Beyond the door Pamela screamed her name.
Jo moved away from the door. She hadn’t wanted to leave the girls but she needed Pamela disarmed, and wrestling the gun away from her wouldn’t have been a smart move. Jo did a quick count. Three shots fired at Sylvia. God, she hoped the girl wasn’t dead. She rushed to where she lay. Checked her pulse.
“Oh my God,” she breathed. There was a pulse. “Hang on, Sylvia.”
She checked her wounds. There was blood but not as much as Jo had feared there would be.
Pamela was screaming at her to open the door.
Another shot and then another echoed in the room.
How many was that? Seven or eight? How many rounds did Pamela have left? She hadn’t gotten a good look at the weapon she’d been wielding so she couldn’t be sure.
She needed a phone.
Jo raced back into the room with the monitors. She awakened each one by touching a key on the keyboard. One showed the three women—all alive and huddling in one corner of their prison. Thank God! Another showed Pamela doing something at the door. The third showed the outside.
Okay. Phone. She needed a phone. Where the hell was a phone? Pamela surely had a cell phone. She checked the conference table. A cabinet that sat against one wall. No phone!
“Fuck!”
No time to try and find her way out of here. She wouldn’t leave the others for that long. She prowled through the drawers. A flashlight, napkins, notepads. No phone. Pamela was still at that damned control panel. Just to play it safe Jo grabbed the flashlight from the top drawer.
The lights went out, including the monitors.
Jo decided she would take her quick thinking where the flashlight was concerned as a sign her luck was changing. Rather than use it for light, she opted to clutch it as a potential weapon.
She told her mind to settle. She listened.
It was way too quiet.
Had Pamela turned off the power somehow to disengage the auto locks?
Jo moved to the door that exited into that long corridor. Everything was pitch-black. Fear coiled in her chest. She remembered well all the days in utter darkness.
Don’t think about it.
Focus.
She slipped into the corridor. No more gunshots or shouting. No sound at all.
She held her breath and pressed her body against the wall, the flashlight held at the ready. Eventually Pamela would come looking for her or simply to escape. She probably thought Jo had already taken off. She hoped that was what the other woman was thinking.
She dared to draw in a breath. Released it very slowly, careful not to make a sound.
The whisper of breathing brushed her ears.
Coming toward the corridor.
Pamela.
Jo couldn’t see her but she could hear her.
She remained perfectly still and let the woman come to her. Slow, easy, silent breath.
Pamela was very close now. Her breathing was ragged. She was nervous. She had a good twenty-five or more years on Jo. This was far harder for her.
Bitch.
Sylvia cried out.
A weapon on Jo’s left fired. A blast of light flared in the corridor.
Pamela stared at her during that momentary flash of light.
Jo ducked low and charged the woman, slammed the flashlight into the last place she’d seen her head. Missed. Hit her shoulder. Pamela screamed.
Another flare of bright light. Another explosion of a bullet from a muzzle.
Jo raised her weapon again. This time the flashlight connected with the other woman’s head.
The blow sent the flashlight flying from Jo’s hand and clattering to the floor.
Pamela went down.
Jo scrambled in the darkness for the gun.
Found it.
Pamela didn’t move.
Jo felt around until she found the flashlight, turned it on. Pamela was out. Jo shoved the gun into her waistband, then grabbed the bitch by the arm. She dragged her into the room with the big square hole in the center. At the control box, Jo flipped switches until the lights came back on. She jiggled more switches until the lift lowered downward.
Dragging Pamela by the arm, Jo went to the edge of the hole. “Tiffany, send the other girls up one by one.”
“Okay.”
Jo figured if Tiffany was anything like her mother or her uncle she would be the strongest of the three.
First, the girl, Vickie Parton, rose to the top. She scrambled off the lift and into the nearest corner. Jo assured her everything was going to be fine as she sent the lift down again. This time a girl Jo didn’t know came up. The other girl.
Finally, Tiffany Durand was on her way up.
Jo checked Pamela’s pockets and found the key she’d used as well as her cell phone. Damned battery was dead. Shit! She shoved both into the pocket of her jeans.
Pamela started to groan. Jo dragged her to the lift and lowered her down into the square prison where she had been kept for fourteen endless days. Then she looked to the girls. “Let’s go.”
Once they were in the short corridor, she locked the door, securing Pamela inside. When they reached the room with the computers, she said to Tiffany, “Look for anything to cover yourselves.”
While they searched, Jo squatted next to Sylvia and lifted her into her arms. The girl was thin and petite, like her mother had been. She was still breathing and that was something.
There was nothing for the girls to use to cover themselves and they were out of time. Sylvia needed medical attention. Jo led the way into the first of the corridors.
When they reached a door, she said, “Take the key from my pocket. See if it unlocks the door.” She hoped like hell since Pamela was no longer at the controls that the key would do the trick.
Tiffany fished out the key and shoved it into the lock. The door opened into another corridor. They moved toward the other end as quickly as possible. Warm, sticky blood was invading Jo’s tee. Don’t you die on me, Sylvia.
They reached another door. “Try the key again.” Jo prayed.
Tiffany used the key again, the door opened into the wider, main corridor. Just a few more steps and that long staircase stood in front of them. Jo breathed a sigh of relief.
“Go ahead of me,” she ordered. “There’s a door at the top. You have to push it upward. It opens into a guard shack.”
The three young women huddled together as they climbed the seemingly endless stairs. It felt like hours instead of seconds before they reached the top. Gotta get out of here. Gotta get out of here.
Tiffany and the others cried out when they emerged into freedom. Jo hurried them out into the parking lot. Exhausted, the adrenaline receding, she dropped to her knees on the pavement and placed Sylvia carefully on the crumbling asphalt. She looked around. The girls were clustered close, sobbing.
She needed a damned phone.
Jo looked down at the injured woman. Wait...did Sylvia have a phone? Jo felt around in the pockets of her jeans. The feel of the thin bulge sent her pulse racing. Since she didn’t know Tony’s number by heart she called 911.
When the operator answered, she said, “This is Joanna Guthrie. I’m in the parking lot of the Ingram Building at the old Central State Hospital in Milledgeville. I found the women the police have been looking for. One has been shot. Please send help.”
Tiffany and the others came over and knelt down next to Jo. They thanked her over and over but she couldn’t say a word. She was sobbing so hard she couldn’t speak.
Within five minutes, sirens blaring and lights flashing, at least a dozen official vehicles showed up. When Jo saw Tony running toward them, she knew everything would be fine.
It was over.
54
Medical Center, Macon
11:00 p.m.
Tony pushed the wheelchair down the corridor toward the Cardiac Unit. A nurse followed close behind them.