The line goes quiet, and I hang up. Michael was right; they are both safe. But for how long? How long before they’re not?
I slip out of the blood bank, but not without being spotted by one of the nurses. It’s Grace. She sees me, out of scrubs with my key card gripped in between my teeth and my purse bulging with stolen bodily fluids. She asks me how I am, concerned for me after the smash; she then eyes my bag, gives me a warm smile and heads off on her rounds. I have no idea if I’ve been busted or not, and if I have, whether Grace will rat me out. Theft from the hospital is a very serious offense. You can’t take one analgesic for a simple headache without being held accountable. There’s paperwork documenting every single pill, bandage, bedpan and milligram of blood in this place; at some point, and some point very soon, someone is going to notice the missing blood and a lot of questions will be asked. There’s a real possibility that Grace will recall seeing me leaving the blood bank and will inform the relevant people. There’s nothing I can do about it now, though. It’s a problem I’m going to have to deal with at a later date.
Michael pulls up outside the hospital and the passenger side door is already opening before he stops the car. “Get in,” he tells me. He flinches when he sees the state I’m in.
“There are cuts all over your face,” he advises me.
“Really? Oh, I hadn’t noticed.” I yank the seatbelt across me—wearing one earlier is probably the only reason I’m alive right now—and shove it viciously into the clip, sending a stab of pain through my sore arm. “Being in a car accident will do that to you, I suppose. Where is he? How the hell did he end up stabbed? And tell me one more time that my parents aren’t going to get dragged into this any further.”
Michael’s a pro driver; he slings the car through the bend, drifting it like someone who’s had to do it before. Many times. “Your parents are one hundred percent safe, Sloane. I swear it personally. And I’m taking you to Zeth right now. He got himself stabbed by Charlie’s woman. Killed herself apparently, but thought it would be wise to try and take Zee with her.”
“What? Why? Why the hell would she do that?”
Michael just shrugs, scowling out at the road. I don’t press. I grip hold of the edge of the seat. I do try and get more information out of him about Zeth’s injury—how deep is the wound? What angle? Where exactly in his abdomen? What kind of knife?—but all he will say is that I don’t need to worry. It’s all being taken care of.
I find out what he means twenty minutes later when he pulls into the dockyard and parks the car in front of an industrial-looking building—single story, with high windows and a single entrance to the side. It looks like a storage facility.
“Go let yourself in. I can’t leave the car here,” Michael tells me.
“Let myself in? What—”
“You have a key, Ms. Romera, remember? Zeth had me hand deliver it myself. Have you lost it?”
I’m transported back to the hospital, to the day Mikey the intern came to advise me there was someone waiting for me. Michael had given me the note and the key from Zeth…to Zeth’s home. “This…this is where he lives?”
“Were you expecting a McMansion?”
Maybe I was expecting something a little more salubrious-looking given the property where Zeth held his party. But this, this actually makes a lot more sense. “No. Just surprised there aren’t any armed guards is all.”
Michael grunts, lips pulling tight. “I’m about as close as you’re gonna get.”
I get out of the car and locate my keys inside my bag. The small key still sits there, thus far unused; I select it and open the padlock, which is currently keeping an industrial chain locked through two massive steel handles. I have to throw all of my body weight behind me to get the eight-foot-high door to slide back, and my injured arm sings out in pain. I pull it back and head inside, surprised by what I find. Not a hollow shell of a building, filled with rats and empty packing crates as I’d expected. It’s a fully renovated home. One I don’t have time to explore right now. I follow the sound of voices and end up in a large, open-plan space which is lit by three high-powered lamps, each directed at the prone form of Zeth where he lies on a tall, wooden bench. Lacey stands to one side, chewing on her thumbnail, arm folded tightly across herself. The moment she sees me, she runs, slamming into me, throwing her arms around my middle.
“Sloane, I don’t…I don’t like him. I don’t trust him. Please. Please.”
The him she’s referring to is a large, bird-like man with his dirty blond hair tied up in a top-knot, hovering over Zeth. His jacket is rumpled but appears to be a fairly clean white. He looks up at me, peering over the top of his hospital-grade protective glasses, and gives me a curt nod.
“You’ll be her, then,” he says.