Page 6 of Blood We Steal

“What?” I whispered, shocked I even had a voice at all.

I blinked, my mind not processing his words. Rubin stared at the door, his expression set in a way that made the hair on my arms stand up.

He’d been milliseconds from ending my life.

Now, he wasn’t paying me any attention at all.

Or I thought that until he loosened his hold and stepped back a fraction. A split second later, he grabbed my shoulders and pushed me back toward the warden’s desk. The force of his hands on my shoulders took my breath away, even though it wasn’t his full strength.

I stumbled, my lovely shoe catching a wrinkle in the carpet, and flailed, seeking some balance. There was none to be found, and it felt like I was moving in slow motion as my face raced toward the floor. I flinched at the last moment and stuck my hands out to break my fall.

That last-minute instinct saved the teeth I’d had repaired with Rubin’s money, but my head banged against the hard floor and my cheek grazed the rough carpet. I sucked in a harsh breath and with it, an acrid chemical scent. It smelled like those scented crystals that people used to vacuum the floor, the cloying perfume designed to hide the rot underneath.

My stomach churned, the rush of the almost stale bagel I hadn’t been able to finish burning at the back of my throat. I swallowed down the acid and pushed up to my knees.

I remembered that Rubin was behind me, and that the threat of violence that permeated the air around him was no longer theoretical. I tensed, waiting for him to pounce, trying to decide what to do. Scream? Fight him? I could try, but I wouldn’t win. But even still, I couldn’t just lay here and die.

Move, my brain whispered.

Move!

But I couldn’t. All I could do was kneel there, the carpet scratching against my palms, my cheek throbbing, my nostrils burning from the scent, and wait for the end.

Hope that he would make it quick.

Holding to that prayer, I waited to feel his bespoke loafer slam against my ribs.

Waited for his thick fingers to tangle in my hair, his palm to press against my skull as he broke my neck.

But the blow never came. His words did.

“Move, Simone!”

Then he grabbed my arm, tucking his hand into my armpit, and pulled me to my feet. Seconds ago my entire body had been tense with the dreadful anticipation of his huge hands closing around my throat. Now he was helping me up? I couldn’t make sense of what was happening, and apparently didn’t have time to. Before I could even think to respond, there was a loud thud. And I suddenly understood why he told me to duck.

The warden’s office door had a window that was six and three-eighths inches long, three and five-eighths inches wide. The covering was a thick plastic threaded through with metal and designed to look like glass. It should have been nearly impossible to break.

That much was clear with one look, but the man who slammed his head against the plastic wasn’t deterred. At the first crash, a fine film of red sprayed the glass and then spread on the man’s pale forehead. But the plastic held.

It held at the second crash, too, one that shattered the man’s nose and sent another mist of red into the air.

Crack.

The sound of the third crash was muted by the jagged splinter that spidered through the plastic.

Though his face was nearly coated in blood now, I recognized the man. It was the warden’s administrative assistant. I’d walked past him on the way to the warden’s office, and he’d been the only person I encountered who looked apologetic for me being there.

He didn’t look apologetic now. I stared at him with macabre fascination, trying to process what I was seeing. His neatly trimmed beard dripped with his own blood, and tiny shards of plastic had embedded themselves in his face. And his eyes…

Thirty minutes ago, they’d been bloodshot and jaundiced, leaving me certain that the man kept more than water in his thermos. But they’d been human. Now…they weren’t like any I’d ever seen before. Unfocused. Milky white.

Dead.

That word reverberated around my brain like a marble looking for a place to land. But there was no place because what I saw wasn’t possible.

I gaped, unable to form words, and then glanced at Rubin. He grabbed the flagpole stuck in one corner of the warden’s office and cracked it over his knee. The polished wood splintered, and then shattered. Rubin looked at one piece then another, then chose the shorter piece with a heavy metal base at the bottom.

Clearly he was ready.