Her Last Whisper (8 page)

She might learn slowly, but by God, she apparently learned.

“Why was that?” Pugh looked at her probingly. “What was it that made you suspect something was amiss in the infirmary?”

Michael said, “Get your stuff together, babe. I’m going to be on my feet here in a minute and when I am we want to be able to make tracks.”

Shooting a hooded, anxious glance at him, Charlie responded with a barely perceptible nod of acknowledgment.

Stepping over to her desk with the intention of retrieving her laptop, which had all her files on it and which she really didn’t want to leave behind, she forced herself to focus on Pugh. “While Dr. Creason was treating my hand, I noticed that he was behaving oddly.” As she spoke, Charlie thrust her laptop into her purse, then began hurriedly gathering up the rest of her spilled belongings and stuffing them in there, too, skirting Michael, who gave her a sardonic look, as she bobbed and weaved around him snagging items from the floor. “It’s possible, as you suggested, that he was experiencing a reaction to a medication, or a gas, or something of that
nature. I also noticed that one of the trustees was behaving oddly. I don’t know what was happening to make them behave as they were. I only know that I was convinced that something out of the ordinary was occurring, and needed to be contained until it could be evaluated.”

She didn’t
know
that the hunter couldn’t track Michael like a bloodhound anywhere they went, but she was hoping it couldn’t. She did know that it knew where he was right now, and
that
gave her the willies.

Tony was looking at her hand. “I noticed the bandage. You hurt yourself on the job today? What happened?”

“She was attacked by an inmate,” Pugh told him. “We’re already re-evaluating our security procedures.”

“A subject I was interviewing grabbed my hand and bit me,” Charlie said shortly. “It’s nothing.”

“See, that’s the thing about them serial killers,” Michael’s drawl was pronounced as he fixed Tony with a hard look. “They’re downright dangerous. That’s why most of us like to keep our women away from them.”

That was sexist, possessive, and otherwise offensive on so many levels that Charlie didn’t even know where to start to bristle. Unfortunately, beyond shooting Michael the most fleeting of dirty looks, there wasn’t any response she could make.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Tony said with such genuine sincerity that she rewarded him with a smile. Moving nearer, he started gathering up her dropped items and handing them to her. The pink and flowery case of her Miracle-Go kit looked ridiculously feminine in his very masculine hand as he passed it over. Their fingers brushed: his felt solid and warm. “Let me help you with that.”

“Fucking Boy Scout,” Michael muttered, seemingly to no one in particular. Then, to Charlie, he added, “What do you want to bet missionary is the only position he knows?”

“You made the right call about the infirmary, Dr. Stone,” Pugh said to her at almost the same moment, which allowed her to pretend that she hadn’t heard Michael’s last remark at all, which actually was a far more effective way of dealing with him than glaring, as she had learned from experience. Pugh then asked, “And how did
you
feel while you were in the infirmary? Other than your hand, I mean? Headachey? Short of breath? Any kind of physical symptoms?”

“I had a headache,” Charlie replied slowly, as if giving careful consideration to her answer, while she continued to scoop up her belongings. After all, what had happened in the infirmary had to be explained away somehow, and the truth just wasn’t going to cut it. The kind of scenario Pugh seemed to be suggesting worked for her. She decided to go with it. “And I was a little nauseous, now that I think about it.”

Pugh said, “Ah,” but before he could expand on that another guard came rushing up.

“Warden!” There was a whole boatload of urgency in his tone. His voice lowered as Pugh turned to look at him. “Something you ought to know!”

“What is it now?” Sounding testy, Pugh once more moved away to deal with whatever dire matter was being brought to his attention. Since it didn’t involve a hunter swooping down out of nowhere or some fresh crisis relating to Michael, Charlie didn’t even try to listen. She was, in fact, relieved to no longer be the object of his scrutiny. She lied when she had to, which, thanks to Michael and her ongoing ghost problem was more often than she would have liked, but she wasn’t all that good at it. She always felt uncomfortable, and sometimes it showed.

“What’s with the salt anyway?” Tony asked, low-voiced, when, as he thought, no one else could hear.

