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It was a corridor full of men in body armor with radios on their shoulders, moving through a building in formation like the professionals they were. Which was why the sight of them took hold of me. Something that had nothing whatsoever to do with this new nightmare. Something older. Something that made my throat close and my hands go numb as my whole body started screaming at me to get away. Because I had spent three years being frightened of a very particular kind of man.

But my ghost didn’t know this, he just felt my fear, which was why his hand tightened again as he pulled me closer toward him.

After that it got worse, and it got worse quickly.

Because we went past the top of the stairwell and there were two men down on that landing, and neither of them was moving. I knew both of them. Officer Mackie who had been working there thirty-one years and even had a photograph of his grandchildren taped inside his locker door. But now he was face down with his hands behind his back and something plastic around his wrists.

And behind him, Ruben.

Ruben who is twenty-three and started in August. Just a nice guy with his whole life ahead of him that he’s trying to get on track. It was only nine days ago that he asked me whether a nurse could do the paramedic course part time and wrote down everything I could think of to help him.

But now Ruben was on his side about four feet from the wall with one arm underneath him and a man kneeling over him. I then watched the forearm come away from his throat and his head go back against the floor as a result.

I got one step and that was all I got.

Because I’m a nurse. That’s what happened when I saw someone go down like that… I went to them. It’s not bravery and most of the time it’s not even a decision being made. It’s more like a thing that lives in my hands. Airway, breathing, pulse, and my whole body had already started to do it before my head had caught up.

But I never got the chance as my ghost put an arm across my belly and hauled me back against him, not letting me take a second step.

“Oh my God, he killed him, I need to…”

“He is not dead,” he stated calmly, softly even, after he lowered his head so it was closer to my ear.

“I watched him…”

“Anna.” And he turned my face with one hand so I had to look at him instead. “Look at me. He is not dead, and neither is the other one, and there is nothing for you to do here.” I swallowed hard at that before looking away. Because I didn’t believe him. How the fuck could I? Here he was trying to convince me the man on the floor didn’t need medical care. Yet not half an hour ago I had watched him take another human being apart with a scalpel.

I opened my mouth to argue this but never got there. Because that’s when I heard the screaming. It came up from the far end of the corridor, from Cedar, and I knew the voice. Everybody who has ever worked this ward knows that voice.

Because you can tell a man he is safe as many times as you like, and none of it reaches him once his mind is lost to fear. Which means when the lights go out in a building and strangers come through it in the dark, the result is whatever has been quietly eating at that man for thirty years.

So, I wasn’t surprised when he came around the corner at a dead run and didn’t look like he had any intention of stopping. He also didn’t look like he even knew we were here, he was simply running, and I happened to be standing in his way.

It was why my ghost let go of my hand.

He let go of me, and he put me behind him with his forearm. Then he stepped out into that corridor, between me and a man charging my way.

And that is the reason I got away.

He stood in front of me as a protective barrier against the oncoming threat and it cost him everything. Because the second his hand was gone, I was already moving. Some older part of me had taken over and my mind was screaming at me.

Get out. Get out now.

So, I turned and ran.

I made it about sixty feet before I heard him shouting my name. But I didn’t stop… couldn’t stop. Everything in me just needed to get out of here and keep going until I was across another state line. Because he had said those men were his. They were there for him and suddenly the call he made clicked into place. Bring it forward, was what he said. Which meant that this had always been the plan.

God, I felt like a fucking idiot!

There I was thinking that him being in a place like this made me safe. But he had always intended to leave and the moment he told me it was time to say goodbye to my life, I knew he meant to take me with him.

That he had always planned to kidnap me.

Those threats of his men taking me had never been the empty kind. Just a promise of what he would do if I forced his hand. And now, he had all the control.

“No,” I breathed out, unwilling to accept it. Because I hadn’t come this far and survived the last three years only to find myself in the hands of a murderer who was obsessed with me.

His little bird.