Driving toward the mansion was challenging with only one hand, but Cordray managed. When he hit the freeway, he found he wasn’t even in his home state, but far from anything familiar. Unhinged as he was, he scraped at the skin on his neck to force himself to stay alert through the long drive in the stolen vehicle.
It had been so long since he’d seen the outdoors. It was all so bright, with clumps of snow marking the season, letting him know the world had indeed kept spinning without his participation.
He wanted to take a minute to appreciate his escape, but wasn’t sure how big Malaura’s infrastructure actually was. If more would be coming, he didn’t want to be waiting around, unconscious and easy to pick off. He bit down on his finger to keep himself awake, but soon only the pain of moving his broken wrist was enough to keep him alert.
He wasn’t sure where exactly he’d started out, but he hoped making a call to Rory’s phone from the one he’d stolen off the body of a dead man would at least tell him where he was going. He knew he didn’t want to be anywhere near the bunker when law enforcement showed up.
“Stay where you are!” Benjamin ordered him upon answering Rory’s phone and hearing a few clipped sentences from the man they’d been searching for for months. “They need to take your statement and get you medical help. You sound deranged, Cord.”
“I don’t care about making a statement! Tell me where she is! The cops can follow me there.” His voice slurred on a few of the words, due to his adrenaline plummeting, which combined poorly with his undernourishment and head injury.
“Pull over. You’ll be no good to her if you drive off the road. You sound drunk.”
“Not drunk. Where is she? Tell her I’m coming.”
“Pull over, and I’ll come and get you myself. You have to talk to the police. Everyone’s been looking for you.”
“You have?” Cord was stunned. He’d assumed they’d given up long ago.
“Of course,” Benjamin’s voice softened. “You belong with us.”
Cordray shook his head when the road started to blur in front of him. In the back of his mind he knew he should pull over, but he’d survived this far. He didn’t want to get abducted again. “You can’t leave her. I’ll come to you.”
“Stop your car and tell me where you’re at. I’ll send Remus to pick you up.”
Cordray finally obeyed, but only because he had to. The world was starting to get blurry around the edges. “Hit my head,” he murmured to Benjamin.
“Tell me where you are!” Benjamin roared, and in the background, Cordray could hear the purr of the town car’s engine firing up.
A note of angst crept out of Cordray as the confession bubbled to the surface. “They’re dead! I killed the Lethals. There wasn’t any other way. Malaura, she’s… Someone needs to come clean up all these bodies.”
Benjamin swore. “How many of them had you captive?”
“A dozen? Maybe more? I got out, but I had to kill them to escape.” The confession felt like breathing, but Cordray knew it would take more than that to cleanse his soul from the filth that felt caked into the crevices of his psyche.
Cordray glanced out the windshield and squinted up at the green sign overhead on the freeway. “Fairview in one mile. Exit 136. Black sedan. Dead bodies. Rory! Rory.”
That was all he could get out before the edges of his periphery began to tunnel. He pulled off onto the side of the freeway seconds before the world he’d longed to see once more faded to black.