Cold-Blooded Beautiful (19 page)

Mission set.  Goals defined.  My thoughts focused, cleared.  Escape.  Kill David.  Get back to Kade.

Nothing was going to stop me from getting back to Kade.

Nothing.

If something did, I was going to kill it.

Chapter 13

After five straight hours on an airplane with my mother, and a handful of flight attendants who listened in earnest as my mum regaled the story of our tragic relationship, I seriously had to encourage myself not to open the emergency latch and jump to my highly desired death.  Every single tendon in my entire being felt as if it was getting coiled tightly into an anxious stress filled band of steel.  Images raced through my head as I was up in the air.  Not in control, helpless. Thousands of feet in the sky, thousands of miles away, fucking bloody helpless. 

Somewhere, hundreds of miles away, miles below the metal box I flew in, my Samantha was in trouble.  There was nothing I could do, and nothing that anyone could say that would make a damn ounce of difference in anything.  The blood pounded in my head the whole flight.  Torture was in not knowing what was happening below. 

“Mr. Grayson, would you care for a drink?  Is there anything that I could…”

“For all that is good and holy, just go the bloody hell AWAY,” I snapped. 

My mother’s hand reached out from her lap faster than my eyes could see, and she slapped me upside the head like I was a disagreeable teen.  “Kade Charles Grayson!  I did not bring you up to be a dick to women.”

“I’m good like that, king of dicks, and that bloody hurt,” I snapped.

“You are acting like an arse!”

“Bloody awesome, thank you. I might add that to my business card. May I quote you?  For one bloody moment, could you, and everyone around me think about what I might be going through sitting here helpless?  All I could see in my head are images of her somewhere hurt, so forgive me if I snap at the twits who are trying to shove a bit of liquor down my throat!”

I was allotted two hours of silence after that, which I spent hyperventilating into a bloody brown paper bag in the back cabin, and going over the last conversation I had with Deputy George before I boarded the plane.  I gave him permission to access my computer where the GPS to Samantha’s phone was.  You’re wondering why I hadn’t done that myself to begin with, yeah?  Well, I bloody tried, but I never got a signal. I figured it was just a cheap piece of shit, or she’d taken the tracking application out to make sure I wasn’t going to follow her.  I should have tried harder.  I should have believed in her more.  Fuck, I should have believed in us and never doubted her.

The only hope I held onto was that of Stanton’s greed.  If David Stanton did have Samantha, he wasn’t going to kill her until he had his money back.  George explained that Stanton had complete control over all the computer modules and bank accounts at the hospital, their insurance claims… They signed checks…forging signatures continuously for millions of dollars to a fraudulent pharmaceutical company they owned; he wasn’t going to walk away from all that work easily.  No bloody way.  Knowing everything that Samantha had told me about him, he would terrorize her until she gave him the money, and I knew she never would.  I knew that for a fact, because Samantha didn’t have the money.  When we went to the Sheriff, she gave him a key to a safe deposit box with all the evidence she had stolen from David when she ran away.  I still don’t know the details, but did it matter?  Sam was being held somewhere probably getting hurt, alone, while bratty flight attendants tried to get me on the piss.

As soon as I felt the landing gear lower, I was out of my seat with my bag around my shoulders, daring the flight attendants to ask me to sit back down.

No one said a word to me, which was excellent, because I was nearing my breaking point.  I’m talking Christian Bale in American Psycho, here, but with a British accent and the chainsaw.

