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“Kate will figure it out.” Her voice trembles, weak and hoarse, like it’s being dragged bloody over coals and sandpaper. “She’ll tell everyone it was you.”
“Didn’t you hear?” This one—this smile—is genuine. It lights up his face, a kid on Christmas morning. “She’s in a coma. Induced, sure, but after I’ve paid her a little visit, I doubt she’ll ever wake up. She’ll die, just as she should have the other night. It’s not too far-fetched, is it?” He muses aloud, toying with her. Even the Glock in his gloved hand starts to lower. He doesn’t point it directly at her on the floor, but just holds it aimlessly at his side. “Preston brought his registered firearm with him to the hospital, because of course all Preston ever wants to do is protect you.” He practically spits out the words and the dark look he throws at Preston’s slumped body over the side of the bed betrays him—betrays just how much Trevor can’t fucking stand Preston’s love for Billie.
He collects himself. A deep inhale that inflates his buff chest and he lolls his head back.
Billie snatches the moment, the weak hope that she might make it out of here alive. Her hands slap, loud, on the vinyl tiles. But her lower half, her bum leg, slows her down.
She drags herself for the most part, crawls herself across the room to the ajar door.
Her heart’s racing, she can hear it thumping in her ears, feel it pounding in her throat—but Trevor’s not worried, it seems.
The steps he takes behind her, following her, are slow and meandering.Lazy.
“You took Preston’s gun while he slept,” he thinks aloud, his words crawling after her, biting at her heels as she grabs onto the edge of the door and yanks it open. “But Preston wasn’t on your hit-list, was he? So you knocked him out. Gave yourself enough time…”
Billie’s breaths hitch into whimpered cries. Panic. Ice-cold panic burning her inside out. But it gives her the strength her body lacks, the strength to drag herself into the dark, shadowed corridor.
Lights are out.
And… it’s wrong out here. So fucking wrong.
Every single lightbulb in the long stretch of endless corridor is off. And not the faintest of sounds from the nurse’s station down the way, where the static of a TV screen gives the only light there is.
Too dark, too quiet.
Billie’s face turns with a frown. Her hands slip on the tiles as she drags herself towards the nurse’s station, but sweat slows her down—sweat and blood. It’s only now she realizes her stitches have popped open and her leg leaks blood in drag marks.
Thud,
thud,
thud.
Lazy steps wandering behind her.
“You gave yourself enough time,” he echoes, words slow and deliberate as though he’s still conjuring up his new scheme, not just tormenting her with the details, “to drag yourself up the corridor here… and shoot the nurse.”
Billie’s outstretched hand stills on the floor.
Her lashes, wet with tears that streak all the way down to her parted lips, flutter. There it is again. That fucking realization crushing her.
It’s all in his plan.
Trevor meant for her to come out here, to have her handprints all over the vinyl, her bloody tracks leading the way. Guided her, letting her think it was her idea to crawl out here, to hold onto the dusts of hope that she might find someone, find help.
But no one’s coming to help her.
Not now.
And the realization suddenly isn’t so crushing anymore.
It’s just… defeating.
Billie lets her head drop. With a coarse sigh, she rests her forehead on the cold touch of the floor and catches her breath.
Trevor’s slow steps stop abruptly, and from the sound of them, she guesses he’s standing at her blood-streaked feet.
“After you killed the nurse,” Trevor says, his voice softer now, no longer trying to rouse her panic, but letting her accept her fate, “you took that wheelchair over there—” he pauses, but Billie doesn’t bother to lift her head and look for it “—snuck into Kate’s room… and unload these bullets into her chest. Of course, your grand finale… as it was supposed to be: With that one final bullet, you shoot yourself by her side.”
