Her gaze fell to his chest and then lower before quickly sweeping upward to his face again.
He took a step toward her. “I’ll give you a good long look later, but right now, I need you to give me the knife.”
“Stay away!” She flailed the scalpel around in front of her.
He didn’t have time for this. He needed to get out of here before anyone else stopped by. “I’ll be right back,” he said, turning for door.
“Where are you going? Don’t lock me in here!”
He exited quickly, making sure to shut the door securely behind him.
As he rushed around the front room looking for something to cover himself with, he could hear her shouting and rattling the doorknob. Inside a storage closet he found a pair of blue overalls covered with dried paint. They would have to do. He slipped into the overalls, then grabbed a white lab coat from a hook and put that on too.
Working quickly, he began to collect any provisions he might need on the long ride across country: scissors, tape, sanitizer, and soap. He stuffed his pockets, then found an empty bucket for everything else.
As he made his way outside, he inhaled a breath of fresh air, overwhelmed by the smell of freedom. The sun warmed his back as he took in the endless sweep of trees and green grass from the morgue’s vantage point atop a hill. There wasn’t another building in sight. And her car was unlocked.
Freedom.
And the warmth of the sun.
It didn’t get any better than that. Especially after spending the night in a refrigerated room. His teeth had chattered from the moment he’d arrived. After being transported to the morgue on Thursday night, he’d waited until everyone was gone before he’d wriggled his way out of the body bag, but it hadn’t taken him long to realize he’d been locked inside the cold room. He hadn’t wanted to involve anyone else in his escape, but there was no way around it. If he left the woman inside that room, she could die. If he let her go, she would call the police.
He had no choice but to take her with him.
The flight from California to Vermont had been quick. No doubt the warden had discovered he was missing by now, but it would take the man a while, hopefully more than a few days, to figure out how he’d escaped or whose body bag he’d ended up in.
After spending years researching morgues and how to fake his death, Jason had realized getting his hands on a low dose of curare, tetrodotoxin, or similar drug would be nearly impossible. Once he’d understood that faking his death would be too difficult to pull off, he’d decided he just needed to be ready for anything.
And then it happened.
His chance to escape became a reality: a riot broke out at San Quentin. Six men were killed. And Jason had to act fast. With years of stellar behavior, he’d been put in charge of a special work crew, which happened to be outside the compound when the refrigerated trucks were brought in. He hadn’t had time to think things through. The moment he saw the truck drivers gather in the front office to collect their papers, he knew this might be his best, if not only, chance to escape.
Everything happened fast after that. He read charts and made fast decisions. Solely to complicate matters, he also switched the corpses’ wristbands. Since Chris Patterson weighed in at one hundred and thirty pounds, he put Patterson inside another dead guy’s body bag, neatly stacking the bodies, before slipping into the empty one. It was all smooth sailing after that. He was flown to Vermont and delivered to the Montpelier Morgue, all within twenty-four hours.
Back inside the morgue, Jason found a case of water bottles and took those to the car, too. His heart was pumping now, his body temperature finally normal. A good thing since he hadn’t been sure how much longer he would last inside that refrigerated room. The gravel dug into his bare feet. There had been individual drawers inside the cold room. He hadn’t felt inclined to look inside, but that was before he realized he would need shoes.