Page 33 of Edging Sanity

Embarrassingly, it was still enough to get Rowan bothered. Enough to make her boxers wet and desire heightened.

This is fucking pathetic. Rowan almost angrily shoved her hand down her own pants. The way Delilah already had her wrapped up tight should have been a clear warning sign. Rowan could hardly look at the woman without needing something to relieve the pressure in her core.

To make it all worse, this time she didn’t have to rely on her imagination of what Delilah might sound like. This time, she had memories of her sound, her smell, her taste. Rowan bit her lip, letting her eyes fall closed as they surrounded her.

Until the door handle jiggled and abruptly ripped her fantasy away. She hastily tore away from herself, wiping her hand on her pants while she scrambled to switch the main camera over to focus on the lobby instead—making sure Delilah was nowhere on screen.

“Yo, boss. You in there?” A knock followed the words, and she took a deep breath, her heart pounding as she leaned back to unlock and open the door.

“Everything good?” she asked, immediately turning back to face the cameras so Jenkins didn’t see the flush covering her cheeks.

“Yeah,” he said, peering around her at the screens. “Ah, there it is.” He reached beside her, grabbing a phone that had been shoved into the corner, partially obscured by the large monitor on the left. He waved it at her with a chagrined smile. “Sorry ‘bout that,” he said before turning to leave.

Rowan didn’t say a word, letting out a sigh of relief as the door shut behind him. There was a strict no personal cell phone policy that she implemented with her guards, but that was the furthest thing from her mind as she tried to remember if she’d been making any noises while she fucked herself to Delilah. Again.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FIVE

Rowan was not going to switch back to the camera in Delilah’s room. Her heart was still pounding in her chest from the near miss, even after almost half an hour of mindlessly scanning through the other feeds. She hadn’t been paying attention to them, not really. Her concern was elsewhere entirely. Shaking her head, she tried to focus on her job. Everything needed to be verified for functionality. Everyone needed to be where they should be—and alive. That was what she needed to be doing.

Huffing, Rowan stood up and stretched, grabbing her water bottle and chugging half the damn thing before slamming it back down on the table. Focus.

With one final, deep breath, Rowan sat back down. She’d go from the start—skipping Delilah’s feed—and do a quick sanity check before she had to collect Delilah for therapy. She selected a room at random and then swore out loud, quickly skipping to the next one after a pair of sunken eyes was staring at the camera from only a few feet away.

Fucking hell. She needed to get her shit together. The residents weren’t usually able to jump scare her like this.

Fortunately, the next several minutes passed uneventfully. The cameras were working, the patients seemed to be doing well—as much as she’d expect them to given the circumstances of their presence. Technicians shuffled from room to room, dispensing medicine and checking on well-being. That new therapist, the one whose name Rowan could never seem to remember, was leaving his office. She wracked her brain for the event schedule, wondering why he’d be wandering at this time of day. There must have been something.

Giving up on trying to remember, she switched to the final four feeds with plenty of time to spare before Delilah’s appointment. Which was good because she needed to get herself under control, to shake the creeping feeling of something being wrong and the intense paranoia that she and Delilah had somehow been caught.

“Code blue, room 119,” a voice crackled on her radio, breaking the tonal monotony of her mouse clicks. She flipped through feeds until she found 119. The patient was lying on his bed. Rowan had assumed he was sleeping when she did her cursory glance earlier. But now that she was looking closer, she could see the frothy bile spilling over his lips.

Two technicians were standing over him, one speaking quickly into his radio while the other held a towel to the dead man’s lips, attempting to mop up the vomit. At least there was no blood this time, she thought wryly, quickly switching the feed back to Delilah’s room. As expected, Delilah hadn’t moved. She was lying back on the bed in post-orgasmic bliss, as if she actually didn’t know what was happening.

Rowan left the room, heading to 119 to investigate. It wasn’t uncommon for her to show up when a death occurred—being head of security and all—and it wouldn’t be strange for her to pop in now.

“What happened?” Rowan asked the guard on duty, who was stationed just outside the room when she arrived.

“Overdose,” he grunted, looking mildly queasy. “One of the techs thought he must’ve been holding onto the pills they gave him. Smells like shit in there. Not worth it if you ask me,” he added as Rowan started past him to enter the room.

The pungent smell of fresh vomit filled the air the second she passed the threshold, and she almost did leave. The only thing that kept her inside was the need to check for any signs of foul play, the idea lingering idly that somehow Delilah was responsible for this one too.

The new therapist—what the hell is his name?—sidled up next to her with a grim expression on his face.

“He kept saying he wanted to die,” he said, and Rowan side-eyed him at the casual tone. “Didn’t think he’d use the pills supposed to help him to do it.”

She frowned. Admittedly, she didn’t know much about psychiatric medications, but that didn’t sound right… Anti-depressants couldn’t be overdosed, could they?

“What was he on?”

The therapist shook his head. “Sorry, can’t tell you that. HIPAA.”

Rowan nodded, accepting the answer and trying to shake off the unease. The guy was too close, too uncaring. With all the eeriness she’d been feeling today, she didn’t need to add anything to it. Without another word, Rowan turned and left the room, taking a deep breath of fresh, untainted air in the hallway before heading to collect Delilah.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SIX