“Ants.” Desperate, Charlie managed to latch onto something halfway plausible. Maybe. Anyway, it couldn’t sound even a fraction as insane as the truth. “There were dozens of them in here earlier, and I hate ants. My purse had candy in it. When it fell they started swarming and”—okay, she was babbling; cut it short—“haven’t you ever heard that salt wards off ants?”

“Ants,” Tony repeated. To his credit, he sounded only faintly dubious. “No, I hadn’t heard that.” He glanced around. “I don’t see any now.”

“That’s because it worked,” Charlie answered. The note of triumph in her voice sounded genuine because it was genuine: she was proud of herself for coming up with such a fast and unassailable rebuttal. There were indeed no ants anywhere in sight: Tony couldn’t argue with that.

Michael gave a grunt of laughter. “You know that sounded nuts, right?”

Even as she flicked Michael the briefest of withering looks, she picked up a few coins and Tony handed her a couple of receipts and a nail file and that was it: the contents of her purse were once again back in her purse. The contents of her Miracle-Go kit were in there, too. Along with her laptop. The fact that everything was a jumbled mess and her purse was bulging and filled to overflowing was something she would deal with later. She did like things organized, but at the moment she had more urgent problems, like a giant murderous monster that could reappear at any second.

“Thank you.” She smiled at Tony, then wasn’t able to stop her expression from changing as, with a look of grim determination, Michael surged to his feet. That brought him so close that she found herself staring at the T-shirt-covered center of his wide chest before automatically adjusting her gaze upward, over his square jaw and beautifully carved mouth and straight nose and chiseled cheekbones to his eyes. For the most fleeting of moments their eyes connected; his were still terrifyingly black. If she hadn’t known him, she would have taken an instant, instinctive step back: only the damned should have eyes like that. As it was, though, she took in the soulless eyes right along with the handsome, hard-planed face and the tall, powerful body, sweeping all of them with the kind of anxious glance a mother would throw over an injured child. He might be on his feet, but he was far from recovered. She got the impression that simply remaining upright was costing him every bit of strength he had.

“Something wrong?” Tony asked with a frown, apparently correctly interpreting her changing face without any inkling as to the cause. He slid a supportive hand around her upper arm. It felt large and warm and comforting against her chilled flesh, but she was too jittery to do more than register it in passing.

“N-no,” Charlie answered, already busy scraping salt out of the
way with a hopefully discreet foot to make a path that would allow Michael to escape. From this point, everything needed to happen fast: once the circle was open, the hunter could pounce without anything to even slow it down. Barely repressing a shiver, she refused to let her thoughts go there. Both men were looking at her, and for a moment her attention was torn between them. Tall, dark, and handsome, stalwart and gainfully employed in a respected profession that required him to wear a suit and tie (her mother’s criteria for the kind of man Charlie should be on the hunt for), her perfect dream man, in fact, if only she had the sense to realize it, Tony watched her with concern. Taller, more powerfully built, gorgeous, golden (dead) Michael, with not one thing in his favor except that he was pure sex on the hoof and she genuinely liked him almost as much as she wanted to sleep with him, fixed her with an inimical gaze.

So unsteady on his feet that he was swaying slightly, Michael shifted his eyes from her face to frown down at Tony’s hand on her arm, then looked at Tony in a way that would have been forbidding even if his eyes weren’t as black as night. Tony, of course, had no idea that Michael was even there. His focus was all on her.

“This is hopeless. I’ll let the janitorial staff deal with it,” she said lightly, seeing that Tony was looking down at her busy foot even as she nudged the last few grains of salt aside.

“Good idea,” Tony replied. “So, are you coming with me to Vegas?”

Charlie’s eyes flew to his face. The thought of Kaminsky’s pain made her want to say yes, but there were so many factors to consider. “I—”

“Let’s go.” Michael stepped through the opening she had made for him. “Chop-chop.”

Instead of rushing for safety as she would have wished, he stopped just outside the circle to wait for her.

This is no time to be gentlemanly! The hunter can’t hurt
me, she wanted to scream at him, but of course she didn’t. Although he could only get ahead of her by about fifty feet, in these circumstances a fifty-foot head start was not to be despised. It would at least get him out of her office, where the hunter knew to look for him.

