Chapter 55
I have to hold onto the wall to keep from passing out.
All this time, I thought the monster was in Seclusion One. I thought he was roaming the halls, hiding in dark corners. But all along, he was right in front of me.
Footsteps echo from down the hallway, growing closer. Bile rises in my throat when Jade and Ramona round the corner. Now it’s three against one, not that I had any chance against Damon Sawyer even on his own.
“You found her!” Jade’s face breaks into a smile. “Where was she?”
Damon turns to look at her, and the affection on his face is unmistakable. “She was checking out the seclusion room. Admiring our handiwork.”
“What do you think, Amy?” Jade’s blue eyes flecked with yellow rest on my face. “And you thought I would never do anything significant with my life…”
“I never said that,” I mumble.
Jade comes up right beside me, her eyes boring into me. “No, you never said it. But you thought it. Didn’t you?”
She’s not entirely wrong. “Jade…”
“You disappointed me though, Amy,” she muses.
“I always thought of you as being very smart, but you never saw any of this coming. You believed me over that geeky reporter, even though you know I’m a brilliant liar.
” She looks over at her boyfriend with admiration. “And worst of all, you trusted him .”
Damon clutches his chest. “Hey, are you saying I’m not trustworthy?”
“You did put on an excellent performance,” she concedes. “I guess those psychology books you were always reading paid off.”
“Well, thank you.”
Jade winks at me. “Damon really is wonderful, Amy. I wish you could have known him in a different context. Of course, that couldn’t happen because you didn’t want to have anything to do with me outside of here.”
“I… I’m sorry,” I manage.
She ignores my feeble attempt to apologize. “We met in such an interesting way too. What do they call it—a meet-cute? Damon was my mother’s drug dealer. You know how she was always hooked on pills? Well, he used to bring them to her.”
I’m not sure I would call that a meet-cute, but I’m not about to contradict her.
She smiles distantly. “And he was the one who brought her the cocktail she OD’d on. She had no idea what she was putting into her system. Damon was so clever about it.”
Damon grins, showing off his dimples. “You’re very welcome, babe.”
My mouth is open. “You were the one responsible for your mother’s overdose? How could you do that?”
The smile vanishes from Jade’s face. “The woman used to burn me with her cigarettes. Do you think I feel any regret about giving her exactly what she deserved?”
I remember the way Mrs. Carpenter smashed that ashtray against the wall. The suspicious marks on Jade’s arms. She begged me not to tell anyone. I should never have listened.
I made a terrible mistake. I should have helped my friend, even when she asked me not to. There’s a small part of me that feels like I deserve everything that’s about to happen.
But no. These people are monsters. Whatever created them has already happened. I can’t let them hurt anybody else.
I back against the wall, trying to figure out my next move. Three of them and one of me. I don’t like those odds. If only Will were still conscious, I would have a fighting chance. But without him…
I’ve got to buy myself some time. One thing I know about Jade is that she’s a talker. I could probably keep her talking until the sun comes up.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “How… how did you manage this? Why didn’t anyone recognize you?”
“It was surprisingly easy,” Jade says. “The real Dr. Beck wasn’t working on the unit this week, so most of the patients had never seen him before.”
Damon jerks his head in the direction of the room full of dead bodies. “And we managed to take care of most of the people who did recognize me.”
Of course. Miguel and Mary were both convinced that Damon Sawyer was roaming the hallways long before anyone else was. Lucky for him, neither of them were terribly trustworthy. I’m guessing if I opened the door to Seclusion Two, I would find Miguel’s body in there.
“As soon as the dayshift staff left,” Jade says, “I opened the door to the seclusion room. It was almost pitifully easy for me to get that code. Just as easy as it was to give you the wrong code. And once Damon was out, we took care of the real Dr. Beck and Ramona.”
My eyes are drawn to the woman that I believed was Ramona all night. She’s looking down at her nails critically, but when she notices my attention, she looks up and smiles. “My name is Nicole,” she says. “I actually am a nurse.”
“Before you went berserk,” Jade points out.
Ramona, who is actually Nicole, shoots her a look. “You asked for my help and you got it.”
Nicole. That was the name of the patient Mary had mixed me up with. I remember Mary saying something about how Dr. Beck wouldn’t let her leave.
