "You know, Generation Z... anyway, when will the cop be by with my stuff?"

"Officer Lopez should be by soon to take your statement. She'll have your things with her, unless they have to go into evidence—at least that's what I know, from dating a cop." Shrugging, the nurse puts her cell phone back into her pocket, still looking a little judgmental about my claim that I don't know my own mother's phone number. "Just settle in and relax, sweetie. I'm sure your mom will be here in no time."

"Thanks."

Clearly I've taken up enough of her time, because she heads out the door in a hurry to finish up the rest of her rounds. Once she's gone, the room falls into a strange silence, and everything that's happened to me floods back in.

Georgia's cruel face as she told the entire student body of Coleridge who I really am: a liar.

Those photos of me and Silas up on the screen, his smiling face flashed there, alive and golden in the early summer sun.

Cole taking my hand and insisting we dance together, two snakes too clever to realize we were each biting our own tails.

His handwriting in his journal, and in that note, sealing his own fate—but leaving out the part where there was a body in the trunk of his car. He told Holly that he never knew about that part; I wonder how he lied to her so easily.

Then I'm thinking about the storm. The kiss. How I raised my voice and let the fire out, trying desperately to burn someone beside myself.

And then—the car nearly hitting me. Two men getting out. I try to pause the memory and see their faces, but they were backlit by the headlights and darkened by the storm clouds overhead. Their voices are seared into my memory, but their faces skitters at my mind and away, replaced by the sweet smell of chloroform and the burn of rope around my wrists.

What should we do with her?

What we did with her brother.

His muddy shoes limp on dangling feet. Body swaying in the wind. Bruised and broken, dead and unmoving.

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