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“Your bedside ma
Lanz whipped out a penlight, then roughly pried open Donaldson’s right eyelid with a latex-gloved hand. The bright beam was like being speared in the retina with a knife. After a few seconds, Lanz pulled away and scrawled something onto a clipboard.
“Was there a girl brought in with me?” Donaldson asked, keeping his voice neutral.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you about anything other than your injuries.”
“You don’t strike me as the kind of man who takes orders from lowly cops, Doc.”
Lanz seemed to consider it. “Yeah, she was brought in.”
“Alive?”
“If you could call it that.”
“Any chance of me seeing her?”
Lanz offered a sour smile. “Buddy, the only things you’ll be seeing are prison cells and courthouses, right up until they punch your clock.”
Donaldson narrowed his eyes. “I did a doctor, once.”
“Excuse me?”
“I had him strapped down on a table…” Donaldson lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “Then I used his own scalpel to cut off small parts of his body. A bit of skin here and there. A finger. An ear. His lips. His penis, in five separate pieces. I used a clotting powder to stop the bleeding so he didn’t die right away. Then I fed the bits to him. One at a time. If he threw up, I made him swallow the parts again. By the time he finally died, he must have eaten almost a quarter of his own body.”
Lanz didn’t flinch. “I’m going to tell the nursing staff to cut you off morphine. We wouldn’t want a charmer like you accidentally dying during the procedure later.”
Dr. Lanz shoved the clipboard back into its slot at the foot of the bed, and then turned to leave.
“See you later, Doc.”
Donaldson closed his eyes and imagined Lanz tied to a gurney, screaming and begging and choking on his own flesh.
But the image didn’t last. Just as it was getting good, his thoughts were interrupted by an image of Lucy. Small. Young. I
In his head, Lucy smiled at Donaldson. The smile quickly escalated into giggling, and then full blown laughter.
The little bitch was laughing at the pain she had caused him.
You think you know pain, little girl?
I’ll show you pain.
Compilation copyright © 2009 by Blake Crouch & Joe Konrath
SERIAL UNCUT copyright © 2010 by Blake Crouch & Joe Konrath
Interview copyright © 2009 by Blake Crouch & Joe Konrath
Afraid copyright © 2009 by Joe Konrath, originally published by Grand Central
Snowbound copyright © 2010 by Blake Crouch, originally published by Minotaur Books
Shaken copyright © 2010 by Joe Konrath
Illustrations and graphic design copyright © 2010 by Jeroen ten Berge
This eBook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the authors’ imaginations or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Joe Konrath & Blake Crouch.