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  Chaos

  BOOK 3

  The Unhinged Series

  Find more about Timberlyn Scott on her website

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  Chaos

  BOOK 3

  The Unhinged Series

  Timberlyn Scott

  SL Independent Publishing, LLC

  PO Box 806

  Hutto, Texas 78634

  www.slipublishing.com

  Copyright © Timberlyn Scott, 2014

  All rights reserved.

  This is a self-published title.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Chaos Book 3 – An Unhinged Novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Image: © Artem Furman - Fotolia.com

  Cover Design: © Nicole Edwards Limited

  Editing: Blue Otter Editing

  ISBN: 978-1-939786-35-7

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  To chaos.

  A necessary evil that often interrupts our path from point A to point B.

  Without you, the journey would otherwise be boring.

  Chapter One

  Payton

  Saturday night

  At the hospital

  Never in my life had I been as scared as I was when I found Sebastian lying beside the exploding car on the side of the road just a couple of hours ago. Not even when I was seven and I fell out of the tree in my parents’ backyard and broke two bones in my right leg. And I’d been terrified that day, but only because no one had been there to see it happen. No one had been there to help me.

  But this… This disturbing chain of events was far more frightening than anything I’d ever experienced.

  I had been sitting in Aaron’s car with Chloe and Aaron, just as Toby had instructed the three of us to do. We saw the cars take off from the line — there were five in total when the sleek black sports car joined them at the last second. I had a good view of tail lights for about ten seconds, at most, but then they disappeared behind buildings. At that point, between wringing my hands in my lap and grinding my teeth together, I was considering asking Aaron to just take me home. I didn’t understand the point of watching a race that I couldn’t actually see.

  Then things got weird. Minutes passed, people were standing around the finish line, jumping up and down, squealing and laughing, and I figured the race must’ve been close to being over. I watched, my eyes trained on the street where Toby said the racers would end up. And then there he was… Sebastian’s white Ferrari barreled around the corner. I thought for a moment that he had lost control of the car, but he corrected. The car lurched forward and was coming right toward us, leading the charge.

  The next thing I knew, he was spinning around while a blue Charger zoomed past him, rapidly approaching the finish line. My heart lodged in my throat, and I could hardly swallow around the lump. I had no idea what Sebastian was doing, why he was going the other way when he’d just been yards from finishing first.

  But then I saw it.

  Fire.

  There was a car upside down, farther down the street. I couldn’t make out much due to the distance between us and the accident, but I could tell that there were glowing orange flames licking up around the body of the car, and Sebastian was now heading toward it, not driving away. I knew it was bad, even though I hadn’t seen it happen. I had a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. A cold chill started in my chest and radiated outward, ending in my numb fingertips.

  It didn’t help when Toby’s big form darted across the road, diving into his car and tearing out of there as if the cops were chasing him. Two of the five cars had made it to the finish line, one was upside down, Sebastian’s was now sitting in the middle of the road not far from the wreck, and another had pulled off to the side close to Sebastian’s.

  “Go!” I yelled to Aaron. “Go down there!”

  “We have to stay here, Payton,” Aaron said softly, his eyes wide as he watched the same horrific scene I was watching.

  “Get me down there,” I yelled at him. “If you don’t do it, I’m getting out.” I reached for the door handle, fully intending to carry through with my threat. Sebastian was down there, and it wouldn’t take me long to get to him if I ran full out. No one was going to keep me away from him.

  Not Aaron. Not Toby.

  No one.

  “Okay. Calm down, doll,” Aaron said in a soothing tone, but I could hear the fear in his voice. He was just as freaked out as I was.

  Thankfully, Aaron figured out how to get his car to move, pulling forward and making a U-turn in the street. Before we were turned around and heading in the opposite direction, toward the wreck, the world exploded.

  A fireball erupted in the sky and then there was screaming. I knew it was me, but I couldn’t stop the obnoxious screeching sound coming from my throat. Chloe was crying, and Aaron was driving toward the flames licking into the inky night sky.

  At that point, I was on autopilot. Aaron hadn’t even stopped the car before I threw the door open and jumped out, nearly landing on my knees when I stumbled. I could see them. Toby, Leif, and Sebastian. Toby was crawling on his hands and knees, Sebastian was trying to drag himself across the asphalt, but that wasn’t the worst of it… Leif… Oh, God. Leif wasn’t moving.

  My heart felt as though it had been ripped from my chest. I started yelling Sebastian’s name as I ran to him.

  Then I started praying.

  Now, two and a half hours later, I was pacing the waiting area in the stupid emergency room. Despite my frequent requests and the one tantrum I had thrown, they still wouldn’t let me back to see Sebastian, and worse, no one would tell me what was going on.

