Page 98 of Bad Medicine
How could Iletthis happen?
“Have you seen my son?” I asked a man pushing his toddler on a swing. “A boy with blond hair. He was right here. Please. Have you seen him?” He gaped at me, shaking his head as he hauled his own child out of the swing, clinging to her as though he thought she might be next.
Moving away from him, I headed to the slide, climbing up the stairs until I could see the top of the platform.
“Jasper?” I shouted, leaning into the tunnel where I had just watched my son playing happily.
It was empty.
But there, wedged between the top of the slide and the stairs, was Jasper’s baseball cap, the little fighter jet staring at me mockingly as I picked it up, clenching it in my fist.
Gone.
My son was gone.
But it wasn’t as though he had just wandered off. Jasper had been taken.
I knew it.
My legs felt numb as I climbed down, spinning in a circle, trying to see everywhere at once. Benny was on the phone, talking rapidly, but I didn’t have the capacity to take in what he was saying.
I felt eyes on me; people were staring, their pitying looks making me want to throw up.
“Has anyone seen my son? Please! You have to help me!”
No one moved. No one spoke.
They all just stood there, clinging to their own children as they watched me dying without mine.
Chapter forty-five
Rocco
Poundingrainthunderedagainstthe windshield, the wipers dancing across the glass at full speed, yet still somehow unable to keep up with the sheer quantity of precipitation falling from the sky. Fat gray clouds hung low on the horizon, their bloated bellies delivering a punishing deluge as the desiccated desert struggled to absorb the seemingly never-ending torrent of rain.
My foot pressed harder on the gas pedal, my hands gripping the steering wheel so violently they ached, as I sped down the waterlogged streets of Las Vegas, desperate to reach my house as fast as possible.
Traffic laws be damned.
That motherfucker.
I blamed myself.
I had thought it was safe, that Gregor was gone across an ocean—across the planet—and that we had been given room to breathe after the constant pressure cooker we had all been living in.
Mia had been desperate to return to work, only having been able to switch a few shifts with another doctor, not getting any actual time off. Once she had decided that she would be staying in Las Vegas, letting me deal with the Gregor situation and not hightailing it out of town, it was imperative to her that she kept her job.
Which meant not missing any time and not ostracizing her coworkers by badgering them to cover for her.
I got it. Really, I did.
Didn’t mean I had to fuckin’ like it.
Even when we thought that asshole was all the way in Moscow, I still didn’t want her to be alone.
Unprotected and vulnerable, although she’d never want me to think of her that way.
So I sent Benny with her.
