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“Morning, Amerie,” Zara said in a breezy tone. She glanced at her watch. “Or afternoon, I should say. You’ve been asleep for a long time.”
I silently glowered at her, wishing my eyes could shoot laser beams that would strike her dead in an instant.
“You’re probably wondering where you are and why you’re here.” Zara crossed the room and perched on the end of the bed. “I have some news for you, sweetheart, and it’s going to come as quite a shock. You’re pregnant.”
“I know,” I said, rolling my eyes.
She looked taken aback. “You know?”
“Yes.” I sneered at her. “I remember everything. The cave with the flaming torch, the speech you gave me, all the threats against my bio family.”
“I see.” Zara nodded slowly. “I suppose it’s lucky we removed you from Vanderwild Bay, then. Before you got any ideas about telling someone.”
“I only just remembered a few minutes ago,” I said, lying through my teeth. “As soon as I woke up and saw that ultrasound machine, I thought about babies. Then it all came back to me.”
“Yes, well, that makes sense,” she said, nodding again. “We know you haven’t tried to tell anyone anything over the last couple of weeks, as we’ve had people watching you and listening to you via your phone. We assumed the memory drugs worked, and you were still completely clueless.”
I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. She’d inadvertently informed me that no one had found the burner phone tucked under my mattress, which meant Jensen was safe. They had no idea he’d been secretly communicating with me and helping me.
“We brought you here because it was becoming far too obvious that you’re pregnant,” Zara went on. “Your breasts have already grown quite a lot, and we noticed you’ve been vomiting quite frequently. Other people would’ve begun to notice that soon, so we had to speed things up and bring you here earlier than expected.”
“But that’s fine,” Dr. Carmichael cut in. “You’ll feel much better here, because I can give you medication that helps with the nausea.”
“You know, it actually worked out to be very good timing,” Zara said, smiling thinly. “When Piper had that awful nightmare last night, you told us you broke the lock on your door so you could get out and comfort her. Remember that?”
I gritted my teeth. “Yes.”
“It’s the perfect story for us to tell people—you acted like you cared about your sister, but really it was just an opportunity for you to escape your room and run away. You stole some expensive things on your way out, of course. Presumably to sell for drugs and transport. Sad but believable, given your troubled reputation.”
“You won’t get away with doing this,” I said in a low voice.
“We will.” She smiled again, but it didn’t meet her eyes. “We’ve already reported you as a missing person. The police in town won’t do much to investigate that, seeing as it’s very obvious that you simply ran away. Also, you’re eighteen now, so legally-speaking, you can leave home whenever you want.”
“Even if one of the officers gets a bit overzealous with the case, we have a few connections in the police department,” Dr. Carmichael added. “They’ll be able to shut things down.”
“So we will get away with bringing you here, the same way we get away with everything else,” Zara said. I wanted to slap the smug smile right off her face.
Dr. Carmichael moved over to the ultrasound machine and flipped a switch on the side to turn it on. “I just want to do a quick check-up,” she said, briskly stepping over to the rolling table to grab a tube and gloves. “Lift your top, please.”
I did as she said, biting back a snippy retort. She squeezed some clear gel onto my abdomen, and then she ran the handheld ultrasound probe all over the area, eyes narrowed with concentration on the screen.
“Hold your breath for a few seconds, please,” she said, cocking her head slightly.
I sucked in a deep breath, craning my neck to catch a glimpse of the screen. All I could see was a flickering jumble of black and blue.
“Hm. That’s odd,” Dr. Carmichael murmured.
“Is everything okay?” Zara asked, voice tinged with anxiety.
“Yes, it’s fine,” Dr. Carmichael replied, glancing up at her. “Nothing to worry about.”
“So she’s definitely still pregnant?”
“Yes.” Dr. Carmichael flipped the screen around and pointed to a blurry, pulsing mass. “You can see it right here.”
I frowned, still wondering about her earlier comment. “It’s not twins, is it?”
She smiled at me. “No. There’s definitely only one baby in here,” she said. “Don’t worry, it looks perfectly healthy.”
