Snow Falls in Prague; I Won't Wait for a Heartless Man novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Back Door

Jakub's POV

The old man in the gray overcoat spoke without a microphone, and the whole hall heard him.

"I am a surgeon," he said. "Five years ago I treated Bethany Quarles after a car accident in Chicago."

I stood at Freya's shoulder.

Bethany's chair had been pushed back.

"She had a cracked wrist and a bruise from the seatbelt," the surgeon said. "I examined her twice. Her reproductive health was whole. It is whole now. I told her to correct the story. She did not."

Four hundred people made one sound.

It was not a gasp.

It was lower, and it went on a long time.

"He's lying!" Bethany said. "He was paid! Brecken paid him!"

"I have the records," said the surgeon. "Here."

He lifted a thick envelope.

I looked at Freya.

She was staring at Bethany with her mouth set.

And I saw, over Freya's head, what Bethany did next.

She did not scream again.

She stood up slowly, smoothing her dress.

She looked at the stage, at the side door, and at the guard by it, who was busy staring at the surgeon.

Then she walked.

Not fast.

She walked like a woman leaving a party early.

"She goes," I said in Freya's ear.

"The back."

"I know where."

"Jakub, stop her."

I was moving before she finished.

I had spent six years in a depot that has three exits and no map.

I knew buildings the way I knew engines, from the inside.

I went along the wall behind the velvet curtain, through a door marked in four languages, down a flight of steps with a service cart parked at the bottom.

Kitchens, steam, a man in a white apron with a tray of canapés.

He pointed with his chin, without being asked.

At the end of the corridor there was a steel door with a bar across it, and a woman in white silk with both hands flat on it.

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