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With a long exhale, I look at the closed door of my hotel room. Even from across the hall, I can feel Kallum. Where we go from here is what I have to answer. Once he’s transferred to a new hospital, I have no doubt Crosby will argue in his favor for a reduced sentence.
Whatever happens next, we’ll be together.
And I want to be with Kallum. The man who can take my pain and consume it like a wildfire, who can kiss me harder as he devours the ache. The man who looks at the blood and carnage in the unhinged depths of my psyche and doesn’t shy away in horror, but rather craves the dark depravity, who can even find the beauty in it. A man who laps at my tears of fury when I’m drowning in the torrent, and who will never let another person cause me harm, because this world will always bring pain. It’s never-ending.
I have almost given up once already, given into the weight of it all, and he will refuse to lose me. He will always find me, and force me to keep fighting.
The truth is, I did die the night I confronted the Harbinger.
And this is the woman who was resurrected in her place—the one designed for a man like Kallum Locke.
I reach for a clean shirt and begin folding it. Iris was kind enough to lend me the use of her hotel washing machines. As I lay the garment in the suitcase, my phone screen lights up with a video call.
I stare down at the unknown number. Brow furrowed, I accept the call.
Dr. Torres appears on the screen.Shit.
“Hello, Dr. Torres. I’m sure contacting me is against the sound medical advice of your doctor.”
“Have you figured it out yet?”
His face shows marked signs of sleep deprivation, and his thinning gray hair is unkempt. He drives his fingers through the sweaty strands, and I note the bandage wrapping his hand. Dr. Torres is not well.
“I promise I don’t know what this is about,” I say, turning toward the window to gauge the coming storm. With the media invasion and road blocks, bad weather will congest the roads that much more. “But I’m positive you’re not supposed to have access to a cellphone.”
He huffs a manic laugh. “You refused to answer my calls from the facility,” he says, as if this is a reasonable explanation. “Besides, this is my hospital. I can use what devices I see fit to.” Even so, his gaze darts around the white room warily.
“And the reason for your call?” I prompt him to hurry him along.
“I was certain, with how intelligent you are, that you’d have put it all together by now, Dr. St. James.”
He’s baiting me. Otherwise he would have already told me what he wants me to know. From what I’ve heard from the psych department at Briar, Dr. Torres is suffering a form of persecutory delusion. Which, I have no doubt Kallum helped exasperate, but he didn’t create the psychosis.
“I’m ending the call now, Dr. Torres. Please make sure to take your scheduled medications and do the work to get well. I wish you the best.”
“Professor Locke was communicating with your suspect.”
The dark, chilly waters funnel over my head as a sinking feeling tows me under the iceberg.
I draw the shades closed across the window. “While he was remanded at Briar,” I say, needing to hear him say it audibly, clearly.
“Yes, Halen.”
“You want me to believe that Kallum was in contact with the Hollow’s Row suspect before I came to the institution.” I speak the words slowly, deliberately, so I can hear each one for myself in some lucid format.
“Yes,” he bites out, his teeth ground in frustration. “His manipulation of that person is, in fact, the very reason for your visit.”
My chest pangs with a residual ache, the floor beneath my feet shifts. “Dr. Torres, I don’t see how that’s possible.”
His chuckle is derisive. “You don’t think a talented mind like Kallum’s, who deftly manipulated a court hearing to obtain a judgement of not guilty by reason of insanity, could maneuver you onto a case?” His smile falls. “You know the truth.”
The anchor tethered to my ankles tightens, the weight submerging me farther down the obscure void.
I sit on the corner of the bed, stare at Torres’s blood-shot eyes through the screen. His gaze isn’t on me, he’s watching my reflected image as I’m watching his. “You have a sick obsession with Kallum,” I say, keeping my voice steady.
“I’d argue you do as well, Dr. St. James.”
“I refuse to hear anything more on this matter until some proof is produced.” Despite every cell in my body screaming, I owe Kallum my trust.
