If I do this, what will happen to me afterward?
—Page 82 of Tessa Waye’s diary
Carson. I need to get Carson. And like I somehow said the words aloud, I hear the detective bellow my name.
“Wicket!” Something heavy hits the rear door. “Wicket!”
My feet won’t move. I can’t take my eyes off Todd.
Go. Now. I ease down the stairs, jumping way over his chest, and run.
Just like that first night, Carson is on the other side of the French door. This time his pistol butt is raised, ready to break the glass. When he sees me, his hands drop and his head tilts to one side, saying something into the radio pinned to his shoulder holster.
My fingers are blood-slicked and clumsy. They won’t work right, so it takes me a second or two with the locks. If I’d tried to escape this way, Todd would’ve caught me for sure.
The dead bolt slides open, and I don’t even have time to reach for the doorknob before Carson shoves his way into the kitchen. He takes one look at me and reaches for his radio again.
“I’m gonna need an ambulance. Now!” Carson tries to wrap his arm around me. “Did he get you, too? Wicket, what’s going on?”
Get me, too? I don’t understand. Did Todd get me like he did Tessa?
Carson gives me a little shake. “What happened?”
The detective tugs me down the back steps, snapping more orders into his radio. “Wicket, I need you to come with me. I need you to tell me what happened.”
“He attacked me,” I manage. My voice sounds too high. I clear my throat, but it only breaks again. “I fought him off.”
Carson rounds on me. “He’s here?”
I nod.
“In the house?”
I nod again. Something about Carson’s horror is seeping into me. All the hairs on my arms stand up and I know, without a single doubt, something is very, very wrong.
The detective pulls his gun out again, tries to push me behind him. I won’t let him. “Did he say anything about what he did with Lily?”
Lily! “What are you talking about?” Carson starts to back up, and I grab two fistfuls of his shirt. “Lily’s with Bren. They’re flying to San Francisco. She’s safe.”
Pity wrinkles Carson’s eyes. “Wicket, they never made the plane. He caught them in Atlanta. At the hotel. Bren was tied up for almost twenty-four hours, and we can’t find Lily.”
Carson tries to untangle my grip. “I have to go inside, Wicket. I need you to stay here.”
Stay here? Like hell I’m staying here. I glare at Carson, but my brain is filled only with Todd. I will kill him again. I will rip him to pieces. My sister! Lily!
I push off Carson’s chest so hard he staggers. “Wicket!”
“He’s in here!” I spin for the house. Carson makes a grab for me, but I shake him off. Does he really think he can catch me after what I’ve just been through?
“He’s this way!” We’re through the kitchen now, into the hallway. “He’s—”
Gone. Todd is gone.
Twenty minutes later, there must be thirty cops on our front lawn, and not one of them will tell me anything more about Lily and what happened. In fact, the only people who will talk to me are the EMTs, but all they want to talk about is how I need to go to the hospital.
“Let go of me!” I hiss at the bigger one. Briefly, we struggle and he does let me go—probably because he doesn’t want to hurt my arm any further. The cut’s heavy bleeding has stopped, but I’m still slowly soaking through the bandage they wrapped around my arm. The ice pack I’m holding against the wound is doing little to stop the swelling. I’m going to need stitches and antibiotics, but I want my sister first.
Where could Todd have taken her?
It’s hard to think with everything going on around us. The front lawn is utter bedlam. Everyone is running around. I rub my hand against my forehead and will my brain to work. Todd couldn’t have gotten very far. He’s injured, and he hasn’t had enough time. He also has Lily, and because he has Lily he would need somewhere quiet, undisturbed . . . convenient.
Carson’s thinking Todd would run, but that’s not the way my foster dad does things. He hid in plain sight for ages. He knows more about hunkering down than he does about escaping. There’s the company office in Atlanta. It would be deserted this time of night. There’s their lake house—but it’s too far away. . . . There’s the church.
“Detective!” I jump off the gurney and ignore the EMTs’ swearing. Carson is striding across the front lawn, and I don’t want to lose him. This is my chance—and Lily’s. I can’t screw it up. “Detective Carson!”
He pretends not to hear me, so I grab the hem of his jacket.
“Not now, Wicket. Mrs. Callaway will be here soon.”
“But—”
“Not now!” He dives into a huddled group of police officers, leaving me on the outside. They mutter among themselves and then, like a pack of cheerleaders, they trudge en masse toward the house.
“He’ll be on the road by now, folks,” Carson shouts. “I want those roadblocks up yesterday. I want Lily Tate’s picture on every news channel. He has at least a twenty-minute head start on us. If we don’t close that window, he’ll be across state lines.”
“Unless he never left!” I shout, and wait for Carson—for any of them—to turn around. He has no idea where Lily could be.
But I know.
Furious, I twist around, ready to pitch my ice pack across the yard. And that’s when I see it. Carson’s sedan. With its lights still flashing and its engine still running.
Score.
“Not without me.”
Griff comes up so quietly behind me I don’t even hear him until his breath melts against the back of my neck.
Maybe that’s because, deep down, I was waiting for him.
I turn around, look up at him. “Oh yeah?”
“Not without me,” Griff repeats. I can’t really see his expression, but then again, I don’t have to. I can hear everything he wants to say in his tone. “I can already tell what you’re thinking, Wicked, and you’re not doing it without me.”
Normally, I’d have something to say about Griff’s attitude. It’s arrogant and demanding, and the way he’s pushing even closer into my space should make my hands curve into fists.
“Not without you,” I agree.
We make our way to the car. No one notices.