Chapter 44

Beverly paced Hudson’s room feeling trapped.

She looked at the clothes strewn around the bed she still hadn’t packed. Feeling totally unhinged, she couldn’t even think about packing when flashes of little white pellets of peace were calling to her.

She headed for the bathroom to splash water on her face. All of a sudden, an alarm blared, making her feel like she would vibrate out of her skin from fear. Looking around, she wasn’t sure what to do, or what the alarm was. A fire alarm?

The phone on the bedside table rang. She ran over and answered.

“I need you to listen to me, Beverly,” Hudson said in a low hard voice that made her feel even more anxious.

“What’s going on?” she said, hearing the panic in her voice.

“You need to stay in my room. Lock that fucking door, and do not, I repeat, do not come out.”

Beverly felt the tentacles of fear begin in her chest and slowly spread out to the rest of her body. “What’s going on?” she asked again.

“I don’t have time for that right now,” he said. “Just stay in there and don’t open that door until I tell you otherwise.”

There was a soft click, and Beverly stared at the phone. The alarm seemed to be getting louder. Fear was making her cold.

She wrapped her arms around herself and looked around the room. He had told her to stay put, so it wasn’t a fire or anything. Was someone breaking in? Was it the Colonist? As she looked at the door, the walls began to close in on her. Her breath came in short bursts, and despite her chill, a sheen of sweat broke out on her brow. Panic and anxiety raced through her, and her desire for a pill became overwhelming. Nothing was helping—breathing exercises, visiting happy places—she was in the here and now and totally freaked out by the night’s events. Turing to the bedside table, she hoped to see Hudson’s pain pills, but the bottle wasn’t there. She fumbled through the bedside table drawers. The blaring alarm caused her anxiety to crawl to such heights, she began pulling out the drawers and emptying them on the floor.

Running for the dresser, she began going through Hudson’s drawers, dumping some of the contents out, ransacking others.

Nothing.

She ran to the bathroom and looked in the medicine cabinet, tears in her eyes, her breathing heavy. Her hands were now shaking uncontrollably as she fumbled around the bathroom, sinking to her knees and finally finding the pills under the sink wrapped in some gauze and bandages.

Taking a moment, she studied the bottle. Vicodin. It was calling her name, its whispery voice burrowing itself deep within her becoming an entity all to itself, its noise deafening.

The alarm continued to blare, and Beverly slowly opened the bottle, turning the top as if she were in some type of trance, the Vicodin a siren’s song to the addict within her.

Suddenly a voice within her was louder than the alarm, louder than the voice of her addiction.

NO!

She threw the bottle across the bathroom, got up from the floor, and ran to the door. Pushing the button for the elevator, she was relieved that she didn’t have to wait because she was so close to turning back for those pills. She pushed the button for the top floor and was thankful when the elevator doors closed.

Bending over, she put her hands on her knees. Taking deep breaths, she tried to relax, but her run-in with the Colonist, the way Hudson had acted—not to mention the—alarm had her nerves so frayed, it was impossible.

She had no idea what was going on upstairs, but she couldn’t be alone right now or her willpower would fail and her own inner demon would win.