Wicked Lies (3 page)

Justice’s expression brightened a little, the most anyone could ever scare out of him. He was in gray felt slippers, and he eagerly walked through the door ahead of Zellman. There were precautions overhead in the hall: big, glossy, mirrored half circles that housed hidden cameras. Justice looked up at them as they passed, and Zellman smiled to himself. There would be hell to pay later when the handcuff protocol breach was noticed. Dr. Jean Dayton, a mild-mannered little brown bird with a permanent scowl, would scream her pinched-tight ass off.

They walked along the hall together and, side by side, clambered up the utilitarian metal stairway that led to the ground level. At the top it was a short walk toward a set of gunmetal gray, locked double doors with small windows filled with wire netting—doors that led to the outside. They stood together just inside, looking through the windows, waiting while a white hospital van with the Ocean Park logo pulled under the portico beyond. Daylight was disappearing, the fading sun fingering stripes of dark gold along the grass that fanned out on the far side of the portico, night still an hour or so away.

As Zellman watched, the driver, an orderly from Ocean Park, jumped from the van. The man would be expecting Justice to be handcuffed, and with a faint feather of remorse touching his skin, Zellman turned to Justice and opened his mouth to . . . what? Ask him to be good?

Swift as lightning, Justice snatched Zellman’s clipboard and pen away from him. The clipboard clattered to the floor, and while Zellman goggled in surprise, Justice jammed the pen deep into Zellman’s throat and out again. Twice.

Blood spurted in a geyser.

“Wha? Wha? Wha?” Zellman burbled.

The door opened and the driver stepped in. Justice grabbed the man by his head and slammed it into the metal door. Once, twice, three times. More blood. Pints of it.

“Keys,” Justice demanded.

“Van . . . van,” the man mumbled, his eyes rolling around in his head.

And like that, Justice was gone.

Shoved aside and tossed to the floor like a rag doll, Zellman clutched at his throat helplessly, blood squeezing through his fingers. Shocked and outraged that Justice had lied. About the stomach pain. About needing to go to the hospital. About
every damned thing!

And he, Dr. Maurice Zellman, a doctor of psychiatry, a member of Mensa, had believed him. Worse than the sting of pain at his throat, the bite of his own damned pen, was the knowledge that he, Dr. Maurice Zellman, had been wrong, after all.

CHAPTER 2

S
ssisssterrr . . .

Whore . . . !

With Satan’s evil incubus growing inside you . . . !

The voice rasped against Laura’s brain again. She flinched and nearly stumbled as she thrust up the mental wall against him again on her way to surgery to check on Conrad’s condition. But her worst fears were confirmed: it
was
Justice.

And he knew she was pregnant??? How?

The frisson that shivered down her spine was an old friend. She’d felt it before many times, but not since Justice Turnbull had been captured, convicted, and locked away. Not like this. Not with this harsh hammering into her thoughts.

Outside the doors to the surgical ward she glanced around, always a bit uncertain that someone else couldn’t hear him as well, though she knew from experience she was the only one. She could block him from digging into her thoughts and feelings, but she could not prevent her own mental receptors from hearing him.

He was a devil. A scourge. A sickness that frightened them all. He was—

“Laura?” Her ex, Byron Adderley, broke into her thoughts, causing her to jerk as if goosed. “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded instantly. Frowning, he stripped a pair of surgical gloves from his hands and tossed them into a trash receptacle. His eyebrows rose, as if he were waiting for her to answer.

Like an obedient puppy,
she thought sourly.

He’d just come from surgery, she realized. Of course she would run into him. Of course. Murphy’s Law. Pulling herself together, she ignored his question. “How’s Conrad? Do you know?”

“Who? Oh. That security guard?” He shoved a thinning shock of coffee-dark hair from his eyes. “We drilled into his head to relieve the pressure in case of a subdural hematoma. Hope he has a brain left. Someone beat him half to death.” He actually smiled, as if he’d said something clever. “That what you wanted to know?”

“I was just concerned.”

His smile fell away and Byron gazed at her hard. “You like him?”

“I barely know him,” she shot back. “I just want to make sure he’s okay.”