“—am thinking about it,” she concluded quickly, pulling her arm free of Tony’s hold and hurrying past Michael toward the door. She added over her shoulder in as normal a tone as she could manage, “I’m just going to go outside. I’m feeling a little dizzy and I really need some fresh air.”

“Charlie—” Tony sounded perturbed. She didn’t look back or even slow down. She was already edging through the crowd at the door. Her fingers curled around the cool hard curve of the horseshoe. Pulling it free of her waistband, she thrust it out of sight into her pants pocket, then kept a firm grip on it. If the hunter came back, she wanted to be ready.

A shiver slid down her spine at the prospect.

Please don’t let it come back
.

Pugh looked sharply at her as Charlie murmured “Excuse me” to get past him. Michael (being noncorporeal had its plus side) had already made it through the knot of men standing in and around the doorway and was once again waiting for her to catch up. Pugh automatically stepped out of her way, but then came after her as she speed-walked away from him, rushing down the corridor with Michael at her side. Tony was perhaps half a step behind Pugh. With thoughts in mind of how vulnerable Michael was to the hunter, she would have kicked up her pace to a flat-out run except she was afraid of attracting too much attention. Plus, the last thing she wanted to do was overtax Michael’s strength. It was clear that whatever the hunter had done to him had left him in a severely weakened state.

Pugh said loudly, “Dr. Stone, wait! Did I understand you to say you’re feeling ill?”

“A little light-headed. Nothing some fresh air won’t help,” Charlie threw back at him. The route to the nearest elevator bank required her to go to the end of the hallway where her office was located and then walk a short distance along the corridor that led to the infirmary—both places, she judged, where there was a better than average likelihood of encountering the hunter—before turning down the hallway that led to the elevator banks. Michael stayed beside her, matching his pace to hers even though his gait was growing unsteady. From that, and his increasingly ashen complexion, she
knew that he was having real difficulty. A moment later, he gave up walking and went into what she called the ghost-glide, with his boots floating an inch or so above the floor.

He must have been able to read her worry for him in her face, because he gave her a crooked half-smile. “No need to get that sexy little blue thong you’re wearing in a twist, babe. I’ll make it.”

That made her eyes widen. There was outrage in the look she threw at him.

Did you watch me getting dressed?

She barely managed to stop herself from saying it aloud. Because a sexy little blue thong exactly described her underwear. And she’d put them on, along with the rest of her clothes, in her bathroom, in which she now dressed because of
him
, which he was forbidden to enter without an invitation.

His eyes raked her face, and his smile widened into a devilish grin. “Just so you know, I saw you getting them out of your dresser. Before you locked yourself in the bathroom to get dressed. Jesus, you have a dirty mind.”

That would have totally infuriated her if his voice hadn’t been so raspy it sounded like somebody had taken sandpaper to his vocal cords.

What she wanted to do was wrap an arm around his muscular waist and have him lean on her. She couldn’t.

Except for tightening her hold on the horseshoe and keeping a wary eye out, there wasn’t a thing she could do to help him. She couldn’t even slow down, or manufacture a reason for a rest stop. Reaching a safe place had to be the priority. If there
was
such a thing as a safe place, but that was too terrifying to contemplate.

Getting outside the prison was neither quick nor simple: they had to pass through a guard station with its requisite barred doors before reaching the elevators, then pass through another guard station before being allowed to exit. All she could do was continue moving as fast as she reasonably could while keeping an eye on Michael and a watch out for the hunter.

Knowing that it could swoop down upon them at any time made her pulse pound.

“This place is a damned rabbit warren,” Tony said behind her. “Is this the fastest way outside?” He was talking to Pugh.

“I’m afraid so,” Pugh replied.

“What the hell do you do in case of fire?” Tony demanded.

“We have an emergency evacuation protocol in place.”

Michael snorted. “Think anybody gives a damn if a bunch of convicts burn?”

“Dr. Stone—” Pugh called. They were nearing the end of the corridor, and she (and Michael) had outdistanced the other two by quite a bit. She could hear Pugh’s quickening footsteps behind her. Ignoring him, she walked a little faster; she was way too antsy to deal with the warden, or try to think up more lies in answer to whatever questions he was bound to ask.