THE PATIENT
The Patient – Chapter 17
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 Walls Between
The Thorne estate had a name Willa had never heard before: Grayhaven.
She learned it from the man who brought her food—a silent, broad-shouldered guard with a scar across his throat who set a tray of bread and water on the floor and left without meeting her eyes. She learned it from the whispers of the other guards outside her door, their voices low and careless, assuming she couldn’t hear. She learned it from the way the wind howled through the cracks in the walls, a sound that seemed to carry the name like a warning.
Grayhaven. A grand name for a dying house.
She had been in the room for hours now. Maybe a full day. It was impossible to tell. The boarded windows admitted no sunlight, only the occasional shift in the quality of darkness that suggested day had turned to night and back again. The single bulb buzzed endlessly. The cot was too short for her to stretch out fully. The bread was stale. The water was warm. And somewhere in the same house, she knew, Lydia was locked in another room, enduring her own private hell.
But Willa was not broken. Not yet.
She sat on the cot with her back against the cold stone wall, the flash drive still hidden, and she planned. Silas had taken her phone. He had taken the photograph of Clara. He had taken everything except the one thing that mattered most. The evidence. The weapon. The key to burning his empire to the ground.
She just needed to stay alive long enough to use it.
The door opened.
Willa braced herself for Silas—for his cold smile and his colder eyes and the way he made every word sound like a threat wrapped in silk. But it wasn’t Silas. It was the guard with the scarred throat. And behind him, stumbling and pale but very much alive, was Lydia.
She was shoved inside. The door closed. The lock clicked.
For a moment, the two women simply stared at each other. Then Lydia crossed the room in three unsteady steps and collapsed onto the cot beside Willa, her body shaking with silent sobs.
“I thought you were dead,” Willa whispered.
“I thought the same about you.” Lydia pulled back, wiping her eyes with the back of her bound hands. Someone had cut the zip tie, leaving red marks around her wrists. “They’ve been moving me from room to room. Asking questions. Silas wanted to know about the flash drive. About Elias. About Marcus. I didn’t tell them anything.”
“Neither did I.” Willa paused. “Well. I told them the flash drive was in the cottage. Behind the fireplace. It bought us time.”
Lydia’s eyes widened. “You lied to him? Silas knows when people lie. He always knows.”
“He touched his left earlobe when he said he believed me.” Willa allowed herself a small, grim smile. “I know his tell. Elias told me. And I watched him. He doesn’t know I know.”
Lydia stared at her for a long moment. Then, impossibly, she laughed. It was a broken, desperate sound, but it was laughter. “You’re insane. You’re absolutely insane.”
“Probably.” Willa leaned her head back against the wall. “But I’m still alive. And I still have the drive.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere Silas’s men were too polite to check.”
Lydia’s eyes flickered downward, then back up. A ghost of a smile crossed her battered face. “Clever.”
“We’re not dead yet.” Willa turned to face her fully. “And Elias isn’t dead. Clara isn’t dead. Marcus might still be alive. As long as we’re breathing, we can fight.”
“How? We’re locked in a mansion in the middle of nowhere. No phones. No weapons. No way out.”
Willa looked around the room. The boarded windows. The stone walls. The single buzzing bulb. The guard outside the door. “There’s always a way out. We just have to find it.”
—
She found it three hours later.
It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t a secret passage or a loose window board or a guard who could be bribed. It was simpler than that. It was the light bulb.
Willa noticed it during one of the endless cycles of the bulb’s buzzing. A faint flicker. Barely perceptible. But when she stood on the cot to examine it, she saw what was causing it. The bulb wasn’t screwed in properly. It was loose in its socket, connected by a thread of frayed wire that sparked whenever the current wavered.
Frayed wire meant exposed current. Exposed current meant a potential short. And a short, in a house this old, with walls this dry, with wooden beams this ancient…
“Do you trust me?” Willa asked.
Lydia looked up from the cot. “What?”
“Do you trust me?”
