Left to Kill (Adele Sharp #4) - Blake Pierce Page 0,14

girl only stayed on her feet that long because she was made of tough stuff,” said the doctor. “Most people couldn’t have made it that far in the forest. Especially not for that long. Adrenaline kept her going. She’s lucky she found the highway when she did. If not, she would’ve died in some hole in that woods.”

Adele frowned. “That’s a morbid thought.”

“And yet true. Look, I have other patients. If there’s nothing else,” Dr. Samuel said, trailing off.

Adele glanced at her companions, but they remained quiet. The investigators bid farewell to the doctor and watched him leave, striding down the hall with lengthy steps that countered his aged looks.

Adele turned to Marshall. “You have the phone number for the girl’s parents?”

Marshall didn’t miss a beat. “In the US? With the time difference, it’s late enough in the day that you should be able to get them on the phone.”

Adele nodded in gratitude, and waited as Marshall flipped through her notebook, looking for the appropriate details.

The doorway the doctor had been standing in was still swinging shut, slowed by a spring mechanism above the frame. As the door closed, it cut off the line of sight into the room with the ventilator, and Amanda Johnson.

“Let’s find a break room so I can make that call,” said Adele, her mouth in a grim line once more.

***

Adele heard the quiet ringing of the phone. It felt strangely soothing—the cool metal pressed against her cheek, the quiet chirp like a nursery rhyme. She sat with one of her knees bumping against John’s long leg. He slouched in his chair, arms crossed, his eyes fixed on her.

Agent Marshall was once again standing. Adele wondered if the young agent ever tired. Marshall had shut the break room’s door behind her and closed the blinds for privacy.

Adele listened to the ringing.

She glanced down toward the number beneath her folded arm, handwritten on the torn piece of paper Marshall had handed her. Correct number. Perhaps she’d gotten the time zone wrong.

Another ring. Adele was about to shut the phone, when there came an interruption of static, and then a voice on the other end said, “Hello, who is this?”

The voice was alert, urgent.

“Hello, my name is Agent Sharp, I’m with Interpol. Is this Mr. Johnson?”

She heard a faint voice now, as if the phone had been lowered for a moment. “Honey, it’s Interpol; they’re on the line. Yes, right now. Hurry.”

Then the voice became louder again. “Sorry about the delay. We were walking the dog. Any update? Well—” A pause, and the man cleared his throat. “I imagine you’re calling about our daughter.”

Adele caught herself before she nodded, and said, crisply, “Yes. I’m sorry if there’s been any delay on our part. Your daughter is still alive, I wanted to lead with that—”

Before she could continue, she heard a quiet gasp on the other end. The second, fainter voice she could barely make out said, “Thank you, God. Thank you, dear Jesus.”

The first voice, Mr. Johnson’s, said, “That’s good to hear. Last we heard, they weren’t sure she was going to make it.”

Adele wrinkled her nose. She hadn’t realized she’d been designated to be the sole deliverer of news to the Johnson family. She supposed because she was American, it made sense the Germans had left it to her. She quickly switched tack, trying to take this new role in stride. “It’s still early days,” Adele said quickly. “She’s not in a good way. I’m not going to lie to you. They’re still not sure she’s going to fully recover.”

As she spoke, Adele felt her voice quaver. A slight fragmentation of sound—but one that caught her off guard all the same. Though she kept the phone raised, her brow furrowed. A swell of strange emotions was rising in her chest. Adele closed her eyes, trying to focus—but though Mr. Johnson was replying to her on the other end, she found it difficult to attend to his words.

Bleeding… Bleeding… Always bleeding…

A flash of an image—a dream, or a snapshot from an old photo—Adele hardly remembered. It came to her at night, usually. Her mother, mutilated, lying in a French garden. Dead. She remembered flying back to Germany to be with her father immediately following. She remembered the phone calls… much like this. Phone calls from nations away. Phone calls picking apart the most harrowing experience of their lives, interviewing—questioning. And at the end of it?

Nothing. Her mother still dead. The killer gone.

This time, the story couldn’t end with