A Harmless Little Game (Harmless #1)

 

For the next few minutes, I wake up and pass out, wake up and pass out. My body rumbles like it’s on a cart, then I’m in the air, doors closing, the distant sound of a siren filling my ears. Someone’s holding my hand. Then they’re not. The babble of voices and crackle of intercoms makes it hard for me to breathe. To sleep.

 

To make it all stop.

 

I feel a pinch in my arm and open my eyes. Everything is white. White curtains behind a doctor wearing white. The lights in the ceiling are bright white. My vision blurs to cotton. Warmth floods through my arm and I look down to find a tube feeding medicine in me.

 

Not again.

 

The heat in my arm creeps up to my chest, until my heart relaxes, my chest releasing, and I give in to the white and black.

 

I just give in.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 35

 

 

 

 

 

The next thing I remember are bodies, standing, so many voices in quiet, worried tones. They’re not worried about me. I can tell. They’re worried about other people and how they relate to me. It’s like sitting in on a meeting at Daddy’s office.

 

As I crack my eyelids, I see that’s exactly what this is.

 

A meeting in my hospital. About me.

 

Spin control with IVs.

 

A smooth, soft hand holds mine, and I turn my face toward the source of the support. Mom. She’s chattering animatedly with Anya, who is scribbling on a clipboard while juggling a smartphone.

 

“Mom?” I croak out. My hand gets squeezed in response, and I groan. It hurts. She drops it.

 

“I’m sorry, Lindsay. Did I hurt you? You’re so delicate right now.”

 

“Hospital?” I whisper.

 

“Yes. Yes, you’re in the hospital. You gave us quite the scare!” She squeezes my hand again. I want to tell her that it hurts, but I can’t. She smells like sweat and coconut. I’ll bet I interrupted her tennis lesson.

 

“I’ve got the major networks under control. We’re feeding them all the easy information,” someone says from behind Mom. “We can’t do anything about the smaller websites and social media, though.” Marshall. That’s his name, right? Tall, older blonde guy who doesn’t even look at me.

 

“Any pictures or video from the scene?” That’s Daddy’s voice.

 

“So far, no. Thankfully, the accident happened on a quiet stretch of highway. Drew thinks there weren’t more than two or three cars that drove past before Lindsay was transported and the tow truck took her car away.”

 

“Thank God.”

 

Accident? Accident? That wasn’t an accident. I want to scream the truth at them. My mouth won’t open. My blood starts to pump so hard it feels like I’ll explode. My head is going to pop like a zit. Didn’t Drew tell them the brakes stopped working? Didn’t he—

 

“Let’s keep the brake malfunction out of the hands of the media for as long as we can,” Daddy says softly behind Mom. My eyes are closed, but I can tell he’s off to the side, right by the door. “Is someone checking out the car?”

 

“Local police tried to claim jurisdiction, but we’ve got this.”

 

That’s Drew.

 

I make a sound, a groan—anything to get their attention.

 

It works.

 

Mom turns to me with a look of consternation, her eyebrows down. This is notable because Botox has made a genuine frown impossible for her. My condition must be serious.

 

“It wasn’t an accident,” I groan, needing for them to understand. If they think I crashed the car on purpose, it just feeds the frenzy inside me. I’m in a hospital bed, and every part of me hurts. But it would be worse if they thought this was my fault.

 

I can’t let them think this was my fault.

 

“I know it wasn’t an accident, Lindsay,” says Drew. His voice is fierce. Protective. There is a steel inside the tone he uses that says, I’ve got your back.

 

No one has had my back. No one. Tears tingle behind my eyelids. Breathing becomes difficult. Not because I’m injured, but because emotion takes over. Drew believes me.

 

Someone believes me. Do you know how rare that is?

 

“We know from Drew what happened,” Daddy says to me. His voice is a mixture of assurance and shrewdness. If I open my eyes, I’ll find him watching me very carefully. Daddy knows how to tease out the information he needs to assess a situation.

 

And then act appropriately on that information.

 

All I am right now is a source. A source first.

 

Daughter second.

 

“The brakes stopped working,” I hiss. The words don’t want to come out of my mouth. They feel like tiny pieces of rock, rolling down a steep cliff over my tongue and teeth and through my lips. “I tried. I kept pushing the pedal, but it wouldn’t stop. The car wouldn’t stop.”