Page 31 of Broken Minds

Chapter Thirteen

Bright morning sunlightstreamed through the bedroom window.

The weather was good, and that pleased me. Today, I’d take Jolie off the island on the boat, and the last thing we needed was a rough ocean to navigate.

Swinging my legs off the bed, I padded over to my adjoining bathroom to relieve myself and splash some water on my face. I dressed casually then left to go downstairs.

Halfway down the staircase, I paused.

The house was still and silent. No aroma of coffee filtered through the air.

I frowned. Had Loretta come down sick again? She’d seemed well enough the previous night. Or was she upset with how I’d spoken to her about the invasion of my privacy and had taken herself off in a huff? I didn’t expect that kind of behavior from her. She was my employee, and she seemed to have forgotten her role in my household.

I hoped she’d hadn’t tried hacking into my computer again. I had misjudged her previously, and I was concerned I’d done so for a second time. I might have changed my passwords on everything yesterday, but there was always the chance she’d had a way of finding them out again. For all I knew, she’d set up cameras of her own and had watched every key I’d tapped as I’d sat at my computer, and then sneaked back while I was sleeping to log back in. She might have logged onto my accounts, transferred my money, and then left the island on the boat I’d planned to move Jolie on.

Convinced that was exactly what had happened, I hurried to my office. Everything looked just as I’d left it, but that meant nothing. I slid into my chair and fired up the computer. Relief allowed me to breathe as my password was accepted—so if she had been on, she hadn’t bothered to change it to block me out of my own computer.

Quickly, I opened the feed for the cameras to check on Jolie. Would she be awake—

“What the hell?”

What I saw on screen stopped my thoughts in their tracks. I leaned in, at first unsure of what I was seeing. The main part of the bedroom was empty, but there appeared to be two figures in the bathroom. One lay face down on the floor, while another had her back against the bathroom wall, her arms wrapped around her legs and her face buried in her knees. I recognized her honey-brown hair splayed over her arms and shoulders, hiding her face.

There was only one person the figure on the ground could be.

I shot to my feet, my chair crashing to the floor behind me. I always kept the keycard for the elevator on my person, so I raced out and used it to swipe the elevator open. The doors couldn’t open quickly enough, and I stepped inside the moment the gap was big enough to allow me to do so.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I slammed my fists against the metal walls of the car.

It moved down, and the doors opened. I threw myself into the room, my heart pounding.

“Jolie?” I stormed through the room, into the bathroom. “Jesus Christ.”

Ignoring Jolie for the moment, I crouched beside Loretta and pushed her over, so I could get a better look. The moment my palm made contact with her shoulder, I knew I was too late. Her skin was cold.

“Holy shit.”

Loretta’s eyes were wide and staring, her skin already a strange mottled white and purple. Dark marks circled her throat. To one side lay the Taser, and I noted how several prongs had been discharged.

How long had Jolie just been sitting there like that? From the coolness of Loretta’s skin, I assumed it must have been half the night.

I left the body to go to Jolie.

I placed my hand on her back, and she trembled beneath my palm.

She said something, but I didn’t catch it, her voice tiny.

“What did you say?”

Jolie lifted her face a fraction, but she didn’t meet my eye. She shook her head, tiny frantic movements over and over. “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”

“An accident? What the fuck happened, Jolie?”

But she continued to shake her head, almost like she was fitting. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to.”

I’d never seen her like this before. I wasn’t even totally sure she knew I was there. She was staring at something, some imaginary point in the distance, perhaps, trying to take away from the horror before her.

Seeing her like this tore me up inside. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.”

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