soulless demeanor.
“You entered a room that every employee,” she said, “newly hired and long-term—has been warned is strictly off-limits.”
He hadn’t actually attended an orientation. But the guard posted at her door had certainly implied Room 00 was off-limits. “I thought I heard a yell for help. I was concerned—”
“Then you should have summoned the guard or the nurse who are authorized to enter that room. That is protocol,” she stated, her voice cold with an icy anger. “By going inside yourself, you violated protocol.”
“I wasn’t thinking,” he said. “I just reacted.”
“You reacted incorrectly,” she said. “And because of that, you can no longer be on staff at Serenity House.” She held out her hand.
He moved to shake it, but she lifted her hand and ripped the ID badge from the lanyard around his neck. “You’re fired, Mr. Ottenwess,” she said, addressing him by the name on that ID badge.
“I would appreciate another chance,” he said. “Now that I’m fully aware of the rules, I promise not to violate them again.”
She shook her head. “That’s a risk I can’t take. And frankly, Mr. Ottenwess, staying here is a risk you can’t take. I talked the private security guard out of interrogating you. But if he sees you again, I’m not sure what he might do to you.”
Shoot at him again. And maybe the next time he wouldn’t miss. The only thing that had nicked Aaron’s cheek had been a shard of a porcelain vase that the guard had shot instead of him.
The burly guy had disappeared, but Aaron suspected he hadn’t gone far. How could he get past him again to access Room 00?
“That’s why I’m having my own guards escort you off the premises.” As silently as she’d dismissed the private guard, she must have summoned her own because two men stood in the doorway.
“This isn’t necessary,” Aaron said. “I can show myself out.”
“Actually you can’t,” she reminded him, “without your badge you can’t open any of the facility doors—not to patients’ rooms and not to exits. They will show you out.” She barely lifted an ash-blond brow, but she had the two men rushing forward. Each guy grabbed one of his arms and dragged him from her office.
Aaron could have fought them off. They weren’t armed. But he didn’t want to beat them. He wanted to outsmart them. Or he had no hope of helping the woman in Room 00.
JANE HAD JUST resigned herself to the fact that the man, that the voice in the hall had addressed as Timmer, wasn’t coming back…when the lock clicked and the door opened. She fought to keep her eyes closed and her breathing even, feigning sleep as she had when he’d entered the first time. Or at least the first time that she remembered.
“Is she really out?” the gruff-voiced guard asked someone.
Soft hands touched her face and gently forced open one of Jane’s eyes. She stared up at the gray-haired nurse who dropped her lid and stepped back before replying, “She’s unconscious.”
“Did he hurt her?” Mr. Centerenian demanded to know.
“Who?” the nurse asked, her voice squeaking with anxiety. Over Jane or over lying to the guard?
“Someone was in her room,” the man explained.
“He wouldn’t have been able to talk her,” Nurse Sandy easily lied again. She obviously hadn’t been anxious about lying to him. “I gave her a sedative earlier, like you requested. She’s completely out and oblivious to her surroundings.”
Jane fought to keep her lips from twitching in reaction to the nurse’s blatant lie. Wouldn’t the guard remember that the nurse had given her no medication?
If only this woman had access to a door-opening name badge, Sandy could prove an even more valuable ally because Jane suspected she would help her escape if she could.
Of course the other man—Timmer—had promised he would return. Could he? Was he physically able to return?
“Good,” the guard grunted. “And he won’t get another chance to talk to her.”
She held in a gasp as fear clutched her heart. Had one of those shots struck the man?
“Why—why won’t he?” the nurse nervously asked the question burning in Jane’s mind.
The guard did not answer, just issued another order. “Leave now.”
“But—but I should stay to monitor her—”
“Leave now,” Mr. Centerenian repeated.
The lock clicked again and the door opened with a creak of hinges and rush of cool air from the hall. It closed again, shutting in the stale air that smelled faintly of the cigarette smoke that always clung to the guard.
Had Mr. Centerenian left with Nurse Sandy? Was Jane alone again?
She nearly opened her eyes but then the guard spoke again. Since the older woman had left, he wasn’t talking to the nurse.
Jane peered through a slit in one lid and saw that his cell phone was pressed to his ear. He spoke in a language she couldn’t place but somehow understood. She interpreted his side of the conversation.
“There is a problem,” he said. “Someone got inside her room tonight. He saw her…”
Mr. Centerenian grunted in response to whatever the person he called told him and then agreed, “Yes, it is no longer safe to keep her here. I will bring her and your unborn child to the airport tomorrow night to meet your private plane.”
Who the hell was the guard talking to? Who was the father of her unborn child? She had suspected it was the man who’d snuck into her room. If not him, then who?
She barely restrained her urge to attack the guard and demand that he tell her who he was talking to, who he was bringing her to meet. But she couldn’t risk getting hit again. An apparent blow had already cost her too much—of her strength and her mind.
And she needed all she had of both to escape before the guard brought her to the airport. She feared that if she got on that private plane, that she would have no hope of ever regaining her freedom.
She couldn’t trust that the man who had snuck in would keep his word to return and help her. She didn’t know if he even could—if Timmer had survived his confrontation with the guard. She waited but Mr. Centerenian said nothing of the man he’d caught in her room.
Was he alive or dead?
And who the hell was he or had he been to her?
PAIN EXPLODED IN Aaron’s stomach, sending his breath from his lungs in a whoosh. He doubled over, hanging from the arms holding him back. Not that he couldn’t have broken free had he wanted to fight. But as he writhed around in an exaggerated display of pain, he lurched forward and accidentally fell against the guard who was using him as a punching bag.
“And