  Aaron had had the good sense to call Garrett about Leif, relaying the details of the accident as we knew them. Garrett in turn had called their mother, Tammy. She’d arrived shortly after we had, her boyfriend — the detective — with her. Then two other guys, who I’d only recently learned were Leif’s other brothers, showed up, going straight back through the double doors that led to the rooms where Leif and Sebastian were being taken care of.

  “Chloe, I need to know what’s going on,” I pleaded, tears streaming down my face. I could no longer hold them back. I was growing desperate, my worry overwhelming every other emotion. I turned to look at her when I
stopped my incessant walking back and forth, crisscrossing the room full of strangers.

  “Did you call Conrad?” she asked as she came over to stand directly in front of me, her hands gripping my shoulders, as though she might be able to keep me in one piece.

  At this point, I wondered whether I was going to shatter into a million tiny fragments, so maybe it was necessary for her to grip my arms tightly. Hell, I didn’t know. I was numb, from the roots of my hair to the tips of my toes.

  “Yeah,” I answered, and I was sure Chloe could sense the disappointment in my tone.

  I had called Conrad as soon as I got to the hospital, but I’d gotten his voice mail. Not wanting to leave a disturbing message for fear it would send him into a panic, I had hung up and called Lauren, praying she would answer her phone. Luckily, I had put her number in my contacts before the trip to Las Vegas, in the event I might have needed her for something. I never imagined it would have been this. “He didn’t answer, so I called his wife.”

  “And?” Chloe asked.

  “I told her what happened and where he is.” I remembered the conversation, the way I had spewed the details, probably sounding like an emotional lunatic. Lauren hadn’t seemed all that concerned, but I had been hoping I was only imagining her indifference. Considering that had been over an hour ago and neither Conrad nor Lauren had shown up, I had to assume the worst. They weren’t coming.

  Truthfully, I didn’t give a shit whether they showed up or not. I just needed to get back to see Sebastian, and they would’ve been my only hope. I probably should’ve called Aaliyah, but I didn’t want her to worry until we knew more about Leif. Even my selfish need to see Sebastian hadn’t overwhelmed my need to protect Sebastian’s sister from this horror for a little while longer.

  I watched Toby as he ambled up to the window where patients were to check in. He spoke to a nurse, but I saw her shake her head before closing the window again.

  I looked at him expectantly, needing something. Anything.

  “Nothin’. Sorry. I tried.”

  “I have to go back there,” I told him. I was ready to storm the building, taking out whoever I needed to just to find Sebastian, to get some sort of assurance that he was okay.

  Toby was scanning the room, his focus settling on a set of double doors where I’d seen a few people go during the time I’d been waiting. He peeked back at me, his brow arching as though he was asking a silent question. But before he could tell me his plan, I heard someone yelling, the voice familiar.

  Sebastian.

  “Bull-fucking-shit I am,” Sebastian growled from the other side of the closed doors, his voice echoing off the tiled floors of the busy waiting room as it grew closer to where we were standing.

  Yep, he sounded about as frustrated as I felt.

  The doors flew open and… Holy shit. There he was. My breath lodged in my chest as my eyes consumed him from head to toe, taking stock of his injuries along the way. He had a white gauze bandage on his forehead, his gray T-shirt was covered in blood, his arms were scraped and scratched, and a couple of nasty-looking bruises marred his cheek. But he was in one piece.

  “Payton.” When he called my name, it hardly registered.

  “Go to him,” Chloe instructed, giving me a gentle nudge from behind.

  That was all I needed before I was moving toward him, my legs feeling like they were made of noodles, definitely unstable as I closed the gap between us. My relief was palpable, and as soon as I was close enough to touch him, my legs gave out. Strong arms came around me, keeping me from dissolving into a puddle on the floor. Sebastian’s face was inches from mine.

  “It’s all right, Angel,” he whispered as he lowered me to a chair that was suddenly behind my knees, likely Aaron’s doing.

  I touched Sebastian’s face tentatively with my fingertips, examining the scratches and bruises that marred his beautiful skin.

  “I’m fine,” he told me, but I wasn’t sure I believed him.

  “How’s Leif?” Toby asked, and that was when I realized Toby was standing beside us, Chloe tucked up under his arm, her hand resting on his broad chest. His shirt also had blood on it, I noticed. Aaron was standing beside them both, watching the four of us with a quiet curiosity.

  “Don’t know,” Sebastian replied, his gaze darting up to meet Toby’s. “Nurses wouldn’t tell me shit.”

  I pressed my forehead against Sebastian’s chest, ignoring the blood that spotted his shirt and the smell of gasoline that emanated from him. He was alive and in one piece, save for a few dings and abrasions, and I felt as though my world had finally righted itself after having tipped on its axis for the last couple of hours.