My eyes go to the ID badge clipped to Nicole’s scrubs. The photo is tiny and blurry, and while it looks somewhat like Nicole, any other middle-aged woman with brown hair could likely have passed.
“Don’t pretend you were doing us a favor,” Jade snaps at Nicole. “Your brother was trying to have you committed . We did you a big favor letting you in on our plan. How about a little gratitude , huh?”
Nicole screws up her face. It doesn’t look like any expressions of gratitude are forthcoming.
“ Anyway .” Jade rolls her eyes as she turns back to me.
“We had to get rid of your buddy Cameron, because let’s face it, he’s a big guy and the two of you together would be difficult to take on.
But when we had the element of surprise, he was fairly easy to take down.
” She snickers. “He should have spent more time at the gym and less time studying.”
“Don’t you dare make jokes about him,” I snap at her. “Cam was a really good guy. He didn’t deserve that.”
“Oh really? Didn’t he dump you to study for an exam?” Jade retorts.
“Plus he was kind of an obnoxious kiss-up,” Nicole adds.
Jade whips her head around to glare at Nicole. “We don’t need your opinion on every little thing.”
“Will you shut up, Jade?” Nicole shoots back, her eyes flashing.
“The whole night it was like you got to call all the shots. I told you that Amy was getting suspicious, and did you listen? Of course not! You’re always talking and never listening.
Frankly, I don’t blame Amy for not respecting you! You always—”
I don’t know what Nicole was going to say next, but she never gets a chance.
Damon removes what appears to be a paperweight from the pocket of his scrubs and bashes it against her skull with incredible force.
Nicole stops speaking mid-sentence, and a second later, she crumples to the floor.
A little pool of blood starts to form around her head.
I take another step back, my mouth hanging open. I can barely breathe.
“Jesus Christ,” Damon comments. “She was really beginning to annoy me. No wonder her brother wanted to have her committed.”
Jade’s expression has not changed. If her boyfriend’s act of violence has disturbed her in the slightest, it doesn’t show on her face. “Don’t worry, Amy. That was part of the plan all along. The only people who are going to survive the night are me and Damon. Nicole was just a third wheel.”
I look between the two of them, trying to figure out if there’s any reasoning with either one of them.
Jade—well, I’ve tried it before. I’ve tried to talk her out of doing something terrible.
And it didn’t work. But on the other hand, she was my best friend.
We’ve known each other our whole lives. She wouldn’t really hurt me if it came down to it.
Would she?
Now that I know who Damon really is, I notice the crazed glint in his brown eyes.
Even his hair has taken on a wild edge, sticking up every which way instead of neatly combed like it was at the beginning of the shift.
When I first found out about the man locked in the seclusion room, it sounded like they were describing a wild animal.
And when I look at Damon Sawyer, that’s what I see.
A man who would smash a paperweight into a woman’s skull and kill her just because she was being annoying .
No, there’s no reasoning with this man. It’s Jade or nobody.
“Jade,” I say, “whatever you’re planning, you don’t have to do this. It’s not too late to turn things around.”
“You really think that?” She nods in the direction of Seclusion One. “You really think it’s not too late?”
She has a very good point.
“You always thought you had all the answers,” she says. “You always thought you were better than me. Well, tonight I’m calling the shots for a change.”
“I’m not better than you.” My voice breaks. “I don’t think that. I never thought that.”
“Of course you do!” Jade bursts out. “You always did! You were the one who got all A’s and were the teacher’s pet, and I was the crazy one. You never had any idea what it was like to be me.”
Damon grins. “Maybe you should’ve dropped a few more hallucinogens in her peach iced tea.”
I feel like Damon just slugged me. For a moment, my entire world is crashing down around me. “ What ?”
Jade drops her eyes, but Damon just laughs. “Come on, Jade. She’s going to die—you should at least tell her what you used to do to her. It’s funny .”
“You didn’t!” I cry.
Jade lifts a shoulder. “You are always drinking those peach iced teas. It was so easy just to drop a little something in there if you went to the bathroom or… you know.”
“Oh my God.” I clutch at my cheeks. “I thought I was going crazy . That was you drugging me all along? How could you do that to me, Jade?”