Lydia hesitated. Then she nodded. “Against all better judgment. Yes.”
Willa climbed off the cot and walked to the door. She pressed her ear against the wood. The guard was still there. She could hear him breathing, the occasional shift of his weight. She banged on the door with her fist.
“Hey! We need water! The water in here is empty!”
A grunt from the other side. “You’ll get more in the morning.”
“We need it now. She’s dehydrated. She’s going to pass out. Do you want to explain to Silas why his prize prisoner died of thirst?”
Silence. Then the sound of footsteps retreating down the corridor.
Willa turned back to Lydia. “We don’t have much time. Help me with the cot.”
Together, they dragged the metal cot across the room until it was directly beneath the light bulb. Willa climbed up, her legs unsteady on the thin mattress, and reached for the socket. The sparking wire was exposed just enough. She tore a strip of fabric from the bottom of her scrub top—she was already ruined, what was one more tear—and wrapped it around her fingers for insulation.
“What are you doing?” Lydia hissed.
“Something stupid.” Willa grabbed the wire and pulled.
The spark was bright and sharp, and the jolt of electricity shot up her arm like a snakebite. She cried out and fell backward off the cot, landing hard on the stone floor. Her arm was numb. Her fingers were tingling. But the wire had torn free from the socket, and the end of it was spitting sparks onto the wooden floorboards.
Sparks that were already catching.
Lydia grabbed the blanket from the cot and started beating at the flames, but Willa stopped her. “No. Let it burn.”
“What?”
“The walls are stone. The floor is wood. The fire will spread, but slowly. It’ll take hours to reach anything structural. But the smoke—” Willa coughed, already feeling the sting in her lungs. “The smoke will rise. Someone will see it. Someone will call for help. And the guards will have to open the door.”
Lydia stared at the growing flames. Then she looked at Willa with something that bordered on awe. “You really are insane.”
“So you’ve said.”
The fire crackled and grew. Smoke began to curl upward, thick and dark, finding the cracks in the ceiling. Somewhere in the house, an alarm would sound soon. Or a guard would smell the smoke. Or the flames would spread far enough to cause panic.
Either way, the door would open. And when it did, Willa intended to be ready.
She reached down and pulled the flash drive from its hiding place. She pressed it into Lydia’s palm.
“If something happens to me, you get this to Cross. She’s not what she seems. Marcus has been feeding her information for years. She can use what’s on this drive to bring down the Circle.”
Lydia shook her head. “Nothing is going to happen to you.”
“We don’t know that.” Willa gripped her shoulders. “Promise me. Get the drive to Cross. Find Clara. Tell Elias…” She paused, her throat tightening. “Tell him I’m glad I broke my rules for him.”
Lydia’s eyes filled with tears. “I promise.”
The smoke was thick now, filling the room with a gray haze. Somewhere in the distance, a shout echoed through the corridors. Footsteps. Running. The guards had noticed.
Willa positioned herself beside the door, her back against the wall, her fists clenched. She had no weapon. No plan. No backup. But she had something better. She had a reason to fight.
The door burst open.
The guard with the scarred throat rushed in, his eyes wide, his hands reaching for the fire extinguisher on the opposite wall. He didn’t see Willa until it was too late. She swung her fist into his throat—right across the scar, right where it would hurt most—and he went down with a strangled gasp.
Lydia was already moving. She grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall and slammed it down on the guard’s head. He went still.
“Go,” Willa said. “Find the stairs. Find a way out. I’ll be right behind you.”
Lydia ran. Willa knelt beside the unconscious guard and grabbed his radio, his keys, and the gun from his holster. It felt cold and heavy in her hand, a weight she had never wanted to carry but was grateful for now.
She ran into the corridor. The smoke was everywhere. The alarms were screaming. And somewhere in the heart of Grayhaven, Silas Thorne was realizing that his prisoners were not as helpless as he had believed.
The hunt was on.
But this time, Willa was the one doing the hunting.
—