“Yeah, well. ‘Okay’ is maybe not the word for it.” Byron yawned. He stretched his arms over his head in a move she remembered, one she’d once thought was sexy. No longer. “God, I gotta get some sleep,” he admitted. “I was out late last night, and this morning came early.”

Like she cared.

“What about Dr. Zellman?” Being a floor nurse, and not part of the surgical team, Laura was forced to get information secondhand.

“Jesus. He’s lucky to be alive! That fuckin’ psychotic stabbed Zellman, too. Got his voice box but good.” Byron actually sounded a little concerned. “Could be, Zellman never speaks again.”

“Oh, I hope you’re wrong.” She glanced past him toward the double doors that led into surgery. “That’s what they’re saying?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Too early to tell.”

“The psychotic who did this . . . ?”

“No surprise there. You remember the one. Justice Turnbull.” Byron shook his head, his unruly forelock falling forward again. “A whole new kind of crazy.” He stifled another yawn. “Think Turnbull’ll come back to his old stomping grounds and go after those cult freaks again?”

Laura went completely still. Tried not to look as if his remark had hit a nerve. “The sheriff’s department will find him,” she said with an effort.

“Oh, yeah.” He barked out a laugh. “Count on them.”

Ever the cynic.

Laura had heard enough. “I’ve gotta get back to work.” She turned on her heel.

“Hey. Laura.” She didn’t so much as look over her shoulder and set her jaw. How had she ever found him attractive, and why the hell had she married him? Her thoughts strayed to the child growing within her,
his
child, the baby that Justice seemed to sense, and her insides went numb. “When are you going to stop dyeing your hair?” Byron called after.

She ground her teeth together, angry at him and herself for ever thinking they could build a life together. She’d known he wasn’t her kind of man from the get-go, hadn’t she? She’d suspected he was self-centered and narcissistic. How had she let him convince her to leave Portland for this stretch of coastline and Ocean Park Hospital, when she’d known it might not be safe? God, she’d been a fool to let him talk her into anything so idiotic. She hadn’t wanted to move. She certainly hadn’t wanted to relocate
here,
of all places. The house they’d rented together in Deception Bay, about six miles down Highway 101, until he’d moved out wasn’t much to write home about, and the apartment he’d subsequently moved into was even less impressive, but that was just icing on the cake of her unhappiness.

Why did you marry him?

At a corner, she hazarded a quick glance over her shoulder, but Byron had already turned away. He couldn’t really care less about the horrific events that had taken place at Halo Valley. If he wasn’t the center of the universe, then the universe itself didn’t matter.

Because I wanted to believe someone loved me.

And she’d been stupid enough to buy into his good looks, his easy charm, his success . . . what a fool she’d been and now . . . Automatically her hand strayed to her abdomen and the life beginning to pulse within her. She couldn’t keep this baby. Byron’s baby. She couldn’t. Yet, it was a child . . .
her
child. . . .

Nurse Baransky, middle-aged, brusque, was coming down the hall toward her. “Are you checking on Mrs. Shields?” she asked.

“I’m on my way to her room now.” Laura tried not to appear like she was hurrying, but inside she was running, running,
running.
From Byron, from her marriage, from the strangeness of her childhood, from Justice . . .
from the truth . . .

“Were you at the ER?” Baransky asked.

“Just coming from outside surgery. No word yet on Conrad or Dr. Zellman.”

Baransky nodded. “It was that madman who escaped, wasn’t it? The one they captured in the shootout at the motel a few years back? Can’t think of his name. Justin something?”

“Justice,” Laura reminded carefully, the taste of his name on her tongue bitter, the sound of it striking a chord of terror that shuddered through her.
Sssiissssttterrr.
His hiss echoed through her brain. Dear God.

“They were bringing him here for testing because he was complaining of stomach pain off and on, apparently.”

“He was faking,” Laura said automatically.

“They told you that?”

Laura nearly bit her tongue trying to take the words back and was instantly sorry that she’d blurted out something she didn’t really want to discuss. “I’m just going on an assumption,” she backtracked as a patient, a thick-in-the-middle woman with a wan expression, walked tentatively down the hall. Her plump fingers were clenched tight around the pole of a rolling IV stand.