“It wasn’t that big a deal.” She juts out her lower lip. “You were such a square. It probably helped you loosen up a little. It certainly didn’t make you any nicer though.”
I can’t believe it. When I started to see that little girl everywhere, I thought my brain was broken. I had never been so terrified in my life. But it was really just my best friend slipping drugs into my freaking drink behind my back.
But any relief is short-lived. I’m still stuck in this locked unit with two extremely dangerous people and no way out.
“Anyway.” Damon looks down at his watch. “We better get going with this. The sun will be up soon.”
My heart sinks. “Get going with what ? What are you going to do?”
Jade ignores my question. “You’re right, Damon. Should I go grab the paint thinner?”
Paint thinner?
Damon tosses the paperweight, splattered in Nicole’s blood, between his hands. “Honestly, anyone who is dumb enough to leave a can of paint thinner on a psych ward is just asking to have the whole place burned down.”
I remember looking through Damon’s chart. The history of arson when he was a child. He had an affinity for setting fires. Two casualties .
“No,” I breathe. “You’re not going to do that…”
He winks at me. “Weren’t you the one who said this place was a fire hazard?”
I start to move towards him, but I’ve barely taken a step when Damon raises the paperweight over his head. I remember the way the marble smashed into Nicole’s skull and I freeze.
No. Not now. It’s not the time.
Jade goes back behind the nurses’ station and she pulls out a bucket. She starts humming to herself as she splashes the caustic material all over the floor. She drenches the floors with it, and for good measure, she pours a bunch of it on Nicole’s body.
“You can’t do this,” I croak. “You can’t kill all these people because you’re mad at me. That’s not right.”
“Oh, get over yourself.” Jade sneers at me.
“This isn’t about you. Damon and I wanted a fresh start, so what better way to get it than to burn down the psych unit and pretend both of us went up in flames?
” She smirks. “Although when I saw your name on the call list for this week, I did get excited about the idea of having a little fun with you in the process. We were going to do it last night, but we decided to move our plans just for you.”
“It’s true,” Damon confirms. “Jade made me wait a whole extra night. She must really hate you.”
A sweat breaks out on my palms as I imagine the entire unit going up in flames. I imagine the temperature rising as flames lick at my feet. I’ve heard being burned to death is a terrible way to die.
But hope is not lost. The two of them are going to need to leave the unit if they don’t want to burn down with it. As soon as they’re gone, I can short out the light circuit again. And then I’ll be able to get out.
Except then I see Jade crouched on the floor, going through Nicole’s pockets. My heart sinks when she pulls out a syringe—the same kind Nicole plunged into Will’s arm earlier.
“We’re not completely heartless,” Jade says. “You’re going to sleep through the whole thing. We’ll put you to sleep, and then you’re going to wake up dead.”
No. Oh my God, no .
“Damon,” Jade says, “how about you hold her down and I’ll inject her?”
He winks at me again. “That sounds like a plan.”
“Please.” Tears fill my eyes. “Jade, you can’t do this to me. Please .”
She frowns at me.
“We were best friends,” I remind her as I swipe at my eyes. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“Best friends,” she repeats mockingly. “Please, Amy. You should have seen the look of disgust on your face when I suggested the two of us go out to dinner. You didn’t even bother to come to my mother’s funeral.
I mean, yes, I’m the one who killed her, but you didn’t know that. Is that how you treat a best friend?”
“I’m sorry!” I cry. “I was terrible to you, and I admit it. But I want to change. I want to get to know you. I want to be best friends again.”
Jade’s eyes soften. Maybe this will work. Maybe she really will rethink what she’s about to do and change her mind.
But then Damon bursts out into loud laughter. “Jade, you aren’t seriously falling for this bullshit, are you?”
If we ever had a moment, it’s now broken. “No. Don’t be stupid.” She looks up at the clock on the wall. “Let’s do this.”
There’s no way to stop this. It’s just me versus the two of them.
They’re going to knock me out, then they’re going to burn down Ward D.
And there’s nothing I can do about it. I might have a chance if it were just Jade, but I don’t have a chance against Damon.
His upper arms are bulging with tight muscles—he’s very strong.
After all, he killed Nicole with one blow to the head.
There’s no way out.