Deception (11 page)

With my eyes still closed, I reached out and grabbed the handtowel off the ring beside the sink. I patted my face dry, then lifted my head to assess myself in the mirror. The reflection staring back at me looked nothing like what I felt inside. At least no one would be able to tell something was wrong with me. I didn’t want to have to tell anyone else about that creep being inside my head.

When I heard Aiden hang up the phone, I walked back into the room. “What did she want?” I asked. Aiden looked up at me. His expression was a mixture of concern and dread. “Is she okay?”

“Yeah, she’s fine, but…”

“But?”

“She got a call from the hospital. They’re going to change Marie’s bandages in half an hour, and she wanted us to meet her there. Don’t worry. I said that something has come up, and we may not be able to come.”

I shook my head quickly. “I’m not going to let what he did stop us from helping out my best friend.”

“Are you sure? ’Cause Lucas can probably do what I was going to do anyway.”

“I’m sure.”

Aiden typed something into my phone, then placed it back on the bedside table. He stood up and went to the closet. “We’ll need to pack a few things to take with us, but don’t take too much. We can buy anything we forget to bring.”

“Won’t he be able to find out where we are from the credit card transactions?” I asked, following him into the closet.

“Yeah. That’s why we’ll need to pay with cash. Or I could always make the shopkeepers give us whatever we need,” he said with the wicked grin on his face that hadn’t made an appearance for way too long.

I smiled. “Cash it is, then.”

I picked out a few outfits I’d left the last time I’d stayed there and stuffed them into the bag. I grabbed a pair of ballet flats in case we ended up somewhere that my flip-flops would be inappropriate.

Aiden zipped up the bag. “Now for the money.” He walked over to the set of shelves, picked up the folded t-shirts, and placed them on the shelf above.

“Don’t tell me you have a safe full of money in there?”

“Yep.” He pressed on what seemed to be the back wall until I heard a click. The back of the cupboard swung open, revealing a small safe with a digital screen.

“You have got to be kidding,” I said, coming closer for a better look. “How could you not tell me about this?”

He shrugged. “It never came up.” Aiden placed his hand on the screen and waited for it to scan. Without a beep, the door clicked open slightly, then Aiden pulled it the rest of the way.

“Holy shit! How much money do you have in there?”

He grabbed a few bundles of cash in various currencies and stuffed it into the bag. “Enough.”

“I’ll say.”

He closed the safe and returned the folded t-shirts into position. “You ready?” He turned to me and held out his hand.

“What? We’re not using a car?” I asked. Aiden always wanted to use a car whenever we were on the Coast.

“Well, there’s no need to keep up the appearances just for Chelsea anymore, is there?”

“I guess not,” I said, lacing my fingers with his. “Lead the way.”

We landed in a pitch-black room. My eyes took a moment to adjust, and when they did, I realised we were standing inside a janitor’s closet. “How did you know about this place?” I asked.

“Someone was coming out of it the last time we were here.”

“Oh.”

Aiden put his ear to the door. “It’s clear.” He turned the handle and opened the door. I followed him out into the empty corridor. We were about twenty metres down the hall from Marie’s room.

Both Chelsea and Lucas were already inside her room. “Hey,” I said quietly, so I didn’t wake up Marie when we walked into the room.

“Hi,” Chelsea said, lifting her eyes to meet mine.

Lucas quickly removed his arm from around her shoulder. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought something was going on, but all Chelsea was thinking about was removing the bandages. Were they going to stick to her wounds and have to be ripped off? Would that cause the old wound to become new again?

I stood to the left of where she was sitting, with my back against the wall, and Aiden squished in on the seat beside Lucas. “Have the doctors told you what time they will be here?” I asked.

She looked at her watch. “They should be here in five.”

I nodded, not knowing what else to say. I couldn’t tell her that her fears were unnecessary, because there was probably a good chance of the bandages damaging the wound. But then again, what did I know about severe burn treatment? Not a damn thing.

“So how was Disneyland?” Aiden asked, trying to lighten the mood.

“Oh my God, it was so good,” Chelsea said, but she immediately felt bad for getting so excited when she was by her mother’s bedside.

I put my hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to feel bad for being happy.”

