Page 102 of The Saint

Amelia raced for the door. He snaked an arm around her neck and dropped both of them onto the floor. Pain exploded at the back of her head. Black-and-white stars detonated as he flipped her around like a rag doll and locked her neck in a choke hold. Amelia clawed his face. She wasn’t getting enough oxygen. She couldn’t take another breath. Her hands were so heavy. Her muscles ached. Spots pocked her vision.

“I’m going to break your neck like your sister,” he growled.

Broken neck. Like my sister.Amelia gave up. It was that easy, knowing Hailey was gone, and the darkness rolled over Amelia again like a suffocating blanket.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Amelia awoke in the center of a bed in the cheap motel room. Half drowsy, mostly terrified, she jerked upright. Her stomach churned. Nausea rolled over her as though she’d had too much to drink. Her head throbbed, and her throat ached. She blinked as the nightmare she hadn’t been able to escape flooded her thoughts.

That man had killed Hailey.

Hailey was dead.

As soon as Amelia’s head stopped spinning, she opened her eyes again. Tears fell as she stared at the stained popcorn ceiling. She wasn’t sure how long she lay silently crying and mourning her sister. There was no one to rescue. Not Hailey, and she didn’t care if anyone found her anymore.

Amelia rolled onto her side. Bottles of water, juice, and ibuprofen sat beside a lamp with a broken shade on the bare nightstand. No phone was there, but a blinking alarm clock was. The headache medicine called to her, but Amelia didn’t trust anything in the room.

Was Camden looking for her?

Was he even alive?

Why the hell was this happening? She couldn’t think. A headache pounded at her temples. The ibuprofen would be helpful. The bottles of juice and water seemed to have their seals intact. She inspected the medicine. It still had the safety wrapping, which she tore free. The foil seal remained in place. After a mistrustful moment, she decided they could have killed her already with far less work than it took to poison headache medicine. She cracked the water bottle open and swallowed two pills.

Stuck with her heartache, Amelia settled against the flat pillow and pulled the thread-worn comforter over herself. If shedidn’t die an awful, poisoned death from the medicine she’d just swallowed, her head would feel much better, and she could come up with a plan.

Or she could at least survive until Camden found her—unless, she reminded herself again, he was dead too.

Her life was unrecognizable. Less than three months before, Amelia had been at a golf course, sitting in an office off the pro shop, watching the weather radar and hoping the MacAlister-Richmond wedding would finish before the first fat raindrops fell on the ceremony. That had been the peak level of stress in her life, virtually nonexistent.

Now…Hailey and Jonathan were dead.Camden? Maybe.And Amelia was here, trying to make heads or tails of living in hell.

She drifted into a fitful nap. Eventually, her headache and nausea lessened, and with the help of the water and juice, she felt somewhat more like a human who had the strength to investigate her surroundings.

Quietly, she crawled out of bed and inspected the room. A bag of gas-station junk food and magazines sat next to a remote on a vanity that had probably once held a television. They’d left her without a phone or television. If they’d taken the time to remove those, they’d probably come up with a way to keep her from walking out the door.

Still, she crept carefully across the old carpet and tried the door. The handle turned easily. Her heart jumped with hope. Cautiously, she peeked out to the outside world and saw that she was located on the second floor of a crappy motel. An open-air walkway guarded only by a rusted railing overlooked a deserted parking lot. Emboldened by the late-afternoon sunlight and chilly temperature, she inched out.

“Going somewhere?” a gruff voice asked.

She jerked back, slammed the door, and quickly secured the dead bolt and slid the safety lock into place. Her head spun, and with her heart stuck in her throat, Amelia rushed back toward the bed.

He didn’t come in after her. He hadn’t been the same man from the bathroom. Had it been the man from the Esme’s party? She couldn’t think straight.

Amelia dove back under the covers. She hid for what felt like hours until her stomach growled, reminding her of the gas-station food waiting for her. She crawled out of bed, eyeing the door as if it had the magical ability to unlock itself, and beelined for the bag of food. She wasn’t a Twinkies-and-Ding-Dongs kind of girl, but nothing had ever looked so tasty.

In a matter of minutes, she devoured a fluffy pink mini-cake and polished off a bag of salted cashews. The sugar and salt overdose threatened to bring back her headache, but she downed a bottle of water and decided it was as good a meal as she could hope for.

Someone knocked on the door.

Amelia’s arms wrapped protectively over her stomach. Fear rushed back. She didn’t move. Even if she’d wanted to run, she couldn’t move a single muscle. Camden’s voice came back to her, ordering her to breathe. She tried to inhale and hold it. Her insides jittered.

The knock came again. It was polite and so totally unnerving that she inched toward the door. Each step strained her body. Her mind revolted at the idea that she might open the door to danger. Sweat dampened the back of her neck as the roar of blood rushing in her ears warned of incoming threats. Still, she peeked out the peephole.

Black hair with perfect silver highlights. Deep mauve lipstick. Esme Van Alstyn waited on the other side. Shaking,Amelia unlocked the door but kept the sliding latch in place and drew a deep breath as she peered out the peephole again.

Esme stepped closer. She didn’t smile, but her blank face shifted to something expectant. “Hungry, Amelia?” She held up a paper sack that promised food and shook it in front of the peephole. The bag dropped out of sight. Esme inched closer to the flimsy door. “Open up.”

“What the hell is going on?” she muttered loud enough to be heard outside.

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