Williams slipped his finger across the touchscreen on his phone and stood as still as a rock. Stanley watched his Director, awaiting orders. When they came, Stanley wasn’t surprised, nor did he ask any questions. He simply obeyed.
“Bring the flight attendant to me. I need to let off some of my—vexation.”
Jaimie was finishing her preparation of the coffee tray and waiting for the coffee beans to finish grinding in the machine when a massive figure of a man yanked back the velvet red curtain separating the galley kitchen from the passenger cabin. She spun to face the figure, confusion dancing in those perfect eyes as she looked up at Stanley. She didn’t even have time to scream before his giant hands were wrapped around her nose and mouth. The sounds of her insignificant struggle were drowned by the coffee grinder.
Stanley released her face when he felt her starting to hang as dead weight in his ample arms. Thinking how proud he was of himself, he carefully shut off the coffee grinder and dragged the body down the aisle as an offering to his Director. He sat her body in an empty leather seat beside the doctor.
As for Williams himself, he was methodically laying out the content of the surgical bag he carried with him for just such occasions.
“Now, my dear, allow me to examine you,” he said as he lifted a syringe to her eye and pulled her lid open.
Jaimie watched a droplet of the liquid at the needle’s tip hang mesmerizingly still and knew in her heart she would never see white sandy beaches. Not without eyes.
Chapter 39 Down
Creed was on his seventeenth mile according to the pedometer he ignored on his wristwatch. He’d been running at full speed for the past hour, trying to pound away the image of Meg’s beautiful dark eyes grazing over him with indifference. That’s what killed. He went from holding her in his arms, whispering devotions and hearing her purr against his chest, the promise ring catching moonlight in its gold…to cold indifference. Then she was gone.
His body ached from the punishment he had been putting himself through. He could handle that pain. He could just switch it off like Meg had showed him he could do all those months ago.
Back when she loved me.
His gift.
He groaned at the thought.
The pain ripping his heart in jagged shards was killing him.
He wasn’t able to let her go.
Ever.
She was the love of his life and the girl he wanted to grow old with.
Earlier, Creed had just found his stride, legs pumping rhythmically, when an elderly couple caught his eye. They were shuffling through the park, taking in an evening stroll together. He nearly burst into tears at the sight. The gentleman wore a brown fedora and a scarf was tied around his wrinkled neck. The woman’s silver hair hung down her back in a single braid. She wore a hand-knitted cap pulled over her ears; her matching scarf billowed behind her with the breeze. They were holding gloved hands as they probably had for the last fifty years. They looked at one another and smiled, wrinkles creasing each of their faces. But the look in their eyes was absolute devotion with a glint of humor. Creed swallowed hard when they shared a mischievous grin at something he said. They must have had countless private jokes after all their shared memories.
Gone.
She just walked out the door and never came back.
If it weren’t for Evan’s claim that she’d been captured by Arkdone’s people, Creed would have sworn her reasons for disappearing had everything to do with not wanting to be a part of them anymore.
However much logic he tried to throw at what happened, he just couldn’t make sense of it.
That night he had to make the toughest decision of his life. Leave with the Winter family or stay and look for Meg. In that split second he did what he knew to be the right thing. He flew from the room and ran down the path in the direction he saw her leave just twenty minutes before. He wasn’t two-hundred yards away from the motel room when his sharp night vision caught a glimmer of metal in the leaves on the ground. He knew what it was before he even touched it. Reaching down, he grabbed the metal and held it in front of him. There, dangling in his hand by one of the wires was Meg’s MP3 and headphones. Holding them up to his nose, Creed could smell her scent—lilies and strawberries—all over them.
He didn’t have time to dwell on it at the time. Not when his sharp hearing caught the squealing of tires up the road. The rev of an engine confirmed it. He was already running back to the SUV loading up with the Winter family.
“I hear them coming, MOVE!” He pushed Andrews out of the driver’s seat and yanked the truck in reverse. They sped away from the motel just in time to see, from across the water, the silent caravan of police vehicles hurrying to the rooms they’d just left.