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“The agency nurse,” I said, pausing long enough to see her face as it was yesterday when under my care… under my control.
“Anna Vale.” The name came out of me like a devil’s prayer.
Something crossed his face at that. Not fear this time but something closer to distaste, as if he knew what was coming.
“What about her?”
“She works medical alone. She continues to do so. Her hours do not change, her post does not change, and she is not reassigned to any other part of this facility for any reason at all.” I held his eyes. “If somebody upstairs decides she would be safer elsewhere, you will discover a reason why that cannot happen.” I watched him swallow hard at this before arguing,
“She’s just a temp. She doesn’t have long left on her contract.”
“Then extend it,” I snapped, cutting him off.
“I can’t just…”
“You can offer it. Whether she takes it is not your business.” I opened the door. “And Warden. Nobody in this building goes near her. Nobody speaks to her when she is walking a corridor alone. Nobody follows her out to her car. If one man in your custody or your uniform so much as makes her uncomfortable, I want to hear about it from you before I hear about it from anybody else, and you had better hope I do… Do I make myself clear?”
He stared at me.
“You’re worried about her safety… why, who is she to you?” he asked, making me smirk to myself.
“That is not your concern. But know this, that nurse…”
“…belongs to me.”
12
WHAT LIES ON A PAGE
THE GHOST
Ididn’t open it on the wing.
I carried it back through the gates against my ribs with two officers walking on either side of me. Neither of them asked what the shape under my jumpsuit was, and I let them keep that small dignity.
This time I didn’t have to wait until the last head count or for the lights to go down, as I knew that even if I was seen with the file, nobody would dare take it from me.
“Let’s see exactly what lies you’re hiding, little bird,” I muttered to myself before breaking the seal.
Yakov had done what Yakov always does, which was to give me the truth in the order I would want it, with nothing dressed up and nothing left out.
Anna Vale. Twenty-six. Agency nursing contract, Ashlock State Penitentiary, six weeks, commenced eight days ago.
Photocopy of a state driver’s license issued eighteen days ago. Photocopy of a nursing license, transferred in from out of state. A social security number. A lease on a two-room apartment nineteen minutes from the prison, signed two weeks ago, deposit paid in cash. A cell number registered to a prepaid account.
Employment history: fifteen placements across three states, going back a little over three years.
And then it stopped.
It did not thin. It did not go vague.
It just… stopped.
Three years, two months, and before that there was nothing at all. It didn’t take the sharpest knife in a murderer’s hand to know that a woman didn’t just arrive on this earth at the age of twenty-three with a nursing qualification and no childhood. No next of kin. No family. No life extending past three years.
I sat on that bunk as I went through it twice, and I felt something in my chest that I hadn’t felt in a very long time. The pure pleasure of recognizing my own work in somebody else’s hands.
Because it was good.
