Page 47 of Freaks
Well, well. There weren’t many guys wondering around the hospital in a five-thousand-dollar tux, I was willing to bet, but somehow I’d managed to go unseen. My lucky fucking day. Strolling slowly down the hall, I came to a stop outside exam four, positioning myself opposite the drawn privacy curtain, slipping my hands inside my pockets. Should have brought my cell after all. Michael’s incessant calling had been driving me to the point of insanity but having it on me now would have been useful. A prop I could have used to make myself look busy as I hovered in the bustling corridor.
Instead, I picked up a pamphlet from a rack fixed to the wall and pretended to read it as I listened carefully to what was taking place in the cubicle ahead. The stab wound Gracie had described didn’t sound particularly dangerous, or even that fucking interesting, but that didn’t matter. I just wanted to hear the sound of Sloane’s voice; the woman could read from an encyclopedia and I’d still have found myself enthralled.
Jesus fucking Christ.
I was fucking crazy.
I’d lost my goddamn mind.
Sloane was the epitome of professionalism when she spoke: cool, calm, and collected. “Looks like you’ve had quite an evening. How on earth did you end up with a shard of glass stuck in your abdomen, Ms. Lafferty?”
My hand made a fist, crushing the pamphlet inside it.What? What did she just say?
Lafferty?
The world was not that small.
The world was not that fucking unbelievable.
It couldn’tbe her.
“It’s a long story,” a tired female voice said.Sera’svoice.
No fucking way.
I’d shown Charlie the staged picture of the woman, laying in a jumbled, bloody mess at the foot of those stairs as I’d promised I would. I’d gotten into the Camaro and driven at breakneck speeds back to Seattle, and I hadn’t given the priest and his girlfriend another fucking thought. Actually, that wasn’t strictly true. I had thought abouther. I’d figured she’d wind up dead sooner rather than later, even if I wasn’t the one to complete the task. These things were inevitable in the end. And now, here she was at St. Peter’s, being treated for a stab wound by Sloane fucking Romera.
Of all the hospitals in all the world…
Of all the doctors…
I didn’t believe in fate, kismet or karma. They were made up concepts designed to control people or give them false hope, but even I had to admit that this was seriously fucking strange. Gracie said the patient’s boyfriend was up-tight, which meant that, not only was Sera here, but so was Fix.
I had better things to do than tangle with the likes of him tonight. Be better if I just left. Went to the party and forgot about Sloane for the night. Better yet, it would be fortuitous for all concerned if I forgot about Sloane once and for all. Banished her from my mind for good. I needed to go to the apartment and pick out a girl. The prettiest, sexiest, wildest girl, wearing the least amount of clothes. If I fucked the living daylights out of that kind of woman, I’d be able to finally let this thing go. The lie jarred me down to the sockets of my teeth. It was an outright lie that I’d told to myself—the stupidest kind of lie there was. I wasn’t going to be able to let this thing go. Never in a million years.
I dropped the screwed-up pamphlet onto the ground, my blood hot and irritated in my veins. There would still be plenty of booze left by the time I reached the party, and I was going to fucking need it. I would drown myself in whiskey, glass after glass of the burning liquid, until I couldn’t remember my own name anymore, and it would be a fucking relief.
Sera sighed heavily and began to explain how she’d come to find herself in the emergency room: her friend had lost her temper and attacked her in her home. She’d smashed the shower screen in her bathroom and had stabbed her with one of the pieces.
Sometimes, the explanations people gave to doctors were the unfortunate truth, but ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, they were falsehoods, made up to protect the person who’d hurt them. Didn’t sound like Sera was making shit up right now, though.
I set my jaw as I slowly turned away. I’d taken one step when the curtain snapped back, and suddenly Sloane was standing in front of me, scribbling something down on Sera’s chart, the tip of her pen flying over the paper, leaving a string of indecipherable black scrawl in its wake.
“Oh. You must be Sera’s boyfriend,” she said stiffly. She didn’t look up at me. “You can go in and wait with her, but she’s on a lot of pain meds. She might be a little out of it. I’m just going to find some instruments so I can investigate the wound. Be back in a moment.” She rushed off, head down, concentrating on her clipboard. I hadn’t even needed to speak to her.
“You havegotto be fucking kidding me.” Sera was propped up on the bed, wearing a surgical gown. Her face was pale and spattered with blood, hair all over the place. Her lips were a little blue, but other than that she seemed fine. Aside from the gaping hole in her stomach, that was. “What the fuck,” she hissed. “I knew Fix shouldn’t have trusted you.”
“Calm down. I’m not here for you.” I stepped into the cubicle, rocking my head from side to side, trying to crack my neck in order to rid myself of the inexplicable knot of pain that had developed there during the past twenty seconds.
Sera’s pupils were blown and dilated so wide, her entire iris was almost obscured by the black. “Carver’s been taken care of,” she informed me. “We dealt with her before she…” She visibly battled with the word ‘her’, struggling to say it without shaking.
“Awomanhired half the hitmen in the country to ex you out?”
Slowly, Sera nodded her head. Her eyes were laced with a penetrating, deep kind of pain that told a tale of its own. Likely, she’d known this woman all along. Carver had been close to her. Someone she hadn’t suspected.
“Yes. And there’s no point in hurting me now. You won’t get paid for it,”
“I alreadygotpaid for it, if you’ll remember. And I gave the priest my word,” I snarled. “I wouldn’t break that.”
