Page 13 of Atone in Darkness
She crept closer to the entrance to see if perhaps the noise originatedout in the hall. But no, she heard it again, this time coming from behind her. There was only one place she hadn’t checked—Chase’s cell.
That was the last place she wanted to go right now, but what choice did she have? Her pulse was pounding in her head so loudly that she was surprised she could hear the noise over it. Drawing a deep breath, she stepped in front of the door, keeping her eyeselevated so she didn’t have to seethe outline of Chase’s corpse under his makeshift shroud.
There was no one in the small room, but her relief was short-lived when she heard the sound again, this time accompanied by a low grunt. She stumbled back a step when she realized the source of the noise was right at her feet. The blanket covering Chase’s body rippled as if his body was twitching. Hermind tried to reject what she was seeing. He was dead. She knew that for a fact. His pupils had been fixed. There’d been no pulse, and his lungs hadn’t drawn a single breath no matter how hard she’d fought to bring him back.
But evidently facts didn’t mean anything, because a hand slipped out from under the edge of the blanket, the fingers clenching into a tight fist as she looked on in horror.Finally, her training kicked in as she dropped to the floor and yanked the blanket off. When she laid her fingers alongside Chase’s neck, he had a pulse. Ragged and slow, but definitely there. Guilt warred with relief when Chase slowly turned his head and his blue eyes blinked up at her.
“God, Chase, I thought you were dead.”
When she tried to take his hand in hers, he yanked it back out ofreach and snarled, “Get away.”
Her heart broke. “Please, Chase, let me help you. I swear I would’ve never left you lying here on the floor like this if I’d known you were alive.”
His head thrashed back and forth. “Get away. Don’t want to hurt you. No control.”
Then a flash of burnt orange washed over the whites of his eyes. With a growl that sounded more animal than human, he made a grab forher. The danger he presented finally sank in. She scrambled back out of reach and throughthe door. His movements were jerky and uncoordinated, but he almost made it to his feet before she managed to hit the button to close the cell door.
What had the beating done to him? Something profound for sure, because the man she’d known was nowhere to be seen. And there wasn’t a doubt in her mind thatthe one staring at her from the other side of the glass was a cold-blooded killer.
