Page 45 of Broken Hearts

19

Alex

With a yawn,I finished the last dregs of my crappy black coffee in the doctor’s lounge before pouring another. It was only seven, but I felt totally and utterly fucked. The surgery had run overtime, due to a couple of complications, and after standing up for so long, I was stiff and exhausted. The coffee might be shit, but at least the caffeine might help me get off my ass and home in time to cook dinner for Celeste.

At ten past, I finally got up, grabbed my stuff and headed down the hall. On my way, I ran into a scrub nurse, a young blonde named Zoe. “Oh, Dr. Magnusson,” she said, batting her lashes at me in a weak attempt at flirtation. “I think someone was looking for you a while ago. Glenda at the nurses station mentioned a weird phone call earlier. Did she tell you yet?”

I shook my head, my brows furrowing. “No. Who was it?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. All I really know is she said it was kinda strange. The guy asked where you were, and it was while we were in surgery. So she told them that, and also said that you’d be here for a while yet seeing as it was running overtime. Then she asked who was speaking. I think they hung up then. You’d have to ask her if they said anything else or mentioned why they were looking for you.”

My frown deepened. I had no idea who might’ve been looking for me today via the nurses station. I wasn’t expecting to hear from anyone in particular, and most people who needed me contacted me directly. I figured it was probably a patient’s family member or a doctor from another hospital who needed my opinion on something (perhaps they simply didn’t have my contact information) but still, I had an odd sense about it. Something about what Zoe said wasn’t sitting right with me, a creepy, oily feeling coiling inside my guts. Why wouldn’t the person identify themselves, unless they didn’t want me to know who they were and subsequently be able to contact them in return?

“Thanks, Zoe. I’ll speak to her now,” I said curtly.

“I’ll walk with you. I was about to go back that way anyway.” With a simpering smile, she joined me on the way to the nurses station, and I tried my best to ignore the inviting side-eyed glances she kept throwing at me. I couldn’t stand when women tried to flirt with me anymore. There was only one woman I was interested in, and it certainly wasn’t Zoe.

Halfway to the station, my phone began to chime loudly. My heart plummeted. That particular sound could only mean one thing, and suddenly, the odd feeling from earlier made perfect sense.

Slipping my phone out of my pocket, I clicked it on and stared at the screen, immediately confirming that my worst nightmare had come true. Someone had breached my security system. It was probably the same person who called the hospital earlier, and they did that to make sure I’d be indisposed while they broke into my place.

Shit. Celeste….

My heart racing, I clicked into the app that let me remotely view the footage from the security cameras I had set up around the exterior of the house. There were two angles: some cameras faced the house, and others faced outwards. It was grainy and black and white, but from the front-facing footage, I could see a dark car right near the porch and a man standing near the front door with a gun. He’d just kicked the door in, which must’ve been what triggered the alarm.

I had no idea who the hell the guy was, but this obviously wasn’t fucking good. If Celeste didn’t hide in time, he’d find her. She’d have gotten a bit of a head start when the power went out along with the alarm—I set it up to do so—because she knew the house better than the intruder. She could possibly find a dark place to hide out in until I could get back, but I couldn’t bank on that. She might not even want to hide.

I took off down the hall as fast as my legs could carry me.

“Dr. Magnusson?” Zoe called after me. “Don’t you want to talk to Glenda?”

“Sorry! Got a family emergency,” I called back to her by way of explanation before racing out the door and heading for the main exit.

As I dashed through the wet parking lot, my legs felt like they were made of lead. I had to get to my girl, but she was still so far out of reach, and no matter how fast I tried to run, it felt like it was never enough, as if I were trying to run through heavily-sinking quicksand.

Finally, I made it to my car and gunned it out of the lot. I left my phone on the passenger seat, screen switched on so I could see what was happening on the live security feed as I weaved my way through traffic on the way out of the city. I was lucky enough to get mostly green lights, but when I finally reached a red, I leaned over and took a closer look while I waited.

A second man had joined the first one at the front of the house, presumably after casing the rest of the place. The men put their heads close together for a minute, seemingly discussing their next move. If I had to guess, I’d say they were cops or FBI, but that didn’t necessarily mean they were.

One of them finally went into the house. Through the windows on the screen, I could see the glow of his flashlight moving throughout the dark rooms, checking them out one by one.

Fuck!

I stepped on the gas and screeched my way through the intersection, but it didn’t matter how fast I went or if I ignored every damn light. Even though I’d been speeding along the frustratingly potholed roads for ten minutes now, I was still twenty miles away from home, and by the time I got back, Celeste might be gone.

I gritted my teeth. Please don’t take her. Don’t fucking take her, I repeated silently in my head as I finally turned onto the main road leading down to my property south-west of the city. I drove in silence, my heart dropping every time I turned my head to glance at my phone.

When I was still fifteen miles away, I saw Celeste on the footage for the first time. She was by the front door, talking to the two men. They appeared to be comforting her, patting her on the shoulder and checking her out for injuries. Then she turned and went back inside for some reason. Two more miles down the road and she was back outside and willingly getting into their car, or so it seemed.

“No! Don’t fucking go with them!” I shouted pointlessly, slamming my hands down on the steering wheel.

But of course she did. She’d made it very clear she wanted to get the hell away from me, and now she was apparently being offered a free ride out of the place. She wouldn’t turn that down, no matter who was offering.

I pounded my hands on the steering wheel again as I watched the car pull out of view on the footage. By the time I got back there, they’d be long gone. The cameras only had views of the house and its very close surrounds, so I had no way of seeing which way they went once they turned out of the long driveway.

Adrenaline spiked in my system, and my chest hurt like hell from my quick and heavy breathing. All I was doing was driving, speeding along a dark backroad, but it felt like I was running a fucking marathon.

The irrational, hopeful part of my brain told me this was all some sort of terrible nightmare—I could wake up to find myself napping in the doctor’s lounge, and when I went home Celeste would still be there. The logical part of me knew it was an impossible, ridiculous fantasy, and that was confirmed ten minutes later when I tore down my driveway to find the dark car gone and the front door swinging wide and ominously open.

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