Beautiful Stranger

And now he was the one with a job opportunity for an old classmate in trouble of his own. But Josh wasn’t looking for a cushy job where he could get paid well for doing little. He could tell he’d be bored out of his mind working somewhere like this.

Not to mention the place gave him the creeps.

The uneasy feeling had only increased when they’d stepped inside. An unsettling sensation slid across his skin. He suppressed a shudder.

He couldn’t quite explain the feeling, especially when the inside was less forbidding than the exterior. Though the building obviously showed its age, the facilities appeared well maintained. The first floor featured high ceilings and all those windows that let in the sunlight and made the space feel open and airy. The tiled floors beneath their feet gleamed. The formerly state-run hospital had been taken over by a private corporation a decade earlier, with the state now paying it to house patients who had nowhere else to go. From all appearances, the company that now owned Thornwood was doing a bang-up job, as well as pulling in a decent enough profit that they could still pay Aaron a better salary than a city hospital could.

But despite the tranquil surface, the atmosphere was charged with something else. Bad vibes, Josh thought. For one thing, it was eerily quiet—not in a peaceful way, but a distinctly unnatural one. Odd for a hospital. Other than Aaron prattling on beside him, the building resounded with silence.

They passed a television lounge where several patients stared glassily, only a few at the actual TV, its volume set to a barely intelligible murmur. Each of them appeared as lost in their own minds as the woman he’d seen on his way in.

The woman.

The thought of her brought the terrified look in her eyes back to him. Aaron had appeared and pulled him away before he’d had a chance to try to speak to her. Now he wished he’d had just a few seconds to do so, to confirm for himself at least that everything was all right with her.

He glanced back just before they turned a corner.

It was too late. She was already out of view.

“OKAY. THAT’S ENOUGH SUN for one day.”

It took every ounce of willpower Claire possessed not to jump at the sound of that low, cruel voice in her ear. It helped that she’d known it was coming. She didn’t have to see Jerry Hobbs to know he was nearby. She’d become so attuned to the orderly’s presence her skin always began to crawl whenever he was around.

This time, though, his presence was a good thing. She’d been waiting impatiently all afternoon, not to mention the three months prior.

The time was finally here. Her pulse might have jumped if she didn’t have it firmly under control.

As usual, he leaned too close, the scent of cheap, sickeningly sweet cologne washing over her, and murmured directly in her ear. Her immediate instinct was to lean away from him. She managed not to.

This is it. This is the last time.

A few seconds later, he wheeled her off the veranda toward her room.

None of the staff she’d encountered at Thornwood had much of a bedside manner, but Hobbs was the worst. He hauled her in and out of bed and the wheelchair as carelessly as he would handle a laundry bag. The bruises on her arms and torso were proof enough of that.

If the injuries he’d inflicted had been solely the result of carelessness, it would have been bad enough. But Claire suspected that wasn’t the case. One time when he’d grabbed her wrist, she’d sensed him watching her face as he’d slowly squeezed with greater and greater force. She’d wondered if he was testing her, trying to see if she would reveal her deception if he hurt her. She hadn’t, somehow managing to keep from reacting to the pain. Only when he’d left had she cradled her aching wrist to her side and let out the whimper of agony she’d managed to swallow. A brief moment, but a telling one. He liked inflicting pain. And at least one instance when the back of his hand had rubbed against her breast had lingered too long to be an accident.

The nurses must have noticed her injuries, but Hobbs was still around. She suspected no one had reported him. Maybe they were looking out for each other. Maybe they were afraid of him. Maybe they just didn’t care.

As they made their way to her room on the second floor, she carefully glanced at her surroundings to get a sense of how many people were around. The halls were mostly deserted, something that would only help her.

Finally they arrived at her room. Hobbs wheeled her inside, closing the door behind them with a noticeable click.

Keeping her body utterly still, Claire tensed inwardly, ready for her moment.

For months she’d had no choice but to sit there and take it, knowing she couldn’t break the charade.

Not today.

Never again.

He stopped in front of the chair and reached for her.

Before he had a chance to wrap his slimy fingers around her arm, she reached up and caught his wrist in midair.

His shocked eyes met hers.

She didn’t say a word. Her other hand was already arcing toward his face.

