Page 44 of Where Daisies Breathe (Star Meadows #2)
ELLIS
“ S omeone threw a brick through the window,” Clara tells me when I enter her room with my gun in my hand.
She’s sitting on the floor with her arms over her head, and behind her, the window is busted.
“Why would someone…” I trail off as reality washes over me. “Stay here,” I tell Clara, then run back into the living room.
The front door is open, it’s raining outside, and there are mud tracks all over the hardwood floor.
Ava is nowhere to be seen.
Still holding my gun, I race out into the night and then grab a flashlight from my SUV. I spotlight it around the yard until I find drag marks in the dirt that lead to the woods.
I’ve never been so terrified in my life as I track them deeper into the trees.
I’ve always had a thing for Ava, even before I met her.
I used to watch her in the classes we had together, not like in a creepy way.
I just like drawing her. She was so beautifully sad.
And then one day, Clover brought her into our group, and I discovered that while she was beautifully sad, she was also wonderfully kind.
But she carried heavy secrets with her.
Just like me.
I haven’t told her everything yet. I can’t until I know for certain it's true.
“Ava!” I shout through the rain and the night.
The wind picks up. Blood starts to mix with the drag marks.
The worst-case scenarios are playing out in my mind as I hike deeper into the woods while digging out my phone from my pocket. I need to call for an ambulance. Police will show up, but that’s something I’ll have to deal with because I’d do anything to protect Ava?—
A moan catches my attention.
I quicken my pace, and my heart sinks at the sight of Ava lying in the mud on her back with her eyes open. She looks dead.
I fall to my knees beside her and touch her cheek. Her skin is ice cold. But her chest is rising and falling, which means she’s breathing.
Which means she’s still alive.
I call for an ambulance as I check for a pulse.
It’s faint, but still there. I check her over for wounds and find a pinprick in her arm from where a needle was injected into her flesh, but that doesn’t explain where the blood is coming from.
The operator comes on the line. I give her the details and a location before turning Ava to the side to see if she’s bleeding there. The back of her shirt is soaked in blood, and with trembling fingers, I lift the hem of it.
Liar.
It’s carved into her flesh, the wound weeping.
The words, the needle mark, the scene, it’s so similar to how the dead girl in the park was found the other day.
Just what the hell was injected into Ava?
Panic sets in that it might be something deadly, that whoever did this is the same person who murdered that girl and the others.
“Ellis,” she moans out my name, giving me hope that she’ll live.
I collect her in my arms and carry her out of the woods. “I’ve got you,” I tell her, making a vow to myself that if she makes it through this, I’ll tell her everything.
Even if it means she’ll hate me forever.
Because I know more than I’ve told her.
About this case.
About the cult.
About their purpose.
About what was in that bag that her uncle carried into the hospital the other day.
About why I’m really doing this.
Because Ava isn’t the liar.
I am.