Lilly was now lying unconscious in her warm bed with an IV line attached to her arm. In addition to potentially losing his wife, Joseph couldn't help but worry about Linda's reaction when she finally comes back to find her grandmother in that state. With a desperate look in his eyes and hands trembling out of fear, Joseph held his beloved's hand warmly in his.
"You need to be okay, my Lilly, you know our granddaughter will wallow in guilt if she finds you like this... So wake up before Jackie and Jeremy find her, okay?"
Jackie and Jeremy rushed out of the house upon hearing Lilly's plea, and they couldn't bear to think of the state Linda was in. Jeremy was frantically trying to reach her phone while looking at her GPS location on Jackie's phone. With every voicemail, he felt his world shaken and his senses slipping, "We have to find her, Jackie!"
He said in frustration and uneasiness, thinking of the worst that could have happened to her, "Hurry!"
"I am! I am just as worried, you know! You also need to take it easy, you just came out of a mini coma....you shouldn't even be here! She will kill me when she finds out I failed to stop you from doing something so stupid..." , Jackie retorted in frustration of her own,
"It is not stupid, and we will have to find her first"
Jeremy loved Linda to the point that his own health couldn't stop him from getting into that car. All he could think about was her and the state she was in. Knowing Linda's temperament, Joseph and Jackie tried to talk him out of it, but it was futile because his mind was already made up.
"You know she won't be happy seeing you in this state-", she muttered as she sped to the location Kim tracked,
"None of that matters - let's worry about her. The fact that I woke up in her bed rather than a cold basement indicates my uncle knows our plan, and at this moment, she's not in a position to defend herself if she is caught. We need to find her -"
His pale face, sunken eyes, and short breaths were a clear reflection of his poor health, and he could feel the room still spinning, but none of it was going to stop him. He would have crawled to find her if he couldn't walk. He knew something was wrong while he was deep in his sleep, stuck between life and death with a repeating nightmare of losing Linda over and over again. From that 3-day coma, he experienced the hell of losing her and the guilt of not being able to protect her - emotions he never thought possible and never wanted to live. At that moment, she was the only reason he fought so hard to open his eyes. His worst fear was never being able to wake up to see her smile, and the thought of never hearing her laughter as he teased her shook him to the core. If it weren't for the piercing sound of someone weeping, he would still be stuck trying to escape that hellish nightmare.
"Hang in there, baby...", he whispered as he grew more weary with distance, "We are almost there..."
Jackie was driving at a speed she had never driven before, hastily closing the distance between them and Linda's location. To their surprise, it was a cemetery, where the King's family's private burial ground was located.
"Of course! Why didn't I think of this?", Jackie sighed as she drove through the gates, "The best way to know if someone is dead or alive - the cemetery!"
However, none of that mattered to Jeremy; all he could think about was the shock and confusion she was in, "She must be in so much pain right now-", Jeremy's heart broke,
Linda drove to the one place she knew her father to be, the funeral home. Although cremated, his father's remains were kept safe in an urn in the family tomb. She just knew that's where he is supposed to be because that's where she's been visiting him her entire life. The moment she walked through the gate, she ran out to find the urn still there and took it to the funeral home office responsible for the cremation, and that's where Jackie found her car parked.
"Tell me who is in here?" The now grey-haired manager gasped in shock, and the crack in his voice sent a feeling of realisation and grief down to her spine,
"Listen to me... You are going to tell me everything, or I will have this tested right this second, and if I find you lied to me, your entire family will pay! AN EXCRUTIATING PRICE", Her eyes did not flinch, and her resolve was written all over her face; she was not bluffing. The chills in her voice made him shudder in fear,
But he still had to try and persuade her, after all, he suspected this day would come, he was told to prepare, " Um.. Ms King... That's your fa-",
She instantly dialled a number on her phone, "Alright... I see you don't wanna talk", and the manager's eyes widened as fear danced in his expression...he flipped to halt her from making the phone call,
"Okay... Okay... Umh... It's no one in particular...I was handed a bag of ash and told to put it in that urn along with a bag of money. I honestly don't know what or who is in that urn...please spare my family"
Linda's time froze, and her phone cinematically fell to the floor where her knees were about to hit if Jeremy hadn't swooped in and caught her. He turned to Jackie,
"Handle the rest, I will take her to the car-", Jackie nodded anxiously, seeing her friend so weak and distorted, unable to grasp her surroundings. All that hurt emotion turned to a menacing rage when he turned to the old manager,
"You are going to tell me everything....and I mean every single detail you could remember about that day - from what you did in your waking moment down to the colour of that person's shoes. You better not leave anything out"