50

50
“Then we wait for a sign,” Damien said. His eyes locked on mine. “But not too long. We won’t give them the chance to corner us in this building.”

Time warped in the waiting room. The clock on the wall ticked far too loudly but the minutes bled into each other like watercolors. Every set of footsteps from behind those double doors felt like it might split me in two.

After what felt like hours though the clock said less than forty minutes, the Operating Room doors opened again. This time, the doctor himself stepped out, peeling off his gloves, his face drawn with exhaustion.

“Family of Sheriff Boone, right?” he asked.

We didn’t correct him.

“He’s alive,” the doctor said.

Relief rushed through me so quickly I nearly fell forward, but then came the bombshell. “He’s in critical stage right now but we managed to stabilize him for now though he lost a significant amount of blood. The next twelve hours will decide everything, he may or may not wake up.”

The room tilted while Damien’s hand steadied me again but his gaze was fixed on the men at the nurses’ station, who were still there watching.

“Can we see him?” Asher asked.

The doctor shook his head. “Not yet, he’s still in surgery. If he pulls through, he will be taking to ICU but right now.....” He broke off glancing at his pager. “Excuse me.”

Then he was gone.

Damien leaned close, his words almost inaudible. “They’ll come here, whether to guard him or kill him, I don’t know but this hospital isn’t safe.”

Asher rose, his hands already reaching for his backpack. “Then we leave. We have Boone’s files, that’s more than anyone else has. Let them sit here and watch an old man sleep, we’ve got work to do.”

I looked at Boone’s doors one last time fighting the part of me that wanted to stay here until his heart either stopped or carried on but Damien was right. If Boone wakes up, he will need allies and if he didn’t… then every page of these files will be his dying testimony.

We walked out together while the two men by the nurses’ station didn’t move but I felt their eyes track us all the way to the doors.

I whispered to myself, almost too low to hear: “If he dies… then it’s me next.”

~

The drive home was a somehow. When we reach my room, every window looked like an eye and every footstep felt like it belong to someone who wasn’t supposed to be here.

Asher dumped his backpack on the kitchen table and spread out Boone’s files. Damien locked the door, checked the windows then leaned against the counter, arms crossed like he was holding himself together with sheer force.

I sat down, my hands shake as I opened the first file.

Photographs slid free, fanned across the table. Boone’s neat handwriting labeled each one, names, dates, case numbers.

Ivy’s face stared up at me first. The picture isn’t one of which I recognized. She was younger standing outside what looked like a drab brick building. It caption, St. Augustine Transitional Foster Program. Intake 2010.

My stomach lurched.

Next came Isabella, the girl Lena had sworn was connected, then Elise Ward, her journalist badge clipped to her jacket. Natalie Reyes and dozens more. Some I didn’t even know by name, all the same label, St. Augustine.

Damien leaned closer, his voice rough. “This is bigger than just Seabridge Bay.”

“Boone knew everything,” I whispered. My throat tightened around the words. “He knew Ivy was in this program and never said a word, attack and accuse me sometimes.”

“Look deeper,” Asher said. He’d already turn into the back of the file flipping through stapled sheets with his sharp and restless fingers. He stopped on a page thick with red-ink notes. “See this. Transfers from the MH Institute straight into St. Augustine’s accounts, thousands of dollars.”

I stared. The columns of numbers blurred.

“They were connected,” Asher pressed. “The place you were kept after your breakdown, the one Elise was also investigating before she died, Boone was tracking them both. Ivy wasn’t just lost Cam, she was taken.”

My heart beat faster. I wanted to close the files, shove them into a drawer, burn them if I had to but my hand moved on its own, turning the next page.

There was a list of everyone and at the bottom, underlined twice in Boone’s square script, Camille Hayes.

My breath stuttered.

Asher froze. “Cam....”

I shoved back from the table so hard my chair scraped across the floor. “No. No, this isn’t...he didn’t....”

“Camille,” Damien said, stepping forward.

But I backed away. “My name wasn’t supposed to be there. I wasn’t.... I was never part of this."

My voice cracked into something unrecognizable.

Damien’s hand hovered like he wanted to touch me but didn’t dare. “It could mean he was protecting you. Watching to keep you off the list.”

“No.” I shook my head, tears already pouring out of my eyes. “It means he was waiting, just like the rest of them. It means I was next all along. Little wonder he warns me everytime as if my life is in his hands.”

The walls of the house felt like they were tilting inward pressing against my chest. I couldn’t breathe.

Asher’s voice was low like he was talking me back from a ledge. “Cam, listen to me. Boone might have written your name but you’re still here, alive. You can still fight back.”

I needed air so I grabbed my jacket, barely hearing Damien call after me and pushed out into the day. The wind off the ocean cut sharp against my skin but it didn’t clear the storm in my head.

My feet carried me without thinking straight to the one place I always went when I am drowning, Dr. Seraphina Crane’s office.

I don’t remember climbing the stairs or knocking but suddenly I am inside and Crane was there, her pale face tilting in surprise.

“Camille?” she said gently. “What happened?”

“I needed.... I can’t....” My words tangled.

She guided me in, shut the door and steered me toward the couch like she’d done a hundred times before. “Breathe, start slowly. Tell me what brought you here.”

I sat but the room felt wrong.

“Boone had files,” I said, my voice shaking. “On Ivy, on all the missing girls. On me.....”

Seraphina’s eyes softened but not the way I wanted. More like she was observing me, dissecting my panic. “You’ve been under enormous stress. When the mind is strained, it projects fears onto anything, even people we trust.”

Her tone was too calm and measured.

“Don’t.....,” I whispered.

“Don’t what?” She asked.