put the syringe in his pocket.
In the eerie silence, the bed squeaked as Alex leaned back against it. He stared at the dead woman sprawled in the middle of the floor.
He’d had no choice, of course, but this complicated things. He had to figure out what he was going to do with her now. He considered stuffing her in the wardrobe, but when he opened the door to check its size, he realized that there was no way she would fit. He could push her under the bed, but the bedcovers didn’t hang down far enough to hide anything under such a high hospital bed.
He paced, trying to think. Soon, someone was going to come in and they would see her. If nothing else they would come that night to get him and take him over to their private torture session in the women’s shower.
He considered putting Alice against the wall, behind where the door opened, cleaning up the mess, and then going down to the sunroom to wait. It would probably be Henry who came looking for him. If Alex only left on the reading lamp over the bed, Henry might pop his head in, not see Alex, and go to the sunroom.
He realized that that was a lousy plan. Any number of things were likely to go wrong. People were soon going to wonder where Alice was and start searching for her. The orderlies were quick to pick up on such things. Some of the patients could be dangerous and they didn’t allow staff to go unaccounted for. They knew that she was doing med rounds. It was probably only a matter of minutes before they came looking for her to make sure she was all right.
Alex paced, frantically trying to think of what he could do, glancing over at the corpse every time he turned to pace in the other direction. He needed to somehow make Alice disappear.
He stopped suddenly and stared down at the woman. She was a mess. Blood from when he had struck her and broken her jaw lay in a long string halfway across the floor. Alice had lost control of herself as he had strangled her. There was a spreading puddle of urine under her sprawled legs.
He needed her to disappear.
Alex wondered if it was possible.
He could try. At this point he had no other ideas and nothing to lose.
He ran to the bed. It was old and squeaked whenever someone leaned against it. When things squeaked like that it usually meant that screws had worked loose. He ran his fingers along the metal bars and quickly found a self-tapping metal screw sticking up at the end of the side rail. He used his thumb and the side of his first finger to loosen it. He gritted his teeth with the effort. Had he not been so frantic he might not have been able to unscrew it with his bare hands.
The screw wasn’t long — certainly not long enough to be an effective weapon — but it had a relatively sharp point and was long enough for his purpose. He hurried over to Alice and squatted down beside her purple face.
He held the screw over the dead woman’s forehead as he thought. He closed his eyes as he worked to remember. He had seen Jax activate a lifeline several times. The first time it had been shocking to see her carving in Bethany’s forehead. Such surprise helped indelibly fix the picture in his mind.
More than that, though, he was an artist. Designs stuck in his head. He remembered forms, spatial relationships. He clearly recalled that every time Jax had drawn the design it looked the same. He was pretty sure that he remembered the way Jax had cut that design into foreheads. He let himself see it in his mind.
He could hear orderlies talking as they walked along the hallway outside his room. He had no choice but to try.
With the point of the screw Alex started carving the lines into Alice’s forehead. He made the arc that Jax had done first, then added two angled lines on the right and one on the left. He cut each line in turn, concentrating on the mental picture he had of the lines in Bethany’s forehead, making them precisely the same angles he remembered.
Alex lost himself in the task, just as he lost himself in painting. He made each stroke with confidence, the way Jax had. The point of the screw dragged against bone as he pulled it across the skin of Alice’s forehead. He finished with the pattern that overlaid the beginning arc, just as Jax had done.
Alex sat back on his heels, holding the screw in his fingers, looking at the thing he had drawn. Blood covered his fingers and ran down his wrist.
Unexpectedly, Alice ceased to be there. She didn’t become transparent and slowly fade away like in a ghost movie. It didn’t look like some spooky special effect. There was no drama to it. She was there one moment, and the next instant she simply wasn’t.
Alex blinked in astonishment. He looked around. The blood across the floor was gone. The puddle of urine was gone. He looked at his bloody fingers holding the screw. There was no blood. He sat still for a moment, taking it in.
He had just drawn a spell and made someone disappear before his very eyes. He had done it. It was so astonishing, and such a huge relief, that Alex laughed.
He heard orderlies coming down the hall. By their brief, muffled words, he could tell that they were putting their head into each room along the way, asking if anyone had seen Alice.
Alex scrambled to his chair and sat, working up a dazed look. He stared ahead, waiting for the door to open.
That was when he saw the med tray on the bed.
Alex jumped up and snatched the tray. He shoved it under the mattress. He wiped his sweaty hands on his thighs as he looked around the room. Everything looked normal. Nothing looked out of place.
He plopped down in the chair, letting his hands lie limp at his sides.
The door opened partway as an orderly leaned halfway in and glanced around the room. “Have you seen Nurse Alice?”
Alex gave the man a stuporous look. “She gave me my medicine and left.”
The orderly nodded and hurried away. When the door shut, Alex let out a sigh of relief.
Now he had to wait for night, when they would come to get him. They would expect him to be more awake but they would also believe he would still be sufficiently sedated that they could torture answers out of him and he wouldn’t fight back.
Alex allowed himself a smile of triumph for this much of it. The next part would be vastly more difficult, and he didn’t know if he would succeed, but he had finally taken back control of his life.
As he sat waiting, he worried about Jax, hoping she could hold out. He couldn’t fail. The price of failure was unacceptable.
He had promised her that as long as he could help it, he wasn’t going to allow them to hurt her. He meant it.
36
LONG AFTER DARK ALEX WAS STILL WAITING. He worried that they might have hatched some new plan. A thousand different terrors ran through his mind as he waited. As the night wore on, there might have hatched some new plan. A thousand different terrors ran through his mind as he waited. As the night wore on, there was nothing he could do but wait. He had no way to get to Jax on his own.
Henry and Dr. Hoffmann finally showed up long after lights-out. The doctor was without his usual stethoscope, although he was wearing his white coat. Henry, looking smug — as smug as he could look with bandages covering his nose — waited back near the door.
Before the door had closed, Alex had seen two more orderlies fold their arms and take up posts just outside. They apparently were going to be ready if his reduced medication had rendered him more alert than they expected. They expected him to be at least aware enough to care what happened to him and Jax, but rather slow and submissive. Alex wanted them to see what they expected to see, so that was the part he played.
He rose from his chair as the doctor approached, trying to do it in a way that would look dull and a little awkward.
“Alice gave you your medication this morning?” the doctor asked as he smoothed thin strands of hair over his bald patch.
“Yes.” Alex gestured to the wastebasket. “I threw the cups away after I took the medication.”
