Free Race the Darkness by Abbie Roads Page A

against Kent’s words. “Dude, I think your Officer Decker is funnin’ with the big, bad BCI guy.”
    Kent’s expression was as serious as grave gravel. No joke. No laugh. No humor. “He’s legit. More legit than you’ll ever be.” He’s gone through the academy, knows protocol, respects the job and his fellow officers.
    â€œSsshhiitt…” Xander couldn’t find another word to sum up the situation.
    â€œYeah. Now tell me the goddamned truth. Who visited her? Did she leave the hospital?” No way she could’ve known about this otherwise.
    â€œNo one visited her. Does she look like she’s been out visiting the local flora and fauna? Dressed in a hospital smock? With all the reporters out there? Use your oh-so-superior smarts.”
    â€œThen you”—Kent jammed a finger at Xander—“toss me an explanation that fits.” You’re wanting me to buy shit that stinks.
    â€œTruth is fucking truth. She hasn’t talked to anyone. She hasn’t left the hospital. Maybe Queen told her that the murder was going to happen. You’re the fancy BCI guy. You figure it—” Xander’s brain went squirmy inside the cap of his skull, the brain itch. It felt like someone had opened his skull, taken out his thinking tool, rolled it around in a patch of poison ivy, then reinstalled it in his head.
    He shook his head hard enough, violent enough, long enough to give himself the adult version of shaken baby syndrome. After his head stilled on his shoulders, his eyes hadn’t gotten the memo because they continued to ping-pong around their sockets.
    Kent was still talking. Xander’s head was still pounding. And still, the itch devoured everything with its unrelenting, unnerving, insatiable sensation. Xander’s center of gravity warped the waiting room, transforming it into a fun house of distorted, disorienting images rushing at him from the walls and floor.
    Against the imminent sensory overload, one thought dominated his mind— get to Isleen . He went with it, lurching away from his conversation with Kent without a good-bye, a kiss-my-ass, or a fuck-you.
    In the hallway, his vision narrowed to a laser beam of focus on Isleen’s door. Each step toward her room systematically eased the itch in his brain and faded the pain of the frequency connection until he stood outside her room—no brain itch, no pain. He had returned to a level of functioning that was better than his baseline. It had to do with her. Something about her affected the frequency connection and did something to him. But how? Why?
    He pushed through the doorway—and froze solid as a glacier. Went as cold as one too.
    Her mussed covers dangled off the bed, pooling on the floor. Her smock was tangled up on her bare thighs, her legs sprawled akimbo. Not even that image horrified him as much as what lay on her forehead. A cross, only it wasn’t shaped the same as a Christian cross. It was squared off and sitting at an angle like a golden X-marks-the-spot. There was something wrathful and wrong about that piece of metal touching her. He ran for her and flung the offensive cross off her, sending it hurling across the room to bang into the wall and clatter to the floor. The silence that followed was deadly. His mind whirled through too many thoughts.
    Someone had been in her room.
    Someone was sending a message—but Xander wasn’t fluent in the language of wonky crosses.
    Someone had hurt her, and now she sounded dead. There was no thumping of heart pumping, no soft rasping of breath being inhaled and exhaled, no whooshing of lungs expanding and contracting. He couldn’t trust his ears. They’d been fucking up from the moment he parked outside the torture trailer and heard nothing. But his eyes didn’t lie. Her normally pale complexion had turned cadaverous, like she’d sidled up to death and was making cozy.
    â€œNo.”