THE PATIENT
The Patient – Chapter 14
Theme: the violence of willful blindness. How much truth are we willing to sacrifice for love?
Settings: port Amber, Port Amber, a fictional gray coastal city. St. Dymphna’s Hospital. The ghost town of Blythe in the northern hills.
Genre: dark romantic suspense•••••
Mystery:What really happened in Blythe? Where is Clara? And is the man in Willa’s care a survivor, a savior, or a monster?
Tags: gothic romance, missing child, anti heroine protagonist, forced proximity••••
® FINESSA.
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The Room
They drove for what felt like hours.
Willa sat in the back of the black SUV, her hands bound in her lap with a plastic zip tie, her head still throbbing from the blow. The windows were tinted too dark to see anything but shadows, and the driver had turned off the GPS display. She had no idea where they were taking her. North, she guessed, based on the turns. Away from Port Amber. Away from the harbor. Away from anyone who might notice she was gone.
Silas rode in the car ahead. She had watched him climb into it with the easy confidence of a man who had never been told no, his charcoal suit immaculate despite the sea spray and the wind. He hadn’t looked back at her. He didn’t need to. She was already caught.
The man beside her was the one she had bitten. He had a bandage wrapped around his hand now, and he sat in stony silence, his cold eyes fixed on the window. The driver said nothing. The radio played soft classical music, something with violins, and the contrast between its beauty and the ugliness of the situation made Willa feel sick.
She thought of Elias. His hands. His voice. The way he had pressed her fingers to his lips and said she reminded him what it felt like to be human. She thought of Lydia, bound and terrified in the car behind them. She thought of Clara, hiding behind a stone fireplace, waiting for a password that might never come. She thought of Marcus Thorne, the dead man who wasn’t dead, and whether he was still alive now or if the Circle had finally finished what they started in Millbrook.
She thought of the flash drive, still hidden against her skin, and the weight of everything it contained.
I’m not dead yet, she told herself. And as long as I’m alive, I can still fight.
The SUV slowed. Gravel crunched beneath the tires. The violin music swelled, then stopped. The driver killed the engine, and the man beside her grabbed her arm and hauled her out into the cold.
They were in the hills. That was all Willa could tell. The fog was thinner here, revealing a landscape of bare trees and gray rock and a sky the color of old iron. The building in front of her was a mansion—or what had once been a mansion. It was three stories of crumbling stone and boarded windows, with a sagging porch and a roof that had lost half its shingles to the wind. Vines crawled up the walls like veins. A single light burned in an upstairs window.
“Where are we?” Willa asked.
“Home,” the man beside her said, and pushed her forward.
—
The interior of the mansion was a ruin dressed in finery. Crystal chandeliers hung from cracked ceilings. Antique furniture sat on floors warped by water damage. Paintings of stern-faced men and pale women lined the walls, their eyes following Willa as she was marched down a long corridor. The air smelled of mold and old wood and something sharper underneath—chemicals, maybe. Or blood.
They took her to a room on the second floor. It might have been a bedroom once, or a study. Now it was a cell. The windows were boarded over from the outside. The only furniture was a metal chair bolted to the floor and a cot with a thin mattress. A single bulb hung from the ceiling, buzzing with the same fluorescent hum as the lights at St. Dymphna’s.
The man cut her zip tie and shoved her inside. She stumbled, caught herself on the cot, and turned to face him.
“Silas will be up shortly,” he said. “I’d suggest you cooperate. It’s easier that way.”
“Easier for who?”
He didn’t answer. He closed the door, and the lock clicked shut with a sound like a bone snapping.
Willa sat on the cot and pressed her hands to her face. Her head was pounding. Her mouth was dry. Her phone was gone. Her car was abandoned at the lighthouse. No one knew where she was. Gloria might notice she’d missed her shift, but by then it would be too late. Cross might find the security footage and connect her to the records room, but that would only make her look like a criminal, not a victim.
She was alone. Truly, completely alone.
No. Not completely.
She reached into her bra and pulled out the flash drive. Small. Black. Unremarkable. The kind of thing you could buy at any electronics store for ten dollars. But inside it was a weapon. Evidence that could burn the Circle to the ground. If she could get it to someone. If she could get out of here alive.
The door opened.
Silas Thorne walked in, carrying two glasses and a bottle of amber liquid that looked older than she was. He set them on the floor—there was no table—and pulled the metal chair toward him. He sat down with the casual grace of a man settling in for a pleasant evening, crossing his legs and loosening his tie.
