Her Final Confession

Chapter Sixty-Nine

For the third time in just over a week, Josie sat on a hospital gurney, sucking in sharp breaths every time the nurse tweezed a particularly large shard of glass from her legs and feet. Between that and the sting of the antiseptic they’d used to clean off all the blood before they started taking the glass out, both of Josie’s lower legs felt like they were on fire. Noah stood across the room, arms folded over his chest, grimacing every time Josie did. “It’s fine,” she told him. “Really. This is nothing.”

“It was a lot of blood.”

“All the wounds are very superficial,” the nurse mumbled without looking up from her work. “So far, only two of these will require stitches.” Her eyes snapped up to Josie’s face. “You were very lucky.”

Yes, Josie thought. I was.

She laid her head back on the pillow and concentrated on taking deep, slow breaths. One of her hands reached out, and a second later, she felt Noah’s hand slide into it. “You have to talk,” she said. “Distract me.”

“How did you know he was there? Did he make noise when he broke in? I didn’t hear a thing.”

“I was awake,” Josie explained. She opened her eyes but focused them on Noah’s face instead of her shredded legs. “Trinity texted me. It woke me up. Then I figured out what else Gretchen was hiding. I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?” he asked.

“I tried. You were so out of it, and I thought you’d be mad if I woke you up to tell you something that could wait until the morning.”

“It would have been better than waking up to you smashing every dish I owned and finding a serial killer in my house.”

Josie laughed. Noah gave her hand a squeeze. “So?” he asked. “What was it? What was Gretchen hiding?”

“Ethan Robinson has a twin. When Gretchen got pregnant after the assault by O’Hara and went into hiding with Devil’s Blade, she had two babies. That’s why Ethan wasn’t in Seattle yet. Gretchen told him to go get his twin and take him or her with him.”