Chapter 38

THIRTY-EIGHT

Gulf Shores, Alabama

Monday, September 23

7:04 p.m.

So this was what dying felt like.

Leigh braced her shoulder, fingers on either side of the blade. Blood seeped from the wound. Warm and sticky with an almost sweet smell. A heavy wave of dizziness hit as she grabbed for the rope still secured around her other hand, but it wouldn't budge.

"Don't come looking for me, Leigh." Elyse stepped over her, grabbed the suitcase off the bed, and headed for the hallway. "You've already seen how far I'm willing to go to protect what's mine. I'd hate for you to end up like Samuel Thornton."

"Except you didn't kill Samuel Thornton." Leigh shoved her elbow into the back of the chair and hefted her uninjured shoulder up. She threaded one leg over the other and struggled to stand on both feet. Dragging the chair with her. Pain and exhaustion threatened to bring her down. She'd survived worse, but this time, she'd have to arrest someone she'd trusted. Cared about.

She struck her heel against the chair arm. Wood splintered off, but she held on to the arm. It took more energy than she wanted to keep standing. "I've been trying to make sense of your motives, the way he was killed. It's all there. He hurt your daughter, so you hurt him. But it's the little things that don't add up, Elyse."

"What is this sudden change of heart? I never figured you for a people pleaser, Leigh, but having you testify I'm innocent will make it so much easier on me in the long run." Elyse pulled short of the hallway, a hesitant laugh filling the room. "Except the police most likely already know I studied Samuel Thornton. That I memorized every aspect of his life, right down to what kind of toilet paper he used to wipe his ass. That I was the one who created Katie Rose to expose him for the predator he was and have him arrested in case I failed killing him myself."

"The evidence does tell quite a compelling story." Her shoulder caught fire as muscle gave way to steel. Leigh grabbed for the handle of the blade and pulled. Logically, she knew the chances of bleeding out increased if she removed the knife, but, at the same time, she couldn't do her job with a pocketknife sticking out of her. She swallowed the scream as black spider webs closed in at the edges of her vision. Leigh doubled over. She had to keep it together. Just a little while longer. "But you couldn't have killed him. Because Saige Fuentes told me someone else was in that storage room with her. That this person promised to get her home to her mom and sister. That she was there to help. It was you, Elyse. You were held hostage, same as she was, for as long as she was. So how could you have killed Samuel Thornton?"

Elyse took a step back. Trying to escape, but there was nowhere she could run. Not from this. She could find Ava, they could try to start their lives over together, but the darkness would follow them wherever they managed to go. "Samuel Thornton liked to drug his victims. Who's to say Saige wasn't given something to keep her cooperating?"

Her friend centered her rolling suitcase in front of her. As a shield. "But maybe I was locked in that room with her. Maybe I had Saige fake an emergency. For as much as the son of a bitch liked disposing of the girls he hurt, he surely wouldn't have wanted one to go to waste. So maybe I screamed that something was wrong until he came down the stairs. I mean, it was two against one. Not so difficult since he liked to have a beer or two after a long day at work. I guess Saige and I could've worked together to drag him into the closet, and I wouldn't have given him a chance to fight back. But instead of locking him inside, I would've put my hands around his neck and strangled him. Just as he'd done to Poppy Slater and Ruby Davis. What he would've done to my daughter."

And in that little story, Leigh had the truth. Did Elyse even realize? "But he didn't keep Ava like he did the others."

"Because I was there." The words growled from Elyse's mouth. Frustrated and enraged. "I knew something was wrong the morning she still wasn't home from the bookstore, so I went to that house. I broke in to get to her like any good mother would've done for their daughter. What that detective and Saige's mother should've done for those girls. Samuel Thornton assaulted me. He pushed me over the guardrail of his deck, and I sustained the concussion that took my memory. I couldn't protect my own daughter from him. Ava was the one who had to get me home. Something I will regret for the rest of my life."

Elyse had lost her hold on that inner sweetness Leigh had always admired. The kind that couldn't be broken, no matter how far she was pushed. Turned out, everyone had a breaking point.

"You've studied Samuel Thornton. You learned his MO and what he likes to do to his victims." Leigh risked another step forward. Sweat slipped over her eyebrow and coated her palms. It was always too hot here. "You're a woman of details. Making sure everyone is taken care of, ensuring there are no mistakes in your patient files. Because you would hate yourself if someone got hurt from your mistake. That's why you're so angry, aren't you? You made a bad decision. You accidentally drove Ava to meet up with a predator, and he took advantage. You would've wanted to hurt him in exactly the same way he hurt those girls. No mistakes this time. Except you got one thing wrong, Elyse. Samuel Thornton was strangled from behind. With a rope. Not from the front like with Poppy Slater and Ruby Davis."

And there was Elyse's lie.

Panic froze on Elyse's face. Just for a moment.

"You sure you want to go into details with Detective Moore bleeding out on my floor, Leigh?" Nervousness had Elyse shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She backed another step toward the hallway. Where Leigh could now make out a distinct pair of slacks. Detective Moore's slacks. "Every second you waste on me is another second she might not live. How would you feel with that on your conscience?"