“I apologize for the accommodations,” he said. “This house has been in the Thorne family for generations. It’s seen better days. But it’s private. And privacy is hard to come by in our line of work.”
“I don’t know anything about your line of work.”
“Of course you do.” Silas poured two fingers of whiskey into each glass. “You’ve been talking to Lydia. You’ve been to the safe deposit box. You know about the Circle. You know about Millbrook. You know about me.” He lifted his glass and held it out to her. “Drink?”
“I don’t drink with monsters.”
Silas chuckled, a low, humorless sound. “Everyone drinks with monsters, Nurse Calloway. They just don’t always know it.” He set her glass on the floor beside the cot and took a sip from his own. “Let me tell you a story. About two brothers. About a father who made a choice. About a little girl who should never have been born.”
“Clara.”
“Yes. Clara.” Silas’s eyes grew distant, as if he were looking at something far away. “When Elias told me Lydia was pregnant, I was happy for him. Genuinely. He had always wanted to be a father. He had always been the softer one, the gentler one. It’s why he became a surgeon. He wanted to heal people. I wanted to control them. We were different that way.”
“But something changed.”
“Clara changed.” Silas took another sip. “The moment she was born, Elias started asking questions. Why were we doing what we did? Who were we really serving? He started refusing assignments. He started keeping records. He became a liability.”
“So you tried to kill him.”
“I tried to save him.” Silas’s voice hardened. “I gave him every chance. I told him to come back to the Circle. To forget about the records. To forget about exposing us. I told him we could raise Clara together, within the fold, protected and privileged. But he refused. He chose to run. He chose to burn everything we built. He chose to make me his enemy.”
“You burned Millbrook. You killed twelve people.”
Silas waved his hand, dismissing a town full of souls like a bad memory. “Collateral damage. The Circle has survived for a century because it understands that the individual is less important than the whole. One town. Twelve lives. Compared to the thousands we’ve saved? The economies we’ve stabilized? The wars we’ve prevented? It’s nothing.”
“Tell that to the families of the people you murdered.”
“I don’t expect you to understand.” Silas leaned forward, his gray eyes cold and bright. “But I do expect you to cooperate. Where is the flash drive?”
Willa said nothing.
Silas studied her for a long moment. Then he sighed and stood. “I didn’t want to do this the hard way. But you’ve left me no choice.” He walked to the door and opened it. “Bring her in.”
Two men dragged Lydia Marsh into the room.
Her face was bruised. Her lip was split. Her hands were bound in front of her, and she stumbled with every step. But her eyes—dark and terrified—found Willa’s, and something passed between them. Something that said don’t give up, don’t give in, don’t let them win.
Silas pulled a gun from inside his jacket. It was small and silver, almost elegant. He pressed the barrel to Lydia’s temple.
“I’m going to count to five,” he said. “And then I’m going to pull the trigger. Unless you tell me where the flash drive is.”
“No,” Willa breathed.
“One.”
“Please—”
“Two.”
“She doesn’t know anything!”
“Three.”
Lydia closed her eyes. Her lips moved silently. A prayer, maybe. Or a goodbye.
“Four.”
“Stop!” Willa screamed. “It’s in the cottage! The keeper’s cottage at the lighthouse! Hidden in the fireplace! Behind the grate!”
Silas lowered the gun. A slow smile spread across his face, and his free hand drifted up, almost unconsciously, to touch his left earlobe.
Liar.
But he didn’t know that Willa was lying too.
“Search the cottage,” Silas said to one of the men. “Every inch. If the drive is there, I want it.” He turned back to Willa. “If it’s not, I’ll be back. And next time, I won’t count.”
The men dragged Lydia out. Silas followed them, pausing at the door to look back at Willa.
“You should have taken the drink,” he said. “It would have made things easier.”
The door closed. The lock clicked. And Willa was alone again, with nothing but the buzzing light and the cold cot and the flash drive still hidden against her skin.
She had bought time. Not much. But maybe enough.
Somewhere out there, Marcus Thorne was still alive—she had to believe that. Somewhere, Clara was waiting for a rescue that might never come. Somewhere, Elias was lying in a hospital bed, his memories returning one fragment at a time, not knowing that the woman he had kissed was trapped in a dying mansion in the hills, fighting for her life with nothing but a lie and a prayer.
Willa pressed her hand to her chest and felt the shape of the drive against her skin.
Come find me, she thought, sending the words out into the dark like a message in a bottle. Elias. Gloria. Anyone. Please. Come find me.
—