“You need help?” Baransky said, and the woman offered the ghost of a smile as she shook her head, determined to walk on her own. “You said that Justice Turnbull was faking his illness?” Baransky asked, turning her attention back to Laura.

She didn’t know how to answer that she knew Justice was faking. She sure as hell wouldn’t be able to explain that Justice had started banging against her brain, something that had begun when she was young, though its strength had waxed and waned over the years, and had practically been nonexistent since he’d been incarcerated, had come back with a vengeance. That she still could manage to hold him out, but there was always a tiny iota of time before she could effectively throw up her mental wall, an infinitesimal moment where he left traces of his own thoughts, scraps that were available to her. So, yes, she knew he’d faked the stomach pain because, in effect, he’d told her as much. More like an overall realization than the needle-sharp words he sent to her.

And she also knew he’d been planning this escape a long time.

And she knew that he was hunting her now. . . .

How does he know about the baby?

“Laura?” Baransky suddenly demanded, eyeing her closely. She had a big voice and little or no tolerance for anything she deemed to be nonsense.

Laura could tell her face had lost color. “I’m just overly tired. Didn’t get good sleep last night.”

“Maybe you should sit down. I can check on Mrs. Shields.”

“No, no. I’m okay.”

Laura forced out a smile as she walked past her. She was feeling nauseous, but it was less about the pregnancy and more about the realization that Justice Turnbull had escaped. When the events of his rampage had taken place a few years earlier, she’d kept the wall against his thoughts up solidly high. Before then, he’d never been seen as a serious threat to her and the others he’d targeted by either herself or her family. But then suddenly he was after them all! Threatening the very foundation of her family, her ancestors, anyone even remotely related to her, all those who lived at the huge lodge shielded from the world by massive iron gates. Her sisters.

Sissterr . . .
How he’d given the word a horrid sound. Her flesh crawled as she remembered the sibilant sound of his voice, a hiss that grated, like talons running down a blackboard.

Justice was bent on destruction and chaos and killing, and though she hadn’t been before, Laura, within the sterile hospital walls, sensed she was definitely in his sights now.

Mrs. Shields was sitting up in bed, her beady, dark eyes regarding Laura with avid curiosity as she walked into the room. She was in her fifties and had been through knee replacement surgery. “How many times do I have to push this button?” she demanded. “I need painkillers, Nurse Adderley. Where’s your husband?”

“My ex-husband,” Laura said for about the tenth time.

“I need more pain medication. I’m supposed to keep ‘on top of the pain,’ that’s what I was told, to not be at a ‘ten on the chart,’ right?” She was referring to the pain management chart that had been pinned to her wall, a row of smiley faces where the smile disintegrated to a frown as the level of pain increased. Zero was pain free; ten was excruciating, the face on the chart twisted in serious agony, a far cry from Mrs. Shields’s primarily ticked-off expression. “Right now, I’m at about a level twenty!” she insisted and, when Laura didn’t respond quickly enough, added, “I need
Dr.
Adderley . . . stat!”

“You’re on the medication levels he prescribed,” Laura said calmly as she tried to take the woman’s temperature.

“It’s not enough!” Mrs. Sheilds said, around the thermometer.

Her voice had risen, and it brought Nurse Nina Perez to the doorway. Nina, an attractive woman in her forties, was Laura’s immediate boss, and she was fiercely devoted to her job. She also was fair and could assess a situation quickly. “Everything all right in here?”

“No!” Mrs. Shields had been scheduled to leave earlier in the day, but she was one of those rare patients who wanted to stay in the hospital as long as possible. She was an attention seeker who had bullied her husband for so long that he seemed to have no identity and no ability to make decisions.

“I need more painkillers,” Mrs. Shields declared as Laura removed the thermometer and noted a reading of 98.6. Perfectly normal. “And here. Fill this up.” Mrs. Shields thrust her water glass at Laura, who took it from her hand. Laura’s fingers brushed hers, and a tingle fled up Laura’s nerves to her brain.

Pancreas.

The word pulsed across her mind. Vivid. Red.

She nearly dropped the glass.