“Beck, come take a look at this,” Howie said. He was watching with Ty, about a half hour ahead of the footage Beckham watched.
Beckham looked over Howie’s shoulder at the screen. For a millisecond, he saw Roxie roll by in a wheelchair. Her head tilted back briefly and her eyes were closed.
“That’s her!” he yelled. His heart raced out of control as he watched her being pushed out of the hospital door.
Ty rewound and they watched the whole sequence again and again. The person pushing the wheelchair had slicked back hair and was wearing blue scrubs and a face mask that covered nearly everything.
“It’s a woman,” Dion said. “I’ll be damned.”
Ty slowed everything down and focused on the woman. It was hard to make out any features with the distance and most of her face covered. They watched it a dozen times before Beckham let out a startled groan.
“Can you focus on her feet?” he asked.
It took Ty seconds to fill the screen with the assailant’s shoes. They matched the scrubs so well that at first it was unnoticeable. Nothing close to nurses’ shoes, these were shoes that he recognized. Blue boots.
Before she left the hospital, she took her second dose of meds for the day and felt the calm wash over her. She’d gone too long without them yesterday and by the time she realized it, she’d almost been completely hypnotized by Ian Sterling’s charm.
No more.
She couldn’t think about his ever-changing eyes and pretty boy looks. His sweetness to her. He’d been interested in what she had to say. It didn’t matter. He knew too much and distracted her.
Half of her life had been spent working toward this—she was closer to Beckham than she’d ever been. She could finally feel him within her grasp. She couldn’t forget her priorities. Not when she’d just stolen the patient right out from under their noses.
She breathed in: Invincible.
Breathed out: Determined.
Roxie was a fighter. It just made this all the more enjoyable. Neither Ian nor Roxie should still be alive, but instead of feeling daunted, the thought excited her. She was up for a little challenge and wanted to prolong the play a little longer. What good did it do to put out the bait and then not enjoy the hunt?
It was all worth it. She put her camera strap around her neck.
Time for some live action.
Roxie came to for a moment—long enough to hear the end of an advertisement and then music. The radio. Justin Bieber. She groaned. Her eyelids were too heavy to open. She wanted to lift a hand to her eyes and pry them open, but her hands weighed a thousand pounds. Her last thought before going out again was that she must be in a car and her head felt like a log.
The next time she woke up, she was able to open her eyes. It was dark, but she could see that she was in a small garage. Arms were wrapped around her ribs, and she was being dragged backwards across the concrete, away from a car. Her lungs and chest ached, feeling as if they were caving in. Fear swallowed her whole, sudden and complete.
What’s happening? Her mind screamed, but no sound came out. Where am I?
They came to a stop and Roxie heard keys jingling. And then more dragging inside the door. Once inside, she was dropped, her eyes squeezing shut as her head hit the floor. They jarred open again as she was yanked up by her hair across carpet that burned through her thin clothes. Her mind raced as she tried to wake up enough to figure out what was happening. She’d been in the hospital. She was still wearing a hospital gown. Whoever dragged her was silent. Roxie’s side slammed into the wall as they turned a corner. Clump, clump, clump, her body was dragged down a flight of stairs like a life-sized rag doll. Down the hall and into a room that was bare of furniture, they finally stopped.
Her eyes were still watering, but she narrowed them into tiny slits to make her vision clearer. The walls had pictures covering every inch of space as far as she could see. Pictures of Beckham and Leo took over a whole wall. She gasped and turned as much as she could—her hair was still tight in someone’s grip. The wall to the right had about a dozen pictures of her with large red X’s crossed over them. Another dozen were pictures that she knew had been her with Beckham, but now she was cut out of them.
She had to get out of there.
Leo. Leo. Leo.
His name ran through her mind on repeat.
She lifted her heavy arms and swung behind her, hitting a leg. That earned her a swift kick in the gut. Her stomach clenched and she began swallowing too fast. She tried to turn her head as much as she could and threw up on the floor. She heard a high yelp and her head was released, but before she could look up she was bashed with a heavy boot that wouldn’t stop.
She was too weak to crawl very far, and moving just made the blows come harder. She curled up into a ball and covered her face with her hands. The sharp tang of blood filled her nose as everything faded to red.
When she woke up, a thick cloth filled her mouth and was secured in a knot at the back of her head. Her hands were tied behind her back, and a rope around her neck held her in place. It looped onto the knobs of the bedroom door and what she assumed was either a bathroom or closet door. It was tight enough that if she stood up or leaned forward for very long, it would cut off her circulation. She didn’t want to move anyway; every inch of her felt bruised, but she shifted her head slowly back and forth to see if the ends budged at all. It only added to the chaffing on her neck. Her heart galloped through her chest and she felt her pulse nudge the rope around her wrists. She stilled and glanced down. Burned photographs were piled next to her on the floor. Some of them had portions of the picture showing through the torched marks. In a few of them, she recognized her clothes.
She told herself to stay calm, but it was too late. Fear clung to her, as much a part of her as the now drenched hospital gown she wore. She smelled like vomit, sweat, and terror.
Another pile of pictures lay next to the burned ones—everyone from the tour, even Chloe and the guards, and a few girls she didn’t recognize. She looked at the walls. The only wall that didn’t have pictures was the one to her left—a huge map covered that wall, but she wasn’t able to see the places marked by tacks. Directly across from her was one she hadn’t seen yet. From floor to ceiling, Beckham at every age looked back at her. She studied it for a long time, seeing some photographs she’d seen through the years in magazines, but a lot were snapshots … some of Beckham looking really young, and others that she knew were taken recently on the tour. And then the wall with Beckham and Leo … Leo.
God, please keep him safe.
Tears ran down her face and she struggled to swallow. Whoever had her was clearly meticulous. Not to mention, deranged. And by the looks of it, had gotten away with following Beckham for years.
Roxie heard footsteps and felt the rope around her neck shift as the door opened. She blinked, unable to believe who she was seeing.
“Coco?” she murmured.
All the images of Coco doing her hair and makeup flashed before Roxie in triple time and nowhere in the memories did she see a single hint of Coco doing anything like this—to anyone or anything. Introverted and maybe a little odd, but so … fearful.
“Clearly I’m a horrible … judge of character.” The cloth in Roxie’s mouth made her voice sound like garbled gibberish. Nothing in the sentence came through.
Coco didn’t speak, but the hatred in her eyes screamed at the highest decibel. Roxie braced herself for whatever was coming. She was surprised when Coco undid the rope from the door, never turning her back on Roxie for even a second. She went to the next door and undid that side too. It seemed as if she was trying to decide her next form of torture because once she had both ends of the rope in her hands, she just stood and focused her laser beam eyes on Roxie.