Samuel's POV
"Did Olivia leave already?" Hugo asks, pulling me from my thoughts.
I turn from the empty doorway to the three humans behind me. Nick is back to gazing out of the window, while Charlie and Hugo are sitting on the middle hospital bed.
"What are you talking about?" Charlie asks.
Nick keeps his mouth shut, but I don't fail to notice the way he perks his ears and turns his head a couple of degrees away from the window.
"Olivia said she'd come to visit you," Hugo explains. "Hasn't she?"
I curse underneath my breath as Hugo's words remind me of Olivia's decision to apologize to Charlie and then her realization that Anya is the driver she's been looking for. Before I can do anything else, however, another human enters the hospital room. In the nick of time, I stagger backward, preventing Wright from slamming into me as he advances into the room.
"Sorry I'm late, kid." The cop wipes the sweat clinging to his forehead into his forearm. "Hugo, nice to see you again. How's your grandmother doing?"
Hugo shrugs. "Same as always."
"What took you so long?" Charlie asks his father. "You were supposed to be here half an hour ago."
"Sorry about that. I had to take care of something at the station. But I've already signed your discharge papers, so we're good to go."
"Finally." Charlie slides off the bed, while Hugo hands him a pair of aluminum crutches.
"You're here too, Nick?" Wright notices his other son, who is still glaring at the window. "I was wondering why you weren't with Olivia when she came to the station. Did you guys fight?"
"The station?" Nick snaps his head around. "What was she doing there? Did something happen?"
"Why, we finally found the driver," Wright announces. "And it turned out Olivia was right. The driver was a woman."
"A woman?" Charlie asks. "How'd you find her?"
"We were tipped off, actually. Then we discovered that her license plate matches the partial one Olivia gave us. Who would have thought that the driver was a doctor from this very hospital?" Wright shakes his head.
I barely keep myself from shaking some sense into him. How can he still assume that the doctor is the one responsible after Olivia told him point-blank that he's wrong?
While Charlie and Hugo look surprised by the news, Nick presses his lips into a pale line. "Is the doctor's name Anya?" he asks.
"No, Anya's the woman who tipped us off. The doctor's name is Kate."
"That's not possible." Nick shakes his head. "I heard Olivia say that Anya is the driver from the accident."
"That's all a misunderstanding." Wright waves him off. "Anya unintentionally caused Olivia's mother to be fired and now apparently Olivia is holding a grudge against her."
I snort, but this time push down the urge to kick something.
"You're sure?" Charlie asks. "She didn't seem like a person who'd lie about something like that."
"Listen to him," I urge Wright, despite knowing that it's pointless. No one inside the room can hear me. "You're allowing the real suspect to walk free."
"I think you should look into this Anya," Charlie continues. "I may not know much about what's going on, but I think you should give things another look."
"There's no point." Wright stupidly ignores his son's sound advice. "Nick, I suggest you call Olivia later on and see how she's doing. She seemed upset when she left the station."
"No," Nick shakes his head, making me itch to slam my fist into his face. "I'll go look for her right now."
"Finally something reasonable," I breathe out in relief.
I follow right behind Nick as he runs out of the room and down the hospital hallway. It's the same hallway Olivia chased me through, but right now I don't have the time to think about that. Instead, I keep close to Nick as he pulls out his phone and dials Olivia's number.
With Nick holding the phone to his ear, we exit the hospital and then run through the numerous streets leading to the police station. Every time the call doesn't get through, Nick tries again.
As we reach the police station and are about to head inside, Nick dials Olivia's number yet again. In an instant, her familiar ringtone swipes into my ears and I stop. While Nick darts with his eyes up and down the street, I sprint toward the spot where the melody is coming from.
At the side of the building, where Olivia and I had been standing when the Head Guardian caught us, lies Olivia's phone, with its screen displaying Nick's name and number. Yet the girl herself is nowhere to be found. No matter how long Nick and I look around, all that remains is her phone.
I run my hands through my hair, barely keeping myself from screaming my lungs out. Where the hell is she?
*
Olivia's POV
What if I never listened to Samuel? Would he still be my Guardian?
The two questions keep spinning round and round inside my mind as I lie sprawled across my bed. With my feet tangled up in the blanket, I'm facing the dull ceiling, while softly squinting at the light peeking from behind the poorly drawn curtains. The longer I lie there the more certain I am that everything that happened is my fault. Had I remembered Anya's involvement sooner, then none of this would be true.
With a loud sign, I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and lift my upper body into a sitting position. Despite the storming cloud hanging above my head, I can't keep doing this. Even ten minutes of thinking are too much for me. My head already feels like it's going to explode.
As I stand up, the sound of clattering bowls fills my ears. It can only mean that Mom is already awake, so without bothering to get dressed or make a pit stop in the bathroom, I head for the kitchen.
"Morning, Mom," I greet her with a yawn as I enter the kitchen in my pajamas.
Mom slams the plastic bowl she's holding onto the counter and turns to me with one of her most murderous looks. "I have never been so disappointed in you. At least when I was your age I had the decency to sneak into the house without my parents noticing. But you? You come parading through the front door at two in the morning, looking like something the cat dragged in."
"I wasn't at a party." I rub the sleep out of my eyes and slog to the table.
"I sure hope not. Because if you went to a party dressed in the clothes you came home in, I will disown you. I mean, who wears sweats to a party?"
"Still wasn't a party." I slump onto the chair and rest my still aching head on the table.
"If you weren't at a partyâwhich I still don't believeâthen where were you? And don't try to use Nick as an excuse because he was here looking for you."
"Nick was here?" I snap my head up. "Was he alone or was Samuel with him?"
"Samuel? Is that a dog of his?" Mom tilts her head to her side. "But no, he was alone. He came here to drop off your phone." She pulls my phone out of the pocket of her apron and brings it over to me.
I instantly grab it and scroll through the missed calls. "There are twenty-seven missed calls from you and Nick. Were you worried about me?"
"Let me see? The last time you didn't come home I got a call from the hospital telling me that you were in a car accident. You have no idea how much I was praying for you to be at a party."
"I'm sorry." I lower my eyes to the table. "Both for making you worry and for coming home so late. I had no idea how late it was because I had lost my phone."
Mom blinks at me and wordlessly stares at me for a moment. "Did you... Did you just... What happened yesterday?"
"A lot." I groan and drop my head back onto the table. "But I can't tell you about most of it. The only thing I can tell you is that I came home late because I was walking around, trying to prevent the Head Guardian from finding me."
"Head what?" Mom furrows her eyebrows. "Is that some new slang you kids are using?"
"No, it's what Samuel calls her." The moment I speak his name my heart squeezes tight. Where is he?
"Samuel can't speak, he's a dog. Anyway, since we're back to Nick, you mind telling me why he found your phone outside the police station?"
"Oh, right." After everything that happened yesterday, I forgot that Mom still doesn't know about Anya. "I went there becauseâ"
My explanation is cut off by the flush of a toilet. Since both Mom and I are inside the kitchen, the sound coming from the bathroom makes no sense.
"Is someone else here?" I snap my eyes back to Mom.
"Yes." She nods just as the bathroom door opens.
Of all the people to walk out of our bathroom the woman my eyes land on is the last person I expect to find inside our house right now. Yet here she is, standing in the open doorway of the kitchen, with a fake smile cast across her dark red lips.
Anya. The woman who almost killed me.
***
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- E