When I stepped my feet on the blacktop of the runway, my knees weakened with the realization of just how much time had passed since she was last seen alive.  I awkwardly stumbled into the waiting car that was to take us to wherever the sheriff’s were gathered, dealing with the mess.  I could visibly see the warm mist of my breath as I climbed in, but I felt not one degree of the coldness.  I was completely numb, and strangely, for the first time since the age of sixteen, my brain was completely calm and focused, because I knew it had to be, because I had to fucking save her.  Taking a slow deep breath, I sat in the back seat, pulled my phone from the pocket of my jacket, and turned it on.  As the driver spoke in whispers with my mother, the light from my phone illuminated the car, and I vividly remembered Samantha and me locked in a closet in my brother’s bar and my stomach dropped.  I wanted a chance to feel those lips against mine again.  I wanted the chance to give her the ring I’d been holding in my pocket since the day I was going to ask her to marry me, the day she went missing.  I needed to see her again.  I needed to hear her voice.  I just plain fucking needed her.  With trembling fingers, I hit the contact button for Deputy George and waited for my world to end.

“Grayson, did you land yet?” he barked.  Not even a proper greeting.  Curt and serious. 
Oh, bloody fucking hell
.

“We’re driving to town now.  What’s happened?” I replied, my voice cracked and shook, immediately giving away my emotional mindset.

“We tracked the GPS to her phone,” he began, and my heart thudded painfully hard against my chest.  I swallowed back the urge to scream and stayed fixated on his voice.  “We found her car off the side of the road on Forest Home Road.”

“Was there an accident?” I asked, clenching my jaw. 

“Negative.  The car is in perfect condition, half a tank of gas, keys on the front seat and her cell phone in the trunk.  We did however find bloodstains in the trunk, Kade.  It’s been a few hours, but we’re waiting on lab results. I’m at the hospital right now with your brother, waiting on the video surveillance recordings from last week.  Seems like this hospital doesn’t have the proper upkeep of their security equipment, so we called in the head of the their security firm to help find the time stamp and evidence from last week.”

“That’s all there is?” I whispered into the phone.

“So far, yes.  I’m sorry I don’t have more information for you, but I’m certain to get this sorted out as fast as we can.  How far are you away from the hospital?  Why don’t you come here and we’ll go to the car site together.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you in a few,” I mumbled hanging up.  “Please head to the Adirondack Medical Center,” I said to the driver.

My mum’s soft-gloved hand touched my forearm, “What information did you get, love?”  Her voice was cautious and caring, making me want to sob out in agony.

“Sheriff’s office found her car with her cell phone in the trunk, abandoned on the side of a desolate road.  There, um was blood inside the, ah…” I couldn’t finish.

“Oh, dear,” she whispered, covering a hand over her lips.

I could do nothing more than turn my head out the window of the car and watch the evergreens as they blurred by.  The
dark and dismal mass that was otherwise known as the Adirondack Mountains. 
Somewhere, in that surrounding black of the forest, was my Samantha.  Did she know how to navigate in the thick nature of the Adirondacks?  Did she know how to survive in this brutal weather?  Or was she somewhere inside with that monster, being held prisoner?  The thoughts gutted me, but I held onto my sanity with a tight grip.  The only way I was going to save her was if I kept my head about me.

When we finally pulled up to the hospital, Jen was outside leaning against the brick columns under the canopy of the large building.  She was uncharacteristically smoking a cigarette, a cherry tip, blazing brighter as she inhaled a pull.  She pulled herself off the wall as I climbed out of the car, and began wiping at the tears that emerged from her eyes, and walked toward me.  “Oh, Kade,” she sobbed,  “this isn’t happening, it can’t be. How could he have known she was still alive?” 

I took the cigarette from between her fingers, and instead of flinging it into the parking area, I took a long pull, and exhaled.  There was no way to answer her question, so I ignored it. What difference would the answer make anyway, it was already done.  “Where is everyone?” I asked.

“There in the security unit on the ground floor,” she whispered.

Taking my last pull of the cigarette, smoke burning and scratching its way down my throat, I flicked it onto the walkway and strode to the sliding doors. I didn’t check to see if she or my mother followed.  Though, I did hear my mum’s voice say, “Well, Jen, dear,  I’m sorry we have to meet under such horrid circumstances…”

I shut the rest out.  The niceties made me want to gouge my own eyes out of my skull.  It was simply astonishing to me, how everyone in the world could be calm and act so bloody normal, while Sam was missing.  Fuck, I was trying my damnedest to hold myself the hell together and not fall apart, but my body was knotted up into clumps of pure hate and bottomless despair.

