Page 192 of Depraved Boys

“I’ll follow the police in the jeep.”

I gave Leopold a sharp nod and sent Prakash a silent apology, hoping he didn’t think I’d abandoned him. Hoping he didn’t think I believed him guilty.

Because I didn’t.

Even though I couldn’t yet explain how Ashley had ended up on his bed bruised and bloody and beaten.

The door opened, and the crowd parted to let out Prakash and the sergeant. Leopold followed after them, and then a male paramedic wheeled a stretcher into the room.

“Ashley,” one of the women said in a loud voice. “You’re in safe hands. We’re going to move you to the ambulance and take you to the hospital, where you’ll be seen by a doctor.”

The two women crossed her arms and ankles and turned her onto her side, revealing a mass of livid, red bruises over the entire back of her body.

I clapped a hand over my mouth to stifle a gasp. Who could have wanted to inflict that much damage on Ashley?

They slipped a board under her torso and hips, lined up the stretcher to Prakash’s bed, and pulled Ashley, board and all, onto the stretcher.

I slumped forward, rested my hands on my knees, and gulped mouthfuls of air. What kind of monster did that to a girl who couldn’t fight back?

As they wheeled her to the door, I grabbed the phone on the desk and said, “She’s my sister. I have to go with her.”

As soon as we stepped into the hallway, a riot of gasps and cries and tear-filled moans filled the air. News had traveled throughout the school because students of all ages lined the walls. Mr. Blunt stood in the middle of the space with his hands clasped, and he led the paramedics through the gangway of students like the leader of a funeral procession. I trailed behind them like the chief mourner.

The caretaker led the paramedics into an empty utility room that smelled vaguely of garbage. A large sink stood at one wall and a goods elevator on the other. He pulled the metal scissor gate open and let them wheel Ashley into the wooden interior.

As we traveled down in silence, I stared into Ashley’s discolored, swollen face. Someone out there must have hurt her and planted her unconscious body in Prakash’s room. It was the only explanation.

“How did you find your sister in this state?” asked a policeman in a conversational tone.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered if he thought I’d battered Ashley because I wasn’t more distraught about her injuries. No matter how much she infuriated me, I would never wish something so heinous on her or anyone.

In a numb voice, I told him a sanitized version of the day’s events. That I had gone to Cummersdale with Leopold to pick up a few things from the cottage and had returned when Prakash had called, panicked and afraid. I couldn’t tell them that we’d been searching for items Ashley had claimed would prove that Prakash killed Corrine Gibbons.

When the elevator reached the bottom floor, someone opened the door, letting in a gust of cool, fresh air from huge, wooden doors at the end of another utility room.

The officer motioned for me to let the paramedics go first. “I remember Mr. Kashaayah from another incident last year.”

An iron fist of dread clenched at my insides. “Wh-which incident?”

“Where’s his friend, the one from Garraway Tea?”

I stepped out of the elevator, clutching myself around the middle. Sebastian was supposed to search the maids’ quarters with Prakash, but somewhere during their search, they had separated.

Where was Sebastian during all this? He and Prakash were supposed to work in pairs.

Panic rippled through my insides. What if the person who had attacked Ashley had also attacked Sebastian?

Thankfully, the enclosed space of the ambulance meant that I didn’t have to watch the vehicle negotiate the bends and curves of Hard Knott Pass. It still took nearly two hours to reach the hospital, and throughout the journey, the policeman and paramedics barraged me with questions about Ashley.

At the Royal Infirmary, they whisked her into a receiving area and then into the Resuscitation Unit. I was about to follow, but a nurse directed me to a waiting room.

Sweat broke out across my brow, and I asked, “Did she stop breathing?”

“Someone will update you soon.” The nurse hurried back toward the receiving area, leaving me gaping at her in the hallway.

Running a trembling hand over my face, I walked into a waiting room lined with plastic chairs, separated by a water cooler and coffee table full of dog-eared magazines. A man slumped in a corner seat and sobbed into his lap.

I took the chair closest to the door and pulled out the phone I’d taken from Prakash’s room. There was no service and no hospital WIFI, so I slumped in the plastic chair and stared at my fingers.