Kira tried to sound steady. “What are you doing?”
The officer. He’d killed that man—his colleague.
She could still barely see, what with most of the room in darkness. Just that murderous flashlight in the hand of a prison guard. The kind of person who attempted murder in the dark so that no one could ever prove it was he who’d done the deed.
Just moments ago, she’d been riding the high of figuring out Torres’s formula. Her organic chemistry was a little rusty, but she’d worked out that lithium could be used in the way his formula had indicated. The one he’d written all over the walls of that room in his house.
Combining elements to create recreational drugs.
The lights flickered and came back on.
Two inmates stood to the left, a prison guard on the other side of the bed. It was the guard who held the heavy flashlight in his hand.
She gasped, lifting her chin and trying to sound tough. “You killed him.”
The officer who had collapsed when his heart suddenly stopped beating lay on the bed with a deadly head wound. From the blunt force trauma of being hit by a man who was supposed to be his colleague. The murderer said nothing. The guy had to be about forty and wore a wedding ring. His hair was receding, giving him a high forehead and making his eyes look tiny.
He held the now dented flashlight in his hand still.
The inmates turned to her, and one said, “Looks like everything is going according to plan.”
It was the cartel guy they had arrested after Rousseau was killed in the hospital—the man Roger had been speaking with at the gala, who claimed to know nothing about what was going on. If he was still here awaiting trial, then he hadn’t been granted bail at his arraignment. The judge must have thought he was a flight risk.
Unfortunately for her, it turned out this man came with a lot of risk. The kind where a prison dissolved into chaos.
Kira curled her legs up in front of her, trying to protect herself. But what could she do against these men?
The other man turned, his orange jumpsuit too tight around his stomach.
She gasped again. “You.”
Frankie’s boyfriend, Stuart Parker.
He was supposed to be in solitary. How was he…? Right, the murderous prison guard.
This man had made Frankie’s life a misery until she needed to seek shelter where she could be safe. Then Stuart had followed Kira to her car and demanded to know where Frankie was. In prison, he’d stabbed Jenkins and put him in the hospital.
So had he been in all of this from the beginning, or did he get paid for that attempt on Jenkins?
He came toward her and crouched, a deadly smile on his face. “Welcome to the party.” His brows rose. “I didn’t know you were here, but when I saw you? Surprise.” He muttered a curse. “Now you get to be part of all the fun.”
Kira shivered.
“The system will be rebooting in a second,” the guard who had killed his colleague said. “That means we only have a few minutes.”
Stuart whirled around to him. “I know what that means. This whole thing was my plan.”
“Just so long as I get paid.”
Stuart motioned to the dead man on the hospital bed. “You ain’t getting his share. So you can forget about that. You did one job, you get one split.”
Kira glanced at the cartel guy, trying to keep an eye on all of them at the same time. He had a calculating look on his face. Dark hair and dark eyes, far too many tattoos on his arms that might have deadly meaning. Not that she had anything against tattoos. But on him, they were menacing. Almost like another weapon.
The fear she’d felt when that covert agent was on top of her, his hands around her neck, squeezing the life out of her, rushed back up to swallow her like a king tide. There was nothing she could do about it, and in the end, she would drown under the weight of it. Fear would keep her from moving. Keep her from saying anything.
Fear would keep her from living if she let it.
God, help me. She was so out of her depth that she had no idea what to do.