“Security unit?” I snapped at the security officer behind the front desk. Placing his hand on his little toddler like walkie-talkie, he eyed me as if I wore a strap-on bomb.  “I’m Kade Grayson, the Sheriff’s department called me.  I’m here to meet Deputy George down in security,” I said, pronouncing each word slowly, so I would calmly get my point across without having to use the knuckles of my hands that tingled to introduce themselves to his eye sockets.

“Oh, yes,” he said pointing to the right,  “it’s just down the hallway to your right.  Just follow the signs.” 
Bloody moron
. 
Bloody splatters of crimson spray splashed against the wall as a bullet tore through his head; gray matter clung to the desk and dripped thickly down his idiotic security uniform
.  Imagining his death made me feel better.

I could hear Jen’s voice somewhere behind me as I stormed through the corridors to the security unit.  Florescent lights beat down on my face, surreal and alien.  Samantha once told me she found a strange kind of peace inside the cold whiteness of a hospital; a comfort in its chaos and trauma. I think maybe because she brought in the calmness, because she could heal everyone’s pain.  Now, someone needed to do that for her.

Through the maze of hallways, I could hear the sounds of male voices, harsh and loud, until I rounded the corner and found the open door to the office.  Before I even stepped foot inside, my gag reflex attacked, and I had to pull myself up short of the doorway.  Dylan was just inside, both his hands grasping the front of his hair. “Bloody, fucking hell,” he was saying, over and over.  “Bloody, fucking hell.”

My hands grabbed onto the doorframe as I tried to focus my breathing.  “What?
What?  What!
” I heard myself screaming.

Sheriff Lane’s wrinkled face was in front of mine, hollow cheeks and oil filled pores, fumbling out words that I couldn’t hear over the white noise that filled my head.  Just past his face, blaring in grainy black and white images, six enormous security screens played the video of David Stanton pushing a full laundry bin into the garage area, and dumping a body sized load of laundry violently into the trunk of Samantha’s car.  A bouquet of dark flowers was tossed in on top of the heap and it didn’t move at all.

Sam’s body was in that bag and it didn’t move at all
.

“NO!”  I screamed.  “No.  No!”  My fists slammed against the walls, splintering holes across the paint. Pain rocked up my arms when I didn’t stop, “Take me to the car. We have to find her.  We have to find her!” 

This isn’t David trying to get the evidence she took. This is David getting his revenge. This is David not caring about getting caught and he was desperate now, desperate for her to give him all the money, desperate for her to die.

Dylan and George wrestled me to the ground.  Their voices urged and pleaded me to stay calm, and I tried, I swear I tried, but I just watched my world get hauled savagely into the trunk of a car, and I could do nothing to help her.

“Over a week,” I roared, stilling my efforts to fight.  Dylan’s hands grabbed my arms tighter, his forehead pressed against my shoulder blades.  “It’s been more than a fucking bloody week since this happened.  I have to fucking find her.”

With Dylan still holding me steady, the fucking sheriff slapped a pair of handcuffs on me and shoved me into a rolling chair, which slid across the office and slammed me up against the far wall.  My head bashed against the wall, and all I could hear was the harsh gasps of my Mum and Jen as they entered the office and realized what had happened.

“Okay, everybody, just calm down!” Sheriff Lane bellowed.  “Kade, you are not helping this investigation at all by throwing a tantrum.  It wastes our time, babysitting you here.  Time that we need to go looking for the victim.”

Fuck me, he didn’t say her name.  He just dehumanized her to me like he knew she was already fucking dead
.  The guttural sob that tore through my chest was
in-fucking-human
.