Page 48 of The Queen (Masterpiece Duet 2)
They probably never expected inmates to break out of their cells. They never expected Jonathan Scott. Like the Titanic that couldn’t sink, they were brought down by their own hubris.
Only once we’re inside do I see the man sitting behind the wall of monitors.
Jonathan Scott is such an intimidating presence that it’s strange to see him wearing plain white scrubs and a five-day-old beard. He looks unkempt and tired, as if years of terrorizing people have caught up to him. Only his eyes look the same as I remember them, silver and sharp, as when he came to me on the elementary school playground.
“Hello, Son,” he says in that silky, scary voice of his.
Damon doesn’t crack a smile. That signature charm that he can give out evaporates completely, leaving only a cold stone of a man. “You summoned. So here I am.”
“You say that as if I should have expected it. But you were never very obedient.”
“No, but you figured out how to get me here anyway.”
“It’s a father’s prerogative, wouldn’t you say?”
That prerogative is plainly visible in the wall of flat screens behind Jonathan Scott, the video cameras pointing into each cell. Some of the inmates pace in their cells. Others lie on their beds.
And still others are twisted at odd angles on the floor. Already dead.
“I thought they were working for you,” I say, my voice hoarse. “They helped you take the nurses captive. Helped you keep them prisoner. Why are they locked up?”
“They failed,” Jonathan says sharply, his eyes flashing with venom.
They failed because Avery helped the nurses escape.
She was kept in this asylum for hours, for days. And now I’m here, a mental hospital like the one where I was attacked, a place completely different from that abandoned building. That had been moss-covered and dirt-blackened. This place is sterile and cold. The only thing they have in common is the callousness of the people who ran them.
“Spare us the sob story,” Damon says, his voice cold. “You are a kind and benevolent leader. Someone dared to disobey you. And now you have to kill and torture people to make things right.”
Jonathan’s smile reveals teeth stained with blood. My chest constricts. How would his mouth be bloody? Is he injured? He sits in a casual and comfortable way. Then again he would be excellent at hiding pain.
A darker thought occurs to me. What if he put that blood there—by drinking it? By biting someone, so deep and so intensely that their blood spilled into his mouth?
My stomach turns over, and I press my hands to it, grateful I didn’t finish that muffin this morning.
“Do I disgust you, sweet peach?” Jonathan Scott says in a singsong voice.
“Don’t speak to her.”
“Then why did you bring her if she isn’t going to play?”
“I brought her because you preyed on her when she was only a child. And I know from experience how large you can loom in memory. But you aren’t that grand, really. You aren’t as scary or as smart as you think you are. And who better to see you for who you really are than Penny?”
Jonathan’s face lights up with twisted pleasure. “She is a smart girl. Outsmarted me when she was barely a baby, didn’t she? Skinny legs and pigtail braids, and there she was pretending to be dumb so I wouldn’t take her. Thinking about it is enough to make me hard.”
Damon pulls out a gun so quickly and so smoothly I barely have time to register the sharp turn in conversation. “And now she gets to see you die, you sick fuck.”
No surprise registers on Jonathan’s face. No fear, either. “I won’t deny you your chance to kill me, my boy. But you know it will mean I’ll have won. That I’ve finally turned you into me.”
“Maybe so, but I won’t mourn you for even a second.”
Another sly smile. This one raises the hair on the back of my neck. “But I think I’ll take something with me when I go. You’ll mourn her, won’t you?”
My heart skips a beat because I know exactly who he’s threatening. Me.
Damon knows too. His head whips toward me, his eyes frantic as he makes sure that I’m standing, still safe. And it’s that split second of distraction that Jonathan uses to lunge at him. With almost superhuman speed he crosses the yards between them, pushing Damon’s gun wide. A shot blasts through the air, crumpling drywall in the corner of the room.
Jonathan tackles his son to the ground, ripping the gun from his hand.
Pure instinct sends me reeling back, out of the path of men and guns. Not fast enough, because Jonathan moves toward me in a blur of feral silver eyes. Then I’m on the ground, a gun pressed to my temple, a heavy weight on top of me, shards of glass pressing into my back in starbursts of pain.
