DEAD IN BED By Bailey Simms: The Complete Second Book

PART 12, AUTHOR'S NOTE - 2/21/15, 10:13am

Minutes after I posted Part 11, I heard footsteps outside the door.

Swarms of butterflies fluttered through my stomach. The cop must have been rewarding me for completing Part 11 by bringing Kyle back for another visit. I'd been so alone and fatigued—not to mention depressed about having to write the death of Ashley's family—that the thought of being with Kyle had made me desperately happy.

"Cuffs," the cop called out.

I cuffed my wrist to the bed and tossed the key against the door. At that moment I didn't care that I was being held captive in a strange place. I didn't care that I had Huntington's. I didn't even care that this time the cop was insisting that I cuff myself to the bed during Kyle's visit. I was going to see him again, if only for a short while, and I was elated.

The cop peered through the slot at the bottom of the door.

"You're cuffed?"

I cooperatively showed him my wrist. Just let me see Kyle, I thought. Just let me see Kyle right now and I'll do anything you ask me to do.

But when the door swung open and the cop stepped in, he was alone.

And he was angry.

He paced back and forth across the room a couple of times before roughly turning around the desk chair and sinking into it, glaring at me.

My soaring spirits plummeted.

"Where's Kyle?" I demanded. "I've been writing non-stop. I finished Part Eleven. You owe me a visit with Kyle."

"What are you doing, Bailey?" The cop shook his head and gave me a look of disgust. "What kind of book are you writing, anyway? Are you deliberately trying to upset your readers? Are you trying to piss us all off? Because it sure seems like it."

I was totally confused.

"I didn't even write about Shawn this time," I said, bewildered. "And, yeah, Ashley considers suicide. But for a heroic reason! And she doesn't end up needing to go through with it anyway. Didn't you read that far?"

"That's not what I'm talking about. Don't play dumb, Bailey. You know exactly what I'm talking about."

"Enlighten me." I threw my hands up and glared at him. For someone so sadistically dangerous, he could be so childish—which made him all the more frightening.

"Of course it's not about Shawn," he said impatiently. "I don't care if he's off screwing that hottie Lindsay—for now, anyway. I told you that. And why would I care if Ashley considered taking her own life for the good of humanity? That's noble." He looked at me expectantly as if I were going to finally realize what he was objecting to. Then he shouted, "Ian! What were you thinking?"

"Ian?" I said, confused. "So, fine, Ashley admits that she's in love with him. But she also acknowledges that she can't ever be with him. SO what?"

"Ian killed his own daughter? He let his entire family die? What were you thinking?" The cop looked at me incredulously. "Ian was the only truly upstanding character in the whole book. He would have protected his family! At all costs! He would have defended them to the death if he had to!"

I couldn't believe this. I guess I could have remembered that the cop's sister had been killed, and that he obviously resented his own father for not protecting her. But this was ridiculous. How was I supposed to write a novel if he was going to take issue with the story like this at every turn?

"That's just how the story goes," I tried to explain. "Of course I didn't write it this way just to piss you off. This novel means everything to me. Don't you get it? Why would I sabotage it?" I felt my eyes start to mist. "From the very beginning, Ian was always going to lose his family in a tragedy. That's how I thought the story up. And, don't worry, a lot more is going to happen to Ian, too. This isn't the end. But even Ian isn't superhuman. Nobody's perfect. Being perfect just isn't how life works. People fail. People make mistakes, sometimes big mistakes. You should know that better than anyone!"

The cop stood up, enraged. The chair toppled over behind him. His fists were clenched. He stepped toward me. I curled into a ball and covered my face, prepared for his thick fist to slam into me at any moment.

But he didn't hit me. Instead, he threw the handcuffs key at me with all of his might. It bit into my ribs painfully then clattered to the floor.

"I'm getting sick of this, Bailey," he screamed. "You're going to finish this book. You're going to finish it right. And you're going to finish it NOW. I'm tired of waiting around for days for another installment."

He stared it me, panting, as if I'd forced him to take some kind of new drastic measures against his will.

"The rules have changed," he said.

Before I'd uncovered my face, the cop rushed out of the room and slammed the door behind him, shaking the entire house.

He must have gone down to the basement. He must have gone after Kyle. But I have no idea what he's planning, or what he meant by the "rules have changed."

I haven't heard anything in the house during the few minutes since he's left. . . But Kyle isn't responding to any of my tapping.