Page 45 of Freaks
Sadie was still weeping in the bathroom, right?
Wrong.
I pushed Sera out of the way as Sadie hurled herself down the hallway. In her hand was a knife, now—a seriously fucking sharp one. She swung her arm down, trying to dig the blade into Sera’s back. I reacted, ducking low, then brought my body up as I tackled her, lifting her off her feet and then slamming her down onto the floor.
“Youdon’t get to showmemercy,” she screamed. “You think you have everyone so convinced. Sera, the little fucking goody two shoes. Sera, the benevolent. Sera, the kind. I know the fucking truth, you whore! You’re a fucking monster! I’ll never stop!” She kicked and spat as she fought, trying to rid herself of me as I pinned her to the floor. She clawed at my arms like a rabid dog, snarling and baring her teeth. “I willneverstop, Sera. I won’t rest until you’re dead and rotting in the ground. You won’t know a moment’s peace. I will always find you, no matter where you go!”
This was pure fucking madness. I understood Sera’s need to show compassion, but this woman wasn’t capable of appreciating it. She was mentally incapable of letting this thing go, whatever it was. “This can’t go on, Sera. She’s crazy,” I reasoned. “The only way to end this is to endher. If not, you’ll always be looking over your shoulder. We both will. I can live like that. I’ll tolerate it, if it makes you happy. But can you?”
Sera swallowed as she looked down at her friend. A wave of unfettered emotion rolled across her pale face. “I need... Fuck, Felix, I need a moment to think.”
SEVENTEEN
ZETH
So far, three ambulances had screeched up to the emergency entrance of St. Peter’s of Mercy Hospital, unloading their critical patients as I sat in my car staring at the building like it was the very gates of hell itself. Michael had been calling for the last hour, had left a number of messages for me on my burner, but I hadn't picked up, hadn't wanted to speak to the man directly. I’d gotten dressed at the warehouse. Put on my best tuxedo. Had even taken the time to polish my fucking shoes. But when I'd gotten into the Camaro, I hadn't headed towards the apartment where the party was being held.
I’d somehow ended up here, parked outside the hospital. That seemed to be happening more and more recently. I liked to lie to myself. To tell myself that I didn't know why it happened, but I knew perfectly fucking well why I found myself parked here all the time. The woman I’d met in the downtown Marriott eighteen months ago had been on my mind ever since. Every goddamn day, she'd haunted my thoughts and my dreams like a goddamned ghost. Try as I might, I couldn't fucking shake her and I had really,reallyfucking tried.
The cellphone I'd been using for the past two weeks lit up on the dashboard, letting me know that Michael was calling me yet again. I glared at the device with a kind of malevolence that sank down deep into my bones. He wasn't going to stop. Not until I picked up and answered him. The party that was taking place at the apartment on the other side of town was my party after all. I’d carefully handpicked and invited each and every guest. They were all waiting for me there. Expecting me to show my face at any moment. I knew how these things went, though. The Moet would already be flowing. Silver trays, filled with party favors, were already being passed from hand to hand as the nights revelers sank into their debauchery. Usually I lived for these gatherings. They were an outlet for my pent-up aggression. A place for me to blow off some serious fucking steam. But ever since that night in the hotel with Sloane, my deviant little get-togethers were less and less appealing to me.
The woman was a plague. A curse I had willingly invited upon myself. And now there was nothing I could do to break that damn curse. I’d tried everything. Blonde women. Redheads. Brunettes. Short girls. Fat girls. Tall girls. Three girls at the same fucking time. No matter what I did, no matterwhoI did, Sloane was always there, lurking at the back of my mind.
I already knew I was going to go inside the hospital. The past three times I'd come here, I'd given in to my own weakness and stepped foot inside the building, pretending to be the loved one of a sick patient, or a delivery man. Once, I’d even impersonated a fucking doctor. I had watched her from the waiting room, from the hallway and from the canteen, always observing her from afar. I didn't know when I'd turned into the type of creepy motherfucker who would stalk a woman around the hallways of a hospital, but that's where I’d somehow ended up.
