“Christopher, what’s wrong?” His posture stoops and he angles his head.
I try to keep my hand from shaking, my mind from screaming, and every muscle in my body from jumping. “You just startled me, is all. I didn’t hear you coming.”
Donny Ray’s dimples fill with light as a smile starts to build. “Good Lord. I was really worried, because for a fraction of a second, I thought maybe it was about that book you’ve got lodged into the back of your rib cage.”
I freeze.
He says nothing more. He doesn’t have to, because from those eyes comes an intense blaze of fiery evil, the magnitude of which sends every inch of my skin crawling with heat. I lower the book to one side, back away from him, and he flashes the smile of a killer.
“It was you. All along it’s been you. You fed them that sentence.”
“I’ve really got a bunch of wacky-assed, fucked-up neighbors around here,” Donny Ray says through a bouncy laugh that makes my toes curl. “And how about those crazy doors on Alpha Twelve? The way your mind keeps locking and unlocking them?”
I have to get away from this monster, as fast and far as humanly possible.
Halfway to the door, I hear, “Christopher?”
I’m unable to stop myself from turning back.
He holds up my cell phone with one hand. “You’ve lost something. Again.”
I look down and pat my shirt. The phone isn’t in my pocket. How did it get into his hands?
“Who’s this?” Donny Ray asks, studying the image on my home screen with interest I don’t at all like.
I say nothing.
“Your son, right? He’s a very beautiful boy,” the child killer tells me. “That dark hair, those deep, brown eyes . . .”
But it doesn’t feel like a compliment.
“You must love him more than anything.”
It feels like a threat.
“Do not cross that line with me, Donny Ray,” I growl. “Don’t do it.”
“When the situation warrants, Christopher.”
“The situation is moot. Fortified walls and the army of security personnel inside this hospital say your threat is useless.”
“Twenty-three twenty Hillsborough Lane,” he says with a smirk rotten as spoiled vinegar. “Green house, white shutters.”
His description leaves me short-winded. “How do you know that?”
At the door, Evan fidgets with his keys in the lock. I glare at Donny Ray. “You’ll never get out of here. Never.”
“Gerald might disagree.”
“What’s he got to do with this?”
“If I can get to them, I can get to you.”
Evan enters, but the silence that covers this room like a wet stinking blanket stops him. He looks at me, looks at the patient, and seems even more confused.
Just as Donny Ray passes by, he winks at me, then reveals that boyish grin, now cloaked in a thousand shades of darkness.
58
A wicked chill bumps up my spine as I watch Donny Ray leave his room under Evan’s guard.
“Evan,” I call impulsively, and he walks back my way. Donny Ray waits patiently in the hall, leering at me.
I motion Evan in close. “Keep a good watch on him today.”
Evan says, “I can assign a rotation to him.”
“No, do it yourself.” He looks surprised. I make my voice confidential. “I trust you, Evan, and this patient is very dangerous right now. He needs close watching.”
“All right, Doctor,” he says and walks back to where Donny Ray stands. I watch them disappear.
I’m alone.
Now I can let myself tremble.
My initial suspicions were right. Donny Ray engineered all the odd happenings in Alpha Twelve that day.
Donny Ray is a psychopath.
He was trying to throw me off-balance. But why? Why did he force confusion on me, when I was the one person who could help his case?
Because he doesn’t need your help.
“What the hell are you talking about? Of course he does.”
Throwing you off your game is the only way to make you see the truth.
“What truth?”
The voice doesn’t answer, but Donny Ray’s comment from just moments ago gives me an uncomfortable nudge.
It’s not about that. It was never about that. It’s about the truth.
The only truth I know right now is that Donny Ray Smith stinks of danger. Not only is he a psychopath—he’s an extremely clever one. After Philips got into trouble at the Miller Institute, I became his next sitting duck, and he’s been playing me like a goddamned fiddle ever since.
The picture on the wall. The girl in a blue dress. His moments of detachment. That tragic story of abuse. All were building blocks for his carefully orchestrated plan. And he was nearly successful, until he slipped by leaving his drawer open.
Or did he?
I’m quickly learning that Donny Ray Smith doesn’t make mistakes. Which leads me to the question of whether he wanted me to see that book. Was it just another installment in his plan to drive me over the edge?
I reevaluate everything that occurred during our sessions. The story about his mother, which echoed my own. I now see how he used it to manipulate, to garner sympathy, so I’d fall onboard with him even faster.
But how did he know so much about me?
I reconstruct my memory of our meetings. The missing pen. My out-of-whack actions and movements. The breaks in our conversations.
The lost time.
I was too blinded by my confusion in the beginning to see it, then later by my empathy, but with both now gone, everything is falling into place. I understand how Donny Ray got so much information about me. It’s because I’ve been unknowingly spoon-feeding it to him. He’s been using my memory lapses to extract the information. But with that realization comes another one far more disturbing.
My address.
Oh, God. How could I have allowed this to happen? In those conversations I don’t remember, what else did I unknowingly tell the monster with a hunger that can make ten kids disappear? What did I hand over that could allow him to put my own son’s life in danger?
You must love him more than anything.
The way he looked at Devon’s picture.