I watch as her face slowly starts to turn purple. And Idon’t ease up one bit.
“What the hell is going on here?”
Unlike Harper, I don’t move my body even a millimeter off of her at the sound of the distraction. As a surgeon, my concentration is excellent. But with everything going on, I hadn’t noticed somebody else enter the basement. I blink my eyes in the dark room, and after a second, Brady comes into focus.
It takes him a few beats to realize what’s going on. As he sees Philip in the chair with his left hand missing, Brady’s face turns green. Maybe he liked slasher movies, but it’s different in real life. I know that, but maybe he didn’t.
“Oh Christ,” he gasps. He takes a couple of deep breaths, obviously trying not to lose his lunch.
“Brady…” I’m realizing now how this must look. It looks exactly the way Harper wanted it to look. There’s a man tied to a chair in my basement with a hand missing, and I’m the one choking a girl on the floor.
He notices the gun on the floor and reaches for it. I have a feeling he’s never handled the gun in his life, based on the way he fumbles with it, but I believe he’s capable of shooting it if he wanted to.
And now he’s pointing it at me.
“Get up,” he orders me.
I do what he says. But whatever Harper gave me is hitting me hard. I feel like my legs can’t quite support me. It takes me three tries to get to my feet.
“Thank God you came!” Harper is coughing and sobbing now as she clutches her throat. “She’s crazy! She was going to kill us both!”
She sounds so believable. He already has his doubts about me. He’s going to think I was holding Harper and Philip captive down here. That’s what he’s going to tell the police when they arrive.
“Brady.” My voice is shaking—I think my speech might be slurred. I can’t even tell anymore. “She did this. She tied him up down here and she… shedruggedme.” My voice cracks. “You have to believe me. You know me. I would never…”
I can see the hesitation on his face. There’s so much more I want to say, but I don’t know if there’s any chance he’ll believe me. And my brain feels like mush. I want to keep fighting, but I’m not sure I can.
But then Brady swivels the gun and points it at Harper. “Get back down on the floor.”
“Me?” she squeaks. “But Nora is the one—”
“I saidget down.” He shakes the gun at her, and her face turns pale. “I already called the police and they’ll be here any minute.”
Harper gets down on the floor, and so do I, because my legs won’t support me anymore. I get on my hands and knees, my vision swimming in and out. “Brady,” I mumble.
And then before I can get out another word, I lose consciousness.
Chapter 46
When I wake up, I’m all alone in a blindingly white hospital room.
My head is pounding and my mouth feels like I’ve been licking sandpaper. It takes some amount of effort to pry my eyes open. I noticed there’s an IV in my left arm, dripping the contents of a bag of normal saline into my vein.
I also notice that I don’t have any handcuffs on. My leg isn’t shackled to the bed. So I take that as a positive sign.
I search my bed for some sort of call button. I want to know what’s going on. What happened after I passed out in the basement? Where is Harper?
I look up at the clock ticking on the wall. It reads two o’clock. Based on the fact that it’s pitch black outside, I’m assuming that means it’s two in the morning.
I press my thumb firmly into the call button, and I wait for a nurse to come. I try to sit up in bed, but the pounding in my head intensifies. God, I feel awful.
After a few minutes, a woman comes into my room in flower print scrubs. She’s got an ID badge dangling fromher neck that has the name Paula printed in big black letters. She gives me a perfunctory smile. “So you’ve woken up, have you, Dr. Davis?”
I appreciate the professional courtesy, but I don’t want to be Dr. Davis right now. “Nora,” I correct her.
“Nora,” she repeats.
“Am I…” I swallow even though it hurts. “Under arrest?”
