Squeeze her hand? Surely, things weren’t that bad. But Evelyn didn’t yet know for sure. She could hear tears in Lara’s voice, so she felt obligated to expend the Herculean effort required to actually break the surface of consciousness.
“She’s pretty drugged. It might be a while,” the first person responded, but that person didn’t realize how much Evelyn stood to lose if her family started to make too much fuss about the risk inherent in her job. What’d happened today (if it was still “today”; she had no idea how long she’d been out) was her own fault. She knew the type of men she dealt with, understood what they were capable of. She’d studied more psychopaths than almost any other mental health professional in America. She’d merely allowed herself to be distracted at the worst possible moment.
“Mom?” she croaked, forcing the word through lips that would barely part.
“Evelyn!” Her mother leaned over her bed. “You gave us such a scare. Are you okay?”
Lara’s white hair and gently lined face, pinched with worry, finally came into focus. A nurse was in the room too—a young Indian woman with a kind smile—but no one else. Where was her father? And her sister? Surely, Lara had alerted them.
Wait...she wasn’t thinking straight. Of course they wouldn’t be here; they’d be back in Boston. Her mother had traveled with her to San Francisco, where she’d had to come on business, so that they could spend some time together before Evelyn moved to Alaska.
“I’m fine. Everything’s...fine.” At least, she hoped it was. It would help if her darn tongue wasn’t so unwieldy... That was due to the pain meds, no doubt; she recognized the effects. “What happened?”
She remembered leaving her mother at the hotel, arriving at San Quentin State Prison, passing through security and waiting to meet with one of the candidates on her list—a serial killer who’d strangled fifteen women...
Hugo Evanski. That was his name. She’d been standing up, reading his file when he was brought into the room, and then...nothing. That was where her mind went blank.
“That animal you went to see?” her mother said. “That murderer? He broke away from the guard and rushed you on sight. Hit you so hard you banged your head against the wall, then fell and hit the corner of the desk. You have several stitches in your temple.”
Evelyn licked her lips, trying to ease the dryness. She felt like the tin man from The Wizard of Oz, with no oil. “Did he...did he do anything else?”
Lara’s eyebrows knitted. “Isn’t that enough?”
“I can’t feel much. I’m...trying to ascertain the extent of my injuries.”
The nurse lifted Evelyn’s arm to take her blood pressure. “According to your chart, you have a concussion and six stitches,” she said and gave her hand a reassuring rub before putting air in the cuff.
“They got him before he could do any more damage,” her mother explained. “But you hit your head so hard that they had to check your brain to see if you were hemorrhaging.”
Not good news. “Am I?”
“No. Thank God.”
Evelyn drew a deep breath. “Then I’m going to be okay, like I said.”
“This time,” her mother responded. “But what about next time? What if something like this happens in Alaska, and they can’t pull the bastard off you soon enough? Or if you’re hurt even worse and they can’t get you to a hospital because of severe weather? Why you’d isolate yourself up there, in the wilderness, with so many human monsters, I have no idea.”
Evelyn couldn’t miss this opportunity, even if her mother didn’t like the idea of her living so far away. It was the culmination of her professional aspirations. “I didn’t get to choose where they built the facility, Mother.”
The nurse removed the blood pressure cuff, made a notation on her chart and said she had another patient she needed to check on.
“They tried other locations,” Evelyn went on as the nurse hurried out. “Texas. Arizona. South Dakota. Hilltop didn’t protest quite as much.” With only five hundred people in town, they couldn’t have the political influence of a larger community, so even if they’d gone at it with more determination, it might not have made the same difference. But she didn’t add that. Neither did she volunteer that public opinion hadn’t shifted in the facility’s favor until after Hilltop had been adopted as the building site. It seemed as if those in the “lower forty-eight” liked the idea of stashing their worst criminals all in the same place, as long as it was some other place.
“Heaven help the people who live there,” Lara muttered.
“They won’t need heaven’s help.” She stifled a groan for how difficult it was just to talk. “Hanover House is going to be a level 4 facility. All the...the monsters will be locked up.”
The lines in her mother’s face grew deeper. “And you’ll be inside with them.”
They’d been through this... “My office will be in a whole other wing.”
“You’ll have to go to the prison section to observe or meet with your subjects.”