None of the reporters had even acknowledged that there was another person involved in the crash. All they cared about was Dianna, Dianna, Dianna.
Knowing that no one gave a shit about Jacob was a big enough blow to send him completely over the edge.
“Would you like to come back and say good-bye?”
The doctor who had delivered the bad news was still waiting for him just inside the door. Her voice was kind and yet he knew his brother was just one more stranger who’d died on her shift.
Before he could respond, a tall blond girl ran past him and into the waiting room. For a minute he couldn’t believe his eyes.
If Dianna Kelley had been in the crash with his brother, how was she running by him now?
It took him a few moments to realize that this girl in her dirt-streaked jeans and oversized raincoat was barely out of her teens. Although she bore a striking resemblance to the famous face he’d seen dozens of times, there was no way she could be the “important” woman the reporters were climbing over themselves to get a scoop on.
“I’m Dianna Kelley’s sister,” the girl said to the doctor in a breathless voice, her cheeks streaked with tears. “I saw on TV that Dianna was in a crash.” She grabbed the doctor’s arm. “I need to see her!”
The doctor looked between the two of them, and even in his fog of pain, he could see that she was torn between the guy with the dead brother and the girl with the hurt sister. But they both knew the famous sister would win.
“Excuse me, Jeannie, could you come help me?”
A moment later, a young nurse came around the corner and the doctor explained, “This is Dianna Kelley’s sister.”
“Come with me,” the nurse said to the girl, whose raincoat was dripping a puddle on the carpet. “I’ll need to see your ID first.”
“She’s not going to die, is she?” Dianna’s sister asked in a shaking voice.
“I don’t know, honey,” the nurse said in a soothing voice. “You’ll have to ask her doctor.”
“I’m so sorry about all of this,” the doctor said to him as she ran her badge in front of the locked ICU door. “I know how hard this is for you.”
He wanted to use the doctor as a punching bag, to scream that she didn’t know a damn thing about him, about the hole in his chest that was growing bigger by the second. Instead, he silently followed her down the hall into the busy ICU.
The overhead lights had been dimmed in his brother’s small room and a white sheet had been placed over his body. The doctor peeled back the cloth to reveal his brother’s lifeless face, and before he could brace himself, pain unlike anything he’d ever felt before ripped through him. He felt dizzy and light-headed. As if he could drop to the floor at any second.
Moving closer and gently touching his brother’s un-moving face, so similar to his own, he felt warm tears streak down his face.
“Would you like me to leave you for a few minutes?”
It was abundantly clear how much the doctor wanted to get away from him and his soul-sucking grief.
He nodded, taking his brother’s stiff hand in his own. All their lives he’d looked out for Jacob, who had been the reckless one, the one who could never hold down a job, the twin who could never keep his fists in his pockets. Jacob was the reason he’d gotten into the drug trade. Manufacturing and selling methamphetamines had seemed like an easy way to support them both.
If only they hadn’t fought that afternoon, then maybe Jacob would have hung out a little longer, would have realized the roads were too icy to drive and spent the night.
If only Dianna Kelley had swerved out of the way, or better yet, never got on the road at all.
It was all her fault.
“I’ll make her pay for what she did to you, I swear it,” he promised his brother.
Bending over, he pressed a kiss to Jacob’s forehead. Wiping his tears away with the back of his hand, he let go of Jacob’s hand and was slowly walking out of the ICU when he saw her.
In a room a dozen feet from the exit, Dianna Kelley was lying in a bed behind a glass wall, hooked up to an IV, her blond hair fanning out behind her on the pillow. A nurse was busy dealing with a phone call just outside the room and she didn’t pay him any notice as he stood there and stared.
Seeing the bitch still alive, breathing and blinking, the blood still pumping through her veins—while his brother was dead—only confirmed that she was to blame.
No jury would ever convict her of wrongdoing. She was too famous, too pretty for anyone to think she could have possibly done anything wrong. She’d killed his brother and she was going to get away with it.
Continuing to stare at her, rage and grief built up and up inside of him until there was no room left for anything else. The nurse finally noticed him and when she gave him a strange look, he turned to leave.
Just then, Dianna’s sister burst in through the ICU doors, her shoulder knocking into his in her haste.
And that was when he realized that he already had the perfect weapon.
Dianna Kelley had killed his brother.
He would kill her sister.
———
Everything hurt like crazy, especially her head, Dianna thought as she slowly woke up. What was wrong with her? Why was she having such trouble moving her arms and legs?
She struggled to open her eyes. They felt dry, almost like they were filled with soot, and she blinked hard to try to clear them. She quickly realized she was in a hospital bed, but how could that be? The last thing she remembered, she was driving to the airport, heading back to San Francisco after arguing with her sister in the café.
She had the strange feeling that someone was standing nearby, watching her, but her vision was still too fuzzy for her to see the person’s features. The only thing she could tell for sure was that it was a man, tall with broad shoulders and short-cropped hair.
Her fatigued brain instantly plopped Sam’s face on the man’s head. She’d spent ten years trying to forget him, but tonight she was too damn weary, too sore and achy to make much headway in dislodging her memories of a gorgeous firefighter, six foot two with midnight-black hair and sizzling blue eyes.
Was it really Sam? Had he come to see her? Or was this just another hallucination? Another vision she was manufacturing out of desperation?
Her heart rate soared, as did the faint beeping of the machines behind her.
With every breath she took, her discomfort grew. She’d never allowed herself to take more than a couple of Advil—given her mother’s history of addiction—but right now, she needed more of whatever they’d put in the IV in her left arm.