  The warm strength of Sebastian’s touch cradled the back of my head as he held me, and I fought the urge to cry. I didn’t know what was spurring the tears, but I felt like every emotion I possessed was wrapped in a flimsy bubble, threatening to burst at any moment. It was overwhelming. Both the relief that Sebastian was okay and the fear because we still hadn’t heard anything about Leif.

  As I gripped his shirt in both of my fists, I took deep breaths. I was going to hold it together. Sebastian wasn’t critically injured, and although we didn’t have news on Leif, I was going to take that as a good sign. And most important, I was going to ignore the violent rage that was boiling in my veins for the simple fact that Conrad wasn’t there to check on Sebastian.

  I think, quite possibly, the last part was what bothered me most, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about it at this point.

  But for now, my prayers were for Leif only.

  Chapter Two

  Sebastian

  I was shaking, although not nearly as violently as I had been a few short minutes ago when the bitchy fucking nurse had refused to allow Payton back to see me. Someone should probably warn the high and mighty ones that when a patient said he was gonna get up and walk out, he meant it. And that was exactly what I did when she told me for the umpteenth time that only family members were allowed back.

  As far as I was concerned, Payton was my family.

  But they had quickly learned just what I was capable of when I’d ripped the IV from my arm and the patches that had been stuck to my chest. I’d yanked on my clothes and then glared at the disbelieving nurse as I’d walked right out of that tiny ten-by-ten room that, for the last hour, had felt more like a prison than a hospital.

  Now that I had Payton in my arms, my anger was subsiding. I knew I had to get some information on Leif before I’d be able to relax completely. As it was, the tension in the waiting room was increasing with every passing second. I could tell that Toby was hanging on by a very thin thread, and when he snapped, no one was going to want to be in his path.

  “Can you try to get ahold of Garth?” I asked, directing my question at Aaron.

  “Already did. He hasn’t answered me since he got here.”

  If Garrett wasn’t answering, that meant one of two things: either they had to turn their cell phones off while they were back there, or he was pissed. I couldn’t necessarily blame him if he was mad, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to know what the fuck was going on. Leif was as much a brother to me as he was to Garrett, and it irked me that no one was bothering to share any information.

  “What’s Tammy’s boyfriend’s name?” I asked Toby, cupping the back of Payton’s head as she leaned her forehead against my chest. I slid my palm down her silky hair, over her back before repeating the movement again and again. I couldn’t stop touching her. For the last hour, since I’d been wheeled into the emergency room, fading in and out of consciousness, I had thought of nothing else except her. The fear that had been etched on her beautiful face just before the world faded to black was the last thing I remembered. I knew she had been scared. Hell, I’d been scared there for a while.

  “Derrick,” Toby said quickly. “What’re you thinkin’?”

  “You okay?” I asked Payton, leaning down and whispering the words against her ear and then pressing my
lips to her head.

  She nodded, still not lifting her head from my chest. Her hands were gripping my T-shirt as though if she held me to her, things wouldn’t be quite so bad. I honestly wished that were the case.

  Focusing on Toby once again, I said, “I think we need to get him out here. Maybe if we use that angle, we can get some information.”

  “I can do it,” Chloe offered. “I’ll go over to the nurse at the window and tell her there’s a detective back there and I have some information about the wreck.”

  My eyes darted back to Toby, and when he nodded, I gave Chloe the go-ahead. She stood up straight, adjusted her shirt, and marched over to the nurse sitting behind the glass pane. I watched from the corner of my eye, trying not to look too interested in what was going on. I hoped that this didn’t backfire. The last thing we needed were local cops showing up to take a statement.

  Speaking of… “Have the cops showed up?”

  Toby nodded. “I had to give a statement at the scene. Told them I’d been driving by when I saw the car flip. Haven’t talked to any since we’ve been here, though. There were a couple of uniforms wandering around a little while ago, but they went back.”

  Chloe glanced back over her shoulder. “Do y’all remember his last name? I forgot what he said it was.”

  I shook my head, as did Toby and Aaron, giving a little plausibility to Chloe’s lie. The nurse talked to Chloe for a little while longer but then closed the glass again. Chloe turned toward them, offering a small smile as she hung her head down.

  “When he gets out here, let me talk to him,” Toby insisted.

  I didn’t argue with him. I wasn’t in any mood to talk to anyone, especially if this guy wasn’t willing to share any information. As it was, I was ready to stomp back through those doors and peer in every room until I found Leif, or at least his family members.

  Twenty minutes passed, and I was beginning to give up hope when the double doors opened and out walked Garrett. He looked as though he’d aged ten years since the last time I’d seen him. Both Payton and I got to our feet immediately, following Aaron, Toby, and Chloe as they led the way. Garrett nodded his head toward the exit doors, signaling for us to follow him outside.