Page 10 of Wicked Promises
“It’d be great if you could drive faster,” I grit out.
I’m not a doctor, but Margo being unconscious isn’t a good sign.
It’s probably a really fucking bad one.
Eli’s already driving fast, but he stomps down on the accelerator and learns what kind of engine is under the hood of my car. It whines as we climb faster and faster, and he barely makes the turn into the hospital’s emergency entrance.
“We’re here, we’re here.” We coast to a halt.
As soon as the car stops moving, I fling the door open and maneuver out. I keep Margo tight against my chest so she doesn’t bounce.
Eli follows me inside, the car forgotten.
I should’ve taken the tape off her arms and legs.
A nurse rushes toward me. “What happened?”
“I—she was abducted. We found her.”
Chaos.
We’re swarmed with nurses or doctors—maybe both. One instructs me to set her on a gurney. Another leans over her with a penlight, cracking open one eye, then the other. They shuffle me backward, but the first one’s gaze stays on me.
“This is the missing girl?”
I nod woodenly. “Margo Wolfe.”
“Sit down, son,” someone orders. “We’ll take good care of her.”
The original nurse leads me to a chair in the waiting room. “Is that your car?”
I open my mouth to say it is, but Eli puts his hand on my arm.
“I’ll go move it,” he says.
“It’s in the way of the ambulance bay,” she explains. “There’s a parking?—”
“I know. I’ve got it.”
He leaves, his back straight. He was just in Chicago with his parents… we didn’t talk about his trauma—or family drama. Seems like it was better left in Illinois. But I imagine he won’t be eager to rush back here, after spending so much time in a hospital only weeks ago. He’ll be gone for a while.
It doesn’t matter. He helped me by getting Margo here, and that’s all I needed.
I hunch lower in my chair and eye the people going in and out of the emergency department. Margo is behind a locked door. Just when I had her in my arms again…
Eli’s dad bursts into the waiting room, gaze swinging around before he finds me. He’s usually a composed man, but right now… he hurries in my direction, motioning for me to stand up.
“Where’s the fire?” I ask.
He grimaces.
The next person through the sliding glass doors is Detective Masters.
“His goal is to make a scene,” Mr. Black says to me. “He wants to trip you up because he has no evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
“He wants to bring you down to the station for questioning. He thinks you—it doesn’t matter. It’s best if we go along with it, let him talk to you with me there. He’s threatening to get an arrest warrant if you don’t go amicably. It’s a bunch of bullshit, if you ask me, but it’s harder to scrub that from your record.”