Authors: Chelsea Cain
A blanket lay in a pile at the foot of the mattress. Archie could imagine what had happened. The night nurse comes in to check on Courtenay, maybe to give her more meds, thinks she’s asleep, pulls back the blanket, sees the blood . . .
Once you knew, you could see it on her face—the bluish tint to her lips, the gray skin. Archie squatted next to her and touched her arm. The skin was cool. She’d been dead a few hours.
Then he noticed something about her face. You couldn’t tell unless you were up close, but there was something about the shape of her profile that wasn’t quite right. Archie reached over with his thumb and very gently lifted one of her eyelids.
Underneath was an empty cavern of blood and tissue.
Archie sat back on his heels and looked around the room. It didn’t take him long. There, on the wall directly across, was a single heart that looked like it had been drawn with Courtenay’sblood.
George was standing in the doorway.
“Lock down the ward,” Archie told him. “No staff leaves.”
George didn’t move. “This is because of you,” he said.
“Yes,” Archie said. Courtenay was in lockdown. Frank wouldn’t have been able to get in. But an orderly would have.
Archie stiffened and turned around.
This is because of you. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
He’d been wrong about Frank.
“Where is she?” he asked George.
George smiled. “Are you having fun yet?” he asked.
Gretchen’s words.
George blinked heavily. “Fun yet?” he repeated.
He stumbled.
Archie lunged for him.
George’s smile spread wider and he lifted an unsteady hand to his forehead. Archie got to him just as he swayed backward, and managed to grab him by the shirt as he fell to the floor. George was on his knees, head back, Archie standing over him, holding him by the neck of his scrubs.
“Where is she?” Archie demanded, shaking him. George didn’t respond, didn’t react at all. His eyes were already shiny slits, his breathing shallow. Archie was yelling now. But it was useless. Gretchen didn’t leave loose ends. Archie’s shoulders heaved in a dry sob and his voice cracked. “Where is she?”
Someone took him by the shoulders and pulled him off George. Archie sank back against the wall, just inside the door, a few feet away from where Courtenay lay. The blanket was pulled back and one of her arms was exposed. That arm, still bandaged in white gauze at the wrist, was the saddest thing Archie thought he’d ever seen. It’s down the road, not across the street.
Archie was helpless. He just sat there, as three nurses laid George out on the floor and worked to save his life. About five chest compressions into CPR, one of the nurses stopped and looked at her hand.
“He’s bleeding,” she said.
Archie sat forward to get a better view. Sure enough, the nurse had blood on the heel of her hand and a red stain had bloomed on George’s chest, where the nurse had been compressing it. She pulled his shirt up, but his chest appeared uninjured.
“Check his pocket,” Archie said, sitting back against the wall.
The nurse slid a hand into the breast pocket of George’s scrubs.
Archie didn’t see what was in her hand when she pulled it out, but he saw her mouth open and the skin of her face stretch back in horror.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
That kind of delicate tissue probably squashed easily.
“It’s her eyes,” the nurse said.
C H A P T E R 23
When Archie woke up, he thought for a second that it had all been a dream. Then he saw Henry sitting on the plastic chair by his bed. The sun was not yet up, but the sky was a pretty shade of pale violet.
“You crawled in here and fell asleep,” Henry said. “You’ve been out cold.”
Archie rubbed his face and looked over at Frank’s bed. He was gone. “It must have been the sedative,” he said. He didn’t remember even coming back into his room.
“George Hay is dead,” Henry said. “Vicodin overdose.” He glanced up at Archie. “Nice touch, huh?”
“He must have taken more than I did,” Archie said.
Henry looked at Archie without a hint of amusement. His reading glasses were up on his forehead, and he flipped them down to his nose and glanced at the notebook open in his lap. “We reviewed the security tapes,” he said. “Hay went into her room at 8:49, out at 8:52.” Four minutes. That was all it took to snuff out a life. Henry continued. “She’d been sedated at 8:30. She was lying on her stomach. The security camera in her room went out at 8:46. He must have disabled it before he went in.” Henry waved his hand in the air, not looking up. “Apparently that happens sometimes—the camera feed goes static—which is why the nurses weren’t concerned.” He scanned another page of the notebook. “Looks like the first cut severed her spinal cord, which is why she didn’t cry out. He stabbed her multiple times in the back and then must have flipped her over and covered her with the blanket. She bled out pretty quickly.”
“And then he just hung around?” Archie asked. Courtenay was dead by nine, but her body was not discovered for hours. Hay had had plenty of time to get away. But instead he was one of the first people who responded when the nurse had screamed.
Henry took the glasses off and set them on the notebook. “Criminal genius, he wasn’t,” Henry said.
Archie swung his feet to the floor and put his head in his hands. “How did Gretchen get to him?” He tried to remember every interaction he’d had with George, and wondered at what point Gretchen had gotten to him.
“We’re reviewing his phone records,” Henry said, “interviewing neighbors, friends. He was recently divorced. No kids. His ex-wife said he’d started seeing someone, but she didn’t know who and no one else ever saw her.”
No one ever did.
How many men had she gotten to kill for her? He’d seen their bodies when she was through with them. But how many of her sleeper agents were still out there, waiting, willing to do her bidding?
“She was obviously using him to keep tabs on you,” Henry continued. He looked Archie in the eye. “Anything you want to tell me?”
Archie dropped his hands and looked up. The phone. Shit. What had he done with the phone? He remembered having it when he fell asleep. Then he must have left it when he went to Courtenay’s room. What had he done with it when he got back into bed? He tried to disguise the panic that surely showed on his face and to focus on the conversation. “When does the ex-wife think the relationship started?” he asked.
“Two months ago,” Henry said.
They thought she’d fled, that she’d left the country. But she’d been there the whole time. They’d never been safe. “She never even left town,” Archie said.
“Why kill Courtenay Taggart?” Henry asked.
Archie looked out the window. If he hadn’t talked Courtenay into giving up the shard of Formica, she’d still be alive. She wasn’t going to hurt herself, not with that. She’d cut her wrists horizontally, for Christ’s sake. She just wanted someone to pay attention. He had to be the hero. And it had cost Courtenay her life. “I was nice to her,” he said softly.
“Archie,” Henry said. “You need to come clean right now. Has Gretchen contacted you?”
Archie glanced toward the floor, to see if the phone had fallen from the bed. It wasn’t there. “No,” he said.