Me, the nurse on, and the security guard all left together.
I mean, it was a bad neighborhood and the middle of the night. It was a safety thing.
So it was extra weird to be unlocking the door and moving inside alone, knowing there wasn’t another soul anywhere around.
I went to my office first, figuring it was the most likely place I’d have left my phone. I didn’t always have it on me all day. I mean, who was going to call me? It wasn’t like I had a lot of friends. Or, well, any friends outside of Michael. And we spent so much time together as it was that we didn’t often feel the need to call or text when we weren’t with each other.
But a search of my cluttered desk and messy drawers told me I was going to have to do more digging than that.
The nurse’s station was the next likely place, but after digging around in there, I still had no phone.
It didn’t occur to me to call it for an embarrassingly long time. Sure, I kept it on vibrate, but when the building was as quiet as it was right then, I was sure I would hear that if it wasn’t dead.
“Weird,” I mumbled to myself when I heard it coming from the back where we kept a supply closet and the medicine area.
I didn’t remember being there at the end of the day, but I honestly didn’t remember the last time I had my phone that day, so anything was possible.
What was weirder was the fact that it stopped buzzing loudly, but was still making some sort of noise.
Maybe it buzzed itself off a counter and onto a chair?
That seemed the only explanation
Or so I thought.
Until I walked into the room and saw my phone.
In the hand of a man who definitely was not supposed to be there.
Panic gripped my system as I instinctively took a step back, but froze for one uncertain second before my instincts seemed to kick in, making me turn and run.
I didn’t get far before a hand was grabbing my hair, yanking me backward by it, sending pain shooting across my scalp, making a cry escape me, but the sound quickly turned into a grunt as I was slammed forward into the wall, my head colliding with a loud crack that had my vision flashing in and out for a moment.
I couldn’t pass out.
Nothing good was going to happen to me if I passed out.
“Where’s the key?” the intruder bellowed into my ear, making me stiffen as he grabbed the back of my neck, fingers digging in. Then, when I didn’t immediately answer, he yanked me back, then slammed me forward again.
I hated that I cried out. Some part of me was jealous of people like Seeley, like the gang and cartel members I did makeshift operations on, who barely showed any reaction when I was literally carving into their bodies without anesthesia.
But I wasn’t hardened like them.
Pain was new to me.
And my body was not handling it well.
“Where is it?” he yelled, this time grabbing my arm and yanking it up until I screamed.
I couldn’t even answer him with all the pain assaulting me at once.
But he was so far into the desperation stage of detox that he just… wasn’t thinking clearly as he grabbed me again.
I braced myself for impact, my stomach twisting because I wasn’t sure I could stay conscious after another hit.
But I didn’t slam forward again.
Instead, I felt something press hard into my throat. I felt it slice into my skin.