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Muscle aches and pants-shitting amounts of nausea don’t generally arouse a hearty appetite.
“Maybe this is your chance to get clean.”
“I’ve heard that before.” Carson takes a large bite of the mystery meat and meditatively chews. “Getting clean isn’t the problem. Staying clean is the real bitch.”
My response is barely more than a murmur. “I bet you know all about that.”
His eyes flash, the look in them clearer and brighter than anything that has come within yards of an opioid. That look sizes me up as he tries to decide if this is going to be his moment or not. I can’t take the risk of looking away from his eyes. Not even at his hands, although something tells me they aren’t empty anymore.
“You’re just as smart as they said, kid.” The dark smile he gives me is practically winsome. “Just had to make sure I had the right guy.”
I’m barely ready for it when he lunges at me. The poor, little addict routine had me fooled better than it should have. My back hits the wall hard as I dodge the sudden glint of metal in his hand. I get a blurring glimpse of a handle in the vague shape of a toothbrush with a dull razor on the end.
He swings again, arm moving in a wide arc. I dive to the side and roll away. His reach isn’t quite enough to make it across the table, but it’s a close thing.
I shove the table into his midsection, hoping he’ll drop the blade. He doesn’t, but the time he takes to recover gives me a chance to put more distance between us. Chairs clatter to the floor as the other inmates scramble away from the guy with the shank. None of them will do anything to help me and the press of bodies also keeps the guards from seeing what is happening and interfering. Something tells me that isn’t a coincidence.
Carson, if that’s even really his name, comes around the table with a yell. He lunges at me with the shank in a practiced move.
Fire burns across my palm as I slap his thrusting arm away. Just the smallest edge of the blade is enough to tear a four-inch gash in my palm. Blood infection and tetanus flit across my mind as generic concepts that I’ll probably need to worry about later. Pain is an even more distant consideration. Right now, I can’t worry about anything except keeping myself alive.
He slashes at me again, aiming for my face this time. Only the table between us keeps him from slicing my nose clean off.
Evading him isn’t going to be an option, not if I want to walk away without a few extra holes in me. Hand-to-hand combat isn’t exactly something I practice regularly, but I am strong and athletic. This guy has some weight on me, but that might be enough to slow him down.
He strikes at me again. Instead of dodging, I grab his arm with my injured hand and yank on it. Agony blares through the wound on my palm, but I ignore it in favor of saving the rest of me.
Carson doesn’t even see it coming when I cold-cock him with my free hand. He flies back with enough force that the back of his skull hits the concrete floor with a loud crack. That’s what he gets for assuming I’m right-handed.
The blow isn’t hard enough for him to lose consciousness. Unfortunately. But he struggles to rise for long enough that the crowd loses interest. They disperse enough for a guard to finally catch sight of what’s happening.
An alarm blares loudly enough to shatter my eardrums. It’s almost impossible to hear the guards yelling over the noise for everyone to get face down on the ground.
I comply as readily as the other inmates, but I keep out of reach of Carson. He stays on his back, moaning like I hit him with a sledgehammer. But his hands are empty. The shank is wherever he had it hidden when he was shining me on before.
“I’ll be waiting for you, Van Koch,” he says evilly as the guards lift him off the floor. “And I’m not the only one.”
I watch them drag him away to solitary or medical or wherever they take inmates that try to kill each other.
The only thing I’m thinking about is the fact that I never told him my last name.
Chapter Three
Sick people have a way of finding each other. It’s the easiest way to justify your own sickness without making yourself try to get well. Love easily becomes obsession when you want so badly to become a part of something bigger that you’re willing to sacrifice everything else.
I wonder if that’s what really lies between Drake and me. Not love, but obsession.
Because even though my twin sister has practically returned from the dead, he is the only thing on my mind.
It takes a ridiculous amount of time to answer all of Anya’s questions. You’d think that the girl has never seen identical twins before in her life. When I finally come up with a good enough excuse to leave the suite, I quickly realize that I don’t have anywhere to go.
I go to the chapel because it’s the only place I can think where I won’t encounter anyone else. The students here don’t spend much time confessing their sins.
To be fair, prayer is an empty gesture when you only do it because you want something. But it’s better than staring at the wall while Anya insists on knowing everything there is to know about Evangeline.
“I still can’t believe you never told me,” she had gushed for the umpteenth time as I headed out the door. “She seems so cool and pretty. Obviously, you’re pretty too, but you know what I mean. You should ask if she wants to have dinner with us tonight.”
If I didn’t know that Anya’s tastes skewed to overly muscular and thick-headed, then I’d think she has a crush.