"You're not going anywhere, Elyse." Leigh gripped the blade in her hand, losing her strength with every pulse of her heart. The right side of her button-down was soaked through. Straight down to her bra where a puddle had started forming in one of the cups. "You don't see it, do you? That you've become the predator. Everything you hated about Samuel Thornton, everything you'd tried to fix, and you became exactly what you'd feared. And I can't let you hurt anyone else."

Elyse hauled the suitcase up. Throwing it at Leigh.

The hard shell collided with her shoulder, and she landed flat on the bed. Shoving to stand, she found the bedroom empty. And started running. "Elyse, stop!"

She cleared the doorway.

Pain struck across her midsection. Lightning exploded behind her eyes as the surgical sites screamed in agony. Leigh stumbled back, hands on her stomach to make it stop. The wood bound to her wrist caught in her slacks. Just as Elyse closed the distance between them.

Elyse fisted the back of Leigh's head and shoved a white plastic tip up her nose.

Spray shot to the back of Leigh's throat.

Her body suddenly felt heavier than it ever had before.

"I didn't want to have to hurt you, Leigh. Not like this." Elyse held her upright. Front and center. But it was harder to make out her friend's detailed features, even this close to one another. "But you're not giving me any choice."

Leigh shot a fist out. Her knuckles met the flesh of Elyse's jaw, and the woman released her, colliding with the nearest wall. The bottle fell between them, hitting the hardwood. She swiped at her nose. "What the hell did you do to me?"

She grabbed for the white palm-sized spray. The words mixed and blurred. The liquid found in Samuel Thornton's nostrils. The coroner had theorized some kind of nasal sedative. Leigh dropped the bottle and expelled as much of the liquid as she could. Big drops spattered onto the hardwood, but it wouldn't be enough. "Did you just drug me?"

Elyse wiped blood from her face with the back of her hand. "I know you well enough to know you're never going to let this go, but I am not going to prison. Not after everything I've done to keep my family together."

Leigh took a tentative step forward, one hand out as the world tipped on a diagonal. Something wet infiltrated the waistband of her slacks. The sutures. One of them must've torn. Relentless pain surged as she gave it more attention than she could spare. A laugh escaped her control as her body seemed to relax all at once. Damn. That stuff worked fast, and suddenly she didn't care if she was bleeding from two holes in her body. Or about Elyse. Not even Detective Moore. "You sound like the cast of Yellowstone . Have you seen that show? Did we watch it together on the phone?"

"We did. Two whole seasons in a week." Elyse backed her onto the bed.

It was a nice bed. Cushy. And she could sure use a nap after everything they'd been through the past few days. A lightness she'd only experienced going into and coming out of anesthesia took over. And Elyse was there. With that smile. Like they were friends again. "Just relax, Leigh."

Pressure built in her head. That wasn't normal. Leigh tried to swallow, but something blocked her windpipe. She couldn't think, couldn't breathe. Slapping her hand down on Elyse's shoulder, she tried to communicate something was wrong, but the grip around her neck only tightened. Her heart rate rocketed into the rafters, and she kicked out. Trying to get relief. But it was no use. The darkness was coming back for her. Closing in.

"I've cut off the blood flow to your brain through your carotid artery." Elyse's outline swam from one side of her vision to the other. "It'll be all be over soon."

Leigh shook her head. No. This wasn't right. She wanted to keep her brain. Wheezes filled her ears. Coming from her. She grabbed for Elyse's face, digging her fingernails into the bruised flesh of one cheek. But it didn't do a damn bit of good. She was losing consciousness. Fast. "No."

One word was all she could manage. Her shoulder collapsed down onto the sheets. The pain from the knife wound spurred her to keep going. To search for… She didn't know. The chair arm was still tied to her wrist. It was all she had as memories of finding herself in this exact position two months ago, of being strangled by a killer under several feet of water, surged to the front of her mind.

All she'd had to do to escape then was die.

But Elyse didn't deserve the satisfaction of watching Leigh die. Not for a single moment.

Throwing everything she had into her injured shoulder, Leigh hauled the chair arm into Elyse's temple. The collision reverberated down Leigh's arm. The grip around her throat released as her assailant hit the floor. A head rush nearly knocked her back on her ass as Leigh slid off the edge of the bed. Grabbing for her throat, she tested her voice. "You are really starting to test my trust issues."

Elyse clawed her way across the floor. Toward the door. "I'm not going to jail."

"Yes, you are." It took more than two tries to get back on her feet. Leigh stumbled forward, still reeling from multiple locations of blood loss and sedative, and caught up to the first woman to give her a chance at friendship in over twenty years. But Leigh was standing. Which was more than she could say for Elyse. She clutched on to her shoulder, aggravating the wound to keep herself awake. "Elyse Portman, you are under arrest for the attempted murder of a police officer and a federal agent, for interrupting my medical leave, and being a general pain in my ass."

Leigh unbound the rope from around her wrist and looped it around one of Elyse's, pulling her arm tight behind her back with more effort than it should've taken. She secured the woman to the dresser pulls. One wrong move and the entire thing would topple over onto her. Shuffling into the hallway, Leigh collapsed beside Detective Moore. Detached the belt radio from the detective's belt. And pinched the push-to-talk button. "This is Agent Leigh Brody. Officer down. I repeat, officer down."

She dropped the radio in her lap and lost her one-woman fight to stay conscious.