Page 52 of Black Hearts

18

Celeste

Yawning,I shielded my eyes from the fluorescent lights above my hospital bed. I’d just woken up after a fourteen hour sleep, and I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so well-rested.

Alex was in a chair at my bedside, and he leaned forward. “How are you feeling?”

I smiled. “Good. I feel good.”

After the police and fire department workers showed up at the rural property where the Circle mansion once stood, I’d been taken to the hospital with all the kids and maids. I wasn’t injured—not like the others, anyway. All I had were a few fading scratches and bruises from when Dwyer held me captive a couple of weeks ago—but rescue workers insisted I be kept for a while to monitor my physical and mental health after my ordeal.

The police had questioned me, and I’d told them the same story the others would when they were asked: The Circle kidnapped me a few months ago, after discovering that I was beginning to remember things about my father’s involvement with them. They’d kept me as a captive in the mansion with the intent of torturing me and killing me one day. I hadn’t interacted much with the kids or maids, as I’d been imprisoned in a small room alone for most of my time there (this would explain why I didn’t know most of their names, if anyone asked).

On the night of the inferno, I’d been sitting at my window when I saw an unfamiliar man arrive on the mansion grounds. He’d rescued me and all the other innocents and sent us outside before detonating an enormous bomb, blowing up the mansion. The explosion killed him with all the Circle members, and it was only because of his sacrifice that the rest of us were alive. None of us knew who this man was—we described him as blond and slightly overweight with a big nose; the complete opposite of Alex—but he told us he was the Heartbreaker, and he’d come to save us all.

There wouldn’t be any discrepancies in terms of the number of bodies found, despite our fictional addition. I knew that when massive explosions occurred, bodies were often fragmented to the point that authorities couldn’t be sure how many people died in the blast. So as far as the investigators would ever know, the Heartbreaker died in the explosion, and his bones were shattered into a million tiny pieces like the others. His remains would never be found, but they’d know he was there based on our stories.

Alex hadn’t been around for any of the questioning, as he hadn’t been on the scene when the police showed up the other night. In order for the story to work, we’d sent him away, and he’d hiked back to his car on the other side of the nature reserve and simply driven home. Now he was here at the hospital playing the role of my concerned boyfriend, and the police were none the wiser.

“Celeste?”

I glanced over at the door, and my heart lifted when I saw who was standing there. “Samara!” I squealed.

She hurried over and wrapped her arms around me in a bear hug. Warmth radiated through me as she squeezed me tight. “I can’t believe it. You’re really here,” she murmured huskily through her tears of joy.

We stayed like that for several minutes, just hugging and touching each other’s faces, so happy to finally be reunited. Then Samara pulled back and gave me a questioning glance, her head tilted toward Alex.

My stomach lurched. I hated lying to my best friend, especially when she’d never given up on finding me, but I knew lies were occasionally necessary to keep things smoothed over. I wasn’t ashamed of Alex or my love for him, but I couldn’t imagine any of my friends truly understanding my feelings, considering how we’d started (along with the fact that he was a serial killer). And so I held back the truth and told Samara the same thing I planned on telling everyone else.

“This is Alex,” I said. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about him before now. We were seeing each other for a few months before I was taken, and I wanted to keep it quiet until I knew exactly how we felt. See, he was my mother’s doctor when she was sick, and we were worried what people might think with the age difference and him dating an ex-patient’s daughter and all. But still, I should’ve told you.”

She waved her hand. “I’ll be mad about that later. I’m just so glad you’re back.” She burst into a fresh set of relieved tears. “It’s really nice to meet you, Alex,” she added a moment later, wiping her cheeks as she glanced over at him again. “I promise I’m not usually this emotional.”

He smiled gently. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Samara. It’s great to finally meet you too.”

I grabbed her hand. “I know you never gave up on me. Not even for a second,” I said softly. I swallowed hard, and then I told her the other half of the story I’d told the police—the part I’d concocted to honor Jason West’s memory. He never gave up the search for me after Samara begged him to find me, and he’d paid for that integrity with his life. I blamed myself for his death. “Agent West told me.”

Samara’s brows knitted. “What do you mean?”

“He found me at the mansion a few weeks ago. He figured out the Circle existed and tracked me down, and he said he’d been looking for me because of you. But… the Circle caught him before he could save me and the others. I saw Dwyer—he was one of them—shoot him in the head, and then he stuffed him into a car so he could dump his body far away from the mansion.”

Samara’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my god. Agent West actually found you?”

“Yes. He was a total hero, Samara.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “He’ll be so happy to know what he did.”

I tilted my head. “You mean his family will be happy to know?”

She frowned, and then her eyes widened. “Oh. Of course… you wouldn’t know this yet. He’s alive!”

A chill shot down my spine, and I felt incredibly dizzy all of a sudden. As amazing as it was to hear that West had somehow survived his horrific injury, my entire story hinged on my belief that he was dead. I’d wanted to make him look like a hero in some way (seeing as I believed he was) without implicating Alex in anything. But if West was alive, then everyone would know the story was a lie. He never went to the mansion, he knew Alex was the Heartbreaker, and he also knew that Alex had me the whole time, not the Circle.

I glanced over at Alex. Unlike me, he didn’t seem scared at all. His expression was completely tranquil, as if he’d already accepted that he might eventually go down for the things he’d done.

I swallowed hard and looked back at my best friend. “He survived?”

Samara nodded fervently. “It’s unbelievable, right? Like you said, he was shot in the head at point blank range. No one survives that!” She wrinkled her brows. “Usually, I mean. But apparently five percent of people who get shot in the head actually do survive.”

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