Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
She woke to darkness. Total darkness. The kind of darkness that was so deep, you weren’t even sure that you were actually awake.
But Debra blinked her eyes. She squinted. She darted her gaze to the left. Then to the right.
Awake. I am awake.
Just enclosed in the dark.
She grew aware of her surroundings slowly. The hard surface beneath her body. Hard and flat. Her hands flew out and slammed into another hard surface—this time on either side of her body.
Hard below me. Hard beside me.
Whimpering, her hands lifted. Rose above her head a few inches.
Hard above me.
“No!” A loud, screeching cry. The back of her head ached, and she could feel something sticky and wet on her neck. She’d…been hit. Hadn’t she? Hit from behind. And now…now she was…
Darkness.
Surrounded.
Had he buried her? Was she in the ground, too? Trapped beneath the dirt? Her breath heaved in and out. In and out. “Help me!” Desperate. “Help me!” Louder.
She couldn’t…couldn’t go out like this.
Darkness. Darkness everywhere. Her fists slammed into the hard surface beside her. Above her.
There was no give. There was no escape.
No, no, no!
Was this what it had been like for Preston? The growing horror. The terrible fear that you were going to get swallowed whole by the dark?
How much air did she have left? Her lungs seemed to already strain with each breath.
Was that real? Imaginary? Panic? Her heart raced too hard in her chest, and her hands banged against the structure around her over and over again.
If she was buried, no one would hear her cries, and yet…
“Help me!” She pounded harder. Cried louder. She—
A screech. Loud. Grating. Close. Making her scream even louder and—then…light.
Light poured on her, coming from down near her feet. Her head craned up, and she stared straight into that light.
“Sheriff Tooni?” Eugene squinted as he peered at her. “You okay in there?”
No, she was fucking not. Did it sound like she was okay?
“Hold on, I’ll get you out.”
Out?
He grabbed something and pulled. There was another screech, and she seemed to roll toward him. Toward him and that wonderful light.
Her head throbbed. Nausea rolled inside of her. And she was…out. In the light. Fully. She blinked quickly. Repeatedly.
Eugene’s head popped over her. “Ma’am?” Worry tightened his face. “Ma’am, what were you doing in there?”
The room came into focus even as cold seeped into her veins. She was at the coroner’s office. In his exam room. A body in a black body bag waited about five feet away. That was Bridget’s body.
Debra sat up, nearly clipping Eugene in the chin with her head, but he moved back just in time. She looked around. Left. Right.
Horror choked her. She’d been in one of the drawers.
That was how she always thought of them.
The storage drawers for the dead bodies.
Her hand slapped down, and there was a metal clang as her birthstone ring—a long ago gift—hit the surface beneath her.
Not the rough wood of a coffin made by the killer.
The metal surface of the coroner’s storage drawer.
Eugene had pulled her out because the surface—slab? —rolled in and out of the drawer.
“You were locked in,” Eugene told her.
Her chest hurt. Squeezed.
“I…I waited outside for you to finish up in here. But you never came out. I got worried. Started searching. We—I called in a few other deputies and we were all looking. Searching for you.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Sheriff Tooni, you okay?”
Her gaze had swung back to the gaping opening of the drawer.
No, no, she was not freaking okay. He kept asking that question, and the answer should be obvious.
She lunged off the slab and fell face-first onto the floor.
Her head throbbed, nausea rolled, and she’d just been locked in where the coroner kept the dead bodies.
“He was…here.” Her hands flattened on the floor as she pushed up.
Eugene grabbed her arm as he crouched in front of her. “You’re bleeding! The back of your hair is caked with blood.” His eyes were the size of saucers. “I’m gonna call for help.” Instead of grabbing his radio, the deputy started screaming, “Help! Help!”
Debra growled and stumbled to her feet. He kept bracing her, helping her, even as the double doors to the exam room burst open. The coroner came in, his glasses askew and his white lab coat flapping behind him.
The coroner stopped in his tracks. Dr. Kayden Hubble gaped at her. “Debra? When did you get back in here? I searched this place for you twice and you—”
“Lock it down,” she gritted from between her clenched teeth.
Dr. Hubble frowned at her. “What?”
“The whole facility…” Debra choked down her nausea. “Lock it down. He was here. The creep was here.”
“What?” The coroner seemed to have frozen to the spot.
“The perp who killed Bridget Russell! The asshole who kidnapped Preston Byron. He. Was. Here.” Eugene still had a tight grip on her arm. One growing tighter by the moment. “He attacked me.” Her free hand dropped to her waist. Her gun was gone. Dammit. “He sealed me up in the drawer.”
Dr. Hubble’s jaw dropped as his head swung toward the open drawer. “Dear God.”
“Lock it down!”
Eugene finally scrambled to obey.
But she feared the perp was already long gone. Nausea rose up again. The throbbing in her head got worse. The room began to spin. “I want…security footage…get me footage…”
Her knees crumpled. The last thing she saw was the flapping of the doc’s white lab coat as he lunged to catch her.
He missed. She hit the floor.