“I’m thinking…the lab…radiology…the blood bank.”

“There you go. Tell the orderly I’m bleeding and send him down to the basement for several units of blood.”

“Okay.”

“I swear to God if you fuck this up I’m going to use your neck for a pin cushion.”

“Now?”

“What?”

“You want me to tell Benjamin now?”

“No, let’s wait another twenty minutes. Yes, now!”

The nurse cleared her throat as Lucy edged her toward the door.

“Benjamin?” she said.

“Everything okay, Denise?”

“Lucy’s having some heavy blood loss. I want you to head down to the blood bank and bring up three units of AB.”

“Should I page Dr. Lanz?”

“I’ll take care of that. Go now.”

Lucy heard the orderly padding away.

“You did well, Denise. You did really well.”

Lucy tightened her grip and jammed the needle twenty times into the nurse’s throat, numerous lines of blood branching and intersecting and running over her fingers as the nurse gurgled and fought to throw her off.

Outside the door, Lucy heard the deputy say, “Denise?”

Lucy dragged her back into the shower and her thirty-third puncture hit home because Lucy felt something swelling in the side of the nurse’s neck.

When the bulge reached the size of a golf ball Lucy gave it a prick and it exploded in a burst of bright red arterial spray that splattered across the shower tile.

Lucy felt the woman’s legs give out and she eased her down onto the floor of the shower.

The deputy knocked on the door.

“Denise, what’s going on?”

The physical exertion had brought on a wave of agony, and Lucy wanted to scream it was so fierce. Instead, she tugged Denise out of the shower and draped her across the toilet.

Lucy returned to the shower stall, pulled the curtain and backed up against the tile, her heart rocketing along, a smile spreading across her face.

So good to be alive.

In the space between the curtain and the wall, she saw the doorknob begin to turn.

The door swung open.

The deputy said, “Oh, shit.”

He took a step toward the nurse, who was still twitching.

“Denise?”

Lucy came through the shower curtain like a wildcat and swung the needle at the deputy’s face.

It glanced off the bridge of his nose and slipped through the corner of his eye.

He howled.

Lucy kicked the door shut and unsheathed his baton and brought it down with a smashing blow to the back of his head.

His knees hit the tile and she struck him again, felt a scrumptious crack.

The deputy was moaning, trying to crawl into the corner between the toilet and the wall.

When he reached the impasse, he stared up at Lucy and whimpered, “Don’t hurt me! Please!”

Lucy wiped the tears from her eyes and beat him to death with his own baton.

At 2:29 a.m., Lucy rolled out of her room in the wheelchair.

The corridor was silent.

A little ways down, three nurses occupied the station, catching up on their charts. Apparently, no one had heard the commotion in the bathroom.

She turned left and rolled along, each turn of the wheel a new level of pain, but one thing kept her going.

Donaldson.

He had to be on this floor, in the ICU.

Probably had a guard outside of his room as well.

But now that she was wearing Nurse Denise’s scrubs and had a few goodies up her sleeve, she liked her chances of getting past the guard.

She’d taken the handcuffs (key stored safe and sound up her ass), scalpel, surgical scissors, and pepper spray (safe and sound elsewhere). Even though she never used them, the gun had been tempting. But she didn’t trust herself with it. Accidentally killing Donaldson and ruining their fun prematurely would have been devastating.

Best case scenario, Donaldson had two broken legs and two broken arms, but was conscious.

She’d sweet-talk the deputy, or kill him, and get inside Donaldson’s room.

Barricade the door.

She wouldn’t have much time.

When Benjamin returned with her units of blood, he’d find Denise and the deputy.

The hospital would go on lockdown.

The cavalry would come running.

But that was still ten minutes away at most.

And Lucy could make ten minutes feel like ten years.

Because it wasn’t the quantity of time she had with dear old Donaldson.

It was all about the quality.

Donaldson

“…multiple fractures of the clavicle, humerus, radius and ulna, a dislocated shoulder, a dislocated elbow, multiple contusions and lacerations, including skin abrasions covering about thirty percent of his body. A concussion. Plus the son of a bitch lost six teeth and an ear.”

The man speaking had a high-pitched voice, with a slight southern lilt.

“How’d it happen?” This voice was Latino, probably Mexican.

“Chained to the back of his own car, which went down the side of a goddamn mountain.”

“Poor guy.”

“Don’t waste any tears on this one. See the deputy outside? Soon as this bastard wakes up, he’s getting arrested. This dude is a serial killer. Name is Gregory Donaldson. Likes to cut up hitchhikers. Did all kinds of crazy, sick shit to them. Hear tell, he murdered more than fifty people.”

Low whistle from the Mexican. “Goddamn. Looks like he got what was coming to him.”

“You said it, brother. There’s a special room in hell for people like this.”

Donaldson peeked his eyes open. The men in his hospital room wore scrubs, the kind with novelty print patterns that were supposed to cheer up patients. One of them was chubby, early thirties, in need of a shave. The other was short, Hispanic, and even from ten feet away Donaldson could smell his armpit stains.

Donaldson figured they were orderlies. Beyond them, through the doorway, he saw the sheriff’s deputy the white guy had mentioned, a portly man in a khaki uniform. He sat in a wooden chair reading a magazine called Handgun Enthusiast. The gun on his belt had a snap over the holster.

Donaldson had been awake for a few hours, faking unconsciousness to avoid being asked questions, biding his time until he figured out a plan.

As situations went, this one was dire. Even in the grip of the morphine haze courtesy of his IV, Donaldson hurt. He hurt bad. His left arm felt like it had been yanked out, chewed up, and sewn back on upside-down. The neck brace was cruel stainless steel, screwed onto his scalp and shoulders, making it impossible to turn his head.

Donaldson peered down at the substantial girth of his body. A thin blanket covered his protruding gut. His arm was a mess, swollen to twice its normal size, purple and scabby with surgical pins and clamps holding his shattered bones in place. The pins poked through the flesh in half a dozen places.

He touched the side of his head, felt a bandage on his cheek and another that went up over his ear. Correction—one that went up over where his ear used to be.

Donaldson tried wiggling his toes, and that ignited his legs. He felt like he was lying on a hot skillet with the flames growing larger. Skin abrasions covering thirty percent of his body. That was the clinical explanation. Fucking agony was a much more appropriate description.

Stronger than the pain was a slithering, palpable fear. Donaldson couldn’t go to prison. He was too old for that and cherished his freedom. He wondered how the authorities knew who he was, what he was. Probably that damn female cop from the truck stop a week ago.