As I climbed out of the Camaro, leaving my phone on the dashboard, a light rain began to fall. I hardly noticed the fine mist as it fell and clung to the material of the Tom Ford tux I'd donned for the evening’s frivolities. It rained so often in Seattle that the weather hardly registered with me at all anyway, but tonight sheet lightening could have been splintering the skies apart and I wouldn't have noticed the storm.
I recognized the woman at the nurses’ station when I walked into the building. Her name was Gracie. She was a powerhouse. A force to be reckoned with, and Sloane seemed to rely on her whenever she was on shift to make sure her patients were being well cared for. Gracie looked up, her face a mask of professionalism as she picked up a tablet, ready to record whatever injury I had come to report.
Most women flinched when they made eye contact with me. It wasn't their fault. It was a natural reaction. Some innate sense of self-preservation within them, screaming at them to run away and hide. Gracie didn't flinch. “How can I help you this evening, sir?" she asked. Her index finger hovered over the tablet, ready to take down my details.
"Got a serious headache,” I told her gruffly. “Had it for three days now."
I’d learned a long time ago that I couldn't report anything more serious than a minor injury. If I said I had chest pain, I'd be bumped to the top of her list and a doctor would be with me within ten minutes. I didn't want that. I wanted to sit in the waiting room. Iwantedto sit here for hours. I wanted to be forgotten about, until I became a piece of the furniture, and the nurses’, and the doctors’, and the porters’ gazes skipped over me. That was the key. If I wanted to go unnoticed as I wandered the halls of St. Peter's, I had to be seriously fucking unimportant.
Gracie gave me a tight-lipped smile, raising her eyebrows. "Do you get headaches often?"
"Sometimes."
“And have you taken any pain relief?"
I gave her a bored, lazy smile. "Just some Advil.”
Two small lines formed between her brows. Gracie fuckinghatedme. Tonight was a busy night at St. Peter's of Mercy. With the three triage patients that had been rushed in here earlier, all of the doctors were busy. All of the nurses, too. She didn't have time to deal with some idiot dressed in a tux, complaining of a fucking headache.
“Okay, sir. If you can fill out your information here and then take a seat, I'll have someone with you as soon as I can." As soon as she could meant about two to three hours, given my past experiences here, and that was just fine by me. I took the tablet from her and began to fill out my information, providing my name and my address—all bullshit—and then I supplied a very bland medical history and family background at the bottom. Handing back the tablet, I went and took a seat.
Mothers bounced screaming, red-faced children on their knees in every direction I looked. A guy with a pretty serious looking gash on his shin argued with someone on his phone. In the corner, by the vending machine, an old woman sat in a wheelchair, staring blankly at the opposite wall. Of all the people gathered in the waiting room I was probably the least significant. Perfect. An hour slipped by. Occasionally, the double doors would open and a doctor would appear, calling somebody's name. A name that was never mine. Every time I caught sight of blue scrubs, my heart seized in my chest, the oxygen burning in my lungs, but it was neverher. It was never Sloane.
They didn’t change the codes on the security key pads here at St. Peter's. Michael had given me a list of them after I’d tasked him with obtaining the information, and he hadn’t asked why. I knew the layout of the hospital like the back of my hand now. The blue prints were online, a matter of public record, but I'd also spent plenty of time hovering outside the labs, or X-ray, or the CT department. I knew precisely where a patient would be sent if they needed an MRI, and I knew how to get to the ICU. I knew where the fucking morgue was, for that matter.
At ten-thirty, an hour and a half after I'd arrived at the hospital, Gracie took her break. I used the change in staff to my advantage, getting to my feet, pretending to head toward the bathroom. Yeah, like anyone would actually, willingly use the bathroom in an E.R. waiting room. If you weren't fucking sick before you used the john in a place like this, you were going to be violently ill by the time you had.
I breathed through my mouth as I cut across the waiting room. Everything smelled like bleach and disinfectant here.
Bleach.
Disinfectant.