The heel of her hand made direct contact with his nose. She felt the bone break with a satisfying crunch. Almost simultaneously, her foot kicked out and caught him in the crotch before he had a chance to scream. Releasing his wrist as he doubled over, she lashed out again, sending her fist straight into his stomach. One last punch crashed into his jaw.

He crumpled into a heap, his head smacking against the floor with a thud.

Just to make sure he was unconscious, she nudged him with her foot.

His chest rose and fell, but otherwise he didn’t move.

Triumph swelled within her. It had taken a while before she could use them, but those self-defense classes had come in handy after all.

She shot a nervous glance back at the door to see if anyone had noticed through the window what had happened. The attack couldn’t have lasted more than five seconds. Had anyone seen?

There was nobody at the window, no sounds of an alarm being raised in the corridor.

Taking that as a sign she was in the clear, she wasted no time lunging from the chair. For a second her head swam and her legs wobbled beneath her. She spent only a few precious seconds waiting for them to steady, then started moving again, reaching for Hobbs. Hopefully if she kept moving, her momentum would keep her on her feet. She was going to need all the help she could get. It was already painfully clear her body wasn’t responding as quickly or strongly as it had before she wound up here.

Grabbing Hobbs under his arms, she dragged him to the bed. Her muscles quivered under the strain. Luckily, he wasn’t much taller than she was, so his limp form wasn’t too hard to handle. When she got to the bed, she pushed the sheets back. Taking one deep breath, she girded her strength and heaved him onto the bed with every last bit of power she had. Somehow she managed to get him onto the mattress.

Unclipping his security badge from his belt, she turned his head toward the wall and pulled the sheets up over him. No one should check on her for at least another half an hour. If they didn’t look too closely, this could buy her even more time, depending on how long it took Hobbs to wake up. What she wouldn’t give for some of the drugs they’d been plying her with, just to be sure.

Darting for the door, Claire carefully checked the hall through the window. It was still quiet, with no one in sight. She slowly eased the door open, and with one last check, slipped out into the corridor.

There was a stairway five doors down from her room. Claire quickly made her way to it, keeping her head turning and her eyes moving both in front of and behind her. There were no security cameras in this hallway, so at least she didn’t have to worry about that. No one had appeared in either direction by the time she made it to the stairwell. She checked it, too, before entering. Neither seeing nor hearing anyone, she slipped inside.

She took the stairs two at a time. This was where things got dicey. She had never been on the first floor on this side of the building. She only had a vague idea of what was there, but it was enough to know it was where she wanted to be.

Not for the first time she wished she could make her escape at night. Except that she had no idea of the layout of the grounds or whether Thornwood was surrounded by any kind of security fence along the far perimeter. She’d tried to keep her strength up and her muscles primed by moving around in her room at night, long after lights-out, but she doubted she had the stamina for any kind of long-distance run, even if she could manage to get over a fence. Judging from the way her body was already responding just from knocking out Hobbs and hauling him onto the bed, she wouldn’t last long on her feet.

Her best chance of getting off the grounds was to catch a ride, and during the day it was more likely a vehicle would be leaving. She knew from listening to the sounds outside her window that the loading dock was somewhere nearby. Every Monday for the last three months a truck had made a delivery around this time. If she could get down to the dock and sneak onto the departing truck before anyone noticed she was gone, she’d have a fast way out of here.

She just had to hope Hobbs hadn’t waited too long to retrieve her. Every second she’d spent out on that veranda had seemed like an eternity. They’d only started taking her outside in the last few weeks. She didn’t know why they bothered, but the change in the schedule had thrown off her plans enough she’d had to wait a few days longer than expected.

Reaching the first floor, she yanked the door open and shot a quick glance in either direction. Seeing no one, she burst out into the corridor, easing the door shut behind her. Her best guess was that the loading dock was to the right, so she headed in that direction, sending up a prayer that she’d chosen correctly.

She moved quickly but quietly, her slippered feet silent on the linoleum. The fluorescent lights flickered unsteadily, casting shadows on the sickly green walls. She swallowed her nervousness and kept moving.

After turning two more corners, Claire found herself facing a set of double doors at the end of another corridor. The faint rumble of a large engine emanating from behind them was unmistakable.

Hurrying to them, she pressed her ear against the doors to try to detect any voices or footsteps inside. Hearing none, she waved Hobbs’s pass in front of the security scanner. The lock released with an audible click. With painstaking slowness, she cracked the door open a fraction and peeked inside.