Chapter 8
SINN'OUS
Worry isn’t something he experiences often. Or at all. In fact he can’t recall the last time he felt this way. The nagging pressure in his skull consuming everything in its ball of tangled strings. But sitting in the cafeteria and watching an empty seat where his prey should be, has him on edge.
He should have flipped the boy and checked under his shirt. Why didn’t he? What if he was bleeding internally? What if he died during the night?
Time continues to crawl and it takes everything in him not to grab his tray and start smashing faces in, until the whereabouts of Jasper is finger-painted in the congealed brain matter.
He can’t take it. And in the next blink he is storming down endless corridors. If anyone knows anything around here it’s Rogers—on the living-slash-dead status of inmate health or who is in Med-Wing.
Where would he be? Someone better not have grabbed him before Sinn'ous has the pleasure.
At K-Wing he finds Rogers standing around and talking with two other guards. CO Nathan Jones and Carson Miller. Jones is of a tall slender build and Miller is a short buff ball of loud demands. Neither of whom are on Sinn'ous’s list of corrupt guards who can be effortlessly swayed.
He plants himself out in the centre of the corridor so he can be seen. And waits. Tracking every detail of the interaction before him.
Miller spots him first. “Inmate, visitation hours have not started, go back to the cafeteria.” He places his hand on the taser clipped to his hip.
The other two swivel, their hands going to their tasers.
When Sinn'ous moves not one inch Miller’s voice booms in the enclosed space, “you hear what I said?”
Rogers drops his hand once he recognises Sinn'ous. “I’ve got this.” Frustration bleeds into his tone, while the other two eye Sinn'ous and mutter something—no doubt unflattering—under their breaths. They turn and slip into the guards’ break-room.
“Are you just here to make everyone nervous, or. . .” Rogers taps his foot, fidgeting, eyes skirting back to the closed break-room door.
“Do you know where Jasper is?”
“Yeah, he’s working the kitchens. Should be in there, although Williams is overseeing that today, so who knows?” An old senile and incompetent guard that should have been retired years ago. Not that Sinn'ous is complaining, he’s a guard you can slip anything past.
“I need more pain meds.” He’d used the last on Jasper. And if his prey is to heal post-haste more meds are a requirement.
The faster he heals the faster Sinn'ous can slip his blade between those tantalising ribs and play with a warm body. It’s been too long since he’s made a sacrifice to Satan and the itch to do so is a clambering drive steering all his actions.
“Sure.” Rogers gives him a once over, a calculating expression in his eyes, but doesn’t say anything.
They walk to Med-Wing in silence, nothing but the heavy thud of guard boots and the soft shuffle of prison shoes. Once there, Rogers does all the talking and they clear out in record time. A collection of a couple pill baggies in their possession.
Rogers hands Sinn'ous the handful of foil squares containing their twin pills. And parts ways without another word, leaving Sinn'ous to pocket the drugs and be on his way back to A-Wing. Where he will leave a set of pills in his prey’s cell.