Page 120

“Then come in here and assess me,” I replied, winking at her, but I saw the hint of a smile before she complained,

“Oh, for the love of…”

“You have your little clipboard and a pen and a legitimate reason to be inside this room, so if somebody comes down those stairs, I will lie down on this mattress, clutch my chest, and you can be the nurse who comes in here to save me.” She scoffed a laugh before pointing her finger at me.

“Nobody would believe you were having a heart attack.”

“Why not?” I asked tilting my head to the side a little, playing with her.

“Because you have a resting pulse of fifty-two and I have the paperwork to prove it.”

I put my head against the frame of that door and laughed. Out loud and unrestrained in a locked seclusion room in a hospital for the criminally insane. A sound that would have been frightening to most, I can imagine.

“I can be very convincing,” I said, but the second she started to shake her head and turn away from me, I knew my patience was at an end and so were my options.

“Last chance, little bird, are you going to open the door, or is my memory going to slip the next time I see someone else, perhaps your supervisor, for example?” I hated saying it, but I hated watching her expression fall even more.

What I didn’t hate however was the moment she finally…

Opened the door.

33

LYING WILL GET YOU PUNISHED

THE GHOST

She came in with the clipboard held across her body like she still had a job to do, and stopped just inside, jumping slightly when the door closed behind her.

“It doesn’t lock from the inside,” she said, making me grin at her nervousness. As if this was to play an important factor in what I had planned for her. But she should have known by now how fast I was at catching my prey, as she had tried to make it to a door more than once.

“I am aware,” I said, and in a way that let her know I had counted on it. Then I sat down on the edge of the mattress and put my hands on my knees and looked across at her. I let her stand there for a moment, because she looked frightened and there was a dark sadistic part of me that wanted to see it.

Fuck me, she was beautiful.

“Come and sit with me,” I said patting the space next to me, intrigued to see if she would take me up on the offer, although I doubted it. And I was right.

“I think I will stay right here, thank you.”

I released a sigh before I got up and went over to her and got what I wanted. She made a small sound when I picked her up, one hand still gripping that useless clipboard. Then I carried her four steps and set her down on the edge of that mattress as though she weighed nothing at all.

And then, instead of sitting beside her, I went down onto my knees on the floor in front of her.

“What… what are you doing?” she stammered, her voice getting high-pitched.

“Isn’t it obvious? I am attempting to appear less threatening.” She stared at me like I had grown an extra head and then God help me, she laughed. And I had absolutely no idea what to do with the sound of it.

I know that woman’s voice better than I know my own. Frightened, professional, defiant, breathless, and that flat pleasant nothing she keeps for everybody in that building. I had cataloged all of them, meaning that I could have picked her voice out of a crowded room with my eyes shut.

But I had never once heard her laugh.

Chuckle in disbelief, sure, but a full unrestrained laugh… no.

It was a delightful sound, and it came out of her before she could stop it. Although she looked appalled with herself about half a second afterward, and it went through me like something being switched on. And honestly, I didn’t know what to do about it.

I didn’t know whether I wanted to put her flat on that mattress and fuck her breathless or put my arms around her and simply hold onto her. And I have never in my life had those two things arrive at the same time and blur the lines.

What I actually did do, was laugh with her.