Chelsea looked at me strangely, wondering how I knew what she was feeling. But she decided she was probably just not doing as good a job as she thought she was at hiding how guilty she felt.

“You should probably take your own advice sometime,”
Aiden said silently to me.

I knew he was right, but I wasn’t going to practice what I preached. After all, Chelsea was only feeling this way because of me. If it hadn’t been for me, her mother wouldn’t even be in hospital.

The door opened, and Dr. Carmody walked into the room, followed closely by three nurses. “Good morning, everyone,” he said as he picked Marie’s chart up from the end of her bed.

One of the nurses inserted a needle into the IV drip to dope her up for the bandage change. “This shouldn’t take long to take effect,” he said as Marie started to rouse.

As soon as she realised where she was, she started to panic, and her pain didn’t help to ease her nerves, either.

“Hi, Marie,” Aiden said as he reached forward and placed his hand on her leg. She winced in pain, but quickly succumbed to Aiden’s magic. Only one of the nurses noticed the strange interaction of a visitor touching a burn victim, but she was quick to dismiss her concern, which had everything to do with Aiden.

Dr. Carmody turned to the four of us. “So, will everyone be staying for the changes today?” He had subconsciously accepted he was going to do things differently with this patient and her family.

“Ah, no.” Lucas stood up and turned to Chelsea. “I think I’ll sit this one out.” He turned to leave, but turned back. “Want to keep me company, Jade?”

“Yep,” I said a little too enthusiastically as I pushed myself off the wall. I didn’t want to sit through a change of dressings. All that gore was too much for me. “Is that okay with you?” I asked Chelsea, trying to sound a little more casual.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Chelsea said dismissively. She really wanted to be able to walk out that door, too, so she didn’t blame me for wanting to get away. She was just glad Aiden would be there with her to help not only her mother, but her, as well, through the next hour or so. My boyfriend was a saint.

Lucas and I found a small waiting room that was completely empty. We each picked a sofa and spread out, preparing for a long wait. “You know you can go home if you want? You don’t need to stay here,” I said, not wanting him to feel obligated to stay with me, and I didn’t think Adam would try something in such a public place.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind waiting. Besides, you’ll need someone to keep you company while you’re out here.”

I smiled. “Thanks.”

Lucas told me about his and Chelsea’s time at Disney and all the funny faces Chelsea pulled and the tears she cried at finally getting her chance to go there. I was glad she got a chance to let go and just enjoy herself, if only for a few hours.

“Chelsea told me about what happened when she was kidnapped,” Lucas said.

“What did she say?”

“She told me about how the guy who took her thought he had taken you and had been waiting for you to turn up.”

My thoughts instantly went to the image I had of her walking up the driveway to my house and how I’d seen her getting kidnapped as if I were really there, but it was only a vision. “I haven’t had a vision since all that shit happened,” I said, more to myself than to Lucas.

“What?”

“Scratch that. I haven’t had a single vision since the few dreams I had of my mother when I was staying in Thailand.” I swung my legs off the sofa. “Why do you think that is?”

Lucas looked at me and shrugged. “No idea. I’ve never had visions, so I don’t really know how they work.”

“Hmm. I’ll have to remember to ask Anna about it.” I lay back down on the sofa and stared absently at the chipped ceiling tiles.

“So how did it go with your mum?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Argh. Don’t ask.”

“That bad, hey?”

“Worse.”

He arched an eyebrow.

“I did something to her. I don’t know how I did it, but I somehow got inside her head and caused her so much pain that she collapsed to the floor.” I don’t know why I was telling him any of this. I had only known him for a few weeks, and I was already divulging things I normally would only discuss with Aiden or Chelsea. But something about Lucas made me feel drawn to him and made me feel as though I could tell him anything. I guessed I should probably watch myself. Maybe it was one of his unique gifts—if he had any.

“Wow, that’s pretty bad.”

“Told you.”

“Well, I guess she’s got to have to expect a bit of wrath after all the secrets she’s been keeping from you.”

“Yeah, but I never meant to hurt her. I don’t want to be
that
person.” I was sure we both knew whom I was referring to.

