Page 56

“Sweet little nurse, tell me, did you fold it again after?” he asked and the implication was easy to hear in his tone.

After.

Like he knew I had touched myself thinking about him. That eventually the temptation would become too much, and I would take his shirt home. That once there in my hand, I would do what he confessed to doing with my scrubs in the note he left me.

The blush came up from my chest and went all the way to my ears, hot and completely out of my hands. And he watched every inch of it happen with the patience of a man watching a kettle come to a boil.

“Ah,” he said softly, “There it is.”

Then he took the first step toward me, so I did the only thing left in my arsenal.

I ran.

I ran away from him and along the wall, because the door behind me was locked and the only thing behind him was more of the room. But I had never been fast. I was also five foot four compared to his six foot seven, which gave his much longer legs the advantage.

Although, that was the scary thing, as he didn’t even need to chase me.

No, he just… strolled.

I heard him laugh, a deep rumble that sounded genuinely pleased, somewhere behind me as I made my way along the wall of showers. Then I heard the flat click of a button being pushed in, and a shower came on in the row I had just passed. Then another. He was walking the room and pushing them in as he went, one after another. Each filling that whole tiled box with scalding water and white steam until I could barely see the far wall. And his voice came out of it from a different place each time. The threat of it only making me panic more and more.

“Run, little rabbit… it only makes this more fun for me… when I undoubtedly catch you.”

I got around the end of a row of showers and pressed my back against wet tile and put my hand over my mouth to keep the terrified sound in.

“Do you know what I like about this?” he spoke, his voice carrying over the hiss of water. Then he pressed another shower on, making me shriek into my palm.

“You’re not screaming. In fact, you haven’t screamed once. Instead, you’re looking for a way out, asking yourself if there’s a second door and you are right, there is.” A shower came on somewhere to my left.

“But now you’re thinking, will I make it there before he does? So let me save you the trouble, sweetheart… It’s locked.” My eyes shot to the door he spoke of, before closing them tight for a frustrated, frantic heartbeat.

“Now let us see if we can get those scrubs to stick to your skin properly,” he said, pressing the showers on another side of the room and the steam came over the top of the partition in a wave making the scrubs cling to my skin just like he wanted.

But this was the moment I remembered something crucial. It was my last hope, and a small, hopeful noise escaped me. Because I had been so busy being prey that I had entirely forgotten I wasn’t empty-handed.

I got my fingers under my collar and found it. Cheap black plastic, warm from my own skin, the little lip over the button.

Press and hold. Press and hold and don’t let go until they come through the door.

So, I pressed it.

I held it down with my thumb so hard that my nail went white, and I didn’t let go. I stood there with my back against the wall and my eyes shut and my whole body held one enormous breath as I waited to be saved.

And it screamed.

God, it screamed. In that tiled room it was the loudest thing I have ever heard. A hard electronic shriek bouncing off every surface and coming back at me from all sides at once. And shamefully, I was crying by the second or third pulse of it because it was working. It was doing exactly what that guard had promised me it would. That every officer within a hundred yards would come running he said. Everybody hates that noise he said. Which was the point.

But seconds felt like minutes… too long.

I counted them, the way you count compressions. One and two and three and four.

I counted them as I held that button down, and the alarm screamed, and the water ran.

Yet nobody came.

Nobody came.

Somewhere on the other side of that locked door was a corridor with officers in it. A wing full of men and a whole building of radios. And my alarm was screaming loud enough to be heard through concrete. And in the roaring siren of panic, there was nothing at all.