that would keep all their asses out of trouble. He couldn’t worry about that right now. The bitch had made a fool of him. She had hurt him physically and stung his pride. He wasn’t going to stop until she was dead.
Find her.
Catch her.
Kill her.
* * *
BETH OPENED THE DOOR of the linen closet a tiny crack, watching him jerk open the emergency door down the hall and start down the stairs.
Him. She didn’t even know who he was. He had tried to kill her, and she didn’t know his name.
Crazy. As crazy as the doctors here sometimes called her. Not to her face, they were always gentle and kind to her face. But she had heard Pierce laugh and whisper behind her back.
She wasn’t crazy, and she wouldn’t let them put her to death like some rabid dog.
The man who had tried to kill her must have reached the second flight of stairs by now. She opened the linen-closet door and flew to the freight elevator around the corner. She punched the button for the basement.
Slow … The elevator was so slow. What if he found she wasn’t in the stairwell or the lobby and ran down to the basement? He could be waiting for her when the elevator door opened.
The elevator stopped.
She held her breath, bracing herself.
No one. The parking garage was brightly lit, but there were no security guards or parking attendants. Billy had told her that the area closed down at ten at night, and she should be safe.
Still, relief flooded her as she punched the elevator button to send it to the top floor before she left the elevator. She hadn’t been sure about anything. She ran down the concrete walk toward the door that led upstairs to the parking lot.
Unlocked, as Billy had told her it would be. One flight upstairs, then another unlocked door that opened to the rear grounds of the hospital. The hospital was built on the edge of a cliff above the sea, and she could hear the sound of the surf on the rocks below. Freedom was beckoning. Why not try to just keep on running?
No, Billy had told her that they would catch her if she took this way out.
Red herring, he had said. Be clever. Trust me.
But she was so afraid. Her hand instinctively reached up to clasp the gold key on her necklace. Help me …
But the key was only a symbol, and Billy was the only one who could help her now. Do exactly what he said.
She turned away from the cliff and back toward the corridor leading to the elevators. She deliberately left the door cracked open so that they would think she’d already left the hospital. Then she ran back toward the elevators.
Red herring. Go back upstairs to the third floor, where Billy would meet her. Billy would help her. Trust him …
* * *
RUN.
Billy had worked his magic. He had not asked questions, had not even let her speak. He had just grabbed her hand and pulled her from the corridor into the room. He had told her exactly what they would have to do to get her away, and they had done it. She had been too frantic to even be afraid. A few minutes after she entered the room, she was outside the gates of the hospital.
Then she was running across the manicured green lawns toward the woods.
Her heart was beating hard as she reached the shelter of the trees. No one was behind her. No one had seen her.
Free. Am I free? Will I ever be free? What the hell is free?
But she had to do everything Billy had told her to do. Make the call. She reached into her jacket pocket and drew out the prepaid phone Billy had given her and dialed the number he had given her. “I’m in the woods, Billy. I’m making my way toward that motel you told me about, where the Greyhound bus stops. I don’t think I was followed.” She drew a long breath. “You didn’t let me tell you, Billy. You were right. There was a man … he was going to kill me.”
“I told you that I thought it would be tonight after I overheard that last phone call. You should have believed me.”
“It was … hard. It didn’t make sense. But I did what you said about the pillows and everything.”
“But instead of running to me right away, you had to stick around and see for yourself. Thank