Page 105 of Hide and Seek
Dr. McKullan shakes his head, and I groan, diving back to the refrigeration unit and pulling out the next table as dread fills me. He can’t be lost. We don’t fuck up here. We can’t have lost him. One after another, I search the body bags, hysteria growing thick in my chest. A lump forms in my throat, making it hard to breathe, and as I check the very last bag, the tears start to flow.
“No, no, no, no,” I cry, hurrying across the morgue to the open report files. I start flicking through them, desperate to find anything on Laith. Maybe his parents had him moved. Maybe he was assigned incorrectly and was transferred. Maybe they’ve already claimed the body and buried him without me. Did I miss it while I was in the hospital after the attack?
Fuck!
The tears are uncontrollable, and as Dr. McKullan steps in beside me and lays his hand on my arm, I lift my panicked stare, unable to make sense of anything. “Harper, I’ve personally overlooked every case we’ve had. Nobody by the name Laith Mitchell has come through the morgue. Perhaps you’ve got the details wrong.”
“No. I did his autopsy. I cried while I cut his clothes off him. I read the carvings on his chest, the same ones that are on my ribs. The same as the men from the double homicide and the one before that. Laith is here. He has to be. I know it.”
“What are you talking about? What carvings? We’ve had no cases with irregular markings on the bodies, and certainly no double homicide.”
“No, that’s not right,” I insist, getting angry that he’s denying any of this. How could he? He’s the one who directly looks over my work. “Two weeks ago. A double homicide came in. Two men. You concluded cause of death as injuries sustained in a car wreck, but you were wrong, and I don’t understand why youwould put that in your report when it was so clearly not a car wreck. They were murdered.”
Dr. McKullan watches me through a narrowed stare. “I’m sorry, Harper. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I shake my head when it occurs to me that this is all the stalker’s doing. Every step along the way, my stalker has been well and truly ahead of me. He took the bodies of the men in the club and the one before that. He took all the evidence and wiped it from every system it could have potentially been entered into, and apparently he wiped it straight out of Dr. McKullan’s memory. So why the hell would Laith be any different? He took him as well.
I drop to my knees, barely able to feel the way my insides scream for relief, and when Dr. McKullan comes down with me, I’ve never felt more alone. He grips my hand in both of his as though that could somehow comfort me, but when two little words come falling out of his mouth, I realize this is how it ends.
“Call psych.”
36
KNIGHT
My team prepares to head out, suiting up and making sure every weapon is fully loaded and accounted for. When my phone rings, I glance down, not really having the time to deal with anything other than my squad, but seeing Blackstone Private Hospital Security appear on my phone, it brings me pause.
“You guys keep going,” I say, already answering the phone. “I’ve gotta take this.”
I lift the phone to my ear, and hold it between my face and shoulder, freeing up my hands to holster my gun. “Now’s not a great time,” I say, assuming it’s Carly. “Is it important?”
“Yeah,” Carly says. “It’s that girl from down in the morgue. Your niece.”
The fuck. “The girl from the morgue?” I ask, knowing damn well that Harper is home in her bed, recovering from surgery.Hell, even if she thought she could manage going to work, it’s not even close to her work hours.
“The one from the surveillance feed,” she confirms. “I figured I’d call you before they shoot her up with a sedative and have her committed. I think you need to get down here. She seems to be having some kind of breakdown. She’s in her pajamas, wailing in the morgue. She keeps saying something about missing bodies and carvings.”
“Fuck. I’ll be there in ten.”
Ending the call, I shove my phone straight into my pocket before finding both Diesel and Ace staring at me. “It’s Harper. I have to go,” I tell them, turning my gaze to Diesel. “Can you take point?”
He nods, and I turn on my heel and run, knowing the boys will have each other’s backs. After stopping by the locker room to grab my keys, I race down to the parking garage and hurry to my truck.
I wasn’t there for her last time she was in trouble, and because of that, she almost died in a back alley, and I was forced to sit there and wait, hoping like fuck that she was going to be alright. But today isn’t going to be like that. If she’s burning, I’m burning.
My truck roars to life, and within seconds, I’m hauling ass out of the parking garage to the main road, racing to get to her through the pouring rain. I have no fucking clue how she ended up in the morgue in her pajamas. What the fuck happened between last night and this morning?
I should have stayed and taken the time off work, even if it meant just sitting outside her apartment and making sure she was alright.
I reach the hospital in just under eight minutes, breaking every fucking road rule on the way to get to her, and as I peel through the parking garage, I see her Honda and immediately want tobitch her out. She knows damn well that she’s not supposed to be driving, especially while on those painkillers. But more than that, how did she get down to her car? Did she walk down all those flights of stairs herself when she can barely stand without grasping the wall?
Fucking hell.
Why does loving someone mean always being furious with them? How the fuck am I supposed to look out for her if she won’t look out for herself? Damn it.
I park my truck only a few spaces down from Harper’s Honda, and within seconds, I’m flying through the main door of the hospital, having no fucking clue where to find her. I head toward the reception desk when an internal door opens, and I hear her voice from down the hall. “LET GO OF ME,” Harper screams. “I HAVE TO FIND HIM. I HAVE TO FIND LAITH.”
Fuck.
