How could she be gone?
Adeline reached out and opened the door. Her hand shook. She wanted to back away. To deny this awful truth. No. She would not be a coward. Her mother deserved every ounce of courage Adeline could muster. The son of a bitch who’d done this had to be stopped. Adeline wanted his ass so bad it hurt. She would make him pay.
Stepping into the room, she closed the door behind her and leaned against it. Before attempting to move toward the bed, she took a good long look.
Her mother looked peaceful. The sheet was folded down at her shoulders, wasn’t covering her face. Somehow she found comfort in that insignificant detail.
Potassium chloride.The bastard had killed her mother using the same technique he’d used in Laurel on the cop. Same one he’d tried to use to kill his wife, but the smaller dosage had allowed his wife to pull back from the edge.
They hadn’t been able to pull Irene back. Maybe because of the recent heart attack. Maybe because of her age. She hadn’t responded to the attempts to resuscitate her.
Now she was gone. And the bastard who’d done this had just walked away. The hospital’s CCTV had shown him walking out an exit and then walking across the parking lot to God only knew where ... just as he’d done in Laurel.
Adeline banished the thoughts as she pushed away from the door and walked to the bed. Tears blurred her vision and she swiped them away with the back of her hand.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” Adeline’s face crumpled with the agony flooding her. “I should have figured this out before now. I shouldn’t have been so stupid.”
She reached beneath the sheet and took her mother’s cold hand in hers. An aching sob expanded in her throat. This wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair.
“Anyway.” Adeline cleared her throat. “He won’t get away with hurting you like this. I’ll stop him. I promise.”
The idea that her mother might have survived this attack if she hadn’t had that heart attack—if Adeline hadn’t stressed her out—had more of those hot tears streaming down her cheeks.
She’d always been a bad daughter. Her parents had deserved far better.
Adeline shouldn’t have left nine years ago. She should have told Cyrus to go screw himself and stayed right here with her mother.
Selfish. That was what Adeline had been. She’d been a selfish, indifferent daughter and now her mother was dead because of her.
I will get you, you bastard.Wherever Daniel Jamison went, whatever he did, Adeline would find and stop him.
Leaning down, she kissed her mother’s forehead. “I love you.” She bit back more of the tears, steadied her voice. “No one else could have been a better mother. I will always be your little girl. Yours and daddy’s.”
She fingered the edge of the sheet, told herself to go ahead and cover her mother’s face. It was time. There was nothing more Adeline could do here. Nothing else to say.
Getting the bastard who’d done this was all that mattered now.
Raised voices outside the room drew Adeline’s attention to the door. Hope pushed aside some of the pain in her chest. Maybe they’d found that son of a bitch. She stormed across the room and jerked the door open.
Wyatt stood between the door and Cyrus.
Adeline looked past Wyatt, the agony inside her instantly morphing into white-hot fury. “What do you want?” Wyatt stepped fully aside, allowing Cyrus to feel the full brunt of her glare.
Cyrus hiked up his chin and glared right back at her. “I want to see her.”
“I told him to leave,” Wyatt explained. “I can call security.”
Unable to shift her gaze from Cyrus’s, she could have sworn that for a single moment she’d seen misery in those beady brown eyes. Whatevershe’d thought she saw, it cleared in one blink and was immediately replaced by the condescension she’d always associated with the man.
“Addy,” Cyrus said sternly, though his voice trembled ever so slightly, “I have the right to see her. Call security if you’d like, but I will not leave without seeing her.”
His man Everett hovered a few feet away. Adeline braced for war. No way was she letting this old bastard anywhere near her mother.
She opened her mouth to say as much but swallowed back the words. Her mother wouldn’t approve of her acting this way. Cyrus Cooper, bastard though he was, was still family.
“All right.” Adeline backed into the room, opened the door wider to facilitate the wheelchair’s entrance. When Wyatt sent her a questioning look she just shook her head. This was something she couldn’t exactly explain.
Adeline closed the door and moved to the side of the bed opposite Cyrus’s position. He stared at Irene for a long moment, then redirected his attention to Adeline. “Are they any closer to finding the animal who did this?”