Page 64 of Operation: Discovery

“Oh, don’t worry. You haven’t seen the last of me.”

Her eyelids felt like cotton batting that weighed more than she could stand. Was she falling asleep? Her mind tried to puzzle why the nurse would put her to sleep when she wanted information, but soon she couldn’t fight the drug.

Dee woke on the floor later and there wasn’t an inch of her that didn’t hurt. She groaned and realized she was still shackled, but now to the wall. How had she gotten wherever she was?

“You all right?” a man’s voice asked from somewhere nearby.

She tried to see but couldn’t blink. “Where am I?”

“You were brought in a little bit ago. You didn’t look so good when they carried you in.”

She wasn’t sure what the nurse had done to her, but her body felt not only beaten but as if she’d poured acid over her skin. Everything hurt. She tried to lift her arms, but the short chain wouldn’t let her move more than a few inches.

“I hope I didn’t give her anything.”

“I don’t think you did. They were cursing you pretty hard when they brought you in. You must know where the boy is.”

“What do you know about it?” Dee swallowed, but her throat was like a desert.

“She’s looking for the perfect little boy to heal hers. She started thinking of him as her ‘other’ son, the one who will save her true son. He needs both a heart and liver transplant. She’s been doing some pretty shady things to get enough blood for his routine transfusions, but he needs the transplants to survive, and his clock is running out.”

That’s why those people and poor little Jacob died. They gave their lives so Ramona’s son could live. “Why doesn’t she just take him to a doctor like everyone else?” She needed water, but there was nothing in the room but the cement floor and the metal shelving that they were chained to.

“Don’t know. I can only guess that the doctors who set all that up won’t touch him because the chances of getting both a heart and a liver at the same time are slim to none.”

“How long have you been here?” she asked. At least if he’d been there a while, there was hope someone would find them.

“About three days. I was working with my brother, trying to keep people away from the burial ground. He screwed up, got burned, and had to go to the hospital. I had to pay for his mistake. I see where we stand now, my brother and me. I was on her side when she was the one paying me. Now I’m chained to the wall like some slave, and I’ll kill her if I get my hands on her.”

ChapterTwenty-Six

Brendon couldn’t get out of the police cruiser fast enough once they arrived back at Wayside. He headed straight for Conner’s office to find out what everyone knew. The door was open, so he went inside. Connor glanced up and looked so tired and run down, which was unlike him.

“You didn’t find Dee?”

He shook his head. “Dee is missing, and I just approved someone to come here who I can feel is going to change everything we know about Wayside.”

He didn’t want to get into anything else besides Dee, but he couldn’t understand how one guest could change anything. “Who is that, and why?”

“I found the woman who is Sam’s regret. I’ve been looking for months. I thought she’d literally disappeared. Then, I got an application.” He rubbed his eyes then closed them for a moment, “and it was her.”

A patient couldn’t ever have a relationship with anyone at Wayside. That was strictly forbidden. “Oh. So you’re worried that you’ll have to break our rules?”

“I’m worried that one of my guys will live in regret forever because of what this woman has been through. She might never have a normal relationship again. Many of the women who come through here don’t. They would rather keep all men far away.”

Brendon said a prayer for Sam and the girl he hadn’t met yet. “When is she coming?”

“She is still in processing at a halfway house. They are working through some things there and they don’t want her to move until she reaches some milestones. Might be a month.”

“Will you tell him?” Brendon wasn’t usually one to suggest keeping secrets, but this could eat away at Sam who was one of the most mellow and reasonable men Brendon had ever met.

“I don’t know. This isn’t something I want to surprise him with. That’s not fair.” Connor closed his laptop. “But that’s for the future. You need my help right now. We last saw Dee at about eight this morning. By nine, she’d gone missing.”

“I got in the way of her run. I wanted her to come talk to me before I left. She usually likes to get to Rebecca early because Rebecca is an early riser, but I needed to talk to her before I left to talk to Evie.” If he hadn’t disrupted her routine, would she have been taken?

Connor put up his pointer finger like he was raising his hand. “Just keep in mind that I want to hear about your meeting with Evie at some point here soon.”

Brendon nodded but continued with what he felt was more important. “When I spoke to Dee, she said she was going to go for a run and then help Rebecca. I can tell you that her normal path is down the driveway to the gate, back up to the house, then around the barn.”

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