The Sanatorium(72)

But the lift doors are still moving, pulsing backward and forward as she moves between the sensors. She needs something heavy to wedge them open.

Frantically scanning the space outside the lift, her eyes alight on the chair. She takes it, weighs it in her hands. It’s solid: it’ll do the job. She places it in the doorway against the left-hand side. The doors stop moving.

Stepping back inside the lift, Elin squats down beside Laure’s body.

She tilts her head sideways, looking at Laure’s hands.

Parts of her fingers have been removed: the forefinger of her right hand, the index. She can’t see the left, not without moving the body.

It looks like they’ve been severed with a sharp instrument: pliers, or shears of some type. Unlike Adele’s amputations, there’s blood around the wounds, streaked up the back of her hand.

Her gaze moves upward to the blood soaking Laure’s shirt. A lot of blood, but not enough . . .

Elin looks around the lift. Apart from transfer from the body, a smear across the wall, it’s clean—nothing on the floor, no spatter on the walls or ceiling.

This isn’t where she was killed.

Laure’s body has been moved from the primary scene. Placed in the lift only minutes after Elin had taken it.

Whoever killed her had pushed the button for this floor, then quickly left the lift.

As she stands back up, her head is spinning—not from revulsion, but because of her own naivete, inadequacy.

All my theories, my ideas, were wrong. Laure was either trying to warn me or this was a trap set by the killer.

Pulling her phone from her pocket, she taps out a message to Will.

Found Laure in penthouse suite. She’s

Her hand is shaking, sliding over her screen, the jerking movement spelling out an unintelligible word.

She takes a deep breath, composing herself, then deletes several letters before continuing: She’s dead.

Pressing send, she steps out of the lift.

This time, her heel strikes something. The sound—a hollow knock, the slight jolt—pulls her sideways. Elin stumbles, grabbing at the wall for balance. As she rights herself, she inspects the floor to see what her foot hit.

A glass box.

A sudden stab of trepidation, but it’s not the contents of the box catching her off guard, it’s the realization that it wasn’t there a few minutes ago.

When she propped the door to the lift open, the floor was clear.

That meant only one thing. The killer had been in the suite while she was examining Laure’s body. Only a few steps behind her.

Somehow the killer had gotten into the penthouse and placed the box there.

It’s then she hears a noise: something strange, unfamiliar. Not a breath, but more of a whistle, then a heavy, labored pull of air.

Elin whirls around, and glimpses someone beside her.

She can’t tell who it is because the figure doesn’t have a face. All she can see is the mask.





57





Elin blinks, fear spiking the base of her stomach.

Her first, dizzy impression is that she’s imagining it—some hallucination triggered by the shock of finding Laure’s body—but the sound coming from the mask flips that thought on its head.

The distorted breathing is magnified, grotesque.

She freezes, thoughts spiraling through her mind: about what might come next; the horrific injuries inflicted on Laure and Adele.

What would they do to me?

The horrible, lurid workings of her brain paralyze her.

She tries to move her limbs into a defensive position, but it’s like she’s wading through mud. Every motion is thick, gluey.

It’s only when adrenaline starts to kick in that her body does something definitive: a sudden jerk, her right leg kicking up, out.

She can do this, can’t she? She’s tired, yes, but she’s strong—her body is in shape. She’s primed.

But it’s too late.

Her attacker is stronger. Faster. And they have the benefit of knowing what they’re going to do next.

A plan.

The figure grabs her, turns her so her back is to them. Her right wrist is ripped backward, rotated until her arm is wrenched behind her back. A hand is clamped over her mouth, her neck yanked backward.

With a sideways glance, Elin glimpses the mask—it’s only inches from her face. Heightened detail: microtears in the rubber, fine white streaks.

It’s now that she feels an absolute sense of terror set in—something so primal she’s only ever felt it once before: the Hayler case, with him, that day, in the water. The memory makes her angry, gives her a sudden spike of energy.

Digging her heels into the wooden floor, she wrenches herself forward, left leg kicking back, jabbing her attacker in the thigh.

It seems to work: their grip slackens. Elin senses a hesitation.

Then: a distant sound—the thud of a door slamming.

Someone’s coming.

Will?

All at once, they let go, pushing her back, away.

Elin falls, her head slamming hard against the floor, the impact pulsing through her body. She cries out. The pain is excruciating; it’s violent enough to make her vision cloud, white stars flickering against the blackness.

Within seconds, she feels hands on her face, fingers clutching, grinding her cheek into the wooden floor. This close, she can smell them: sweat, something soapy mixed with something else. Something familiar she can’t quite grasp.