Page 37 of Play With Me

It was the last I heard from her. I followed them down the invisible path. Aaron Cortez, the head of the crime family, left the dirty work to his nephews and remained outside the building. He placed a cigarette between his lips and patted down his pockets, looking for a lighter. I had the urge to offer him a light, but that would have been careless. When he found one and lifted it, bringing the fire to the cigarette, I rose from the ground and came up behind him with my blade. I struck him in the side of his head.

His body fell to the ground. It wasn’t a hard hit, and I knew I didn’t have much time before he came to. I bound his feet with my rope, tied it at his ankles and knees, shifted him onto his side, and brought the rope up to his wrists behind his back and tied it there. I checked the time on my watch.

Four minutes.

Moments later, the sound of a machine gun ricocheted through the desert and I stilled.

Aaron Cortez woke, yanking at the rope with a grunt. I stuffed his mouth with a cloth before he could make any more noise, removed my gun, and pointed it at him. “Shut the fuck up.”

I kept my focus locked on the chapel entrance, and didn’t exhale until I saw Cameron carrying Kate out the front door. Brook came out next, dragging Mike Donaldson, Kate’s alleged half-brother and then Anna and Father John followed.

I rushed toward them, removing a water bottle from my side pocket in the process. As soon as I saw her face under the chapel’s dim light, I wanted to throw up. I tilted the bottle to her mouth. She took a few sips, and said, “It’s beautiful.”

“What is?” Cameron asked.

Her eyes were barely open, so I wasn’t sure how exactly she could see anything, and that’s when I realized that Kate was hallucinating.

“The Milky Way,” she replied.

Cameron let out a loud desperate yelp: “Hurry!”

Chapter 9

Brook

Iturned the corner and walked down the hospital hallway to where Lola was sitting in a chair. We’d been waiting for my brother to come out of Kate’s room for over an hour when I decided to go to the downstairs cafeteria. Now that I’d returned, I could feel an eerie tension in the air. The more time Cameron spent with the doctor going over Kate’s injuries and the surgeries she’d had, the more I worried for them both.

Lola leaned her head back against the wall. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was slow, as if she were sleeping. Except I knew she wasn’t. She was lost in her thoughts, somewhere far away, where I felt her slipping away. Since we’d come out of that crypt, Cameron carrying Kate’s limp body, Lola had become distant. I worried for her the most because she hid her pain so well. She’d been sitting there for hours. We all had been. I wasn’t even sure how many hours, but it was enough for Kate to have gone in and out of three surgeries.

Lola’s knees bounced and she cracked her knuckles. I hadn’t seen her eat or drink since last night, so I’d gone to the downstairs cafeteria and picked up a coffee and a sandwich. I knelt in front of her and passed her the cup, but she refused to take it.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You didn’t say anything on the flight over.”

“What’s there to say?” she shrugged. “There’s a possibility that Kate won’t make it. Even if she does, there was so much damage done, Brook.”

I’d seen it myself: a broken arm, leg, and possibly some ribs. Her face was swollen and bruised. Kate Black was barely recognizable, but if Lola thought she was at fault, she was wrong.

“You’re blaming yourself for this? Jesus, Lola. You brought in the head of a crime family. I think you’ve done more than enough.”

“Did you see how much she bled?” she asked, as if she hadn’t heard a word I’d said. Of course I saw how much Kate bled. Her face looked like she’d lost all the blood in her body. I didn’t even want to think about all the different reason why her inner thighs were streaming with blood. It was enough the doctor had already told Cameron that she’d miscarried.

“Kate would have wanted a baby. She’ll never get over this. It’s impossible to get over something like this.” There was an ache in Lola’s voice. I could feel her pain. It was the first time I could see some of her past reflected in her eyes, and it killed me that she understood Kate’s pain so well. Yet I couldn’t do anything, because she wouldn’t let me near her to comfort her.

“Cameron will make sure she gets therapy, but it still doesn’t make it your fault.” I tried to pass her the cup of coffee again, which she refused.

“What makes it my fault is that I let her be kidnapped in the first place.”

“Okay, you need to stop blaming yourself right now. You couldn’t have known that her boss was also her thought-to-be-dead brother. Come on. You’re good at what you do, but you’re not a psychic.”

“If I’d been there, I wouldn’t have let her go to the station on her own. Don’t you get it? I shouldn’t have left her. That’s it.”

My words didn’t seem to register with her.

“Look, Lola. What’s done is done. All you can do right now is—”

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