Soul Stealer Read Online Free Page A

completely psychotic.
    The orderlies burst through the doorway, knowing the drill instantly. They got the patient’s hands into the straps first, but the legs put up more of a fight.
    As two men the size of refrigerators wrestled the remaining limbs in to the straps she prepared the sedative with steady hands. This guy was a sad case, and these fits were getting further and further apart. He was rational and almost sweet when he was calm. Who knew what had set this episode off? Hopefully it wouldn’t set back his treatment too far.
    As the sedative raced through his veins he stopped screaming, and after a moment, his body relaxed and he stopped straining against the leather straps. His breathing calmed, eyes sliding closed slowly.
    Patrice thanked the orderlies and cleaned up the snack she’d been bringing him that he had sent flying across the room. Then she collected the wrapping from the sharp she’d had to use on him. The sharp itself she deposited in to the biohazard container in the hall.
    Patrice returned to the patient’s side, some motherly instinct making her put a hand on his forehead. In reaction to her touch, his face turned towards her but his eyes stayed shut.
    “Oh Charlie,” she said softly and sympathetically. “Please rest well.”
    He swallowed, then he peeked out at her from drooping lids. “I can’t,” he said, sounding like his mouth wasn’t working the way he wanted it to.
    “Of course you can, honey. We’re here to take care of you, remember that. We’re your friends.”
    He shook his head just slightly. “Damned,” he croaked weakly.
    He always said that. She’d heard it many times and it still broke her heart.
    Charles Goodwin had done awful, violent and horrifying things. But she’d heard his back story, and even after these infrequent rages she couldn’t imagine him being capable of such atrocities. They kept a watchful eye at all times but the most he’d ever done was bat her hand away when she handed him food he didn’t want.
    For a homicidal schizophrenic he seemed quite harmless.
    Alarms sounded again and she frowned. When the room number was paged she sighed and turned back the way she’d bee n, headed for Charlie’s neighbor’s room.
    When these two men had first been admitted their attacks were always linked, but it hadn’t happened for months now. Charlie may have been sweet, but Jasper McKay was another story. He had none of Charlie’s innocence, and something about him always made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. He’d never been violent or menacing, but the guy was cold.
    Patrice was always more comfortable when she wasn’t left alone with Jasper. Now she had two orderlies restraining McKay while she took his vitals. She nodded that he was stable, and they were trying to talk the man down while she readied the sedative. She avoided McKay’s eyes as she injected the mixture, only exhaling when his body stopped jerking and convulsing. She didn’t linger with this one. The room was ten degrees colder than the rest of the ward for some reason, and it took about fifteen minutes before her goose bumps wore off.
     
     
    “Jesus Bauer, take it easy,” Jimenez said, lowering his hands and blockers. “You really trying to take a round out of me?”
    Claudia dropped her fists, smiling. “Can’t take a few punches from a girl?”
    He crossed the ring, picking up his water bottle and taking a swig. “You’ve been at this for over an hour. I can only take so much. What’s up?”
    She joined him, sitting down on the canvas and taking a pull on her own water bottle. “Megan dumped me. Came to her senses.”
    Jimenez shook his head. “Bitches are crazy, Bauer. Might as well learn to like the schlong. We really are the simpler sex.”
    She snorted water out her nose, which delighted him.
    Jimenez could have been a professional boxer, but instead he’d gotten in to a fist fight at 21 and killed a guy in a bar brawl. Now his “prime” was past but he