Page 60 of Wicked Love
I needed to get out of here, to clear my head and make sure I wasn’t freaking myself out over nothing. I switched off the light and walked out, past the others to the entry room, right outside into the fresh air.
As the breeze washed over me, not really all that fresh with the whiffs of asphalt and car exhaust but better than inside, I let out a shaky breath. Dragged another in. Let it out again.
The things I’d found might mean nothing at all. They could all have been part of the staging. There could be legit operations happening in that place that had nothing to do with Doom’s Seed or his illegal shipments.
But...
Before I had to follow that thought to its conclusion, the door opened. Maddie eased out and looked me over, her face tight with concern.
“Hey, are you okay?”
I opened my mouth and closed it again. I didn’t know how to answer that question.
“I’m not sure. I—some of the stuff here—”
As I grappled with my words, Maddie touched my arm, her eyes softening. “Whatever’s the matter, you can tell me about it.”
I knewthat. I knew how strong the woman standing next to me was. The problem was how much I wanted to admit to myself.
“The other room,” I said finally. “It’s set up like an operating theater. There were a bunch of pills—some of them the same kind I’ve taken since my transplant. And there was a bag of the stuff they use to store organs…”
My gut clenched up again with another jab of nausea. Maddie gripped my arm more firmly even as her eyes widened. “That is strange, but they have set this place up to look like a medical facility. They could have chosen to have those around for any number of reasons. Anyway, it has nothing to do withyou.”
She sounded so certain that I almost believed her. Almost.
I rubbed my hand over my hair. “I’m just getting a bad feeling that there’s something worse going on than we’ve even started to suspect.” Worse than I wanted to imagine.
Maddie held my gaze. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out like we have so far. I think that—”
She cut herself off when a SUV pulled into the narrow lot a few spots farther down than Beckett’s. Its glossy black shell held tinted windows that hid all view of the people within—until the back door swung open and a slim, blond woman in a posh dress-suit and sunglasses stepped out.
A sense of recognition hit me in that first glimpse, ricocheting through my brain. My mind was already starting to resist the idea rising up from my memories when the woman took off her sunglasses, and I couldn’t deny it.
I was staring at my mom—what I had to imagine my mom would have looked like if she’d been alive for the past decade. Or else some mysterious identical twin I’d never known about. There were more lines at the corners of her eyes and lips and a few strands of gray in that golden-blond hair, but those dark eyes, that gently sloped nose, that hint of amusement in her quiet smile…
My heart had stopped. When the woman stepped toward me, it started beating again in a heavy, erratic rhythm. My throat closed up. I couldn’t speak.
Her smile widened as she reached me. “Logan,” she said with so much familiar warmth that the back of my eyes started to burn. That was her voice too, smooth and crisp.
She reached out to pat my shoulder, and I registered as if from a great distance away that the hand she’d pressed against me wasn’t real flesh. She had a prosthetic attached to her forearm, the false skin a slightly artificial peachy shade that didn’t quite match the rest.
On her left arm. Her left hand—the hand we’d buried in Mom’s coffin because it was the only part of her remains we’d been able to recover after the gas main explosion.
Maddie had gone still beside me—how much because she could recognize Mom too from the few pictures she’d seen and how much because ofmyreaction to this woman, I had no idea.
My voice came out in a croak. “Mom?” And Maddie stiffened even more.
My thoughts were spinning in circles. This couldn’t be possible. None of this made sense. How could my mother bealive? Where had she been all this time?
“I’m so proud of you, Logan,” Mom said, beaming at me. “Seeing how determined and clever you’ve become has been amazing to watch. But this game needs to end here.”
Before I could process those words, her expression darkened. Her prosthetic hand whipped from me to Maddie, the fingers closing hard around Maddie’s wrist. She yanked Maddie toward her—and pulled out a pistol with her regular hand, pointing the muzzle right at Maddie’s forehead.
A choked sound burst out of Maddie. “What are you—”
“Quiet,” my mother said sharply, rapping the muzzle of the gun against Maddie’s temple. My arm had been rising to reach for her, but both Maddie and I froze at that gesture.
“Mom,” I rasped. “You can’t—”
