Free Keeping by Sarah Masters Page A

gotten there. Perhaps she was going through a strange spell, the drug doing weird things to her. Maybe she’d be back to normal in a minute—well, as normal as she could be in the circumstances—and she’d understand exactly what she had to do next.
    A couple of the others had refused to administer it to themselves at first, but he’d persevered and won. He wasn’t a killer and wouldn’t be blamed for their deaths. They had to kill themselves. No way was he going to be labeled a murderer. No, he just provided them with what they needed then put them in a place where nature could finish them off.
    “If you don’t take your medicine, it will get worse,” he said. “Mr Clever might tell me to do other things to you, and then you’ll use the syringe gladly. He might tell me to hurt you. I don’t want to do it, haven’t had to do it before, but I will if he says so. I could ask Mr Clever what I’d have to do, if you like. You might need to know in order to make your mind up. Do you want to know what would happen?”
    She shook her head and lifted the syringe. Sat upright and leaned forward, her head seemingly too heavy for her neck. He stared at the cords standing out in her throat and wondered how much effort she had to put in to keep her head from dropping to her chest. She jabbed the needle between her toes like a true heroin addict who knew where to hide those telling needle holes from the suspecting eyes of family members and friends. Squeezed the syringe until all the medicine disappeared.
    “There,” he said, voice quiet and even. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”
    He pulled Sally’s cord and smiled as the music began. Cheryl leaned back and closed her eyes, the syringe falling from her grasp. He stared until the song was almost complete then ran with Sally to the door, going out into the hallway and closing it a little, positioning Sally so she peeked into the room.
    “Goodnight!” Sally said.

Chapter Six
    Langham sat at his desk, mulling over what the team had found out so far today. Evening had arrived at one hell of a pace, darkness falling without notice—one minute the late afternoon sun had been thinking about going to bed, the next it had disappeared and the moon was wide awake.
    Oliver dozed in the chair opposite, feet on the desk, hands clasped over his stomach. Langham watched the rise and fall of his chest—nice and steady—and resisted the urge to go over and kneel beside his chair, stroke his hair, run the backs of two fingers down his face. He couldn’t risk waking him. The visit to the newspaper had further upset him. Oliver had said he felt responsible, as though his being there when the man—not blond or green-eyed, damn it—had visited might have made some difference. As though he’d have been able to pick up more than the editor had. And that editor—Langham now understood why Oliver hated the job. No sooner had Langham and Oliver walked into the office, than the bolshy bastard had ordered Oliver to make a round of teas then let him in on the gossip, give him something for tomorrow’s edition.
    “No gossip at this time,” Langham had said.
    The editor had opened his mouth to protest, and Langham had leveled one of his stares at him. No further orders. No further prods for a scoop.
    Cheryl hadn’t been due in to work the past couple of days, so her absence hadn’t been a concern. This morning, however, the editor admitted he’d been pissed off she hadn’t shown because they’d had a shitload of makeup and feminine hygiene articles that had needed going over and Cheryl had been chosen to do it. Her not coming in had meant Colin—“some dopey little shyster”—had had to take over, and what the hell did Colin know about makeup? Langham had suspected quite a bit, going by Colin’s blush, the remnants of eyeliner, and the quick glance that had told Langham all he’d needed to know. Yep, his gaydar had been right on target there.
    The CCTV footage had shown a