“You were mad and pissed off. Sometimes things happen, and you do things you would never normally do. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It just makes you human.”

“Thanks.”

Chapter 10

A couple of hours later, Chelsea and Aiden emerged from Marie’s room. Lucas had fallen asleep a while before, and I’d been drifting in and out.

“How is she?” I asked as I sat up.

Chelsea flopped down beside me and put her head in her hands. “It was horrible. I don’t know how she would have gotten through all this without Aiden.”

“Was the pain that much?” I asked, putting my arm around her shoulders.

Aiden sat on the armrest beside me. “The morphine dulled her pain quite a bit, and then I was able to do the rest. But it’s not the pain Chels is talking about. It’s the burns. Her skin has started to scab up, and it’s not the nicest thing to see.”

Chelsea lifted her head away from her hands. “That’s the understatement of the century. It was like seeing something from a horror movie.”

I shivered when Chelsea’s thoughts confirmed it was just about as bad as I imagined it.

“Come on, we should all go home and get some sleep. It’s almost—” Aiden paused to look at his watch. “—four a.m. in UK time.”

Chelsea groaned. “How do you guys manage this?” she asked, referring to the different time zones.

“We don’t,” I said as I stood up. “We just sleep when we get tired. Kind of like how Kai does it.”

Aiden got up, walked over to Lucas, and whacked him on the arm. “Get up.” Lucas rolled over so he was facing the back of the sofa and continued to sleep.

“How the hell did he sleep through that?” Chelsea asked, amazed.

“Because he’s a lazy arse,” Aiden said, looking down at his friend.

“You’ve got to remember, they—”

“We,” Aiden corrected me.

“
We
don’t feel pain like you would,” I explained.

“Huh, really?” Chelsea asked.

“Yep. These arms are made of steel,” Aiden said, doing a mock body-builder pose as he tensed his biceps.

“Okay, stop showing off, Superman, and just try to get him up so we can get out of here,” I said shaking my head.

“Actually,” Aiden said as he looked around the room.
“I was checking for cameras,”
he told me as his eyes settled back on Chelsea and me. “If you two want to stay here for a second, I’ll just drop him home.”

I sat back down beside Chelsea. “Sounds good to me.”

Aiden placed his hand on Lucas’ shoulder. “Let’s just hope I land him on his bed.” They both disappeared, leaving Chelsea and me alone in the waiting room.

Chelsea slumped back and brought her feet up onto the lounge in front of her. As she opened her mouth to say something, Aiden reappeared. “Holy shit, that was quick,” she said, instead.

“Well, it doesn’t take long to get around with our mode of transport,” Aiden said.

“Did you land him on his bed?” I asked hoping for Lucas’s sake that he had.

Aiden laughed. “Nope. I misjudged, and he ended up on the floor.”

You didn’t leave him on the floor, did you?” Chelsea asked.

“Don’t worry, he’s now safely tucked into his bed.”

Chelsea snorted. “You seriously tucked him in?” She was imagining Aiden pulling up his sheets like a parent would.

“No, not literally.”

“Good,” Chelsea said with relief. “’Cause that would be all kinds of weird.”

“Anyway,” Aiden said, trying to change the subject quickly. “We’re going to have to figure out where we are going to stay tonight.”

“I vote England,” Chelsea said.

“Sorry, Chels, but we have to stay somewhere else,” Aiden said.

“Why?” She asked.

“Long story,” I said, not really wanting to retell the whole reason. “In short, we figured it would be safer if nobody knew where we’re staying so Adam wou—”

“Adam?” Chelsea asked.

“That’s my father’s name.”

“Oh. Well, Adam doesn’t really seem that fitting for a villain.”

“Yeah, I know,” I agreed. “Anyway, we don’t want Adam to find out where we are staying, so we can’t go anywhere he might already know about. And it also means nobody besides the three of us can know where we are.”

“That also means we can’t take our phones with us,” Aiden said, holding out his hand for us to give him our phones.

“What?” Chelsea spat.

“Sorry, but them’s the rules,” he said.

Both Chelsea and I begrudgingly handed over our phones to Aiden. “What are you going to do with them?” I asked.

“I’ll take them back to the Gold Coast.”