Stealing Faces - Michael Prescott [114]
Last meal for the condemned, Justin said.
Don’t turn it down, Anson advised. If you’re not hungry, girl—we are.
Laughter from them both.
“Shut up,” she said weakly.
The nurse assumed the comment was aimed at her. “Fine, then,” she said stiffly. “If that’s the way you want to be, we won’t bring you any dinner. You’ll be ready to eat by morning, I’ll bet.”
There would be no morning. But Kaylie knew it was pointless to say so.
The nurse lingered another moment, perhaps expecting Kaylie to reconsider, but Kaylie was silent, leaning disconsolately against the door.
“Sometimes,” Nurse Cunningham said finally, “I wonder why I even try.”
Her shoes squeaked again as she stalked off down the hall. Kaylie heard her go.
It was the sound of hope retreating ... fading ... gone.
The nurse would not stop Cray. No one would stop him.
You’re dead, girl, Anson said, and Justin added, As dead as me.
They kept talking, saying awful things.
Kaylie turned away from the door and stumbled to the bed and fell on it, her fist jammed in her mouth, her whole body shaking as she contracted into a fetal curl.
This wasn’t happening. None of it was real. It couldn’t be. Cray and Nurse Cunningham and this room and the bed with rubber sheets and the steel toilet in the corner—all of it—this cramped and dismal universe she inhabited alone—it was a fake conjured by her mind, a cell that existed in imagination only, and if she concentrated hard enough, if she wished very hard, like a child wishing for a visit from Santa, then maybe it would all go away and she would be free.
But she knew she could never be free, not really. There was no exit from this nightmare, no escape from Cray ... except the one he himself had pointed out.
She lifted her head, blinking at the harsh overhead bulb in its wire cage, and then slowly her gaze traveled to the air vent in the ceiling, the grille fastened to the frame.
For a long time she stared at it while a thought took shape, a thought floating in space, offered for her inspection and approval.
Kaylie sat very still, contemplating that thought.
For once the voices were gone. There was silence inside her and around her, the hurricane’s serene eye, and in that calm place she was herself again, at least for the moment.
She saw her situation plainly.
And she knew that there was only one way out. One plan that could work. One chance, and one hope.
Strip the sheet from the bed, then tie a knot ...
A slipknot.
With a trembling hand she touched the rubber sheet. It was smooth and cool between her thumb and forefinger.
How would it feel, wrapped around her neck and drawn taut as she dangled, dangled ... ?
“No,” she murmured, “I can’t.”
But she had to.
If she didn’t, Cray would come, and he would kill her.
Could she give him that final victory? After everything he had done to her, could she allow him the obscene triumph of taking her life by his own hand?
This new thought of hers was the only alternative, her only choice.
If she dared to do it.
If she had the will.
The strength.
Time for you to go, Kaylie, said a voice that seemed oddly familiar, not at all threatening—a gentle, persuasive voice. It took her a moment to realize that it was her own.
Slowly she nodded.
“Yes,” she whispered. “It’s time for me to go.”
All right, then. Do it.
Now—quickly—before the nurse returned for the day’s last injection.
Kaylie rose from the bed with a sleepwalker’s unselfconscious grace and, moving fast but with no sense of strain, began to strip the top sheet from the bed.
“Yes,” she was saying in a quiet monotone. “Yes, it’s time. It’s time. It’s time, at last, for me to go.”
51
Shepherd found Anson McMillan in an unfenced desert lot at the rear of his house, an ax in his hands, logs of mesquite scattered on the ground.
The sun was low over the Pinaleno range, the sky burning with fever. Shepherd had expected to find Kaylie’s father-in-law indoors, perhaps fixing a leisurely dinner or nursing a beer in a frosted