Travis Depaolo stared into the darkness and reasoned that the killer must have extinguished the last of the work lights. He cursed himself again. He felt like a coward. He had to make it right.
He left his flashlight off and listened.
The absence of light made him feel as if he stood in the vacuum of space gazing into the belly of a black hole. He feared that to step forward was to give himself as offering into the arms of oblivion. He stepped forward anyway.
The approximate location of Emily Morgan’s room from his former position next to the nurse’s station was across the hall and back to the left. He wanted desperately to turn on the flashlight and illuminate his path, but he knew that the killer would find him by the light. It would draw death down upon him like a moth to a flame.
The doorway eluded him as he moved across the hall and groped blindly for the entrance. He found the opening and moved inside. Once through the entry, he pushed the door almost closed, in order to block the light from entering the hall, and then activated the beam.
His heart sank as the light shone upon the empty bed. The sheets had been thrown back. Tubes ending in needles lay strewn across the floor.
The killer had claimed his prize. He was too late.
He fought back the guilt and fear. Maybe she made it out of the room?
He extinguished the light and opened the door. He listened in the darkness again.
This time, he heard a faint whisper down the hall. The voice reverberated off the walls. By the time it reached his ears, it sounded as if a legion of the damned lived in the darkness. The voice repeated Emily Morgan’s name.
He moved in the direction of the voice. He didn’t turn on his light at first, but then he decided that he might bump into the killer or walk right past the man and not even know it.
He flipped on the flashlight. His eyes adjusted while his gun sighted along the beam. He mimicked his deceased commander and moved forward by taking cover within each of the doorways. He prayed for strength.