Beyond Reach by Karin Slaughter Read Free Book Online Page B

then follow the blue line to the nurses’ station. They might know what you’re talking about.”
    He looked down. There were five painted lines under their feet. Two led down a hallway, one led toward the elevator, and the last one, a red line, led to the exit, which was less than ten feet behind him.
    Jeffrey picked up his badge and tucked it back into his pocket. He let Sara walk ahead of him toward the elevator. As if by magic, the doors slid open on their approach. The floor of the car was reddish-pink from dirt, and the faint odor of Pine-Sol and vomit filled the air.
    Sara stopped. “Maybe we could take the stairs?”
    “What about the blue line?” Jeffrey asked, only half-joking.
    She shrugged and got on. He followed suit, pressing the three button, noticing that there was a two but not a one. They both stood there, waiting for the doors to close. Nothing happened, so he pressed the three button again. Still, nothing happened. He pressed the two button and the doors closed. Above them, machinery whirred, and the elevator moved upward.
    Sara said, “I really shouldn’t be here.”
    He hated that she felt so out of place. “I want you here.” He tried to sound more convincing. “I need you here.”
    “You don’t,” she insisted, “but I appreciate the lie.”
    “Sara—”
    She turned around, studying the notice board screwed to the back of the elevator. “Meth is Death!” one of the posters warned, showing before and after photos of a beautiful blonde teenager who, after a scant year on meth, turned into a soulless crone with no teeth and festering wounds erupting from her once perfect skin. A number at the bottom was scribbled over, a crude drawing of a joint obscuring the last two digits. Another poster outlining the steps to performing CPR took up most of the remaining space. This one was vandalized with the usual graffiti you found in spaces like this: dirty limericks, phone numbers for loose women, and messages for various people to go fuck themselves.
    Finally, the elevator doors groaned open and a bell dinged. A dimly lit hallway greeted them, and Jeffrey guessed the lights had been turned off so that patients could sleep. The emergency exit sign across from the elevator gave off a warm red glow, pointing toward a doorway at the very end of the hall. Jeffrey glanced around, holding the elevator doors open, wondering if they were on the wrong floor.
    “There’s the stripe,” Sara whispered, indicating the single blue line on the floor. Jeffrey saw that it went to the right, past the emergency stairway, and around the corner. He looked up the hall to the left, but all he could see were more patients’ rooms and another exit sign.
    They followed the painted line to the nurses’ station. He realized as soon as they got there that the hallway circled around and that they could have just as easily taken a left and gotten to the same place.
    “This is why people hate hospitals,” Jeffrey told Sara, keeping his voice low. “If they can’t make you feel sicker, they drive you crazy.”
    Sara rolled her eyes, and Jeffrey remembered the first time he’d told Sara that he hated hospitals. Her response had been almost automatic: “
Everybody
hates hospitals.”
    The nurses’ station was oblong, open at both ends, and packed to the gills with charts and colored sheets of paper. There was one desk with a lamp casting a harsh light over the blotter. A newspaper was folded to the crossword, some of the squares filled in. Jeffrey guessed from the half-eaten pack of crackers beside an open can of Diet Coke that whoever had been sitting there must’ve been called away mid-snack.
    Sara leaned against the wall, arms folded over her chest. “The nurse must be making rounds.”
    “I guess we’ll wait here.”
    “We could find Lena on our own.”
    “I don’t think the sheriff would appreciate that.”
    She gave him a curious look, as if she was surprised that he cared.
    He was about to respond when he